"Running after sleep, leisure, free time"

 

It can be difficult to have too many projects going at the same time, and this can be one of the reasons why. Hopefully, I'll catch up with them. Eventually. 

Walking and writing

 

Walking is good for your health. It helps you burn off all those puddings and cakes you ate, when you really should have not –or at least it appeases your conscious. However, it is not what makes walking so attractive. Walking is also a way to enjoy your surroundings, to take notice of details that would have escaped you, had you been driving or cycling by at great speed, trying your best to not be late at school/work/an appointment.  

In the country it could be the frothy lace of wildflowers in a hedgerow. An empty snail-shell, striped yellow and brown. A feather from the wing of a buzzard. Moss draped over the branches of an ancient tree. Clusters of blackberries, purple and plump. Or elderberries glistening like dark-blue pearls. Lambs playing in a meadow, stopping to watch as you pass them by. The smell of hay being cut. A gurgling brook, bounding over rocks, as if it was trying to escape from its bed. A pile of pebbles made as an offering to the fairy world. Pine-cones half-nibbled by vagrant squirrels. 

In a city it could be a tiny tea-shop selling homemade cakes and freshly ground coffee. A heavy, ornate, wooden door, dating back from Medieval times. A narrow cobbled street winding up a hill, leading to a hidden garden, or a castle-like building. A road you’ve never taken before, going to a part of town you’ve never visited before. Fragrant lilac spilling over a wall. Sparrows squabbling for crumbs of bread.

Walking is accepting a slower rhythm of life. It is forgetting the rush working or studying implies, deadlines, cramped timetables. Walking is allowing yourself to take a deep breath and look around you. But this is not the only good point: I think that walking is good for my writing. 

Walking gives you the leisure to look around you and take in the world that surrounds you. But also to daydream and let your thoughts wander –which is not the case of driving, if you want to stay alive, that is. All the details you consciously or subconsciously notice can feed your imagination, whether you realise it or not. An idea for a new setting. The seeds of a short story, of a novella, of a series of novels… The terrace of a café becomes the ideal spot for a romance. An abandoned house becomes haunted. The gait and clothes of a passer-by inspires a character. A dark passage-way, glimpsed as you went by, suggests to you the plot of a thriller. And the more you look at, and for, all those details with the eye of a (would-be) novelist, the more ideas they suggest as you walk by.

As I said, walking allows you to daydream. To daydream about your novel. I find that walking helps when I’m a bit stuck with my work in progress. As if moving my feet unclogged my brain, giving it a fresh intake of energy and inspiration. Being outdoors helps a lot when you’re going round in circles with your writing, not being able to find a good ending, or a good beginning, or whatever. But being outdoors and walking, being outdoors and being in movement, gives, in my opinion, even better results. As if being physically active allowed you to be intellectually active. 

I think about my novel as a walk. I “play” in my head different versions of the scenes I’m stuck with, until I find the right one. Or I just let my thoughts wander and ideas come to me, shaping themselves, being influenced by my surroundings and the mood of the moment…

"When I want to work on my novel but have too many other things to do"

 

This felt especially the case when I was rushing to finish the dissertation I had to do for my Master's degree (the horse is a reference to this as I was working on Medieval horses). Hopefully I should have more time for my creative writing now! 

And the publication date will be...

 

Yes, I have finally decided that As Winter Came and Went will be published on the 4th of December 2018. So that leaves me a little under 6 months to make the last edits and corrections (and by the way, I want to thank all the people who have read or are currently reading the manuscript and giving me feedback, as well as correcting my many typos!), to proofread, to finish the cover, to write the blurb, and so on...

 

6 months seem like a long time now but I'm pretty sure I'll be rushed nonetheless and do most things at the last minutes... Acually, I have less than 6 months: the book should be ready for pre-order and for the cover-reaveal at the beginning of November. And that also means that I must have my website up and ready by that time.

