The importance of recycling

How many times have you been told to 'kill your darlings' when writing? I was talking about this last week and what I suggested was that you don't kill them but perhaps you move them and I don't mean within the same story. There are times when they just don't belong however beautiful and well crafted they are.

What I suggest you do is create a darlings document. You then can move all these precious words into it as you never know when you might be able to use them again. We all know how hard they were to write in the first place. Why waste them?

As I have already told you I am rewriting again and I have suddenly find a use for elements of a novel I wrote a few years ago. Moments of Disjointed, a novel I am unlikely to ever try and get published, have jumped ship and moved into Trafficking. I did't anticipate this and hadn't thought about Disjointed for ages but then suddenly a scene from that story bounced into my head. A perfect episode that summed up an issue I was having in the rewrite. It gave me the sense of tension I wanted.

But it doesn't just happen in fiction, I have spent the morning beginning to write a chapter I am doing in collaboration with a good friend.  So far again the words I am using have been inspired by text I have used elsewhere. They are not strictly the same ones and are very definitely in a different order but there is an element of inspiration drawn from established 'darlings' that were tucked away in a more recently ignored folder entitled 'PhD bits.' All things that had never quite made it into the final thesis.

See it is all about the recycling and don't be afraid of it.

There is a caveat of course. Don't use those darlings just because you are in love with them however beautiful or clever they are. Even when you move them to a new story, make sure they fit and you are not trying to shoehorn them in. Remember you have plenty of writing life ahead of you when you can utilise them.

White Buffalo 'Wish it were true' .

I don't have time to write...apparently yes you do!

Meg Rosoff's Eck 

It has been an interesting week. On Tuesday the truly wonderful, Meg Rosoff came down to the University to talk to our MA students. As always she gave a fascinating talk, open to all and to a packed room, which she finished by reading from There is No Dog. This was followed by a workshop just for the MA students that had us all digging into the depths of our feelings looking for our voice. It certainly gave me a lot to think about. It was a very useful session.

This week I have also been bemoaning my lack of time to write my new book. Blaming my work, blaming the fact I know I have some rewrites to do to Trafficking and therefore can't focus on new stuff. Blaming everything I could think of rather than facing the truth. Of course you can find time to write if you want/need to but I wasn't. Then I was sitting vacantly staring at my iPad yesterday in the Learning Cafe after a student had failed to turn up to a dissertation meeting (*sigh*). Next to me was another colleague also sitting and working more productively on his iPad. However, little did he know that I was in the middle of an epiphany (as opposed to wasting time on Facebook as I was accused). It suddenly came to me why I was struggling to write this book. It wasn't working. It wasn't right. I am a member of a great critique group who had given some very useful and positive feedback on the chapters I had written so far. But the writing had stalled and I still couldn't move forward with it. I kept walking around it, dancing with it every now and then rather than engaging with the narrative. Why? Well that was my epiphany - I needed to kill off another character. I had started off with four siblings, cut this down to three and now I knew I needed to cut it down to two. Bye, bye Rose, exit left stage from Persephone's Pegasus please.

I then had another epiphany - it was a busy day for them - that even when you don't think you are having time to write you are in fact sub-consciously thinking about your work in progress. It is there in the back of your mind being mulled over quietly. My panic that I wasn't writing, I felt, was unfounded. I was in fact writing but not necessarily on the page. I am hoping I can move forward now and take this story where I want to because I do believe it is quite a good one.

My epiphanies may well have been instigated by an  interview with Nick Cave, which was posted earlier this week by JW (thank you). At the end of the interview he talks about the brief light bulb moment when you get an idea. I thought, rather insightfully, he talked about the fact it is not just having the ideas, it is what you do with them. He pointed out that, inevitably, it takes a lot of hard work to make the light bulb moment into something really good. See being creative is not easy!

This is one of my favourite songs from a new album I have just got by Heidi Talbot. Happy Weekend everyone!

Starting Over.....

Starting over....

Last week was full of new beginnings. On Friday I spent a glorious morning with our new students for a couple of induction sessions at the University of Winchester. It was wonderful, the room was absolutely buzzing. Their faces were so full of hope and happiness. There was a good dose of laughter too, which is always important. I can't wait to work with them.

This week I actually wrote the first chapter of my new story. I have been mulling it over for a while but I decided to get the first chapter down and see what happens. Luckily the words flowed and seemed (at the moment) to be in the right order. It doesn't mean they will stay like that but it is a start.

This is the first story I have written for a long time that is not tied into some form of academic achievement. Quite a strange feeling. I have been very lucky, however, to be invited to join a particular YA Critique group. I am delighted to be part of it because the writers who are already members are very strong writers and am sure I am going to get a huge amount out of it. It is quite terrifying though. I posted my first chapter this morning and this in itself is unusual for me as I usually tinker for ages before I let people see it. But I decided I would be interested in seeing what their thoughts are on a very early version. It was a real GULP moment for me putting something so new and precious out there, particularly when you know deep down that it isn't perfect. I am looking forward to their comments though as I am certain they will help keep me on my toes when I am writing this new story - it has a tentative title 'Persephone's Pegasus' - which may well change but I always have to name my stories so that I 'own' them. They become mine and it is something I encourage my students to do, even for their assignments.

