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This morning I was on the blank page that was the beginning of Chapter 14, and I had no idea what was going to happen next.
Well, my character would get out of bed, perhaps. She would drink coffee, eat a bagel. Do some work.
In fact her day sounded about as interesting as my brother’s diary did back when he was seven. The whole family were amazed that every day for months after he’d been given a diary for Christmas, at bed time he would faithfully get it out, and write for a few minutes, and then lock it up and put it away.
Eventually I gave in to the temptation and sneaked in his room to read it. And every day it said the same thing.
Woke up and had breakfast.
Went to school.
Had tea.
Went to bed.
Except at the weekends and holidays, when one line was missed out.
This is not good enough, I am writing a crime novel, a psychological thriller, a descent into hell – one is not supposed to eat bagels and drink coffee whilst crossing the Styx. Although I suppose a bagel or two might keep Cerberus occupied.
But egged on by Facebook friends (my writing support group, I could not do without them) I started to allow the ideas to come through, to let the characters take their next steps…
And suddenly I have an idea that seemingly came from nowhere – a scene that takes us deeper into the plot, and a step closer to hell. It is just so right that I can’t imagine why I didn’t see it before…and I start to think about it, how I can prepare the way earlier in the story for these new actions and this new character…
And to my amazement, it’s already there. There’s a brief mention right back in Chapter One, and something else in Chapter 12…that all helps to lead up to this scene in Chapter 14.
How did that happen?
Weird.
All I can conclude is that my unconscious mind has been working, while my conscious mind has been lounging around apparently doing nothing.
Just keeping on going now…and hoping that next time I am stuck this will remind me that there’s a way forwards, even if I don’t exactly know how to find it!
And now all I have to do is WRITE!
Ann
and just a bit over excited because…
I’ve been longlisted in agent Kate Nash’s novel openings competition!
Chances are I’ve told you already, and that I’ll tell you again. I have been wandering around with a big silly smile on my face.
I know it’s only a start, but it feels wonderful, especially after collecting a long string of rejections for my short stories.
I’m still stuck in the middle of Chapter Twelve, but I do now have a few pages of ideas scrawled in my notebook.
I always enjoy reading AL Kennedy’s blog about writing in the Guardian, and the latest post was no exception. This part about her notebooks, for instance -
“I have played a similar trick on myself with my notebooks for years – each book I intend to write has a notebook containing … well, yes, notes, but nothing that is finished or, as things progress, is massively helpful. The notebook seems to be a way of getting to the point where I can start – and I know everyone is different in this area, I’m just saying how it is for me. Despite it being full of scared nonsense, illegible essentials and unhinged suggestions, I like to stare at the (tightly closed) notebook and pretend that it is, in fact, full of the novel, neatly written down by hand, and all I have to do is type it up and maybe do a spellcheck.”
I have a huge A4 notebook half filled with nonsense notes about my novel in progress, and most of it means nothing, refers to earlier versions of the idea, to characters who have simply disappeared. It’s also not very legible.
And yet, whenever I get stuck, I write in there for a few days and somehow it all starts to make sense again. I actually dare not look back at it in case I get confused…. Perhaps when I’ve finished the first draft.
That seems entirely separate to the Word documents that I am also keeping going as I write… One of them is a list of things I must go back and fix after the first draft, and the other is a collection of ideas that I want to remember to include in future chapters.
I also love this section from A L Kennedy’s blog – because it says so well what writing (and reading) really seem to be about.
“I always say that writing and readers are misunderstood, because if you glance casually at people who are reading and writing, you may simply see people who appear serious, frozen. But if we happen to glance at people just before they kiss (not in an intrusive or unpleasant way, Best Beloveds) then their expression is the same – oddly solemn, intent. And yet nobody ever suggests that kissing is dull, or pathetic, or a bit of a waste of time. I happen to believe that giving and receiving a kiss operates very much along the same lines as giving and receiving a word – it’s simply that the giving and receiving are done in different rooms at different times – they are still an attempt to touch, be touched, be recognised, to exist in passion, to be human.”
Anyway, I really ought to get back to the delights of Chapter Twelve
Ann 
At one thirty this morning, I finished writing the first draft of Chapter 11.
I’m now about a third of a way through my first draft – in terms of story, and word count. That’s 34 445 words…and my first character is now dead.
