Tag Archives: WIP

A W.I.P. is born

For non-writers, that’s ‘work in progress’, by the way.  And what better time than January to move on?

I have now redrafted eight chapters of TWE in first person and with a number of plot tweaks. I think I like it more than I did, but for now, (pace the odd competition) I don’t think I’m going to take it any further. I will be posting it on Authonomy to get some critical feedback, and should an agent or publisher appear on the horizon I’ll be chaining myself to the desk to finish it, but unless that happens it will be on the back burner, a project to pick up when other writing stalls.

Meanwhile Julia McCutchen has been talking  about an ‘emerging vision’ and that’s what I now need to tackle. I make no apologies for being coy myself, especially as I’m still not quite sure what ‘the vision’  is, or what it may turn into. But I’ve got to the point where even if my goal  isn’t clear, some practical work has to be done or it might never emerge at all and just rattle around in my head annoying me.

 What is it? It’s certainly not a novel, (not now, not yet?) and may not even be fiction. I have actually made a start at writing it as a film script, because this is how it makes sense to me. It also  frees me from doing more research and allows me to concentrate on action and dialogue. Since I have never learned or even considered screenwriting, this is a huge leap in the dark, but one that feels right for now. I’m even happy to think of it as a precursor to something else, as an artist might do a preliminary sketch before starting on the main canvas.

 In time I may add some W.I.P. pages to the site . Anyone who’s interested in the background will get some clues from the new links in Current Research.

 

So, Happy New Writing Year!

And long live the WIP.

Sunrise, sunset

Had a sobering thought yesterday when I heard mail delivery (i.e. by the postman) being described as a ‘sunset industry’. Hang on, I thought, as a novelist whose primary aspiration is to get into print, am I also part of a sunset medium,  soon to be supplanted by e-books, downloads or just one big blogosphere?

It’s not that I  consider e-books to be works of the devil. Readers may note that a Kindle or Sony Reader in my Christmas stocking would be more than accceptable. But for the book to die out altogether? Well, call me nostalgic, but that is very scary indeed. 

Luckily I recently discovered Nathan Bransford’s blog (now on the sidebar) and he has such an up-beat take on this (and publishing life in general) that I’m taking the liberty of quoting directly.   

don’t panic. Things are changing, it’s going to be an interesting/challenging couple of years as we gradually succumb to our coming e-book overlords, but it doesn’t mean the novel is going to disappear or that we’re all going to hell in a handbasket. Things aren’t going to be worse (at least in the long term), they’re just going to be different. And in 50 years when we’re making the transition from reading e-books on screens to having them beamed directly into our heads we’ll wax nostalgic about the charming blink of electronic pages and the smell of plastic and people will get angry about the change and say that you can pry their e-books from their cold dead hands.

Not quite sure why this cheered me, but it did! Do get along there if you haven’t been already.

Next on my to do list is to look at all of Nathan’s advice on getting published, but a more pressing problem is the WIP. As I pass the 10,000 mark of my Water’s Edge rewrite, I’m wondering, in view of previous reactions, why I have retained the first person?  I tell myself   that every scene is now told in a way that would work in third person. 

So why on earth don”t I just do it?

First impressions

Writers are always being urged to provide dramatic and memorable openings, but a post on Random Distractions sent me on a tour of my own bookshelves to discover that amongst even the worthiest of contemporary novels, great first sentences are hard to find.  Determined to find something better, I resorted to Google which reminded me of this one. 

‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’

(L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953)

Maybe not contemporary, but still stunning, though not so much the start of a story as a statement: a ‘truth universally acknowledged.’  Of course it takes a different kind of panache to deliver,

‘It was the day my grandmother exploded.’ 
(Iain Banks, The Crow Road)

 but maybe nowadays we are too hell bent on plunging into the action to pause and simply deliver a statement.  

