The Development of The Doctor’s Hidden Patients

How it Happened

I’d thought about writing a novel for a while but I didn’t know what to write or where to start. In 2019, I devised an initial concept with the working title of Connected. Five years later, that initial concept is an 84,000-word thriller novel titled The Doctor’s Hidden Patients. I think it’s fair to say the pace of the novel is much more dynamic than my development of it. If ‘patience is a virtue’ and ‘good things come to those who wait,’ maybe my debut novel just needed an extra bit of time in the making to be truly complete.

Early Beginnings

On Sunday 1 March 2020, with a few thousand words of my novel drafted, I attended a Writer’s Retreat in my home city of Birmingham. It was interesting to hear the stories of other writers and be able to spend time working on our own creations. My reflection is that it is quite inspiring to find yourself sitting in a room full of strangers undertaking the same painstaking process. Firstly, you realise you’re far from alone in attempting something so ridiculous. Secondly, you realise how much you can achieve when you don’t procrastinate. I’ll cover this in more detail later.

Global Pandemic

I have wondered if The Doctor’s Hidden Patients would be complete were it not for Covid-19 and the periods of lockdown. Time, and more precisely my management and best use of it in the modern era often leaves a lot to be desired. However, when the world suddenly closes you do find yourself with more time than ever. Much of my drafting and novel development took place during the strangest of times in our lives. You need a lot of patience and perseverance to complete a novel. Locked in your own home is the perfect scenario for such a process.

Rewriting

Even the greatest of writers don’t produce a masterpiece with the first draft. The rewriting process is a necessary step in polishing your manuscript. The first person to read my first draft was my wife who said ‘it wasn’t what she was expecting’ and was ‘better than she expected.’ This gave me sufficient confidence to share the draft with a friend of ours for review. Having completed a proofreading course and as a reader of thriller novels, they were the obvious first choice to tell me what was right, and more importantly what was wrong with it to make improvements.

Traditional Publishing

With an edited manuscript, I thought I’d research traditional publishing options before self-publishing. If you can’t handle rejection, I’d suggest seeking out agents and publishers to review your work is probably a bad idea. If you brave it, you will most likely become numb to the rejections and the even more demoralising feeling that is not receiving a response at all. Seeking traditional publishing is a tough slog with a very low prospect of success. But then, an agent shows an interest. Your belief in your work soars. If a professional is interested then it must be good after all….

Revise and Resubmit

In amongst the rejections and no responses, I had a revise and resubmit with an agent which then ultimately resulted in rejection. That proved to be a tough but invaluable experience in many ways. Firstly, it was a massive confidence boost to have positive engagement with a literary agent. Secondly, it provided me with feedback that has helped me to improve my manuscript. Thirdly, it led to me seeking out an editor who has provided the much-needed polish to a final draft I can be proud of. Yes, I am disappointed I wasn’t signed but it has propelled me forward.

Self-Publishing

Having seemingly exhausted all hope of traditional publishing, I was left with two options, self-publish, or leave my work to rot away. I’ve invested so much time and effort into The Doctor’s Hidden Patients that I feel I must make it available to the world, whether the world actually wants it or not. And if it’s the latter, it doesn’t really matter. I feel a sense of achievement in completing a novel when along the way it would have been so much easier to give up. I’ve even started work on a second novel which I’m sure I’ll finish eventually.