A good sort of writer’s block

Tags

LeechBlock, Plank 7, publication date, retreat, word count, writing

Goodness, these blog posts are now so infrequent that I am amazed to have any readers left at all!  But please do stick with me: my day job is taking most of my energy at the moment and any writing time I can carve out is being used on “Plank 7” rather than this blog, but rest assured that I am writing slowly and surely in the background.  With my plans to “retreat at home” over the summer, I am quietly confident of hitting my planned publication date of 3 December 2021 – so remember to buy “Plank 7” for everyone for Christmas!

My big news today is that I have discovered a marvellous writing tool.  When I am writing, I will often dart off to check facts – when did the term “big cheese” come into use? what sort of market was in Brick Lane in the 1820s? – and these lead me onto other websites, and before I know it I’ve spent an hour on vaguely related reading and not written a word.  I kid myself that it’s all helping, that I’m filling in the background so that I can write with more authority – but if I’m not actually writing, well, that’s just an excuse.  And then I read about browser blockers.  You can buy them with all sorts of bells and whistles, but there is also a perfectly adequate free one called LeechBlock (so called because it blocks those sites that leech your productive time).  You download an extension to your browser and then set the sites you want it to block, and for how long.  You can be ferocious (blocking everything by using *.com) or select your sites of greatest browsing weakness…. And when you tootle off to those sites during the blocked hours, you get a splash screen saying “The page you’re trying to access has been blocked by LeechBlock”.  I’ve been using it only for a couple of days, and my word count has shot up.  As always, of course, there’s no guarantee that what I’m writing is any good, but – my constant mantra – you can always edit something, but you can’t edit nothing.

I have a plan

Tags

beta reader, cover, editing, Plank 7, publication date, retreat, writing

Hard to believe it’s been more than a month since I last updated you on my (lack of) writing progress, but it is.  Oddly, I find that time during lockdown both seems endless and speeds by – most peculiar.  But I have finally grasped the nettle and set my writing deadlines for the remainder of this year.

Given that I am still working full-time (and seeing other people’s struggles to maintain an income during the pandemic, I am grateful to be doing so), I realised that it was unrealistic to plan to have “Plank 7” ready for publication in mid-October.  September is a busy month for me with my day job (people always want training in that month – I think it is the muscle memory of the new school year and an attendant determination to leap into new learning).  And counting backwards, as self-published authors must do, to allow for the linear tasks of beta reading, editing and cover design, there’s simply not enough time.  I have therefore reset my publication date to 3 December 2021 – which is my mother-in-law’s birthday (guess what she’ll be getting this year…) and just in time for the Christmas rush.  (When I published my first book, “Fatal Forgery”, I actually thought there would be a spike in orders before Christmas – it’s now simply a running joke in the family.)

One exciting development is that I have managed to reinstate my writing retreat.  No, I’m not planning my usual escape to Switzerland – the last thing I need is to have my trip covid-cancelled at the last minute, or to be stuck up a mountain if Switzerland locks down again.  My husband has just retired, and something he has wanted to do for ages is go on a long bike ride, camping in the wild.  Given my fondness for feather duvets and bubble baths, I’m not tempted by this “holiday” – and he has agreed to disappear on his own for three weeks in July.  So I will be retreating at home.  To do it properly, I will lock my office (in case the day job tries to interfere), set up my writing laptop on the dining table and turn off my phone from 0800 to 1700 (as I do in Switzerland), and fill the fridge with M&S ready meals.  To maintain the illusion, I make even take to greeting those I see on my post-lunch walk with a cheery “Bonjour”.

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.

Changing up a gear

Tags

cover, design, Plank 6, retreat, title, WHSmith, writing

I know I’ve been quiet recently; my excuse is that I was on holiday cycling along the Rhine (which I can recommend for both scenery and ice-cream – the Germans are mad for both).  But I am now home again and work on “Plank 6” is at the forefront of my mind.  There are two key deadlines: on 22 July I am off to Switzerland for my writing retreat (seventeen days on my own, just for writing), and then on 18 October I am hoping to publish the book.  For the writing retreat to be of most value, I need to make sure that I have all but finished the first draft by the time I go – which is only 28 days away.  I’m nowhere near that at the moment, so it’s full steam ahead, carving out writing time whenever and wherever I can.  And the writing retreat should – must – result in a draft that I can send out to my lovely beta readers, and then I need to allow time to incorporate their suggested changes, which could be extensive.  I’m getting the vapours just thinking about it.