 I also think it’s not just the thought or the action but the rhythm. Think of

‘Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’

(Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca)

As for contemporary, ten minutes ago I picked up a copy of Linda Grant The Clothes on their Backs. It begins,

 ’Today, for the first time in many years, I passed the shop in Seymour Street.’

Why so good? I don’t know, but I like it. I like it a lot.

For a novice, there’s always the danger of striving for effect, or for bursting in with a fanfare that the rest of the novel can’t deliver. You can read my the current offering here, although it’s up for review following the addition of a mini prologue. 

Feel free to give your verdict.

End Game

I have now written the last piece of the plot of my W.I.P. and have only a chapter or so of ‘loose ends’ to tidy up. Am I celebrating? Actually, no. Because I find writing the act of finishing a novel a strangely vicarious pleasure. Last time it proved no pleasure at all, but more an uncomfortable act of separation. I wrote nothing for several weeks afterwards.

Even now as I realise that the end (and not quite the end I had planned) is in sight for Ailsa, I can feel a bit of a dark moment creeping over me. This time I do have other projects to attend to, but I feel sure that when I have written the last sentence I won’t want to go back to this book for quite some time. I could of course simply finish it of and send it out for critiquing, but I already know there are elements of the first section which need to be changed. Sending it out ‘warts and all’ doesn’t feel quite right. On the other hand, waiting until the spirit moves me to go back to it could result in a long gap – good for the book, perhaps, but not in line with the target I have set myself of having a finished article in time for this year’s Winchester conference.

Foreseeing this difficulty, I have come up with a cunning plan. I am going to hold back from that last chapter and attempt to do my tidying now. Having reached the end in my head, I should be able to see how the plot as a whole shapes up and, with this in mind, I have rewritten my synopsis. It looks, I think, pretty tidy, except that the novel itself doesn’t quite match – so some work to do there!

This experimental game (of pretending not to be finished) may not work. Perhaps I’m too close to it to make a decent job of rejigging it at this point. But I think it’s worth a try. If all else fails I can revert to my original file and try again later.

If you want to know the outcome, watch this space!

Anything is possible?

Bad weather has been good for writing, and I’m forging ahead with the WIP. Today I ignored the hint of spring in the air, having promised myself a whole day in. Typically I ran out of steam after a couple of hours, but a break during which I washed my car (I did think it might fail last week’s MOT on grounds of invisibility) was enough to get me going again.
I must say I’m impatient to know that my plot will work out and for now I’m skipping through scenes at a great rate. When things grind to a halt (as they do from time to time) I’ll reread and decide what needs to go and what needs writing up into something more solid.
Last night’s meeting of Bristol Women Writers (I missed the last one) also provided encouragement. Another member has now found an agent – that’s two in the last year.
Which goes to show that if the writing is strong enough, it can be done.

50,000 Today

Not the number of snowflakes I have watched flutter down today, or the number of kids released from school to play in the snow, but (more impressively for me!) the number of words that now make up my Work in Progress.  To celebrate the big five o-o-o-o, I ‘downed tools’ and took to the local slopes on an old plastic sledge dragged down from loft , but then came home and wrote some more. Can’t be bad!

In fact my main motivation right now is the thought of that new novel idea waiting in the wings. The more I think about it the better it gets, and I am starting some background research, starting with the libraries at Bath Spa. As part of the day-job, I’m also dabbling with Refworks citation software and now have the chance to try it out for real as a way of storing research references. (Yes, this novel is going to be serious stuff!)

Also passed a half hour watching Youtube videos of Julia McCutchen discussing submissions and agents with top agent Simon Trewin, which gives me the chance to say thanks to Julia for all her words of wisdom and publishing tips. If you’re a writer and haven’t made her acquaintance, I’d recommend you do.

The photo is of Bath Spa on Tuesday. Who knows how many flakes have fallen there today?

A rather nice place to go to work

A rather nice place to go to work

Silver Lining?

