Writing in the dark

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Do it, just do it. After the not-knowing, but vowing my trust that it would come, ideas for Next Book are pouring out. But all higgledy-piggledy (Happy Year of the Pig, by the way). How to tame, how to order. I don’t know, but keep on writing. It doesn’t matter. Get the words on paper, fix them later.

I now have three different starts for this novel. Have already diverted a fourth to be used further on. One challenge is to know the back story, but provide it later. Get into the story, the voice, the action. Get the characters talking to each other: Lo! They become people! And anyway it will all get moved around when I am much further in — so interesting to find out what is going to happen next!

Meanwhile heartening news, agent A has read all of A Body of Knowledge, and we meet this week! She misses the characters, we are plotting our path together, and I’ll be able to tell her of characters to come…

 

Writing in the negative upside

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Waiting waiting working waiting — negative capability Keats called it. While one book is out seeking an agent I thought I’d better start the next. You know, just in case a scary Yes email comes and among other things the question is: what-when is your next? I have the idea, I have the main storyline, I’m doing some (interesting!) research, but… I need the voice. And you know what? I am positive it will come. I have learned to trust. To keep working around the edges, and tolerate the creative state Keats identified: ‘when one is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.’

Can I stretch it to tolerating rejections of A Body of Knowledge? Yes, that too — part of the game. Just send my adult contemporary novel about a fairytale-telling therapist out again again again. However, now it has a new title:  The Misper’s Tale. I like the first title, but perhaps it promised darkness and this is not a suspense-ridden crime story; it is gentle, thoughtful. Even if it does have police procedure in it.

A new winter haiku on my haiku page here.  Hmmm ‘punching the sky’ — a bit of irritability there?

Writing patterns

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Golden November. And it’s NANOWRIMO too. If you’ve never done it and you want a breakthrough in your writing, DO IT; guess I’d better put the link in here. Talk about patterns of writing, this go for broke method led me to the novel I completed in late spring. I am now submitting A Body of Knowledge to agents, a whole ‘nother adventure.

Of course once I had the breakthrough — after two agonising days of facing the blank page and writing rubbish, and only then finding a voice I didn’t know — I had to keep writing for the whole month. The flow was fantastic, and the freeeedom to write any old how. Besides that, there is no such thing as a novel in a month (but it’s fun to say). Once you get to the end of November you’ve got 10-20-30-50??000 words. Rest, recover, keep writing. And then edit-revise-rethink… a very different kind of pattern.

Patterns, seasons… time to add an autumn to my haiku page. Click here for a peek.

Writing turn on

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‘I’m not happy when I’m writing, but I’m more unhappy when I’m not.‘ So said Fannie Hurst from the source you’ll see in my teachingcreativewriting blog here with scores of freebie writing exercises for writing tutors. It’s an exercise I call Quote-match. What did Stephen King say? How about JK Rowling? Hemingway? You may object to what Agatha Christie said… Alternative, look at this page of this site. Have a happy teaching term!

Writing: nailed it

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Six months later… she emerges from the intense re-writing of A Body of Knowledge. And the challenge of synopsis and letters-to-agents. I vowed to get my mystery about a therapist who tells fairytales off to six agents by end of July, and I’ve nailed it (just one week late).

Thanks to author Diane Chandler (Moondance, The Road to Donetsk – Blackbird Books )for being my Beta reader. To husband Michael for being my First reader. To Rachel Knightley and her Green Ink Writers Gym for incisive support on Chapter 1 and approaching agents. To Jericho Writers for their wonderful Agent Match and online tutorials.

UPDATE: I forgot to say big thanks to editor-tutor Jayne Watson and to all at Retreats for You in Sheepwash, Devon where a year ago this month I went to wrestle with the first rewriting, a wonderful writers’ haven.

And 6xmonths apologies to family, friends and followers whom I have had to abandon to get to this stage. Normal broadcasting will resume shortly… And thanks to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, full of colour and creativity, including this fierce and wonderful dog by T. Blewitt

 

Writing in my sleep

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papiermache sculpture by slk

Sleeping Wing slk 2010

‘Sleep on it’ they say. I’ve finally got to the stage of life when I find out it’s true. Deeply deeply re-writing A Body of Knowledge, I’ll finish a chapter, glance ahead to see what to tackle next, shut down for the day (or night). Then towards morning, or walking about doing the Rest of Life next day, I’m suddenly struck. ‘He wouldn’t say it that way, it’d be…’ or ‘She has to remember the time they…’ or ‘omg, X has to happen before they discover Y.’

Feeling good about Trust the Process. Let things come to me. Don’t force it.

The blue wing thing is an abstract piece of sculptural papiermache I made. It came as a dream image.

Writing, Interrupted

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Mega moan. Writing interrupted by builders, plumbers, painter, festivities, family… and just as I am getting back in the groove of re-writing A Body of Knowledge, the pc crashes. Count blessings: nothing lost in the crash. Re-writing is really interesting — so many nooks and crannies where I am making connections and discovering new layers… some of them were there already just waiting to be brought out a bit. A case of What I didn’t Know that I Knew.

Though skies are grey, even in January sometimes they are blue… to see a winter season haiku click here.