Pyjamas and Gin

A fortnight ago, I announced that I was taking a leap of faith by quitting the day job in favour of taking up writing full time. Since then, it’s been a time of transition. I’ve had an emotional last day at work, and been treated to a parting gift of a beautiful pen set. I’ve had a leaving do, a hangover, some old friends for the weekend, and some more gifts – a bottle of Bombay Sapphire from an old university chum and a surprise bunch of flowers from an old colleague. It’s been a good time for getting presents. And on Monday, I pulled on my pyjamas and got to work. Yes, I wear pyjamas to work now. Because I can.

This picture sums up my life right now quite well. #livingthedream

How’s it gone so far? Well, as Helmuth von Moltke the Elder once said (and I find 19th-century Prussian generals make the best life coaches) ‘No plan survives contact with the enemy’. I had originally intended to try and get my daily dose of writing first thing in the morning, and then have the rest of the day free for such activities as going for walks, drinking tea with friends, cooking dinner, and looking for a part-time job. Disappointingly but entirely predictably, this hasn’t quite worked out – the writing has spilled over into the afternoon several times, and my health hasn’t co-operated either. But hey-ho – chronic pain is part of my life now, and I just need to manage it as best I can, and hope it gradually improves. And the good news is that, by making writing my top priority, the thing I do before I do anything else, I have so far managed to achieve my creative goals. Which was, after all, the whole point.

What were my creative goals for my first week as a writer? I reported here back at the end of May (https://ruthdehaas.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/at-the-crossroads/) that I was considering various options for what to write next. I had been hoping that, by now, I would have a steer and be able to get on with churning out the first draft. As ever, things haven’t quite gone to plan, but I have received some feedback on my ideas which has enabled me to refine the list of options, and this week to revise the outlines for the two leading candidates. At the moment – and of course this could change – the front runners are Forever 27, a tale of sex and death and drugs and magic and rock ‘n’ roll, and The Silvergreen Sea, a fantasy novel about a heavily-forested land facing ecological disaster.

The Silvergreen Sea is a fairly new idea, currently very much at the planning stage, with nothing actually written so far. In contrast, Forever 27 was started back in November 2011 and I’ve spent quite a lot of time – albeit intermittently – on it since then. This week – with a little help from my friends at my writing group – I finally wrestled the outline into a shape I’m fairly confident will actually work as a novel, while remaining true to the original concept. The bad news is that this has changed it so radically that I’m going to have to chuck out everything I’ve already written. Oh well. So you could say I’m currently working on two projects, both with a wordcount of zero. Put like that, it might not sound like a great deal of progress, but I figure it’s better to have ideas and no words than words but no idea.

At the crossroads

It’s been almost a year since I secured a literary agent, taking an important step on the road to publication, and I now find myself in an interesting situation. My first novel, The Heartland of the Winter, a coming-of-age tale set in a fantasy land with a harsh climate, has been doing the rounds since last July. It has attracted some positive comment, but sadly the publishing contract and cheque for that five-figure advance seem to have got lost in the post. Oh well. So it looks like I’ll need to write another book before those royalties start rolling in. This writing gig is starting to seem a lot like hard work.

What should my second novel be? When Heartland went off on submission, I had to decide what to do: get cracking immediately on the sequel and give myself a headstart on that trilogy, or try the ‘and now for something completely different’ approach. Of course, if the first book doesn’t sell, nobody’ll want the second, so rather than risk doing work on a project that would then end up on the scrapheap, I went for the latter option and started writing Forever 27 – a tale of sex and death and drugs and magic and rock n’ roll, inspired by the 27 Club of prematurely deceased musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. But then there were some problems with the plot, and by the time I’d ironed all those out, I was struck down with ill health, unable to write any significant amount, and the project ran out of steam. So the short answer to the question ‘what are you working on at the moment?’ is ‘nothing’. Now my health is in the process of recovery, and I’m faced with another decision: do I pick up Forever 27 again, or would one of my other ideas be a better bet?

