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.