Fracking for Fiction

"There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges."

Ernest Hemingway's description of the creative process sounds a bit like fracking to me – occasionally you strike oil and out comes the black gold in an effortless stream, but more often than not you're drilling into rock, setting your charges and then blasting away. The British Government called a halt to some experimental fracking in the north-west of the country because it seemed to be causing minor earthquakes. The compensation of a good day's writing, even if it involves some difficult detonations, is that the effects of it can sometimes feel seismic. It's one of the few things that really does make the earth move.

Architecture for Writers

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, according to Ernest Hemingway, an interesting insight with which to start the week. If you think of your novel as a work of architecture, you may find yourself looking at the way the story arcs and intersects with more pragmatic eyes. Try picturing your book as a building, think what you will need to support the spans of the narrative - strong characterisation and a slippery plot; give it solid foundations, provide somewhere for imagination to take refuge, house your reader, make them at home.

By concentrating on the structure of your story, you will be less diverted by the niceties of polishing your prose (that can wait for later), which means there's every chance your writing will be less self-conscious and the work as a whole more solid and robust.