Fantastic day today - first dealt with tax and credit problems (3 of them) and then turned to the book. The thing is growing (102,000 words), I have found some passages that don't need much editing (hurray!) and other bits with lacunae. I have a bit of stuff to be inserted - including the climatic discussion about Feminism... and I am beginning to feel nervous. It seems likely that the end will arrive in about 3 days - and then I'll have to send it to her... Fear and trembling... it seems so terrifying. Part of me believes all will be well - has stopped doubting, but then I think "she might not want it"... There's nothing I can do. And if she doesn't, someone else will.
Ballyalban Fairy Fort
Monday 30 April 2012
Saturday 28 April 2012
Into the final stretch....
have been editing slowly but surely last week - on Friday I took the printed copy to look at the last section and annotate a bit.... still not convinced I haven't repeated things too much. Told rather than shown - oh horreur!
I sat in the pub at Pegwell Bay (there are two, but this is the nice one) and annoted in the sun, but indoors because of raging wind.
Today have been writing up some more - got to 99,000 words, so will definitely be longer than the original... still haven't quite answered the question of what love means to a feminist... well, actually, the book does on the whole... the answer is probably that Love is too mysterious to explain in those terms. Anyway, I have another 50 pp to edit, add to, re-write.... and then I probably need to add a big dialogue - and then it will be finished. Then what?
I will then probably need to be absolutely happy that it will be respectable enough for the Agent to at least read it. It does work, I read it last week, I liked it, I just .... what? Oh, it's mine, so it all seems so obvious to me, I can't believe anyone will read it in a different way, will be surprised or interested by it. I expect I'll get over it - I have plot twists... I even thought of a blurb...The longer I labour over it, the more I worry that it needs to be more.... anything/something.... but really, it's fine.
I sat in the pub at Pegwell Bay (there are two, but this is the nice one) and annoted in the sun, but indoors because of raging wind.
Today have been writing up some more - got to 99,000 words, so will definitely be longer than the original... still haven't quite answered the question of what love means to a feminist... well, actually, the book does on the whole... the answer is probably that Love is too mysterious to explain in those terms. Anyway, I have another 50 pp to edit, add to, re-write.... and then I probably need to add a big dialogue - and then it will be finished. Then what?
I will then probably need to be absolutely happy that it will be respectable enough for the Agent to at least read it. It does work, I read it last week, I liked it, I just .... what? Oh, it's mine, so it all seems so obvious to me, I can't believe anyone will read it in a different way, will be surprised or interested by it. I expect I'll get over it - I have plot twists... I even thought of a blurb...The longer I labour over it, the more I worry that it needs to be more.... anything/something.... but really, it's fine.
Monday 23 April 2012
Heave ho!
This is what it felt like today - a lot of good solid housework and finance this morning, then spent the afternoon forcing myself to edit some of the new sections of the book (I am fed up with changing 1st to 3rd person and vice versa, and have now finally decided to go with 3rd - and now have to swap a lot it back.... after tramping through the dismal swampland for an hour so after supper I managed to edit a magnificent 18 pages. Oh Lord, that's simply not good enough... tomorrow is another day. I am still feeling encouraged though - Anna was really nice and enthusiastic and supportive on Saturday, so I am generally feeling like an absolute genius, until I come down to brass tacks and find myself eyeballing my work.
Saturday 21 April 2012
Happy!
Shockingly I did not work yesterday - basking in the discovery that the first draft wasn't as bad as I'd thought. This morning I woke up and lay in bed - half-dozing and began to think about the Romanticism-Feminism-Evolutionary Biology argument... so leaped up and wrote it - not quite finished, it's ticklish, but I think it will fulfill The Agent's brief. Need to put more affair in the book - and perhaps conversations with him about male-female behaviour - higher brain etc. The sort of thing he would talk about.
Friday 20 April 2012
Not so bad...
Yesterday I was getting very bogged down in the structure - and felt I had lost things that needed to be said, or hadn't yet said things I wanted to deal with. So I did what I've been meaning to do - got the hard copy and read the book.... it was really exciting reading scenes that I hadn't read since I wrote them a few weeks ago, and seeing how well it seemed to go. I remember feeling a bit excited when I first finished the first draft and like God "saw that it was good"... so now I feel incredibly positive and hopeful. I think I can get in what I need to say - and make more room if necessary.