 

Well, I think I’d quite like to finish writing Forever 27, but then there are also other considerations. I wrote The Heartland of the Winter – quite consciously and deliberately – without any concern for the eventual market whatsoever, and I’ve written here previously about the joys of being unpublished https://ruthdehaas.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/the-joys-of-being-unpublished/. But now I’m at the stage where I’m thinking I would actually really quite like to experience the joys of being published, for a change. So, the short answer to the question, ‘what do you want to write?’ is ‘whatever is most likely to get me that 3-book deal’. Of course, it’s not quite that simple. Nobody wants to work speculatively for a year, however much passion you have for the project. But if you try to write something purely for the marketplace, your lack of genuine enthusiasm will probably show through in the finished product, and you could well be left with something that won’t sell and which you didn’t even enjoy writing.

 

The good news is that there’s no shortage of ideas, of possible books I want to write – some I’m keener on than others, of course, but then, concentrating on one project doesn’t mean you can’t have something else on the back burner. So my latest work has been to collate my hopelessly disorganised mass of ideas into a semi-coherent list, ranging in level of detail from ‘I have a six-page outline, 3 chapters in first draft, a character list, loads of background, and a bunch of stuff I wrote in a sleep-deprived haze for NaNoWriMo 2011’ to ‘well, I had this nightmare…’ And now I’m awaiting a steer on which one to pick. I don’t yet know whether that steer will come from my agent, a publisher, my own feelings, or possibly a roll of the dice, but in any case, I’m hoping to get going within the next month or so.

A daisy chain of writers!

I have been asked by my friend and fellow writer-cum-blogger Helen Ellwood to participate in a blog chain, in which I have to answer four questions and then send those questions to someone else, thus linking both forwards and backwards to other writers.

Helen writes fantasy and also non-fiction adventure about her own improbably exciting life. She has a three-in-one blog about writing, living with disability, and arts and crafts, which can be found here: http://helenellwood.blogspot.co.uk/

And here are the questions, with my answers:

 

What am I working on?

At the moment, not a great deal, since my back pain is preventing me from doing much actual writing. My second novel, ‘Forever 27’, has been progressing in fits and starts, and I am hoping to get stuck into it in earnest soon. I am billing it as ‘a tale of sex and death and drugs and magic and rock and roll’. Inspired by the ’27 Club’ of musicians who have died at that age (eg Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison), it tells the story of a journalist with magical powers and her stormy relationship with a rock star who’s convinced he’s doomed to join the club.

 

How does my work differ from others?

An interesting question. My first novel, ‘The Heartland of the Winter’, currently out on submission with publishers, is a fantasy novel, but one with a story driven by human characters rather than dragons. In it, I explore the impact of a harsh climate on society, and how a young individual copes with being introduced to that society.  It’s an imagined world, but I’ve kept the fantastic elements – ie magic – to a minimum. I wanted to create characters the reader could relate to, and push them to the extreme, without giving them any magical get-out-of-jail-free cards. So I think it’s different from other fantasy books because, while the main characters’ situation has supernatural causes, they don’t themselves have any powers or resources which wouldn’t be available to the reader.

‘Forever 27’ is more of a magic realist work, set in the real world (or at least a version of it!). It’s not whimsical, but it certainly has its share of the macabre. Since it’s a work-in-progress, I don’t yet feel quite confident to say exactly what will set it apart, but I can say that at least part of what I’m trying to do is to explore what makes people creative, and how creativity can be used, burned out or even stolen.

 

Why do I write what I write?

 I was initially drawn to fantasy because I enjoy reading it, and because I like having my own little world in my head where I can make up whatever stuff I like to torment imaginary people. If that sounds rather like a kind of mental illness, well that’s probably about right.

