Starting a new book in 2018 – David Thorpe

Other ABBA writers are starting off the New Year by blogging about resolutions. Why should I be any different?

I find myself in a very unusual position at the beginning of 2018. For as long as I can remember I have been working on the same three projects that I actually dreamt up a long time ago. I have been writing and rewriting, editing and re-editing, struggling to get them to be as good as I possibly think they can be.

I always hesitate to say that a piece of writing is finished. It seems like arrogance or over-confidence to say that I can't make it any better.

Too many times I've come back to things I have written in the past and thought were done and dusted only to find only to find all kinds of mistakes.

How about you?

Even when you think it is finished and have sent it away it still turns out there is more work to be done.  Like painting the Forth Bridge.

Even when one of my books is published and I pick it up I still cringe at times at the howlers. I suppose one should not admit this in public.

Anyway, at the end of 2017 I declared an end (at least until I get feedback from editors etc) to work on these 3 projects. I've had enough. I've got them as far as I can. I think they are as good as I can make them. I would stand by them in a court of writerly law and bear testimony. There, I said it.

So for 2018 I'm going to start something new for the first time in ages, and I don't know what it is. It's a delicious feeling.

I feel like for so long I have been writing according to a pre-prepared script. Working on existing stories to bring out the best in them.

Because I believe that within every story idea, the perfect story is somehow contained, and the job of the writer is to keep scraping away until they have brought to light, like a gem long buried underground.

A writer is like a miner and a jeweller combined.

So I'm going off mining again. I will take the advice all of my fellow bloggers at the beginning of 2018. I will use whatever it takes: blank slates, pictures, walks, dreaming, interrogation of imaginary beings. I will not try to impose any preconceived ideas.

From past experience I know this expedition that I am embarking upon can take years, depending upon what is found, quite frequently ending up nowhere with nothing. So it goes.

As the old Taoist phase goes, it's not the arriving but the journey that counts. Well, up to a point. It's nice to get there sometimes.

Hi ho! Happy mining everyone!

[I am the writer of Marvel's Captain Britain, the sci-fi YA novels Hybrids, Doc Chaos: The Chernobyl Effect and the cli-fi fantasy Stormteller. My writing course, called 'Making Readers Care' can be taken online. Contact me if interested.]

The Windmills of my Mind - Ruth Hatfield

Only a short one from me this month, because in the reduced amount of time I have to write since beginning my stint of parental ‘leave’, a new creature has suddenly emerged, and it is demanding attention. It’s familiar, but I haven’t seen it for a while. 

At first when it appeared, I was suspicious. It seemed too good to be true. I looked at it more closely and realised that, like a loveable dog at a rescue centre that turns out to be fully grown and completely unruly, it might quickly prove to be a lot of effort for not much apparent gain. But it was such an attractive prospect that I couldn’t help myself. I opened the cage door and took it home.

‘It’ was a completely new story that I really wanted to write. Just that. I’ve finished my last contracted book, so was thinking – I have to write something really special, now, to attract the attention of a publisher. Trouble was, I had plenty of ideas, but… I just really couldn’t summon up the will or desire to begin writing them. It got so bad that I found myself ranting the other day about how I spent my time encouraging others to write, telling them it was the route to freedom and happiness, but I was a complete fraud, because it wasn’t like that for me at all. I had to be so self-conscious about everything I wrote that I hardly ever enjoyed writing anymore, and I couldn’t see that I ever would again.

But here I am, free. No publishing contract. If this new story is no good, I don’t even have to show it to anyone. It’s like those old days of being a child and writing purely for my own pleasure. Of course I still have all the more grown up responsibilities. It’s just that – somehow – for a magic few moments, I’ve managed to forget them. It’s as if I’ve struggled out of a cave and come blinking into the sunlight. How often does this happen in a writing life? In mine – maybe just enough.

I’m interested in how I did manage to get out, but I feel that I don’t have time to look back at the moment and understand it. It’s a shame – I think understanding might help a lot when next I duck my head back underground and lose sight of the sun. But the story is rushing at me, demanding my attention. It’s telling me it might not be anything special – there are plenty of books about ponies already. But, like the untrained dog, loveable and wild, it’s leaping at my heels and telling me to throw it a ball – it’ll run and chase it and bring it back to me, and I’ll throw it again, and it’ll chase again, and oh, we’ll have so much fun –

Planning? Structure? Research?

Nope, this time I’m running with it.

(photos posed by a model - with thanks to Layla)

In Between Days

I’m in between books. A place where I haven’t been for some time. It’s been a busy year of writing projects. Still Falling came out in February, by which time I was putting the final touches to another book, Street Song.  Then fate – or rather my publisher – threw me a curve ball, which meant setting everything else aside to write a completely new novel (in three months). Name Upon Name will be out in September; I’ve just submitted a new version of Street Song to my agent; I’m waiting to hear about another project I’ve pitched, and so for now I don’t have a book on the go. For the first time in well over a year.

Great! Because I’m tired, aren’t I? I need a break. I was certainly looking forward to having one. I went to the SAS  Charney retreat last week – oh, wait, I was helping to organise it, wasn’t I? So maybe that wasn’t a complete break. All the same, it was fun. For the first time at Charney, I wasn’t trying to write or edit: I concentrated on socialising and just being. Which was absolutely lovely, and very much in keeping with this year’s Charney theme, which was about well-being.

Charney Manor

 Lovely. But also slightly odd. Because I was surrounded by many more people than I am used to, but inside my head it was strangely quiet. When I’m mid-book, I have all sorts of extra people in there – my characters. Once they’ve been delivered to their fate – publication for Name Upon Name; submission for Street Song – they go dark. I can’t access them because the book is written now; I can’t do anything else with them.

And I don’t like it. I feel like Harriet (the spy) when her notebook is stolen. Banned from spying, she goes straight to the stationer’s for a new notebook. Because she’s a writer; it’s what she does.

surrounded by more people than I'm used to

I told myself I was having some weeks off writing. There’s plenty of admin I could be doing, and events to plan for Name Upon Name. I don’t need to be writing a new book. In fact, sending Street Song off to its fate, worried that it mightn’t be bought, I told myself I wouldn’t start anything new until I had some definite interest. No more writing on spec. Especially as I have a notion that my new YA idea might not be very marketable. No point in wasting my time, is there?

But it’s too quiet inside my head. Lonely really. And the other day, walking in Oxfordshire, my new characters started making their presence felt. Maybe I could only hear them because it was quiet. But contract or no, I know what I’ll be doing next week. Because it was wonderful to meet them.

New notebook. New characters. New plans. Because like Harriet the Spy, I’m a writer. It’s what I do.