And of course the inside of the book is only part of it: before publication I need to decide on a title and a cover and a cover blurb, and organise a launch event.  So no pressure, then.  Over the weekend I put together a list of about fifteen possible titles – some are rather dull, others could work.  I’ll narrow that down to five and then put it to the public vote, as usual, in July.  I’ve started looking for possible cover images and documents, but thankfully can leave colour choice to the cover designer – I’ll be interested to see what they add to our current suite of blue, gold, red, green and purple.

One small update: you remember the book-signing that I did at WHSmith in April?  I’ve been trying to extract from them the vast sum I made from the day (read all about it here) and it’s taken nearly as long as writing “Plank 6”.  They’ve apparently designed a new payments system and I’ve had to submit my details to be approved as a new supplier, along with my invoice.  I’ll let you know when the money arrives and I can treat myself to an extra box of Jaffa Cakes.

Sorting out Sam’s diary

Tags

Plank 5, retreat, title

In past years I have been lucky enough to enjoy a writing retreat over the summer, where I immerse myself in writing as I reach the final stages of a book.  This year we had a long holiday in Canada instead – oh, what a hardship – and so I have engineered a mini-retreat for myself this week.  My husband is off cycling and visiting family for three days, and I have cleared my desk of “normal” work, and so it’s just me and Sam (and Martha, and Wilson, and Conant, and Wontner, and Freame – heavens, it’s crowded in here).

Yesterday – the first of the three days – I tackled a job that has been much on my mind: timetabling.  When I write, I do not anchor the chapters to particular dates.  But, as anyone who has read a Sam Plank book will know, each chapter in the final version has a specific date attached to it.  This is because I envisage the stories as a sort of constable’s notebook, and in such notebooks dates are very important.  And so, at some point in the process, I have to allocate a date to each chapter.  But of course by this stage there are all sorts of cross-references in the text, such as “only two days later”, or “three weeks earlier”, or “after she had attended four Sunday meetings” – and they all have to be made to work together.  It’s a rather frustrating exercise, involving big blank calendars, a soft pencil and a very big rubber (for my American readers, that’s an eraser…).

Actually, I say “big blank calendars” but that’s not true: on the calendar I first mark any significant dates – such as Sam’s birthday, and important festivals like Easter – and any particularly relevant events.  “Plank 5” is set in 1828, and in that year London Zoo was opened on 27^th April (which is not at all relevant to my story) and there was an unseasonably harsh frost on 12^th November (which is).  So it’s like assembling a rather formless jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box to guide you, and I am very relieved to have done it.

(You will notice that I am still referring to “Plank 5”: don’t forget that my title poll is now open, and you can cast your vote here for the title that you like best.)

Born to look backwards

Tags

historical fiction, Plank 5, research, retreat, Samuel Plank, writing

My husband is away for the weekend (doing a long bicycle ride somewhere up north – I really should listen more carefully…) and so I have awarded myself a mini-retreat for writing.  I have turned the dining table into my desk, and am spending two days – one and off – gazing out into the garden while enjoying the company of Sam and Martha.  And it strikes me that I am rarely happier than when retreating into the past.