It was all going so well (too well?) with the WIP. There I was, chugging along to the 20,000 mark, when my second (and final) tutorial on my writing course came along to put the mockers on what I have done so far. (Okay, I exaggerate, but we writers have fragile egos!)
Clearly all advice is subjective, but since I sought  – and paid – for professional help, it would be stupid to disregard what was given, especially when a number of the tutor’s points do ring a bell. But as a result, the novel I thought was up together and on its way, is suddenly adrift, and so am I. Even taking out my writerly angst on a golf ball turned out to be pretty inadequate as a coping strategy, but in a surprising turn of events, the phone rang shortly after the bad golf trip and a very nice lady from Frome relayed the news that I am the winner of the local writers’ prize in the Frome Festival Short Story Competition.

Many thanks to the good judges of Frome for supplying a much needed silver lining, and what a pity the prize-winners’ lunch  is the weekend we’re on holiday in Scotland.  (A moment of glory certainly wouldn’t have gone amiss right now!)
Instead, here’s a photo of Frome which I visited for the first time last year. It’s a very pretty place, quaint but lively, and well worth a visit. I forgot to take my camera with me that day, so this pic is by Ross Websdale on Flickr.

Bloomin’ marvellous

 our fountain

No, this isn’t the local stately home or municipal park, this is Our Garden This Evening. If you’re surprised by the bizarre fountain (officially styled ‘Gothic Boy with Dolphin’ – ?) it was bequeathed by previous owners of the house. We keep meaning to get rid, but now it’s a case of ‘I’ve grown accustomed to your face.’

Meanwhile, the ongoing reconstruction of the patio (out of shot) has necessitated moving all the pots into the middle of the garden where you see them now. Hence, for the first time ever, our own backyard could actually be described as a ‘riot of colour.’

It’s such an improvement I think I’ll have to increase my pot collection forthwith. Credit is also due to the Daily Telegraph gardening offers for supplementing the plant collection and the best friend who provided the ‘vertical growbags’ to make up for the loss of a clematis (or two) from the back fence.

 

The garden is also the view from my study, though I try not to be distracted from the WIP by thoughts horticultural. I confess to being easily distracted right now. I’m writing a  Pivotal Scene, but one I ‘ve written at least  twice before and so it has stopped feeling pivotal to me. Today I even crept downstairs and watched bits of the tennis at Queens.

Writing associates feel free to slap my wrists.

Quick, quick, slow

Draft 2 of the WIP is a slow process, or that’s how it seems. My current method goes like this:

  1. Check outline (though this is pretty much in my head) for what my next scene will be
  2. Look at Draft 1a or 1b (so many already!) and identify something I’ve written previously that will do the job
  3. Copy and paste
  4. Read through and congratulate myself on my speed and efficiency
  5. Sleep on it
  6. Decide the new scene won’t do
  7. Rewrite the scene, slowly and carefully 

I do sometimes skip steps 1 to 6, but I just hate to think my efforts first time round were wasted. In fact today I have carried over another complete scene with just a few tweaks and feel sure it’s fine. Check back tomorrow for the verdict!

 

Work in (slow) Progress

I’ve had to take a break from the WIP  in order to flesh out (literally) my second main character, Ailsa’s mother, Lorraine. She suffers from a medical condition called lupus which I had already looked up on several websites but I felt I needed more in-depth knowledge. Luckily I found Talking About Lupus by Triona Holden, which covers the medical stuff but also gives the patient’s point of view. I feel much more able to get inside the  character and the disease. I’ve also decided to read the new novel (currently called Her Father’s Daughter) at Bristol Women Writers, which I attend fortnightly. This is an excellent incentive to produce some quality writing compared to the verbal scribble of my first draft.
With  the novel lying fallow I’ve been writing a short article for Golf Monthly’s Clubhouse Chat column. Glad to say that’s also done and dusted, so now I’m hoping work will now progress at a more encouraging speed.