A Week Back Writing
Well that proved far easier than expected. A week into my return to writing and I've played with words every day. Two blogs posts and 2,000 words written on two chapters that have me thinking.
The blog posts are the easy part. A mechanism to air thoughts, bash happily along at a keyboard, and have no real long term objective in mind. The splurge of an author, a release compared to the intricacy and detail of a novel, novella, or indeed short story, but I still count them as writing; as important to me and my sanity as the completion of a much larger piece. Valuable, in terms of the positioning and choice of words. An achievement in an artistic process that otherwise takes an age to achieve and often leaves one wondering "Why?", blood, tears, and soul dripping onto the page; which brings me back to the non-blog writing...
I'm really happy with it.
Now 2,000 words may not sound a lot, but I've been writing between 300 to 500 words a day, editing as I go - which is my way. Many say one shouldn't edit as one goes, but personally I don't think there are any right or wrong ways to write. My only rule is to write every day. Even but one sentence is enough. For me, one good sentence is better than ten bad pages; much easier to edit too. I also don't worry about counting words too much because I tend to write in a particularly minimalistic style, my voice often being compared to prose and poetry which is weird because in my head it's just how I think. Perhaps that's just my insanity showing. But better than wordcount, at least to my mind, is the characters showing up with a story - not that I know what the story is yet.
This week I've met Gal Humble, Ebenezer Bitt, and Muntin, out in among the reeds of a drowned world, been called back to the lands of Nightjar and Magpie, a feudal future with villages and towns I know of, pulled into researching the art of catching eels, and learning of its feudal importance. So too have I been introduced to Sister Philomena who is making her way into a world I know from a world I nothing of - namely from the Convent of the Blessed Virgin in the Pyrenees - and on the last leg of her journey she has met Hovis, a team of oxen, and and a girl her own age called Aífe.
The old cart bounces, jolts, sets stone and pebble to crack and snap beneath heavy wheels as Hovis shouts out strange encouragement to his oxen; a spell, perhaps, that keeps them moving.
The Pyrenees?
It was the characters that told me to go there.
As to where the story is going I have no idea. I rely on characters to reveal this. All they've shown me so far, as if in a thick fog, is poison and forest, a utopian world in a dystopia from out our own making, and a conflict between Gods of old and new. There is also - in my mind - a separation of at least some of the main characters by distance, and the vague impression of a main character I can't make out yet, one that comes in and out of the story, and the trade of towns and villages that brings them together. I know. Not a lot, but it's all the voices are telling me, showing me, and so I must trust to their advice, to their wisdom and knowledge.
Here's to hoping that next week, my return to writing might prove equally fruitful.
If there's a topic you'd like me to consider in a blog, a book you think I really need to read and review, or a TV Series you think I'd enjoy (and you'd like me to include it in my blog) drop me a line and let me know.
Finally.
If you do buy my books.
Thank you.
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I'm always there; a writer, you see...
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