I opened my new document and typed Chapter 12 at the top of the page, and I am suddenly aware that I don’t know quite what to write next. The last few weeks I’ve been steadily writing towards this death scene – that’s been my whole focus.
So I turned back to the synopsis and chapter by chapter outline I wrote back in February…
I knew it had all changed, but I wasn’t quite aware of how much. In the outline the death occurred in Chapter 4….and the next chapter was intended to focus on my main character’s meeting with someone she first met, and threw a glass of wine over, a few thousand words back.
Still, writing towards that major scene that I had already visualised quite clearly did work reasonably well – my progress was slow mostly because I was distracted by short story writing, not because I was stuck.
So I’ll spend some time thinking about the murder I have planned for about two thirds of the way through, and then get back to it.
I’m not surprised it’s changed so much since I wrote the synopsis. I’m not sure if it was actually helpful to have it there or not. I do think spending all that time writing it triggered lots of ideas, maybe even some of the ones that made it into my draft, but weren’t covered by the outline. I’ve only just looked at it for the first time in weeks – but it has felt like something of a safety net.
The only problem with that image is that if I had looked, I would have realised that there was no net there to catch me – just a long, long way to fall…
Ann
or I’m really beginning to get better again.
After all the stress – emotional and physical – of the last few weeks I was expecting my lupus flare to really put me out of action. It has hit me hard a couple of days – last Monday, until I remembered I am allowed anti inflammatories again – I was so stiff and creaky I could barely move.
But it does seem that although I am being knocked out when I overdo it, I am much more resiliant than I was. Instead of being knocked out for a week at a time, or longer, even after a very hard day physcially and emotionally, I only had to take one day resting and I could work again – and walk.
So I’m back to building up my energy and strength by walking absolutely every day. I think that getting the thyroxine back to the right level maybe did trigger the flare up – but also I think that may be why I get better faster.
Maybe with a bit of luck, I can catch up with myself and find a new balance, with this higher level of energy.
I sent my crime story out to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine this week – to their Department of First Stories. I don’t know how much of a chance it has, but I do think it’s the best crime story I’ve written so far by miles and miles.
I’ve also made progress on my ghost story for the Asham. It’s now got a better shape – a much improved opening scene to grab the reader quickly, and I think there’s a lot more emotional intensity too – especially at the end. The spooky stuff is a bit stronger and I fixed a plot hole. I’m leaving it for a week or so and then will give it a final read aloud edit, and try to fix any clunky language then.
And tomorrow, it’s back to the novel
Ann
I’m a bit disappointed with myself – I really planned to throw myself into the July version of nanowrimo, and get to the end of the first draft of my novel.
But a variety of different things got in my way.
Writing the novel is right at the top of my priority list and I feel as if I should have made more progress, but it turns out that for me it’s not as easy as saying okay, I can always find time to write 500 words a day. I have to capable of concentrating, and it’s just not always possible. I didn’t have access to my computer, and the weather affected me quite badly, and I’m having a mild lupus flare – which affects my ability to concentrate as well as my general energy levels.
On the bright side I do have the time now so I just have to be a little gentle with myself while I recover and then I can put myself back into it heart and soul.
I am going to take a few days to ease myself back in gradually – I have a couple of short stories to work on and I can do that a little at a time. Editing doesn’t require quite as much concentration as first draft. I have a sense of direction with the stories too, thanks to the wonderful Nik Perring at The Story Corrective – a very useful service for anyone who wants some really practical, nuts and bolts advice on how to fix up a work in progress.
Then it’s back to the novel. It’s frustrating because I know it is actually going very well. I love my prologue, Chapter 1 is a bit shaky, Chapters 2 through 8 are really quite strong, Chapter 9 is dreadful but at least holds the shape and storyline, and Chapter 10 has moments that almost work – and I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in to Chapter 11.
In fact I am nearly a third of the way there.
Stories fixed first – then back to the novel next week – with the end of September my target for a finished first draft.
Ann
at the moment; it’s all just a little bit out of control.
In the last few weeks I’ve actually started writing the novel, instead of just planning to write it. Even though I have just dumped 5k words or so that I didn’t like – I am now on 22k, and about to start writing Chapter 8.
But I’m not where I thought I’d be in the story.
I had it all planned out, this happens in Chapter 1, that will happen in Chapter 12, all the way up to Chapter 20. But I’m nowhere near close to writing the big scene I had planned for Chapter 5 – I’m now expecting it to come in at Chapter 9. Probably. Unless something else happens first.
