Well, it’s Jan 3rd and I’m already on the back foot.
I try to blog at the start of the month, but despite having the week between Christmas and New Year off, I didn’t have time to write a blog. I thought about writing it, but didn’t get around to actually doing it. However, I did do a lot of other stuff.
Obviously, a lot of the “stuff” I did was Christmas, family and New Years. Had a great time – thanks for asking – hope you did too. But I also got a lot of writing work done too.
In the seven days from Boxing day to New Year’s Day bank holiday, I managed to write over 12k words of my latest contemporary thriller. This may not sound like much to some of you (may sound like masses to others, what would I know), but for me this was a surprising rush. You see Elaine has been giving me grief all through November and most of December. Let me explain…
Elaine is my main character and she has to basically carry this book. She’s an everyman (and no that’s not sexist, it’s just a description), and she has to go through some fairly big changes from the first chapter of this book and I’m now 22 chapters in. But despite writing and pushing, I couldn’t get her to go where I needed her to go. This was mostly because I didn’t really know how she was going to go there, or who she was going to have to deal with when she got there. Well, that’s not entirely true, I knew what he was, I knew what he looked like, I knew what he’d be like, I knew how he would react. In fact, the only thing I didn’t know, was his name. But I hadn’t even got to him, and Elaine was still reluctant to go anywhere.
I think in the end what it was, was that like a lot of mothers, she just first had to go see her daughter, and like a lot of those lot of mothers – it took longer than this outsider expected. But then, there were an awful lot of issues that needed to be resolved between the two of them. Once I’d sorted that things really started to flow.
Then, of course, there was him. He was fine once I decided what to call him. That was one moment when keeping a database of my characters was really useful in ensuring that I don’t double name, I had to check it just to be sure, because once I had his name it felt so familiar that it was like déjà vu.
Now they are properly on different teams the book is working well, can’t wait for the time when these two characters have to start actually working together. Really looking forward to that.
That wasn’t all the writing I did either.
I also hand wrote (yes in a book with a pen) about 1000 words of my second steampunk novel – then I realised I didn’t like it and started all over again with a different point of view character and it works better though I haven’t had chance to catch up to where I was yet. That has a lot to do with the fact that the new POV required that I start the scene several minutes earlier than I had and that takes up word count – that and now Elaine is cooperating I’m concentrating on her.
I’m also working on an editing commission so that’s me keeping busy.
Unfortunately, I never got the cover design last year, but this year I have found a new artist so I hope to have my collection out in the next few weeks.
Well, life and editing calls…
The Write Route 