Every book starts with a single paragraph

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Cambridge, Gregory Hardiman, plotting, research, Samuel Plank, Scrivener, writing

The good news is that my plan has gone, well, according to plan.  I did my last bit of general, background, “I don’t know quite what I’ll need but this sounds interesting, and oh, that’s good too, I’d better read that just in case” research on Sunday.  I tell you, those Victorian chroniclers were a gossipy lot – so much so that it sent me off down a rabbit-hole researching defamation law!  Surely you can’t say that, I kept thinking, but apparently they did.  Symbolically I have moved the towering pile of research tomes off my writing desk and onto the floor and will now rely on the notes I took in Scrivener (my research and writing program).

The really good news is that I have indeed started the actual writing.  Well, to be fair, it’s only one paragraph – but it’s a whole paragraph!  This means that I have settled on the outline plot for the first Gregory book.  It’s set in 1825, because that’s the year of the Act for the better Preservation of the Peace and good Order in the Universities of England – which gave Oxford and Cambridge universities the powers to appoint constables.  The Act was passed in July 1825, but my story is starting in February of that year – and that’s all I’m telling you.  Except that valuable artworks, books and bottles of wine are disappearing from one of the colleges…

And the bad news is that no-one has bought a single one of my books – or even downloaded the free guide to the Sam series – since last Thursday.  Here I am, slaving away, wearing my fingers to nubs writing whole paragraphs (well, one whole paragraph) and no-one cares.  Harrumph.

And we’re off!

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Cambridge, constable, Gregory 1, Gregory Hardiman, Heir Apparent, plotting, research, Scrivener, university constable

I promised myself that after a suitable break to admire “Heir Apparent” I would crack on with “Greg 1” – the first book in my new series, to be set in Cambridge and narrated this time by a university constable.  Sunday was the day and I began by setting up the blank templates in the research/writing package I use (Scrivener) as this is always the symbolic start to a book.  Once the templates were there, of course I couldn’t resist starting my research, and I’ve been knee-deep ever since in the history of Cambridge.  I did consider setting this series a decade earlier (I’m never really happy too far from the 1820s…) but then I remembered that the University of Cambridge Constabulary was not created until 1825, so I’m back in my favourite decade – hurrah!

And once again I am amazed at how helpful people are when you say that you’re writing historical fiction and need their help with their area of expertise.  I have already been in touch with the current head of the university constables and she has invited me in to meet her and talk about their work – past and present.

And I know that I want Gregory Hardiman to have an army background, so I read up about possible regiments in the area, and who did what in the Peninsular Wars (he’s going to be a wounded ex-soldier), and found a combination that would work.  But I am treading with extreme caution: I come from an entirely un-military family and don’t know my adjutant from my ensign.  And although all historians are (quite rightly) nit-picking, I believe that military historians are the pickiest of the lot, so I daren’t get it wrong, but military history books are complicated to the uninitiated.  What to do, what to do – and then I thought of contacting the present-day descendent regiment of the one I had chosen for Gregory.  I put together some questions, which I daresay appear extremely naïve and basic to anyone military, and sent them to the “contact us” person on their website.  Less than 24 hours later, I have had a full reply to every question from the curator of the regiment’s museum.  How very, very kind – and it’s all really interesting too.  I now know that Greg lied about his age to sign up, because there were too many mouths to feed at home and he fancied guaranteed grub every day.  If you’re writing historical fiction, never feel shy about asking for help: I have never once been turned down.

Forgiving Flora

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audiobook, Fitzwilliam Museum, plotting, Portraits of Pretence, Scrivener, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

Well, I think we all knew it wouldn’t last – my resolve, that is, not to go back to Sam for a while.  The truth is that I am listening to the audiobook version of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, which my fab narrator Guy is working on and sending to me chapter by chapter, and it has made me miss Sam even more.  And so yesterday I prepared the space for “Plank 5”.

Those of you who followed my writing retreat progress over the summer will know that my Macbook gave up the ghost, taking with her two days’ work on “Portraits of Pretence” (which thankfully I was able to recreate – probably not exactly but perhaps even better than the first time round) and all of my research for the three previous books (which I could not retrieve).  Luckily I had what I call “main Plank research”, which went with the first book, backed up on a memory stick, but for some dotty reason I had not bothered to do that same for the files that went with the second and third books.  So now I have the final text for these, but not all the research that went along with them.  My own fault, of course, for not backing up more assiduously.  My Macbook – Flora – was herself revived and even upgraded by a local Mac resuscitation expert, but I did wonder whether I would trust her again…

So yesterday I had to decide: would “Plank 5” be written on Flora, like its four predecessors, or would I stick with my laptop, which came to the rescue when Flora had her nervous collapse?  I have always liked having a separation between my day job and my Plank writing, and Scrivener (the writing package I use) looks nicer on the Mac than on the laptop, and Flora was very remorseful, so I have decided to stick with her.  I have copied across the research files I do have, and have set up my blank “Plank 5” file, complete with the character files that I carry across each time, where I note details that I have given about the main people so that I can be consistent.  So now I’m heading for 1828…

And I am trying not to go into the Fitzwilliam Museum shop more than once a week to enjoy the sight of my books on their rather erudite shelf of books about art.

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.