It’s not just that I’m avoiding writing a difficult scene either. I know how that feels – having taken four pages in one story getting a character on to a bus. In the most recent draft of that story, I cut that down to three sentences.
I’ve melded two characters, and that’s working surprisingly well. Then a minor character has suddenly come forward and become much more important. My main character, my narrator, is developing a voice and a minor personality disorder.
And some of the time at least, I’m just writing down what I see the characters do. It doesn’t feel like I’m plotting any more, they just feel that little bit alive.
Weird.
I’m obsessing. We went to the greengrocers four times this week and I still forgot to buy tomatoes. That sounds like Ryan, not me 
I have this folder filling up of lots of documents, one for each chapter. (Go and do your backups now, stoopid)
Then there’s two extra files I’ve discovered I need. One for notes about what I need to go back and fix later. Restructuring, names I need to sort out, places where I already know I need to show and not tell. Places where I really out to cut some more.
Another for the ideas for the first draft ahead, that are just tumbling out of my head faster than I can write them down.In theory at least, that file should get shorter from time to time, as I delete the bits that make it into the current chapter.
Why am I scared? I just don’t know where it’s coming from. It took me such a long time to start, and now it’s just flowing, and I don’t know why and how. I tell myself not to overthink it – but that just wouldn’t be me
On to chapter 8 then.
Although I might just take an evening off, and watch a film.
Ann
The Travis McGee novels by John MacDonald were big favourites with my Dad, and I learned to love them when I started to read his library books as well as my own.
He’s a wonderful character – one of the cynical and tarnished knights of private investigation, who nevertheless has a sense of honour. He’s also a terrible womaniser – sometimes I am quite surprised, looking back, at what my Dad used to let me read. I remember realising, reading Ian Fleming, that Pussy Galore was some kind of reference that I was missing, and asking him to explain. I don’t actually remember what he said, other than recognising that he wasn’t going to give me a proper answer.
Anyway, I’m making slow but steady progress on the novel – and writing and rewriting the first chapter to try to give my narrator the right kind of voice – the one that everyone loves in my prologue
Then I read about John D Macdonald, and how when he read over the first draft of the very first McGee book, he hated the voice so he trashed the lot and rewrote it.
Then he read the second draft – and decided he had gone too far the other way – so he started all over again.
Writing in the first person, getting the voice right is fundamental. So, I’ll just keep on keeping on…
Ann
from Nik Perring – whose blog you can read here.
That’s where I first discovered him, following a random link. I read a fascinating post on story shape, and followed the links to read some of his short stories online, and I was hooked.
So when I read on his blog that he had a book coming out, of course I ordered it staright away, and it arrived here this morning. 
So far, I’ve read the first story – which made me think and made me cry. I’ll be savouring them one at a time over the next couple of weeks, but already I can say without reservations – if you love short stories, if you love the kind that make you pause and think, that linger in the mind – you won’t regret buying this collection.
Ann
is inherently depressing, and apparently not something one easily gets used to.
A couple of days ago I received an email from the Brit Writers Awards – my short stories had sucessfully passed Round One judging, and they said, if they successfully pass Round Two – I will get an email tonight after five.
If I don’t get through – no email 
As I said – not getting an email is difficult.
It does reinforce my decision to concentrate on the novel though. For the last year or two I have spent so much time on short stories – writing and rewriting them, that now I have about fourteen I’m fairly pleased with. It doesn’t look as if anyone else is though – and there’s the rub.
If I’d spent all that time on writig a novel, I’d at least have a first draft by now, and even though I do have fourteen short stories I’m not actually any closer to getting published.
So, back to the novel.
And try to ignore that nagging hope that just maybe I will get an email tonight.
Ann
JFDI
Torture the character – and the reader.
It’s all about creating emotion and fulfilling and subverting expectations
Kate’s voice needs to be more, more – something – whatever it is that everyone loves about the prologue.
You have more than two senses – use them.
Say what you mean to say, instead of avoiding saying it.
Say it in the right order – hold back, and without cheating, create drama…
Emotion, body language – show don’t tell
Cut the adverbs – find the right verb instead.
Avoid unintended repetition.
Don’t be boring.
This is descent into hell, not a visit to Ikea. Well, maybe there isn’t that much difference.
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