I was drawn to write something about the 27 Club firstly because of my love of their music (you can blame my Hendrix-fanatic father for that), and also because I think there’s something very interesting about the way some creative people burn out young and others manage to keep going and going – just look at The Rolling Stones. Founder Brian Jones loses it half way through the 60s, drowns in his swimming pool (at 27), while Mick and Keef just carry on rolling into the 2010s.

 

How does my writing process work?

I’m not sure I’m organised, or experienced enough to have anything that can really be called a ‘writing process’. I just bash it out and hope for the best.

 

Link to next writer in the chain to follow soon!

 

 

 

 

It’s nearly the end of another year, and time for a few reflections before I have to start panicking about hosting Christmas next week (Can I possibly cope with making bread sauce? Especially when bread never lasts for long enough in our house to actually go stale? Will 12 bottles of wine be enough? For four of us for two days? When one of us doesn’t really drink? Maybe I should go and get more?).
Well, if 2012 was a transformation, and a vintage year, 2013 can perhaps be best described as ‘mixed’. In the winter, I moved to a four day week at the day job. In the spring, I lost my beloved Nan. In the summer, I finished one book, The Heartland of the Winter, secured an agent, and started another book, Forever 27. And in the autumn, I strained my back so badly that I’ve been essentially out of action for seven weeks and counting. Out of my creative writing and my husband’s rock climbing, who’d have thought my hobby would turn out to be the more dangerous?
Overall, I’m not sure I’m going to be looking back at 2013 with great fondness, but it hasn’t been a total annus horribilis. The last couple of months have been painful and a bit surreal at times, but it’s at least been a chance to rest and reconsider, and I’m trying to take away a few lessons. Bittersweet lessons about the important things in life, about the need to be patient and enjoy things for what they are, as they come. And harder lessons about the need to make choices, to prioritise the things which are really necessary, work hard at what matters, and accept that sometimes, you have to let go. To quote the Rolling Stones: no you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need. This can perhaps be summarised by my reaction to my injury: at first I wanted to just let it get better by itself, without actually doing anything to help it. Then I tried throwing money at the problem: massages, chiropractor, private yoga tuition. But then all these people I was paying to make me better told me that, in this instance, I have to heal myself. Exercise, posture, breathing technique, not overdoing it, all that stuff. Boring, maybe, but necessary.

And so another year will shortly begin. What does 2014 hold in store? A publishing deal is too much to expect, but not too much to hope for. Completion of my second novel, Forever 27, should be within my power. And also, perhaps, some refocusing, a bit more yoga and a bit less time slumped over a hot computer.

I’ll leave you with some half-baked homilies, fresh from the same oven I used to bake the loaf of success in a previous blog post. If you have to do something, do it with a smile. If you don’t have to do something, don’t feel bad about not doing it. All things in moderation, including moderation. Enjoy the good things, and remember, you don’t need to leave room for dessert, because you have a separate stomach for that.
Anyway, a merry Christmas to all, and a happy and productive 2014.

Convention, Convalescence and Creativity

So, in my last blog post, I announced I was about to attend the World Fantasy Convention down in Brighton, get some inspiration and motivation, and then take a week off work to crack on with some writing. How did it go?

Well, not quite according to plan. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the Convention, but I did enjoy it very much: I got to see some great writers including Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and my personal heroine Robin Hobb. I met some interesting people – a mixture of fellow writers, agents, editors, and fans. I walked along Brighton promenade several times and admired the beauty of the sea in all its different moods. I picked up some tips on topics such as world-building and ‘that difficult second novel’ (timely!). I successfully resisted the temptation to buy any books, but did succumb to a vinyl copy of Janis Joplin’s ‘Pearl’ in a record shop round the corner from my hotel (it totally counts as research). On the negative side, I didn’t get a wink of sleep all weekend, and I suffered from terrible backache – the writer’s curse – which had me chugging back painkillers washed down with wine.

