“Time is a jet plane,” Bob Dylan sang, “it moves too fast.”
Too right, Bob. We all know that as the years pass, they begin to pass quicker and quicker. But what about interior time? The time in your book. Surely this is controlled by the author?
Do I preside over my novel like some keyboard-attached Time Lord, speaking with all the authority of a town crier with a new Timex?
Of course not.
The truth is that as I near the end of my first draft, it is beginning to dawn on me that the time frame of my book is about as accurate as the Departures board at my local station.
Somewhere - at some time - time has got away from me.
Now, I know this is not fatal - that’s what second drafts are for - but it brings home how important it is to have an eye on the clock; especially when you’re writing a crime novel.
This morning, while merrily typing away in my penultimate chapter, my detective - according to my plot outline - needed to walk out of a building and head home to bed. Fine. Except that it was about ten in the morning. He'd had a busy morning, but that would have been taking it too far.
I was stumped. Had I lost twelve hours, or gained a dozen?
What had happened was that I was so carried away with the progress of actually writing scene after scene and seeing them turn into chapter after chapter, that I had managed to take my characters out of a linear time and place them in some alternative temporal dimension. All well and good if you’re Ray Bradbury; but not so great if you’re not.
Better planning seems to be the answer - but as ever, it’s better to get your times right at the beginning. If not, your carefully planned novel might suddenly derail and all you’ll be left with is a train wreck of a synopsis.
Blood on the Tracks, indeed.
Friday 29 February 2008
Friday 22 February 2008
Week 22 - The Road to Recovery
The road to recovery is long and paved with the pot holes of the writing life. But it’s still a road and it’s still going in the direction I want. I just wish it wasn’t so damn steep.
Thanks for all the people who emailed me to wish me a speedy recovery. It’s always nice to hear from people, especially when you’ve not been too well.
The emails have helped, but it’s still been tough. When you fall behind - and are trying to catch up - life can throw all kinds of debris in the road to make you take the wrong turn.
The past week has been hard and I have put in many extra hours in the evening to try to make up for my week of fluids and daytime TV. The good news is that I have made progress; but it has been far from easy.
First of all I had to re-write the 600 words or so I wrote when I was ill. They were terrible. I like to think they were the result of all the drugs that were fighting to prop up my immune system, but I fear they were just bad.
It makes you realise how much effort you need to put in to your writing to make it half-decent. Take your eye off the ball and things soon untangle (and you find your prose full of mixed metaphors).
One thing has really helped. My characters. At the risk of sounding all precious and creating images of me in a garret drafting perfectly formed sentences, while eating dust to survive in a world too imperfect to be worthy of my work; my characters really have helped.
After a break from writing, if your characters are even slightly well formed, they should began to “speak” again a lot quicker than if they are just paper-thin devices to hang a plot on.
One thing I have found that really helps develop the identity of characters is to have an image of them in your head. If you’re lucky - or just visually inclined - you can do this automatically. If like the rest of us, you find this a little tricky, Kate Mosse has a good tip here: http://www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk/advice/20.asp She suggests you look through exhibition catalogues, coffee table books etc until you find a face that fits.
Once you have a picture of your character in your head, you should find that it really helps to write about him or her.
And believe me, when you're struggling up that steep road to recovery like the literary equivalent of an Hillman Imp, any help is much appreciated.
Especially a friendly face.
Thanks for all the people who emailed me to wish me a speedy recovery. It’s always nice to hear from people, especially when you’ve not been too well.
The emails have helped, but it’s still been tough. When you fall behind - and are trying to catch up - life can throw all kinds of debris in the road to make you take the wrong turn.
The past week has been hard and I have put in many extra hours in the evening to try to make up for my week of fluids and daytime TV. The good news is that I have made progress; but it has been far from easy.
First of all I had to re-write the 600 words or so I wrote when I was ill. They were terrible. I like to think they were the result of all the drugs that were fighting to prop up my immune system, but I fear they were just bad.
It makes you realise how much effort you need to put in to your writing to make it half-decent. Take your eye off the ball and things soon untangle (and you find your prose full of mixed metaphors).
One thing has really helped. My characters. At the risk of sounding all precious and creating images of me in a garret drafting perfectly formed sentences, while eating dust to survive in a world too imperfect to be worthy of my work; my characters really have helped.