The structure thing is like a jigsaw - or rather a game of chess - if you move one section, you'll have to see how that impacts on all the other pieces - and what new shape you'll make. No antagonist though - but just a conflict between how you want it to be, and how it's going to actually work!
Today I am so happy that I'm going to do gardening and shopping before I work!
The structure thing is like a jigsaw - or rather a game of chess - if you move one section, you'll have to see how that impacts on all the other pieces - and what new shape you'll make. No antagonist though - but just a conflict between how you want it to be, and how it's going to actually work!
Today I am so happy that I'm going to do gardening and shopping before I work!
Wednesday 18 April 2012
Getting back on the bike
Is what it feels like - it's not as though I'd fallen off - but getting back into it is difficult. It is partly because a lot of it is editing and I feel if I edit the first 4-5 chapters ever again it will only be with a gun at my head. They now feel as flat as ink... but perhaps I should say "very smoothly written" and be nice about my writing.
This afternoon I was delighted to discover that having cut a whole darling chapter (the sojourn in France) it was necessary to create a miniaturised flashback version to get in the Amsterdam Sex Olympics and the somewhat sexist Jim Haynes (who is not mentioned by name) - he of the open dinner party fame... to illustrate how Lucy's ideas about open Brave New People fell a bit flat. So that cheered me up. Then Finn came home and we had long amicable discussions about homework, detentions, social class, his new English teacher etc. I am a bit worried since Finn is behaving more responsibly etc. at home, but I fear he hasn't quite got his act together at school. He does have a new friend who is "even more of a grammar fascist than me". I was shocked at the this: Finn was notable for his "whatever" attitude to grammar a few months ago, I remember explaining the difference between There are and there is to him... he said I was being ridiculous and that no one cared about it. I said that people might not care, but in the end if people didn't use proper grammar then no one would be able to understand each other - that there were already people I'd met who couldn't understand me because I spoke more accurate English and I couldn't really understand them because their language wasn't specific enough and contained too many possible meanings. Obviously this discussion has gone in, and now he is priding himself on this.
This is of course the wrong blog for these observations, but I suppose it's language - it's part of my demesne, and obviously both Ned and Finn have benefited from having literate parents. Finn is also becoming fascinated with the nuances of social class - interestingly has made a new friend (the grammar fascist) who he says is the most middle class boy in school...it's hard to tell really, so many of them talk down so as not to be noticed. But I am delighted he has a new friend.
Literature: I actually wrote a bit first thing this morning - because when I woke up I found I had an idea about Conscience which was so useful. I realised that John Ames, the protagonist in Gilead was roughly a contemporary of my character David... although MR has wisely avoided giving him any antiquated ideas. Obviously David is a very different person, and younger, more volatile... but for whatever reason I started writing the fateful bedroom scene from Conscience - and found more ideas as I went along, so clearly leaving David and Kitty on the compost heap for a bit has softened them and they are now metamorphosing nicely.
This afternoon I was delighted to discover that having cut a whole darling chapter (the sojourn in France) it was necessary to create a miniaturised flashback version to get in the Amsterdam Sex Olympics and the somewhat sexist Jim Haynes (who is not mentioned by name) - he of the open dinner party fame... to illustrate how Lucy's ideas about open Brave New People fell a bit flat. So that cheered me up. Then Finn came home and we had long amicable discussions about homework, detentions, social class, his new English teacher etc. I am a bit worried since Finn is behaving more responsibly etc. at home, but I fear he hasn't quite got his act together at school. He does have a new friend who is "even more of a grammar fascist than me". I was shocked at the this: Finn was notable for his "whatever" attitude to grammar a few months ago, I remember explaining the difference between There are and there is to him... he said I was being ridiculous and that no one cared about it. I said that people might not care, but in the end if people didn't use proper grammar then no one would be able to understand each other - that there were already people I'd met who couldn't understand me because I spoke more accurate English and I couldn't really understand them because their language wasn't specific enough and contained too many possible meanings. Obviously this discussion has gone in, and now he is priding himself on this.
This is of course the wrong blog for these observations, but I suppose it's language - it's part of my demesne, and obviously both Ned and Finn have benefited from having literate parents. Finn is also becoming fascinated with the nuances of social class - interestingly has made a new friend (the grammar fascist) who he says is the most middle class boy in school...it's hard to tell really, so many of them talk down so as not to be noticed. But I am delighted he has a new friend.