This all left me in a bit of a state by the start of this week, which I had designated for a detox and get-down-to-some-serious-writing. The detox bit has been going all right, but the serious writing – not so much. On Tuesday morning, whilst doing some exercises to try to loosen up my back, I managed to sprain a ligament in my knee, so I’ve been hobbling around, unable to either walk properly, stand up properly, or sit down without my back screaming at me. Less than ideal – I’m writing this lying in bed, propped up on some pillows, feeling sorry for myself. Oh well, shit happens.

I have written a few things this week, some of which may well be appearing on this blog soon, although it hasn’t been quite the productivity-fest I was hoping for. But you can’t force these things – with luck a bit of convalescence will help me ferment some creative juices for later enjoyment. And I have started developing an idea for a new character in Forever 27 – who even has a name!* – so my next task will be to introduce her into the story and see how she gets on with the other characters. I’d tell her to play nice, but I don’t think she’s the type. Which is why I’m looking forward to working with her.

 

*crap, while writing this, I’ve just realised her name is nearly identical to another character’s. Gah! Back to the character-naming board…

One year on…

It’s now been over a year since I started this blog, and I thought it was worth taking a few minutes to reflect. In that time, I’ve finished one book (again), started another, entered some competitions with mixed levels of success, got an agent, and moved to a four-day working week. I’ve managed to keep to my self-imposed deadlines, writing blog posts on a variety of topics including cricket, music, trolls, the hidden gems of London, historical fiction, and how to write humorous poetry. Checking my stats, I see that I’ve had more than 2,000 views from people in countries including Canada, Israel, Malaysia and Kazakhstan. A number of different search terms have brought people to the blog, including ‘Giles Coren is a drunk’ ‘blah blah blah simple diagram’ ‘where to buy feuerzangenbowle’ ‘xkcd bubble bath’ and ‘Alastair Cook sexy and hot’, but by the far the most popular is ‘triple facepalm’. Not entirely sure what to make of all this, but hey, it’s feeling like some kind of success.

For my writing, it’s been a vintage year: I’ve improved my productivity and made some genuine progress towards publication, although there’s still a long way to go before I crack the Amazon Top Ten. This time next week I’ll be at the World Fantasy Convention down in Brighton, where I’m hoping to catch up with my agent, meet some interesting people and get some inspiration. Then I’ve got a whole week booked off to spend writing, coinciding with the start of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, where aspiring novelists try to complete 50,000 words in November). I’m not sure yet whether I’ll spend it working on my new book, Forever 27, re-working my first book, The Heartland of the Winter, working up some short story ideas, or perhaps just taking stock and thinking about what direction I want to take next.

I’ve always found one of the best ways to get in some quality thinking time is to wander around a local park or woodland. As well as being an aid to rumination, you can sometimes stumble across cool things – like a fine crop of toadstools. As a fantasy writer, I thoroughly approve of toadstools (Amanita Muscaria if you want to get technical) although I was amused to discover last year that some of my friends were under the impression that they were mythical. I can assure you that they are not – and here’s the photographic evidence. And with these pictures, my friends, I’ll leave you, until next time. TTFN.

The fine art of filth

As previously mentioned here, I’m currently writing a book called ‘Forever 27’, now with the working tag line: ‘a tale of sex and death and drugs and magic and rock ‘n’ roll’, which I think sums it up pretty well. I’ve been doing a bit of research into these topics, and some writing. All the characters now have names and I think the plot should just about work. Then I hit a bit of a stumbling block: the first thing on the list. I realised that, if I want to write this book, I’m going to have to write about sex. Oo-er – I’ve never done that before: the young lovers in my previous book, The Heartland of the Winter, went all shy on me. But the characters in Forever 27 are a bit older, and a lot more confident, and they want sex lives (characters and their unreasonable demands really are the bane of an author’s life…). So I figured, I’m just going to have to take the, er, plunge, and try not to imagine my mother reading over my shoulder.