After a break from writing, if your characters are even slightly well formed, they should began to “speak” again a lot quicker than if they are just paper-thin devices to hang a plot on.
One thing I have found that really helps develop the identity of characters is to have an image of them in your head. If you’re lucky - or just visually inclined - you can do this automatically. If like the rest of us, you find this a little tricky, Kate Mosse has a good tip here: http://www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk/advice/20.asp She suggests you look through exhibition catalogues, coffee table books etc until you find a face that fits.
Once you have a picture of your character in your head, you should find that it really helps to write about him or her.
And believe me, when you're struggling up that steep road to recovery like the literary equivalent of an Hillman Imp, any help is much appreciated.
Especially a friendly face.
Friday 15 February 2008
Weeks 20 & 21 - Notes from a Sick Bed
Just when it was all going so well, the Kit Kats stopped appealing.
On track to complete my first draft... hitting a chapter a week... Life was good.
Then the wheels fell off in spectacular fashion.
You know you’re properly ill (as opposed to not being able to face another day of pointless meetings when people talk about singing from hymn sheets - whatever that means) when the things that really motivate you are suddenly as appealing as an All You Can Eat buffet in Michael’s Meat Market is to Paul McCartney.
For me, I knew I was ill when a packet of Kit Kats remained untouched for a whole week.
And if the Kit Kats don’t appeal, writing a few thousand words just isn’t going to happen. Not that I didn’t try - I even managed to write a couple of hundred words. But they were terrible.
Even through my drugged up mind, I could tell they were horrible. The tablets I was taking had no Doors of Perception effect on my writing; the only similarity my writing had to those doors was that it was wooden.
So I retreated to the couch, tried to watch some TV (have you ever sat and tried to watch daytime TV? The Spanish Inquisition had nothing on the horrors in the daytime schedule. I found myself missing the test card.)
When I finally began to feel human again, a whole week had gone by. I was seriously behind, with time to my deadline getting closer at an alarming rate.
As I write this, I have yet to catch up; although I have started to make some progress.
I will get back on track. I will make the time up. How do I know this? Because I want to get back on track and I want to make the time up. That, of course, is the key.
My week off made me realise that it did not matter if you got behind, as long as you were passionate about what you were doing. Without wanting to sound all evangelistic: if you don’t love to write...if you don’t need to write, then a set back will be just that. If you do love/need to write, it will be no more than an interruption.
I don’t think I have ever read a book on writing that does not make this point: you have to want to write. What they tend not to say is that there’s nothing like a week of coughing up bizarrely green stuff to make you see if this applies to you.
The good news is that it does. I am now hard at work to make the time up. It’s not easy, but I will get there now I’m on the mend.
How can I be so sure I’m on the road to recovery? That’s easy. All the Kit Kats have gone.
On track to complete my first draft... hitting a chapter a week... Life was good.
Then the wheels fell off in spectacular fashion.
You know you’re properly ill (as opposed to not being able to face another day of pointless meetings when people talk about singing from hymn sheets - whatever that means) when the things that really motivate you are suddenly as appealing as an All You Can Eat buffet in Michael’s Meat Market is to Paul McCartney.
For me, I knew I was ill when a packet of Kit Kats remained untouched for a whole week.
And if the Kit Kats don’t appeal, writing a few thousand words just isn’t going to happen. Not that I didn’t try - I even managed to write a couple of hundred words. But they were terrible.
Even through my drugged up mind, I could tell they were horrible. The tablets I was taking had no Doors of Perception effect on my writing; the only similarity my writing had to those doors was that it was wooden.
So I retreated to the couch, tried to watch some TV (have you ever sat and tried to watch daytime TV? The Spanish Inquisition had nothing on the horrors in the daytime schedule. I found myself missing the test card.)
When I finally began to feel human again, a whole week had gone by. I was seriously behind, with time to my deadline getting closer at an alarming rate.
As I write this, I have yet to catch up; although I have started to make some progress.
I will get back on track. I will make the time up. How do I know this? Because I want to get back on track and I want to make the time up. That, of course, is the key.
My week off made me realise that it did not matter if you got behind, as long as you were passionate about what you were doing. Without wanting to sound all evangelistic: if you don’t love to write...if you don’t need to write, then a set back will be just that. If you do love/need to write, it will be no more than an interruption.