I have spent the last two and bit years working on Trafficking (that which was Ham and Jam) so it is quite strange to start over again with a totally new story,new voice and new characters. I am busy getting to know them, getting to understand their idiosyncrasies and knowing what they look like. All good fun. They will become my friends in the same way Saba and Amina became my friends before and who are hopefully going to embark on their own journey soon.

I am also involved in a new project which I can't quite reveal yet but it certainly will be hatching in the very near future. I will share all the details with you very soon. I am very excited about it and what it will offer, plus I am working with some fantastic people on it.

You see I am definitely 'starting over....'

Elation and fear!

Why elation and fear I hear you ask? Well I am elated because I have finished the first draft of the rewrites and a week ahead of the deadline I had set myself. On the other hand, I am full of fear that it won't be what the editor wanted. I have to say it is not ready for her to see but I have something tangible to work with at least. A story with a beginning, a middle and an end, which seems to flow too. Miracle!

Of course, these are not emotions that only I have as a writer, I know we all go through them. Meg Rosoff wrote a great post the other day about finishing the book,which is well worth a look. I was delighted to read that some of her first drafts are 'thin'. I know that is a problem of mine but as I write cold and edit hot I should be able to sort that. My plan now is to print it off, have a quick look through it and create a book map (yes I know that is probably the wrong way round but it is the way I work), it will help me see where there are holes. (Thank you to IC for the map btw). I will then put it away for a a couple of weeks, maybe if I can be strong the whole of July, and then I will go back to it with eyes afresh. It will be that editing time where you have to distance yourself from the piece and read it as a reader and not as a writer this time. Should be fun.

This book is a rewrite of my PhD novel, last year's great achievement, but apart from some characters it bears very little relation to that story. Even the name has changed from Ham & Jam  to Trafficking. But I have to admit I think it is better for it. Don't get me wrong it was tough killing my babies like that. The PhD novel had been a huge part of my life for a very long time and it was hard to give up sometimes, however, you have to do these things all in the name of art.

I feel I am standing on the edge of the high wire (see Keren David's post where this idea came from and Candy Gourlay's brilliant response). It is a moment where there is a lot of potential ahead and it is down to me to make sure I make the most of it. That's another part of the fear - what if I waste it? But I mustn't think like that. It is all about looking forward. Having read Candy's post it made me thing of some high wire moments in my past where I haven't grabbed the moment and I deeply regret it. However, it is not all negatives, I have also grabbed several other moments and they have made a huge difference. One of which was making the decision back in 2002 to go to university after I had lost my business through illness. Who knew that that idea was going to take me to this point? It had been my way of not vegetating in the corner waiting to die as the medicos seemed to think I should, instead I found a whole new career and love of life. And I am sure it is going to continue like that.

I have pinched this from a friend's recent post because it is one of my all time favourite songs and I know I have used it before but hey who cares.

The Civil Wars and 'Dance me to the end of love'

A new approach to writing.

I have been writing, in fact, I have been writing a lot. I have been in the groove so to speak. It all started last weekend, the Jubilee weekend, I was totally on my own for most of it as my children had gone off to various places so I decided to get to grips with Trafficking. I have been walking round and round it without actually really getting down to the writing. Really engaging with it. It was time to change this. I had my denouement. I knew what my characters looked like. I had a change of setting and I had two chapters.

I made a weekend of it and I took Martin Scorsese's advice - he suggests you need to know the past in order to create the new. (Check out this blog post from back in 2010)  I watched a couple of films and read some books in order to remind me of what I liked and what I wanted to achieve. And then I started. I was really lucky the words just flowed. All the images in my head just fell onto the page and  in four days I managed to write just over 16,000 words and 11 chapters with all the rest clearly forming in my head as I wrote. This is the first time it has been such a complete process. In part I think it is down to the amount of pre-writing thinking I have done which has helped form the story so totally.

There was another difference this time though. I am a tinkerer or I was. As I wrote I would go back and change things. Fiddle with them slightly until they were right but this always stopped the creative process. It was like a hiatus, so this time I decided to keep writing regardless. If I thought of something I put it in my notebook under a list of things to check and/or change. For example I wrote a chapter last night which I know is too long (it has been so hard not to go back to it) but I am going to wait until the end and I have the whole picture to see how I want to change it. I also know I need to add more sense of place and more character detail. As I have said to you before I write cold, getting the story down, and then go back and fill in the colour. It is actually quite liberating to just get the story down and not stop. I am now over 22,000 words and the ideas are still flowing easily. I do wonder if this is because I have changed my method of writing. Whether it is or it isn't I am relieved and delighted. When it flows like this it is a wonderful place to be. Long may it last

This was the theme tune to my writing, Paul Buchanan's album Mid Air