I’d previously struggled to write about death, but I got over that problem with the help of my writing group, whose advice was very helpful in getting me to stick in the knife and give it a twist. And, really, if you can’t write about sex and death, what are you going to write about? So I approached them again. Not everything they said was helpful (‘the thing is, murder is socially acceptable’ was probably my favourite comment), but now I have a stack of books called things like ‘How to Write a Dirty Story’ lying around the house, right where the cleaner can see them.

Nervously, I got cracking. I found that coming up with the scenario, writing the build-up and the dialogue, was easy enough, but my characters were demanding more than a bit of flirtation and then a discreet veil draped over the rest of the proceedings. They want to go all the way, and I have to take them there, but I didn’t feel ready. My solution was to try to write something separate, a related-but-distinct set-up and characters, a kind of sexy sandpit, and see if I could get things going there without worrying about the writing forming part of anything I might actually want to get anyone to read. The hope being that, having lost my literary virginity there, I could transfer the lessons across to the actual book.

There are, I soon discovered, many perils of doing the literary nasty. Ikea Erotica (’insert Rod A into Slot B’). Mills & Boon speak (‘her pink flower of femininity opened’). Elaborate metaphors which end up either hopelessly mixed and meaningless (’we are lost in oceans and deserts…’) or just stupid (’she is like a rockpool… she keeps a starfish in there’). The biggest issue I found at the start was figuring out what words to use for, y’know, parts, without sounding either medical or ridiculous. Is pussy okay or does it just sound like you’re talking about a cat? Should you try a more robust Anglo-Saxon term, or is that just a bit too – blunt? How are you supposed to refer to a clitoris? And that’s before you’ve even thought about the male side of things. One of the books I’ve been lent suggested that you shouldn’t get hung up on terminology. Which is all very well, but I think if I had my hero ask my heroine if he can put his mop-handle in her love-bucket, both she and the reader would fall about laughing.

When questioned by a writing friend, I confessed to wrestling with the above, and was treated to a Google-derived list of terms, many of them… interesting. At ‘meat curtains’ I laughed so hard my wine went up my nose and I nearly choked to death. Things were not going to plan. Fortunately, rock ‘n’ roll came to the rescue. After establishing with two separate groups of people that Trent Reznor has the sexiest voice ever, and that therefore ‘Closer’, a song in which he expresses his desires in a forthright manner, is the sexiest thing ever recorded, the suggestion was made that I should simply stick it on repeat on my iPod, get the creative juices flowing, and go for it. It was also suggested that I try writing about Mr Reznor himself – a tempting idea for the punning possibilities alone (’Oh Trent, is that your nine inch nail…’), but I decided that would be taking things too far.

So what’s the result? Well, I didn’t actually put ‘Closer’ on repeat (one play is enough…), but I did crack my knuckles, sit down on Sunday morning with my laptop, my iPod, and a cup of tea, and manage to forget about my inhibitions for long enough get a few characters into bed and out again. I’ve drawn the meat curtains, fired the love gun, wanged the doodle. Metaphorically speaking. Of course, I’m still too nervous to show anyone the actual material, so it won’t ever see the light of day in its own right (unless I can think of a good enough pseudonym – Jenny Taylor? Penny Trait? Anne L. Loving?), but at least I’ve got over the hurdle of my own hang-ups. The main characters from Forever 27 can’t wait.

Bob by any other name

All novels need characters. Unfortunately, characters are awkward buggers who won’t do as they’re told and just cause trouble any way they can, like demanding names. I’ve recently started writing a scene for Forever 27 which introduces a character I had previously dubbed ‘Professor Chater’. Then, suddenly, he starts wanting a Christian name as well, which is just plain greedy. So I call him Michael, thinking ‘it’ll do’. Then I realise I not only already have a Michael on the cast list, but I’m about to introduce him later in the same scene. Oops! So I re-name the Professor Vincent. But wait, I’ve already got a Vincent too, albeit he doesn’t come along until later and is usually known by a nickname anyway. Still, best to eliminate any chance of a mix-up. What other names are there? The mind goes blank. In the end I call him Mervyn and hope for the best.