 

So there's a lot of work left to do, and it's both exciting and scary to have this precise deadline. Writing As Winter Came and Went was an adventure. Publishing it is another one and I'm determined to enjoy every part of it!

 

Why the 4th of December? Well, it's a Tuesday, and it seems that books are traditionally published on Tuesdays. Then you may have noticed that the title of my novel refers to a certain season... So I thought it would be a good idea to link this to the time of publication. And, since I finished the first draft in December 2016, there's something symbolical and satisfactory in publishing it close to the birthday of its completion.

"Stream of consciousness is like a messy bun..."

 

 

Trust me, I know what I'm talking about (in both cases)... Still, it's the effect that matters! And I have to admit that though it is hard, though I rewrite those passages over and over again, I love using stream of consciousness. Maybe I use it even to much! 

Sad endings, happy endings

I hate sad endings. I hate reading books which leave you a crying mess. I hate it when characters you have come to know and love, you have followed for several hundred pages, sharing their feelings, their thoughts, their fears, their hopes, are suddenly, and ruthlessly killed off. Generally, when this happens before the end of the book, when a secondary character I like dies brutally and needless, I spend the next few chapters hoping against hope that it’s not true, that they will be resurrected by the all-powerful writer, that they will appear on the next page, claiming it was all a mistake, a bad dream. But this barely ever happens. 

I’ll admit it. I love happy endings. I love stories that end with “and they all lived happily ever after.” Romances wouldn’t be worth reading if they two main characters didn’t end together. Happy endings are like triple-chocolate chewy-gooey cookies: delicious, comforting, even if they can become a bit sickening after a time. And look at books by Jane Austen: would we love Pride and Prejudice so much if Elizabeth and Darcy did not marry? If Jane was killed in, say, a carriage accident and Bingley committed suicide? We wouldn’t even want Wickham to die or Lydia to be ruined and disgraced. Pride and Prejudice wouldn’t be Pride and Prejudice if it wasn’t concluded by a happy ending.

Of course it all depends on the genre of the book. If romances call for happy endings, it is not the case for thrillers or dystopias. What about literary fiction? I love reading literary fiction but it sometimes seems like it seldom ends happily. Look at Victor Hugo. How do many of his books end? With everybody being killed off. That’s it. The end (and I’m barely exaggerating). No need to go on writing about those characters, to resolve the conflicts that remain, because everyone is dead. And when I read these endings, I’m like, what? Is this a joke? And that’s one of the reasons why Victor Hugo is not on the list of my favourite authors (along with the fact that I hate the style of his prose – but that’s another story). 

If happy endings are the cookies of literature, it seems that unhappy endings must be Brussel sprouts: good for your health/ literary reputation, but leaving a bitter taste in your mouth, though some people do enjoy them and others can even cook them in a way that makes them more edible, and even delicious at times (add a little olive oil, and a little garlic, and a generous amount of pepper…). End of the metaphor.

Some unhappy endings are handled well. Some books do not call for a happy ending. Maybe because literary fiction tries to reveal something about life, and life is not all rosy and perfect. So how could it all end well? How could it all end on a stereotype? On a vision of happiness that, after all, may be outdated?

Yet the difficulties that are part and parcel of life are the very reason why I want to read books with happy endings: the real world is often sad and harsh and difficult. Reading offers a mean to forget, for a moment, the hardships of reality, but what if the alternative books offer is even worse? I want books to uplift me. I want books to give me hope. I want books to show me a side of humanity that is not all about death and destruction. 

Actually, more than a happy ending, I want a positive ending. One which, even if it is shrouded in sadness, even if it makes the reader cry (but not too much!), is full of hope. I want the ending to be satisfactory, to be luminous. To hint at new stories, to a future within the world of the novel I have just read.

