Note the spaces around the words. Not empty for long...
I have printed out my first draft of novel #2, and it comes to nearly 500 pages, and used up a whole black inkjet. This environmental abomination is going to be my constant companion for the next six weeks or so. I’m going to read it, scribble on it, cross out great chunks, add bits and make lists from it and fill in a pile of index cards.… read more
Me by Rembrandt
Today I am feeling a little Lazarus-like thanks to antibiotics. But still happily confined to bed, where I have been engaging in research for novel #2. I am a sort of after the event researcher – I like to write unhindered by mere fact. It’s only after I make something up that I want to go and check if it’s actually true. It can be annoying if it isn’t, but that’s the great thing about fiction-writing.… read more
Where I am mostly working today. Note Simba hot water bottle.
What do writers and women of the night have in common? Prostitution, you may say**. But we also both work in bed.
Today I am feeling a little ropey, a bit meh, like I’ve got some sort of bug hanging around me. It might have something to do, too, with the last glass of wine I drank last night, which was one more than I should have had.… read more
I have spent the last couple of days catching up on admin and reading, trying to flush my mind for the read through of novel #2 (which I hope, one day, will actually have a title). I have had to fill in a couple of interview forms for a couple of places, both of which asked about my process.
While it may sound a little precocious coming from a first-time novelist, I do believe that I have a process, or a way of working that suits me.… read more
Today, after a fruitless day yesterday where I wrote myself into a dark hole, (including some inappropriate sex scenes that took me nowhere except to consider making an appointment with a therapist) I sat down with my good old friends from the eighties. Yep. I got out the index cards.
I don’t know why I need cardboard real-life index cards when I have the wonderful Scrivener, which duplicates the process, but virtually. In fact, I then always go on to transcribe the scenes onto the Scrivener corkboard.… read more
That’s what it’s feeling like at the moment. I’m in a good spot after a slow summer, producing over 2000 words a day. It just keeps coming and coming, for which I am very grateful.
I am having some very familiar difficulties with self-doubt, but it’s amazing how a deadline makes you push them away. I am aiming to get to the end of this very first draft by half-term, when I will read it through.… read more