Literature: I actually wrote a bit first thing this morning - because when I woke up I found I had an idea about Conscience which was so useful. I realised that John Ames, the protagonist in Gilead was roughly a contemporary of my character David... although MR has wisely avoided giving him any antiquated ideas. Obviously David is a very different person, and younger, more volatile... but for whatever reason I started writing the fateful bedroom scene from Conscience - and found more ideas as I went along, so clearly leaving David and Kitty on the compost heap for a bit has softened them and they are now metamorphosing nicely.
Monday 16 April 2012
Not my best day...
Slow old business: first there was the important decision about the opening chapter(s) - have finally made the radical decision to more or less keep it the same - only I cut the quince tree out! Darlings are lying slaughtered around me as I speak - not just darling words and phrases - whole great darling scenes have been killed. Now have a newish bit of stuff - about life - might re-instate the quince tree somewhere secretly...Then it was on to the sorry affair of editing down the teenage affair chapters - removing any last shreds of self-pity, any ludicrous asides any "aren't I clever!" bits - and making sure that I had the right tenses and the right persons. It was boring, and I lost the will to live frequently and switched over to Twitter and Google research for alleviation of boredom.
I did some interesting research into a couple of my acquaintance to see whether they appear in public anywhere - this yielded one result on Google - searching for her on her own, I discovered she had written an article on her industry which had rather offended an intelligent critic of her industry, so had the rare pleasure of seeing a critique of her piece and feeling all lovely and warm and Schadenfreudisch! I also discovered something about her that I feel is a bit discreditable - which added to my picture of her as a person of only relative integrity. But I daresay her husband doesn't care about that sort of thing much.
This isn't perhaps the blog to write this in perhaps, but it did occur to me that Mark and I are sadly lacking in the sort of vanity and self-esteem which leads people to trumpet themselves up and advertise themselves. Or perhaps we just lack the commercial nous other people have. Perhaps M's blog would be better if we had loads of videos of him in action on it, talking about his work and how fab he is... and perhaps as a result we would have a great deal more work and, by extension, money. Heigh-ho!
I did some interesting research into a couple of my acquaintance to see whether they appear in public anywhere - this yielded one result on Google - searching for her on her own, I discovered she had written an article on her industry which had rather offended an intelligent critic of her industry, so had the rare pleasure of seeing a critique of her piece and feeling all lovely and warm and Schadenfreudisch! I also discovered something about her that I feel is a bit discreditable - which added to my picture of her as a person of only relative integrity. But I daresay her husband doesn't care about that sort of thing much.
This isn't perhaps the blog to write this in perhaps, but it did occur to me that Mark and I are sadly lacking in the sort of vanity and self-esteem which leads people to trumpet themselves up and advertise themselves. Or perhaps we just lack the commercial nous other people have. Perhaps M's blog would be better if we had loads of videos of him in action on it, talking about his work and how fab he is... and perhaps as a result we would have a great deal more work and, by extension, money. Heigh-ho!
Back to work
I am quite excited about going back to work on the book. Last night I dreamed about it a lot, and woke up and had thoughts about it.
Last night and this morning I was reading bits of The Female Eunuch to prime the pump - it's interesting to see how much of the book is actually (like Kate Millett) literary criticism - it isn't a socialist feminist handbook - it isn't a "right answer" book. Is there/was there some sort of feminist handbook - a what's in/what's out? I doubt whether such a book would be desirable - anyway, I'm not meant to be writing a "correct" book that is based on someone else's work and ideas, this book is meant to be answering the question of feminists falling in love - is it right? Can one be a Romantic and a Feminist? And it is I, or rather my character who has to answer that question.
Last night and this morning I was reading bits of The Female Eunuch to prime the pump - it's interesting to see how much of the book is actually (like Kate Millett) literary criticism - it isn't a socialist feminist handbook - it isn't a "right answer" book. Is there/was there some sort of feminist handbook - a what's in/what's out? I doubt whether such a book would be desirable - anyway, I'm not meant to be writing a "correct" book that is based on someone else's work and ideas, this book is meant to be answering the question of feminists falling in love - is it right? Can one be a Romantic and a Feminist? And it is I, or rather my character who has to answer that question.
Thursday 12 April 2012
Getting antsy
Yes, really feeling I can't wait to get on with the re-write now - very happy making feeling. Had a long chat with Lorna today - a bit about the book - but just talking about family life, love, feminism etc. trying to answer some of the book's questions...wrote a few notes towards it while I was waiting. Lorna encouraged me to keep the teenage stuff... people really relate to it... so one big teenage flashback - the whole thing? And then get dragged into the present - then have the revelation of the end of the relationship flashback a little later. Then she gets the idea for the book? Dunno.