My little story illustrates a problem many writers struggle with, how to come up with a suitable and unique name for each character. It’s a lot harder than you might think. Obeying the one-Steve limit is just the start; you need to make sure there is absolutely no possibility of confusion, no Michael and Mitchell, or Lisa and Louisa. Tolkien may have come up with some great names – Gollum, Shelob, Faramir – but did he have to call his main villains Sauron and Saruman, and his only two female characters Arwen and Eowyn?

Of course, with names as with so many other aspects of writing, the freedom of invention in fantasy or science fiction can be a bit of a double-edged sword. On the plus side, you’re not restricted to the tedious ranks of names from the baby books (mind you, neither are many parents…). On the minus side, if you come up with your own names, they might sound ridiculous. Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon Riders of Pern series boasts characters called things like F’lar and F’nor (I’m not making this up). Or you could try using ‘real’ names, but spelled in, um, creative ways. Personally I don’t really see how calling someone ‘Petyr’ or ‘Peeta’ instead of just plain Peter improves your book, but hey, George RR Martin and Suzanne Collins have sold an awful lot of copies, so they must be doing something right. A third way – the one I used for The Heartland of the Winter – is the ‘Aerith and Bob’ approach, where some characters have ‘normal’ names and others ‘fantasy’ names. This can work well if there’s a distinction in the naming conventions between different societies in your world, but if the names are scattered at random it can be a bit jarring.

A name needs to not only suit the book’s setting, but to suit the character as well. A well-chosen name can make the character memorable, conjuring up an vivid image in the reader’s mind. A poorly-chosen name – not so much. This is something that can only really be done by ‘feel’ – I actually ended up swapping over two characters’ names during an early draft of Heartland because it just felt like they were attached to the wrong people. It can be tempting to resort to punny names – Rick O’Shea the Irish terrorist, Eric Shun the porn star – but this is not generally recommended.

Which authors have got it right? Well, I’ll suggest two who have impressed me in different ways: Jane Austen and JK Rowling. Austen names her characters with simple elegance, each name perfectly expressive without being over the top. Elinor Dashwood. Frederick Wentworth. Emma Woodhouse. And of course, Mr Darcy. Rowling – who is, lest we forget, writing for children – is rather less subtle and can’t resist a few puns, but her names are certainly distinctive. Horace Slughorn is probably my personal favourite, but there are loads more – Draco Malfoy, Albus Dumbledore, Bellatrix Lestrange. All names which roll off the tongue and evoke a vibrant world of magic. And you remember who the characters are – which is, after all, the whole point.

The perils of research

As previously recounted here, I’m currently working on my putative second novel, Forever 27, whilst awaiting publishers’ responses for The Heartland of the Winter. While I’ve written a prologue and a brief account of my main character’s childhood, the bulk of the work I’ve done so far has been research of one kind or another, a bit of a new experience for me. One of the reasons I originally started writing in the fantasy genre is because you don’t have to do much or any research: you can just make it up. Now I find myself attempting to write a book set in the real world, and in the past at that (admittedly just the 1990s rather than the 14th century). Which means I suddenly have to know the answers to questions like: ‘when did people stop doing the 11-plus?’ and ‘at what age was Kate Moss discovered?’ and ‘would a staff journalist at a local rag have had a mobile phone in 1992?’. It’s all suspiciously close to hard work, and I don’t really know what I’m doing. I am at least lucky enough to have a very supportive network of writer friends, whose help has been invaluable so far and will doubtless continue to be – so thank you to everyone, especially the two Marks.

Aside from the period detail, because the book is set in the world of music, I’m having to research a lot of stuff about sex and drugs and rock n’ roll. The sex and drugs part of that equation means I’ve ended up googling some fairly bizarre phrases, hoping that if I end up on some dubious website ‘it’s not for me, it’s for my characters’ will be an adequate excuse. But I suppose it’s better to keep it on the internet than to go out and do field research into the lives of groupies and heroin addicts – I don’t have the time for starters.