The signs were always there.  As a little girl, my favourite book was “The Little White Horse” by Elizabeth Goudge – I still re-read it once a year.  The religious symbolism of the story quite escaped me (indeed, I saw it only when I shared it with my book club and they hated it for its religious overtones – the lesson is never to submit a beloved book to this sort of scrutiny!) but I was enchanted and captured by its setting: the west of England in 1842.  When my mother allowed me to stay up and watch evening television dramas with her, my very favourites were “Upstairs, Downstairs” (London, 1903 to 1930), “The Onedin Line” (Liverpool, 1860 to 1886) and – of course – “Poldark” (Cornwall, 1783 to [eventually] 1830).  When I went through the inevitable teenage girl phase of reading overblown family sagas with occasional scenes of torrid sex, I eschewed the modern Jilly Cooper and Judith Krantz in favour of anything by Susan Howatch – particular favourites being “Cashelmara” (Ireland in the late nineteenth century) and “The Rich are Different” (London and America in the interwar years).  As an adult with my own money for television boxed sets, I wallow regularly in “Cranford” (Cheshire in the 1840s) and “North & South” (Manchester in about the same period).  In my everyday life I favour dresses with a 1950s cut, and drive a car from the 1980s.  And I must say that in today’s current political climate, the past seems much safer place to be.  Now, I must head back to 1828 – Sam is attending a religious meeting on the City Road and cannot believe his ears.

Day one in the Sam Plank house

Tags

retreat, Samuel Plank, word count, writing

My husband flew home yesterday after a few days’ holiday, leaving me at the top of a Swiss mountain with a car and a cupboard of word-count-based rewards:

Last night, in preparation for an early start, I set up my “desk” on the dining table:

And this is my view from that seat – out of the balcony over the treetops.  Pretty enough to be a rest for the eyes, but not busy enough (apart from the small, darting birds chasing insects) to be distracting:

Interestingly, as I have been anticipating the start of my retreat, my mind has been working ahead of me subconsciously, and over the past few days my husband has become used to me saying suddenly, “Don’t talk to me – pass a scrap of paper” as I scribble down another idea.  In fact, the whole ending of the book (or at least, the ending at the moment) changed yesterday, which is rather exciting, as I always like to have something of a twist.  So my work folder is now stuffed with Post-Its and bits of paper from wherever I could find them, including receipts and torn-up cardboard packets.  All I need to do now is get writing, so I’ll do just that.

Crunching the numbers

Tags

plotting, retreat, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, word count, writing

Being a part-time author is not easy – actually, neither is being a full-time one, but I spend quite a bit of time making sure that I have enough time.  And it all comes down to numbers, so periodically I have to stop what I like doing – thinking about Sam, and asking him to tell me his thoughts and adventures – and instead do some nasty adding-up.  To put it simply: each Sam book seems to end up with about thirty-chapters, each of about two thousand words.  (Wish I could say that this is carefully planned, but it’s not: it just follows that pattern.)  On a good day, I can write a chapter.  So I need thirty-two days to get a first draft done.  “Hah!” I hear you scoff.  “Wish I could get by with working thirty-two days a year!”  And indeed so do I – but unfortunately these thirty-two days (let alone the pre-writing plotting, planning and research days beforehand) have to be fitted in around my full-time job, which often ends up taking six days a week.  (Ask anyone who runs their own business: you work five days a week, and then do the business stuff – oh, the joy of admin – on the sixth.)

I have tried, believe me I have tried, to be one of those amazing people who can scribble down a paragraph while waiting for the potatoes to boil, or pen a little conversation while sitting on the bus.  But it doesn’t work: for me to get into full Sam mode, I need dedicated time: a morning would do, but a full day is ideal.  So to be most efficient, I need to find thirty-two full days.  Hello Sundays.  But then selfish, thoughtless people like husbands and other relatives interfere, and demand that I attend birthday parties and days out and weddings and sponsored bike rides (all of which I love and am far too weak-willed to resist).  There’s holidays and sick days, and days when I am just too pooped to care.

So I get to this point in the year, when I am galloping towards my summer writing retreat.  Regular readers will know that this is when I disappear for a fortnight and spend it pummelling the first draft into something that I dare to send out for beta reading.  (I also start thinking about the title and the cover, and wondering whether life as a ditch-digger in darkest Africa wouldn’t be an easier option.)  For this fortnight to be most productive, I need those first-draft chapters done.  And so I start counting: how many Sundays between now and then?  Enough, or do I need to start pinching other “free” days for writing?  Well, what do you think?  To make myself feel a little bit better, I have glittery book-shaped stickers (I think designed as reading prizes for children) that I put into my diary on writing days, but it’s all looking very alarmingly colourful now.  It will be done, I think, but only as long as no-one in the family gets married or falls off the perch between now and 21 July.  Here’s hoping they all keep celibate and healthy.