Lorna was telling me about a friend of hers whose novel sales have really taken off since she worked harder on her plots. It's all about plot... and a build up of suspense towards the end.... hence no doubt the popularity of detective fiction/thrillers... the fact I can live without them is neither here nor there. Anyway, this writer's agent retired from agenting and wrote a detective novel and told her "It's all about plot". I don't think I'd go that far for my own tastes - but if I want to sell - so maybe I need to tighten up things a bit, give more suspense in places. More things to think about!
Lorna was telling me about a friend of hers whose novel sales have really taken off since she worked harder on her plots. It's all about plot... and a build up of suspense towards the end.... hence no doubt the popularity of detective fiction/thrillers... the fact I can live without them is neither here nor there. Anyway, this writer's agent retired from agenting and wrote a detective novel and told her "It's all about plot". I don't think I'd go that far for my own tastes - but if I want to sell - so maybe I need to tighten up things a bit, give more suspense in places. More things to think about!
Tuesday 10 April 2012
Book of the Month
This month's reading group book was Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, which I am re-reading. It is a wonderful book - and very funny in places. I think I am enjoying it more second time around because I am not waiting for "something to happen" but enjoying the texture more.
I am also reading Bernal Diaz's The Conquest of New Spain a book I've had for ages, and was prompted to read by reading B Kingsolver's The Lacuna - it's interesting and readable translation (somewhat abridged to take care of his moaning about stuff). Another book - the current handbag book - is Smollett's Journey through France and Italy which is amusing. We were in Dover yesterday and found in the Museum a quote on Smollett's comments about Dover's innkeepers. It's brisk, brusque and funny. Because I am reading three books I am getting on very slowly.
My father has lent me a Christian/archaeology book - which claims to shed light on the old testament. In particular the day Joshua asked the sun to stand still... 21st July 1400BC apparently. I happen to have access to an ephemeris chart that goes back to that year... it's not shown. The author, Victor Pearce, cites ancient authorities who record this event, but doesn't give notes as to where one could find this and how. Time for a trip to Google I guess.
You may wonder what the Penguins are doing here: my policy of adding more pictures to my blogs is now in progress, and if I can't find a suitable picture (God stopping the sun? An 18thC Dover innkeeper) I will darn well include any picture I please: these are I think Macaroni penguins in Torquay.
I am also reading Bernal Diaz's The Conquest of New Spain a book I've had for ages, and was prompted to read by reading B Kingsolver's The Lacuna - it's interesting and readable translation (somewhat abridged to take care of his moaning about stuff). Another book - the current handbag book - is Smollett's Journey through France and Italy which is amusing. We were in Dover yesterday and found in the Museum a quote on Smollett's comments about Dover's innkeepers. It's brisk, brusque and funny. Because I am reading three books I am getting on very slowly.
You may wonder what the Penguins are doing here: my policy of adding more pictures to my blogs is now in progress, and if I can't find a suitable picture (God stopping the sun? An 18thC Dover innkeeper) I will darn well include any picture I please: these are I think Macaroni penguins in Torquay.
Thursday 5 April 2012
Writing anxiety
I didn't realise there was such a problem until I found something about it on Twitter - I realise I have been suffering from it, and that my frenzied writing a few weeks ago was the best way of dealing with it. I also realise that I needed time off to get perspective... so I think that's beginning to work, I'm beginning to think about some of the things Leo and Lucy need to say to each other. And write little bits, but I'm clearly going to have a longer holiday than I intended since Easter will get in the way... but perhaps in another week or so's time I'll be back on the coalface...I really want to go back now, because I'm so glad I'm thinking about things again, but I don't think more time off will help.
I heard Anne Enwright today talking about The Gathering - how she re-structured it and then threw half of it out, and eventually ended with a stump of what she'd originally thought of writing... Still, she got the Booker prize. I don't think my offering is quite up to The Gathering. But it does show how long it can take to get something really right.
I heard Anne Enwright today talking about The Gathering - how she re-structured it and then threw half of it out, and eventually ended with a stump of what she'd originally thought of writing... Still, she got the Booker prize. I don't think my offering is quite up to The Gathering. But it does show how long it can take to get something really right.
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