I don’t think I have ever read a book on writing that does not make this point: you have to want to write. What they tend not to say is that there’s nothing like a week of coughing up bizarrely green stuff to make you see if this applies to you.
The good news is that it does. I am now hard at work to make the time up. It’s not easy, but I will get there now I’m on the mend.
How can I be so sure I’m on the road to recovery? That’s easy. All the Kit Kats have gone.
Friday 1 February 2008
Weeks 18 & 19 - No Access to Bad Habits
A combination of internet provider issues (they didn’t) and a trip to the Lakes and north Norfolk (they looked closer together on the map) has resulted in there being a longer than usual wait between blogs.
It got me thinking about habit, though. Just like brushing your teeth, writing can - and should - become a habit. I was always conscious that I had missed a week’s blog; something that would not have happened if the blog had been more ad hoc.
And this applies to writing. While I have been without access to the internet, my trusty MacBook has travelled with me and has been a blessing. It’s amazing what can happen when there’s a laptop impatiently sitting in the corner when you haven’t written anything for a couple of days. Habit again.
Not that I’m saying you should never take a break - you should - but when fate plonks an excuse in your lap to avoid writing, kindly refuse the offer and start typing.
Which is what I have been doing, between all the other stuff that crops up when you write.
One such thing is responding to anyone who is kind enough (or sometimes clinically insane enough) to respond to the blog (you can do this by emailing me at jimmymac53@googlemail.com). One such person who did this was Karl from Durham, who asked for an update on where I was up to on the novel as he was trying to keep pace with the 52 week plan.
The answer is that I have just completed chapter 24 of my planned 30. Yes, these are only the first draft and there is a massive amount of work ahead on the second draft, but even so it is beginning to get quite exciting thinking about the fact that all going well I will have a full novel sitting on my desk by Easter.
I am quietly amazed by how far I have come - something that I can solely put down to the fact that I write daily (or at least six days a week).
My novel has one more murder to come, which I am setting the scene for next week. I plan to combine the disappearance of a character with a romantic interlude for my detective, hopefully mixing a bit of suspense while providing the calm before the storm.
Chapter 26 - the week after next - will be concerned with the discovery of the body and the implications for the rest of the characters.
One of the advantages of working to one chapter a week, is I have a good idea of where I am going to be at any one time. Of course, things can - and do - frequently change; but I still keep moving towards my goal having at least a general idea of what will happen along the way.
Which is why it’s essential that I work every day. Something my internet provider would do well to emulate.
It got me thinking about habit, though. Just like brushing your teeth, writing can - and should - become a habit. I was always conscious that I had missed a week’s blog; something that would not have happened if the blog had been more ad hoc.
And this applies to writing. While I have been without access to the internet, my trusty MacBook has travelled with me and has been a blessing. It’s amazing what can happen when there’s a laptop impatiently sitting in the corner when you haven’t written anything for a couple of days. Habit again.
Not that I’m saying you should never take a break - you should - but when fate plonks an excuse in your lap to avoid writing, kindly refuse the offer and start typing.
Which is what I have been doing, between all the other stuff that crops up when you write.
One such thing is responding to anyone who is kind enough (or sometimes clinically insane enough) to respond to the blog (you can do this by emailing me at jimmymac53@googlemail.com). One such person who did this was Karl from Durham, who asked for an update on where I was up to on the novel as he was trying to keep pace with the 52 week plan.
The answer is that I have just completed chapter 24 of my planned 30. Yes, these are only the first draft and there is a massive amount of work ahead on the second draft, but even so it is beginning to get quite exciting thinking about the fact that all going well I will have a full novel sitting on my desk by Easter.
I am quietly amazed by how far I have come - something that I can solely put down to the fact that I write daily (or at least six days a week).
My novel has one more murder to come, which I am setting the scene for next week. I plan to combine the disappearance of a character with a romantic interlude for my detective, hopefully mixing a bit of suspense while providing the calm before the storm.
Chapter 26 - the week after next - will be concerned with the discovery of the body and the implications for the rest of the characters.
One of the advantages of working to one chapter a week, is I have a good idea of where I am going to be at any one time. Of course, things can - and do - frequently change; but I still keep moving towards my goal having at least a general idea of what will happen along the way.
Which is why it’s essential that I work every day. Something my internet provider would do well to emulate.
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