Creative Writing - the Weirdness of the Middle Period

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Hmm. Yes. Well.

To the untutored eye (mine?) you might think that nothing much was going on in the world of shed-building, but that's where you'd be wrong, so terribly wrong.  In fact, there's felt on the roof (held down with bricks, admittedly), the electrics have gone in, and so has the insulation -- giant steps on the road to completion.

When I'm working, I hate it when people ask me how I'm doing, even though I know the question is kindly meant and springs from genuine interest (tinged with sympathy), and I'm sure our builders the Steves feel the same way.  I'm writing, I say,  just writing, and that's the truth.  There are long screeds of time when a writer is desk bound, hammering away at it, even though the unfinished novel stays just that: unfinished, as if nothing at all were happening.

However, during this time some incredibly important things are going on.  You will begin to find that your characters take on a life of their own: they may start doing unexpected things, they will certainly start to determine their own story if you let them.  It's a weird feeling.  Having spent so much time in preparation, honing your ideas, it is as if you begin to lose control of your material.  Intoxicating though this may be, don't let yourself be too carried away.  Keep a beady eye on the pitch and pace of what you are writing.  Make sure that you incorporate plenty of contrast in terms of action and mood, and don't worry too much about the fine tuning, because at this stage nothing is yet set in concrete and everything is still up for grabs.

A Place of Greater Safety

I've had a tummy bug over the last few days and have been feeling under the weather - boo hoo - but it has meant that I can go hurtling through A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel's epic novel about the French Revolution.  It's an extraordinary kaleidoscope of a story, made up of vivid shards of narrative, shaped by meticulous research and brought to rip-roaring life by as fallible, likeable, and dangerous a crew of characters as ever stood a regime upon its head (and then cut that head off!)

Quite apart from helping me to while away the hours of feeling poorly, reading APOGS has been an extremely efficacious experience. I've been having a bout of the re-writing blues during this funny no man's land between Christmas and New Year.  I've done about a quarter of the work I need to do in order to burnish my narrative so that it is as good as it possibly can be.  There is still quite a mountain to climb and deconstructing a book can be a confounding experience: you are nose to nose with the story's shortcomings just at the point when you need most verve and grit to put them right. It's a  fiddly, time-consuming, intricate task. Working away at the seams, snipping and hemming and stitching can all feel rather thankless until that final moment when you turn your novel right side out again and see how it looks.

I'm taking heart from the fact that Ms Mantel apparently filed APOGS away  for several years, until a call from a journalist researching an article about books in bottom drawers prompted her to fish it out again. She spent a significant amount of time tweaking it until Ta Da! - a nine hundred page masterpiece was delivered.

Which makes me think that something worth having doesn't necessarily come easily, or, for that matter quickly.  That you have to shape and reshape it; that you have to be patient, and open hearted, and full of faith and undeflectable.  It's a tall order, but that old adage that writing is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration feels particularly true, just now.  I also know that writing is elating and absorbing and challenging and takes you to the limits of yourself - a place of greater safety it is not.