Putting Sam’s house in order

Tags

blurb, cover, design, drafting, Heir Apparent, plotting, retreat

I bet you’re all wondering how I’m getting on with “Heir Apparent”.  Well I don’t mind telling you that’s its going to be a close-run thing.  It’s Wednesday morning and that means I have today and tomorrow to finish my first draft – with two chapters to go.  My husband reminded me that with “Portraits of Pretence”, I finished early and spent the last day of my retreat swanning around on the paddle-steamers on Lake Léman.  This time, I’ll be packing with one hand and typing with the other.

On the plus side, I am pleased to report that the story works, which is a huge relief.  Until I get pretty much to the end, it’s not a done deal: it could still fall apart.  My great fear is that twenty chapters in I’ll realise that something I wrote in the second chapter makes a nonsense of it all.  And indeed I had a difficult day on Monday when I decided that I just had to rearrange the order of various events in the book – so when I print out the draft I’ll have to read it really, really carefully [beta readers, that’s a heads-up for you too!] to make sure that I don’t talk in the past tense about something that now happens later in the story.

And thank you for your thoughts and comments on the back cover blurb.  I’ve made a few adjustments as a result – great improvements, all of them – and now that’s off to the cover designer.

The next time you hear from me, Sam and I will be back in Blighty – and, just to put you out of your misery, it’s Suffolk.

Let the nail-biting begin…

Tags

beta reader, drafting, Plank 5, title, writing

Well, that’s it: the completed draft of “Plank 5” has just been sent to my lovely beta reader Roy.  So there’s nothing more I can do until I hear from him, and that’s both scary and a great relief.

By the way, I’m now feeling the terrible lack of a title, so please do head on over to my earlier post and cast your vote.

I am currently reading Susan Hill’s book “Jacob’s Room is Full of Books” – it’s described as a memoir of a year of reading – and in it she says that she is constantly being asked to give tips to aspiring writers.  In particular, they ask her how many drafts she does of her novels.  And here’s what she says: “I make some notes… and they are very random and disconnected….  I think a lot….  And then I start.  I carry on.  I finish.  One draft and one draft only, at least for fiction….  Of course I tidy up and tighten up, I correct grammar and punctuation.  But in all essentials, the first draft is the last draft is the published book.”  Of course Susan Hill is a much-respected professional author, not an amateur like me, but it’s interesting to hear that not all authors go through several drafts, as almost all writing courses demand.  It gives great hope to the lazier of us…

[Side note: as I typed the word “constantly” just then, my fingers automatically typed “constable”.  I’ve been spending, as usual, too much time with Sam.]

Beta out than in

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beta reader, drafting, editing, Fatal Forgery, Samuel Plank, writing

I am quite breathless with the excitement!  Since Friday, fuelled perhaps by that view of King’s and a slice of Battenburg, I have written and edited like a demon.  Then I added dates to all of my chapters.  I did this in the first book (“Fatal Forgery”) without really thinking about the implications, but because it made (and still makes) sense for a constable’s notes to be dated.  What it does mean, however, is that when I reach the end of the writing, I have to work out how time passes between chapters – is this the next day, or weeks later, or even flashback?  (Actually, that’s a red herring: Sam Plank, being a man of great practicality, lives in the moment and does not do flashback.)

Next I had to think of names for each chapter.  Again, I did this in the first book and so now I have to keep to it – but it’s not really a chore because I enjoy looking for a slightly quirky little phrase to sum up each chapter.  So this time round we have, for instance, chapters entitled “Bruises and confessions” and “A ferret in the Compter”.  (No, I will not elaborate: you’ll just have to buy it in October.)

And once that was done, I had to admit that I had a completed beta draft, ready for sending to my greatly trusted and hugely respected beta reader.  You see how nice I am to him?  So – scary moment this – off it went about thirty minutes ago.  Nothing to be done now until I hear from him.  (Big tip: once you’ve handed a draft to someone else, don’t be tempted to fiddle around with your own copy, otherwise you’ll create enormous confusion.  Just. Leave. It. Alone.)  How am I celebrating?  Well, I went for a walk in the sunshine, and I’m going to have fish and chips for dinner.

Plot unknotted

Tags

drafting, plotting, research, Samuel Plank, writing

Well thank goodness for that.  I had a night’s sleep and then a little bike ride to clear my head, and lo and behold a solution came to me.  I’m not sure whether the solution – or indeed the knot that led to it – will stay in the final version, as that will depend on later editing, but at least it has got me out of the corner that I painted myself into.  And it’s quite a nice solution too, requiring some reading and research – always my favourite part of the process, and any excuse, etc.

Buoyed by my success, I motored on through the words yesterday and managed 2,475.  And today I woke very early and was on a roll – 2,061 words – and so now I have time for the ironing.  (If anyone ever tells you that life as an author is not glamorous, don’t believe them.  Not only ironing, but also clearing expired food from the back of the larder.  Just like JK Rowling’s Sunday, I should imagine.)  And looking at my overall chapter plan for “Plank 3”, I see that I have only three blank chapters left, with thirty-nine written.  Each chapter is basically an incident; as the book is written from the point of view of a policeman, it concentrates on action and incident rather than description or emotion.  Again, who knows whether that chapter breakdown will remain, but the end is very much in sight: once I’ve written those three blank chapters, I’ll have done the first run-through of the entire book.  Day off tomorrow (meeting godmother in London, while checking out a couple of Plank locations), then back with renewed vigour and determination on Tuesday.

Virtual cork-boards and Post-Its

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author, drafting, plotting, Samuel Plank, Scrivener, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, writing

As I mentioned on the very first day of this year, I have a naturally rather chaotic writing style.  I don’t write my books chronologically, but rather I do a rough outline of the main plot turns and then write whatever scene or chapter grabs my interest when I sit down at the keyboard.  This means that I can write all procedural stuff if I’m feeling detailed, or some dramatic stuff if I need livening up, but eventually the piper has to be paid and I need to start pinning it all together into a coherent whole.  And I am rather scared to report that, for “Plank 3”, that day has come.

I sat down to write something on Sunday morning, and realised that I had reached the point where I couldn’t remember what I had already written.  How did Conant’s daughter Lily meet that man, I wondered?  I remembered writing about it, but not what I had actually written.  So I had to bite the bullet.  The way I tackled the problem was to re-read each chapter that I have written, and summarise it into three or four bullet points, which I then typed onto (virtual) Post-Its for pinning on the (virtual) cork-board that is part of the excellent writing program that I use (Scrivener).  So each chapter now has its own Post-It, and I can move them around on the cork-board until they’re in an order that I like.  “Plank 3”, like “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, has several plot strands, and I like to interleave them, so that you hear a bit about one then a bit about another.  I figure that it’s more interesting (and testing!) that way, and indeed more indicative of the real way that police work is conducted – several investigations on the go at once.

So now I feel I have a much better grip on what still needs to be written for “Plank 3”.  And thank goodness I did re-read it all; somehow I had managed to betroth the afore-mentioned Lily to two different men, and her magistrate father would have had plenty to say about that.