The Last Push

I’ve been on my holidays and resumed writing last week. I’m now about to start Chapter 25. It’s so good to be able to type that. It was wonderful to have a complete break, particularly as the story is now taking place in a different country and the tone has changed. It also meant I could read novels that were nothing at all to do with my studies.

I’m now pushing really hard to get the final six chapters done (in first draft) by the end of July. I even found myself using a timer this week and aiming to get x number of words down in an hour. It does rather focus the mind and is working. When I did my BA I did a similar thing and rewarded myself with biscuits but I’m not sure I can do that anymore and get away with it. Of course, this is fine in a chapter that has not required so much micro research but it won’t be so easy when I get further along.

Romance of the Middle Ages

Yesterday I visited the Romance of the Middle Ages exhibition at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It uses manuscripts, printed books and art to explore the story of the romance from the Middle Ages to the present day. Exhibits range from a most incredibly illustrated copy of Le Roman de la Rose to a pen-and-ink drawing of a knight and lady by Edward Burne-Jones, a hand written page by Tolkien and a letter from the BBC to the Monty Python team regarding The Holy Grail.

There are many elements that I could write about here but the overwhelming feeling I came away with was my love for the physical book. This is beautifully illustrated (no pun intended) by an exhibit named A Shared Book. It a version of the poem Arthur and Merlin and is inscribed ‘This is Robert Jones his booke recorde of Steven Jones and of Robert Webbe and of Misteris Caterne Jones and of many mo good people in the parishe of Tolpudle’. I love the idea of it being passed around the village to be read and surviving to this day.

More on the exhibition can be found at http://medievalromance.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/romance-home

Plodding

I haven’t blogged for a while. The main reason is that I am going through a phase loosely titled ‘heads down and get on with it.’ The writing process is a little like a job at the moment. I sit down on my allocated study days, review my milestones and then keep writing. It’s a bit lonely sitting here in the office most days and self motivation cannot be underestimated. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying it but I just want to get to the end of the first draft so that I can go back and start having fun with it. I’ve now reached 80% of the novel although I expect that the estimated total word count will increase. There was a brief moment of panic a few weeks ago when I found a basic error when reading my research notes which rendered part of my novel plan useless. However, due to the joys of the excel spreadsheet I was able to move everything around and it’s actually much better.
Hopefully, by the summer I will have completed the draft. I will also be allowing myself out of the house to attend a couple of conferences.

Progression

The last few weeks have been very busy. I finished editing the first eighteen chapters of the novel, drafted a progress report and finalised my bibliography. What was the reason for this flurry of activity? This week I had a progression meeting at university to determine whether my work is of a suitable standard for ‘upgrade’ from MPhil to PhD. The good news is that I was successful. The feedback on the draft novel chapters was positive but I need to add another layer of detail in order to bring the characters to life. This didn’t come as a surprise and is a result of my annoying need to get the whole thing down before allowing myself to have fun with it.

I also attended the research student poster conference at my university. I was inspired to submit my own next year and have already started to design it in my head.
So what next? Basically I am researching and writing the final eleven chapters and continuing to read a list of WW1 novels published post 1930. That should keep me busy for a while...

Tired

I have spent the last few weeks editing the first two thirds of the novel. I’m just over halfway there. I think that it’s been the most difficult time that I’ve had since commencing this project. The fact that there are 50,000 words is rather daunting in itself. In addition, I find it hard knowing that the remaining third is yet to be written. It’s as if I can’t sleep until I have an entire first draft. I have to get over that. The editing will need to be done at some point; it will require the same amount of time whenever I do it. If I get the first two thirds in better shape the drafting of the last ten chapters should be a little easier.

But it’s more than that. I found the first couple of weeks of the editing process very tiring. The problem wasn’t writers block; it was as if my mind didn’t want to do it. At times, I wasn’t sure that I even enjoyed what I was doing anymore. It was like being a child that doesn’t want to do their homework.

How have I dealt with it? I take a chapter, amend it according to my tutor’s comments and then start editing. The key is to approach it paragraph by paragraph. I literally make myself sit there until I enter that state which is difficult to describe; when the room around you disappears and you are in the world that you are writing about. There were a couple of occasions when I knew that it didn’t matter how much I pushed myself, I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. There are some days when you really can’t be creative. That’s when I got of the house and went for a run. It really helped.

Now as I compare the second draft to the first I do feel a sense of satisfaction. It’s a slow process but it’s making a difference. Writing is extremely hard work and requires a great deal of determination, self discipline and effort. Never mind the loneliness. I’m tired but the end is in sight and hopefully this will all be forgotten.

The Penny Has Dropped

My husband recently went away for two weeks so I took time off work (I work part-time) and dedicated the entire period to study. The aim was to draft ten thousand words. There was one point when I didn’t leave the house for three days but it was worth it and I achieved the word count.

Why did I want to do this? I wanted to get as much of the story down as possible (as well as the historical micro research that goes with it) so that I can then go back and focus on description, dialogue and character. This is just my way of working.

Character. Well the penny has finally dropped. I had another tutorial last week and I received the same feedback as usual – my protagonist is too distant. I was incredibly frustrated as I had really worked on this area. However, it’s all very well knowing there’s a problem but you need the tools to fix it. I clearly hadn’t got the right tools. There are reasons for this distance issue: my job requires very factual drafting with no emotion or bias; I spent last year reading 30+ novels which were mainly from an omniscient or distant third person point of view; and I naturally like to sketch in the story and then build layer upon layer of shadow and colour.

It’s all part of the learning process and I like a challenge. I went off to the library, took out every book I could find on the subject and read. My problem was understanding the difference between distant third person and close third person as well as everything in-between. For some reason I couldn’t see it from reading novels, I needed a detailed explanation. I now have it.

I am now going back through the first nineteen chapters and editing them with this in mind. I used to look at my writing but not see it. I found this frustrating because in my day job I could read a submission of my own and see a sentence or just a word that was incorrect because it didn’t follow the key principles behind that particular drafting style. Now I can see it with my creative writing. The thing I have to be careful with is how I move along the spectrum between close and distant; knowing when to do this and how.

How to be a Writer

Last night I went to the book launch of How to be a Writer by fellow student Sally O’Reilly. As the book description states “There are hundreds of books that will take you through the writing process or provide advice about how to get your work published, but none that explain how to transform your talent into a long-term career”. Sally offers practical advice, including case studies, on everything from using the Internet to how to find a day job. Even if you are not yet published, it is a valuable way of anticipating risks and finding ways to mitigate them. It also helps to manage expectations. Sally is a published author and Creative Writing tutor and so has a great deal of knowledge and experience.

The launch was held at the famous Groucho Club in London. It was a great night and it was lovely to see so many friends. Sally also read from her latest novel which I’m very much looking forward to reading when it’s published.

Sally blogs at http://how2beawriter.blogspot.com/