Tuesday and Wednesday nights are “Writing Night”. For the past few months I’ve been doing research for a new novel, but as you’ll have gathered from my witterings here, I wasn’t feeling sure of it at all. The story just kept eluding me.
Last night I finally got around to doing my research reading, and when I started I was seriously questioning the whole project. Maybe I should just focus on making blank books, I thought, or zines. Or maybe I should just stop all this and just be a person for a while without thinking about creating things.
I kept reading, though, and by the time Craig got home from a work-related event in Thurso, my brain was sparking again.
This morning I woke up and the little cobbling elves of my subconscious had stitched together a whole story. Thank you cobbling mental elves!
My confidence with this project so far has been like a tide — one that was mostly out to sea. So what’s different this morning? What is it about the package that arrived in my head that makes it feel different now?
The events in the book are a lot clearer, and that helps a lot. I’m looking at a period of history and specific government/security structures and events, and I knew I couldn’t capture all of that (and wasn’t interested in writing about that aspect of it). So having a specific lens of action to look through is a big help.
What really swings it, though, is having characters. I know who this book is about now. That makes it fun. That makes it possible to start.
And thank Odin for that! My lower eyelids have been twitching for the past two weeks from what I can only assume has been the stress of constantly thinking about this project, or rather the vacuum that was there in place of it.
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