There’s no escape

Tags

editing, Fatal Forgery, plotting, retreat, Samuel Plank, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, writing

My writing retreat begins the day after tomorrow.  I have told everyone.  I have cleared my work (the day job) as much as I can, by writing ahead, preparing ahead and warning all clients that I am about to disappear.  And I have even forced my poor husband to leave the country for three weeks.  So there is No Escape: come hell or high water, on Friday I must write.

In that superstitious way of so many of us, I am trying to recreate my successful writing retreat from last year.  I can’t do much about the location – then it was Swiss mountains, now it is Cambridge flatlands – but other things can be emulated.  I was relying on Swiss telly, and the only channel in English was called BBC Entertainment and showed endless reruns of gentle dramas like “The Darling Buds of May”, “Heartbeat” and “The Royal”.  I became ridiculously addicted to the last of these – set in a hospital in a Yorkshire seaside town in the 1960s – and allowed myself one soapy episode a day as long as I had written my required words.  By happy coincidence, “The Royal” is also being shown here in the UK at the moment, and I have been recording it in order to provide myself with the same reward.  In Switzerland they sell some marvellous paprika-flavoured crisps called Zweifels, and again, a bowl a day was on offer to any writer who could complete 2,000 words.  I can’t find them here, but I have located some other paprika-flavoured crunchies, so they will have to do.

With having the house to myself, I can set up and leave all of my writing requirements – laptop, index cards, notebooks, inspirational-mousemat-featuring-photos-of-Richard-Armitage-as-brooding-John-Thornton-from-“North and South”, etc. – on the dining table.  And if I need to put on the bedroom light in the middle of the night to jot down a Plankish piece of inspiration (fingers crossed these do materialise), then it will be only the cat blinking at me in displeasure.

Mapping Plank’s progress

Tags

Fatal Forgery, London, map, retreat, Samuel Plank, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, writing

I will admit that things have been rather sluggish recently.  I have had a busy time at work (the paid, day job) and I’m heading towards a holiday, so Sam has been on my mind but no so much on paper.  That said, I have managed to write nearly two thousand words (so far…) this weekend, in between chores, so am pleased with that progress.

One thing I spent quite a bit of time on was consulting my map.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I am heavily indebted to Greenwood’s 1827 map of London, but for ease of paper reference I have turned to an unusual source: the Transport for London cycling map of central London.  It is a lovely colourful folding map of the area I need, and because it is intended for cyclists on the hoof/wheel, it is wonderfully clear.  I have taken my coloured pens and marked on it all the key Plank locations – Great Marlborough Street magistrates’ court, Newgate prison, the Fleet, Sam’s house and so on – and then use pencil crosses for the more one-off places of interest.  If I then need Sam to hare, say, from home to Newgate, or from the Fleet to a suspect’s house, I can get a good overview of the route he would have taken.  Before mentioning any street names, I then cross-reference with Greenwood’s.  This is essential, as even the most seemingly established London place names might not be all that old.  Ludgate Circus, for instance, was actually called Farringdon-circus until relatively recently – and that’s certainly the name that Sam would have used for this busy junction.

Now that I know that my summer retreat-at-home is happening, I have decided that I will spend one of my precious days down in London, armed with my marked-up map, re-walking some of the main routes taken by Sam, just to add some little descriptive details – and to check that I am not making the poor man walk his boots off.

And for those of you who have requested it, please rest assured that I am considering the idea of including a map in the next book so that you can “walk the Plank” along with Sam.  (My husband is a neat little draughtsman and may be roped in on map-drawing duties with bribes of chocolate biscuits.)  The only thing that might stand in our way is whether I can include diagrams – rather than just text – in the interior template that I use for my books.  I will check it out and let you know.