This one is about my daily writing work
My work is making things up. I rarely talk about it but I keep doing it no matter what. Unless I get sick, or worse still someone close gets sick, Covid19 won’t make a lot of difference to this.
The book I’m working on right now (the next one I’ll publish is already written) will be finished late this year, maybe early next year. I haven’t settled on a title yet.
As usual, it’s fiction—that is, a story of made up places, people and events. While for many years I made my living from writing other people’s stuff, I don’t write fiction for the money. Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t buy and hopefully enjoy my books. But my main reason for writing them is more of a compulsion than a choice. I enjoy writing a lot more than I enjoy not writing.
I started my current book nearly two years ago and have worked on it in between other things. I began by writing a first draft about 80,000 words long.
The purpose of my first draft was to give me something to work with—people, places and a story. There were lots of messy bits and threads that went nowhere but by the time I finished I knew what the story was about.
Here’s a chunk of writing from my first draft:
Jay wanted a beer. Between man-bun and Sam’s friend Rebecca, he was upset. The feeling ran across the lower part of his belly, a churning sensation he recognised too well. Sam was unaware of it, linking arms as they walked briskly back towards his apartment block. What she did know was that his mood had changed when the runners had come past. She didn’t want to pry but she was curious; it was a side of him she hadn’t seen before.
Once my messy first draft was done, I had a big problem. This was my discovery that I’d been writing from the wrong viewpoint. I’d been mostly writing from Jay’s viewpoint but I knew I really needed to write it from the viewpoint of Alex, who is older. (I have written several books from the viewpoint of younger characters but this one was different.) It was a tough discovery because of the extra work involved. But there was no escaping it.
So, at the start of my second draft, I started getting into the head and mindset of Alex. Then, slowly but surely, I began turning the chaos of my first draft into a detailed, logical scene by scene outline. The result looks more like an extended Ikea manual than a story, but it makes sense to me.
With my outline done, I was able to start working on my third draft. This is work I really enjoy because I know where the story is going and can concentrate on my characters and action in more depth and detail—with the reader in mind.
In this scene I’ve been writing today, Alex is watching someone he’s hoping to meet because he thinks she might be his very first girlfriend of many years ago.
She has just climbed out of a sporty-looking red Merc about fifty metres from where he’s standing outside the café entrance. The phone she’s talking on is cupped in her right hand. As Alex watches, she closes the driver’s door with the point of her left foot and walks to the sea wall where she looks out across the water while continuing to speak. Alex sees that her short brown hair is uncovered, unlike in the magazine story. He notices the bangles on one arm and the wristlet on the other. Everything fits. He’s sure this is Nadia Norton but he still doesn’t know if she was once the girl called Nadia Summers.
In case you’re wondering, she is Nadia Summers and she invites Alex to her place for a meal. I know what happens when he gets there and that’s what I’ll be writing about tomorrow.
When my third draft is finished, I’ll go back and polish the language and tidy up anything that needs it. With that done, it will finally be ready to go looking for readers, and I’ll be starting on my next book.
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