Yesterday was something of a red-letter day for me – it was the day I made my first fiction sale. It’s a 495-word slice of gothic horror for a new publication called Postcards from Hell.

The idea is this: the editor (a writer contact of mine named Jeff Crook) commissions thirteen items of flash horror, each one no bigger than can be printed onto a postcard. He then commissions suitable artwork for the obverse – puts them together, and mails them to his subscribers. Neat, eh?

You might be surprised that it has taken me this long to sell some fiction (unless you’ve read some, of course). To be sure, I have written four stories for Nature_’s _Futures series (two under pseudonyms), but that was editorial prerogative (and we had holes to fill). One of these made it into a ‘Best-Of’ anthology, which was great, but that doesn’t really count, either. I haven’t really made much of an effort to hawk stories around – just three over the past twenty years (all rejected).

And a novel I wrote last year currently limps desultorily round the publishers (but don’t wait for them to decide – you can read it free online here).

So this sale, while small in size, means a lot. First, it is something of a confidence booster – which cannot be underestimated.

Second, it has unclogged a block I’ve had in my mind about my second novel, whose progress I’ll tell you all about in postings to come.

Writing my first novel was a thrilling, empowering and immersive experience. The enjoyment lies in seeing your own imagined world come to life before your very eyes during the act of writing. My agent liked it too, but whereas (she said) the novel was a decent piece of writing, it lacked somewhat in the plotting and planning. Why not, she advised, try a kind of ‘puzzle book’, like the Da Vinci Code, only better?

I started to plan it – to write a story without, in fact, writing the story. Just to get the facts straight. This has been driving me barmy, as what I really want to do is let myself loose on some prose, but I am fearful of doing this before I have a better idea of where the story will go.

When, therefore, Jeff invited me to write something for Postcards from Hell, it was a grand opportunity to essay, in proper writing, one of the scenes I’ve sketched for the next novel. To be sure, it is less than 500 words long, but in the act of writing I learned a lot more about two of the key characters – one, in particular – and generated a new idea which will, I think, help drive the plot along.

What I’ve learned is that plotting and writing are not two separate tasks, one to be completed before the other, but a kind of ongoing conversation. What scientists call ‘reciprocal illumination’.

So when I got home, this news in hand, I started to write the novel in earnest – while returning to the plot with more enthusiasm.

What will the new book be like? To be sure, it’ll be nothing like The Da Vinci Code: At the moment, imagine a plot for the X-Files written by H. P. Lovecraft, but with a more contemporary feel.

But really, who knows? No matter how well drawn the plot might be, writing is an adventure of uncertain outcome, and part of the excitement is that one never quite knows how things will turn out.