At least I’ve managed to keep the research on sex and drugs and local journalism within fairly defined boundaries, finding the answers to specific questions. The rock n’ roll, on the other hand… well. The 27 Club – a group of famous musicians who have died at the age of 27, including Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse – underpins the whole concept of the novel, and I’ve been trying to immerse myself in their music and the details of their lives. Which, I’ll admit, is not a very well-defined research goal. On the plus side, it means I can stumble across little gems buried in lyrics and biographies and think ‘I can use that!’. Also, having started out with a worry bead that my plot outline was a bit far-fetched, I’m now confident that, whatever crazy stuff I can dream up, some drug-addled rock star already did it. On the negative side, it means I can spend an entire evening watching a live DVD of The Doors and come away with no information more useful than the fact that Jim Morrison was a hopeless alcoholic. Which I kind of already knew. I also made the mistake of asking my Dad (who is, to be honest, ultimately to blame for the whole idea) if he had any books about Jimi Hendrix. Answer: a mere shelf-full. And of course, this kind of unfocused research can get perilously close to procrastination, especially when those ‘if you liked x, you may like y’ algorithms on Spotify and YouTube lure me into checking out the work of other musicians who might be equally talented but failed to die at 27 and hence don’t count as relevant. When I find myself half-wishing John Bonham had died five years earlier, I know it’s time to put the internet down and get back to thinking through my characters’ motivations, possibly whilst listening to Bleach.

I’ve just come back home from my second stint at the Writers’ Summer School at Swanwick. While many things were similar to last year – the inspiring courses, the entertaining speakers, the stodgy food – the overall experience was very different. For starters, I managed to pace myself a lot better: instead of greedily hoovering everything up until my brain burst, I was more choosy in what I attended, and made sure to take time out to relax and recover. Instead of meeting dozens and dozens of new people, I caught up with the friends I made last year, checking on progress and celebrating success. And I did find the time to make some new friends too.

Highlights of the week included: Alexa Radcliffe-Hart’s course on literary fiction, which enabled me to develop an interesting idea throughout the week and gave me some very useful exercises; Alex Davis’ course on horror, which helped me outline a scary tale; and of course, the evening speakers, especially Deborah Moggach, Syd Moore, and Curtis Jobling. Sadly this year the ‘TopWrite’ scheme, which offers subsidised places to younger writers, did not run, but a generous donation from an old Swanwicker means it will resume next year.

In addition to the outlines for a literary novel and a horror story, I was also able to make a plan for a new novel, Forever 27. This started life as my NaNoWriMo project in 2011 and has languished on my hard drive for nearly two years while I finished The Heartland of the Winter. This week I dusted it off and worked out how to extract a strong story from the mass of infodumps, continuity errors and unedited verbiage. It’s a complete departure from my previous work, a magic realist novel inspired by the ‘27 Club’ of musicians who have died before their time. I’ve drawn up a detailed plan, and I’m feeling sufficiently inspired to create a playlist of songs to go with it. My intention is to write it whilst waiting for a response on Heartland, and get it ready as a ‘Plan B’ in case the response is negative. Of course, if a publisher calls and says they want to give me a three-book deal for a fantasy trilogy, I’ll have to drop it and start work on the sequel to The Heartland of the Winter instead, but hey, I think that’s known as a problem I’d love to have, and I can always come back to it later.

All in all, an excellent week – the only problem is, it has to come to an end, and drop me back into mundane reality for another year. I’ll just have to try to keep the buzz going as long I can.

 

Websites of the tutors and speakers I mention:

Alexa Radcliffe-Hart: http://servicestoliterature.co.uk/

Alex Davis: http://www.alexdavisevents.co.uk/

Deborah Moggach: http://www.deborahmoggach.com/

Curtis Jobling: http://www.curtisjobling.com/

Syd Moore: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Syd-Moore/118216464935269

The school: http://swanwickwritersschool.co.uk/