I prefer happy endings but I realise that the one in my novel, and the ones I planned for my novels in progress and my novels to be, may not quite qualify as such… I suppose it will depend on the reader, on what he/she expected, on which characters he/she sided with and so on… And the themes of As Winter Came and Went are not exactly happy. It’s certainly not a feel-good novel. But… I hope I managed to turn the ending into one similar to those I like reading. And if not… Well I’ll just be one of those people with opinions on everything under the sky and who cannot manage to live by them and put them into practice! 

"From Mt First Draft to Mt Editing"

 

 

Writing is as relaxing and refreshing as taking a walk in a mountain-range. Climbing steep slopes. As a storm brews. As snow starts to fall. As you get lost in a forest. As you reach the top of a mountain and realise there's another, bigger one to cross. But when you reach the top and enjoy the view, isn't it worth all the difficulties? 

As Winter Came and Went - Extract 3

 

 

And it's already time to post the next extract of As Winter Came and Went! I have to admit I'm finding it difficult to choose suitable ones, that do not give away too much, yet are understandable when taken out of the context of the novel. I should have probably choosen to publish the whole of the first chapter, in several installments...

 

This passage was taken from chapter 1. It is narrated by the main character, Dennys, like the very first extract (of the incipit) I posted. In this chapter, set in September 1820, he is on a boat on his way back to England after having spent two years in Africa. However, he had been thought dead during the last months of his stay and the circumstances of his reappearance were rather mysterious.

 

Please note that this is not necessarily the final version, since I am still in the process of revising my manuscript.

Feel free to comment and let me know if you like or dislike it, what you think work or doesn’t work, and if this taster makes you want to read the rest of the book!

 

Extract of chapter 1

 

 

Time stretches endlessly, a long thin thread always on the point of breaking. You can feel it sometimes. When it’s dark. And you can see nothing but time flowing in your mind. I was blind for a while. Not blind but I couldn’t see; I thought I’d become blind. I woke up. There were noises in the street, daytime noises. I remember a man was selling figs. Or was it dates? I remember well enough though, I remember the last days. 
I woke up. Everything was dark and I was scared and I didn’t know where I was. There was nothing, not even a chink of light. I tried to open my eyes…I widened them…still I couldn’t see. There was someone, not very far from me, breathing. He was perspiring, I could smell it. I could smell the street too. Spices, horses, sweat, stale meat. It was so strong it sickened me. 
My body wasn’t my own. I remember that well enough. I felt my face. My hands were heavy though nothing but skin and bone. Weak. I could barely lift them. They hurt too. I must have cut them at some point ‘cause the palms were burning. I felt my face. It was then that I realized that my eyes were bandaged. I was relieved, so relieved, and I tried to take it off…
A hand grasped mine, don’t, a voice said. I wondered why he’d not spoken before. It was definitely a man though he had a sugary sort of voice. “Your eyes have not healed yet.” I remembered how my eyes had hurt before. He let go of my wrist. His voice was both very close to my ear and very far away. Everything was disturbing. His hand had let go of my wrist but it was now pressing upon my chest. “Lie still,” he said. His voice was harsh and unpleasant beneath the syrup. “Who are you?” he said. I didn’t know what to answer, I didn’t know how to answer. His hand was impatient, like it wanted to shake some sense into me. He repeated, slowly, as if he was speaking to a small child. I felt like a child. Helpless. I just wanted to sink into nothingness and to not feel anymore ‘cause everything was so uncomfortable and queer and I wanted to be sick. I rolled on my side and was sick. There was a gasp of disgust and the voice called for someone else, who was brisk and efficient. He knew what to do. I was reassured ‘cause just now I wanted to burst into tears and I knew it wouldn’t do. The other person told me they wanted to help me. They guessed I was a white man, they told me. Who was I then? “Was I French? Was I English?” I nodded. I didn’t want to explain. I didn’t want to open my mouth for fear of being sick again. They told me to rest. They told me I’d feel better once my eyes were healed. They told me they understood I was confused. Confused? I just wanted to sleep. 
Time stretched endlessly.