Never Delete your Unfinished Writing

During a radio interview, I was asked what inspired me to write “Ghost of Me” my new paranormal crime novel. The full story behind my book would probably be too long to answer in an interview, but it shows why you should never delete anything you start writing.

It started with an abandoned novel

I began writing a novel where the main character finds her own dead body in the morgue and realises she’s a ghost and someone killed her. A handful of chapters in, life took over and even after I studied some creative writing module as part of my BA degree, I forgot about the novel while I worked on other projects instead.

I found it years later while looking at old files on a memory stick, around the time I was starting my Creative Writing MA. I rewrote and edited what I had so far and submitted part of it during my first year. The plan was to continue writing and submitting the rest as part of my essays for the second year. For reasons I won’t bore you with, I changed my mind, although I continued to write the novel and completed it before my course finished.

How did I my ideas?

I can’t recall where the idea of a ghost solving her own murder came from, but as I continued writing, I liked the concept of getting to see what happens after you die and how people may not react in the way you…