Ambition and Reality - Joan Lennon

My month in Fair Isle is done. I'll be going back to city and family life stronger and with windswept hair.

I wrote about my ambitions for my time here a month ago - so how did those pan out?

When I got back into the wip, I realised just what a tangled mess it had become. I'm a pantser, and with each widely-separated time I've been able to work on this novel, I've gleefully dived in and wrote whatever was topmost in my mind. That's the way I've always done it, and yes, it means 3 or maybe 4 times as much writing as a novel that's been planned. Normally I'd also say 3 or maybe 4 times the fun, but this time...

It's the gaps that have skewed the system. This time, writing up to a problem and then turning to another bit and then going away from it all for half a year had left me with a ball of wool that the cat's had its way with. So, it turned out, this time on Fair Isle has been about untangling and problem solving. Which, for me, isn't something I've ever been able to do in snippets. My characters have grown and their growth has powered the plot and all in all I have a much healthier novel to be going on with.

And the other ambitions? Walks - yes. Photographs - yes. Poems - yes for a lot of days but not every one and not every poem worked. Other stuff - nope. General happiness and breathing out - YES.

And next? That complete first draft I was aiming for - that's now at least a possibility. So wish me luck.

Joan Lennon website

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Never Still Nivver Still  Narrative poems set in Fair Isle written by Joan Lennon, translated into Fair Isle dialect by Anne Sinclair and illustrated by Lucy Wheeler. Copies are available from the publisher Hansel Press or me.