The moment when I prefer to write

There is a moment when I love to write: very late in the evening, when everyone else is asleep and only I am awake. When the night is deepening outside and the world is hushed by darkness. 

It is a moment when I love to work on a first draft. And at that moment, working on that first draft becomes almost relaxing: I take a piece of paper and a pen and I write and write, caring only about the story that is slowly taking shape and not asking myself if it is any good. 

When I was a child I invented stories as I lay in bed, waiting for sleep to come. So, in a way, writing at night is a continuation of this childhood habit, especially since it fueled my dreams of becoming a writer and taught me to use my imagination, and to create characters. 

I love that moment when the night and sleep overcome the world around me. A shift in the atmosphere. An owl hoots outside. All is still. The floorboards creak. It is the time when ghosts awake and wander once again through the world they should have left, remembering times, remembering people now lost forever. 

Being alone awake at night is sharing a secret with the house you are in. Sharing a secret as the night breathes a strange new life into it. The house remembers. Previous inhabitants, from centuries past. Sorrows, joys… It remembers and it dreams, as owls hoot outside. 

What better time to stir the imagination than this moment between wakefulness and sleep? What better time to make up stories? What better time to create? In those stolen moments of quietness, as the whole house sleeps. 

I especially love those moments when I am in the countryside. Then, the first hours of the night have a song of their own. The frogs in spring, and their enamoured croaking. Crickets in summer as the nights begin to lengthen again. The rustling of autumn leaves as the winds strengthens and rain threatens. The cold stillness of winter as the smell of frost creeps on the hills. 

All this is what makes this moment magical in my mind. All this is what makes it special. Inspiration grows as the dreams gather, and the story grows with the night itself. 

Of course, there are other moments when I like to write. In the morning, with a steaming cup of black coffee. During the day, in a café maybe, sitting by the window, watching people going to and fro. Those are straightforward moments to write, to edit, to correct. 

But the first hours of the night are shrouded in mystery. And in the stillness that characterizes them, the story you create is a secret, shared with the house, and the darkness, and the moon.

After NaNoWriMo

That’s it, NaNoWriMo is over. My wordcount on the 30th of November was 71,434 words (I estimate that the completed first draft will be around 85,000 words) and I only have three chapters left to write. 

I am both elated and exhausted and eager to write the final words of The Orchid Collector. NaNoWriMo has allowed me to do in one month what took me YEARS for my debut novel. 

When I was writing the first draft of As Winter Came and Went, I only picked up my pen when inspiration struck. I could go for weeks, months even without writing a single word. I didn’t even know if I would actually finish it one day or just give up, like I gave up on so many projects. Well, I didn’t give up but there were about five years between writing the first words and publishing the book. 

And now, after thirty days, I am 15,000 words away from the end of my manuscript. And this is so exciting! Of course, this first draft is awful. Parts are incoherent. It will need months of editing. It may need a total rewrite. The style is sloppy in part. Most of the secondary characters are just cardboard. And to be honest, I am a bit fed up with it. But you know what? Once it is finished, making this first draft into a proper novel will be the fun part: I like editing, refining, working with words, trying to create the perfect sentence. 

And even if this manuscript isn’t very good, by taking part in NaNoWriMo, I have proved to myself that I could write every day. That I could take this writing thing seriously. That I could churn out chapter after chapter. And more importantly, I have learnt to not wait for inspiration: I produced about 2,000 words a day, even if I did not feel like it. Because that is what this challenge is about: pushing your limits, and getting the writing done. 

Could I do it the whole year round? No. But I will try to use the momentum this challenge gave me to finish The Orchid Collector and maybe another project. I will try to write the last chapters in the next couple of weeks, and then I will let the manuscript rest for a while. I have already made a list of details, scenes and characters I want to change, but I will wait, to look at it all from a distance. I also have more research to do, historical and otherwise, in order to flesh out the manuscript and make the story more realistic. So yes, lots of work ahead. 

But now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got three more chapters to write!

Announcement

I have some exciting news! *drum-roll* I have finally decided that I would turn my cartoons into a book, or rather, into a series of small books, focussing on the different aspects of a (would-be) writer's life. I know that I've been hinting at this project for some time, but now it is official.

 

I do not have a release date yet, as I have to write/edit/proofread the text that will go with the images, make some new cartoons (that will only be published in the books, not on the blog), format the whole thing, make some nice covers... But I'll try to publish the first book before the end of the year! I'll make another announcement as soon as I've settled on a date.

"A writer's best friends"

Dogs may be Man's best friends, but a writer's best friend is certainly the cat. Even if cats take up all the room on the desk and play with the pens and like to lie down on manuscripts...

What happens now?

And that's it. As Winter Came and Went is published. Which means I can now relax...or not! It's good to be a published author. It's even better to be a published author who actually sells some books.

 

So I know need to develop (or rather acquire) some marketing skills and try to spread the word about my book and hopefully sell a few copies (to people who are not family or friends). What will I do then? I'll go on being present on social media (Facebook and Instagram, because I still haven't figured out how to use Twitter...). I'll also go on publishing fascinating articles and this wonderful blog. And I'll enter my novel in some competitions.

 

There's one I have in mind and I'll try to find others. I'll post more about that later on (or if I don't, you'll understand that it's been a failure and that I'm to ashamed to speak of it...). I'm not so much hoping for a win as to be shortlisted: that would already be great.

 

I will also go on working on the sequel to As Winter Came and Went. I'm two thirds into the first draft and hopefully, same time next year I'll already be editing it, which could mean that the publication could take place in 2020. I'm also still working on Cinnamon. Maybe it will be finished (and published) before the sequel, for it is more of a novella than a novel.

 

I'm also working on a new project related to As Winter Came and Went. But I'll make a proper announcement soon.

 

So publishing my novel was just the beginning... And a whole new adventure has started!

Prologue or not prologue?

 

I have an issue with the first chapter of my novel As Winter Came and Went. Or rather readers, seem to have an issue with the first chapter of my novel. Too difficult, too strange, odd style, etc. Which is how it was meant to be (my excuse being that I write literary fiction - aka fiction in which the English language is tortured and mutilated). But though I intended to write something literary, I also wanted to write something that would actually be read. Not something that the reader would want to close and throw away after a few pages, making me feel very misunderstood and mistreated.

The trouble is that this first chapter is especially important to the novel (you can find several extracts of it on this blog). It announces the style. It presents the main character. It raises several issues that will haunt the said character throughout the rest of the novel. And, I'll admit it, I'm fond (proud) of this chapter. So there was no question of deleting it from the book. Was there, however, a way of making it more attractive to the reader, without sacrifising the style or the intent? 

Since the style was what bothered readers, I realised that there was not much I could do... So I decided to ask for advice, in the real and the virtual world. The virtual world? Yes, on social media. 

For the 21st century writer is a connected writer. I discovered that when I was beginning to look into ways of marketing my book. Being present on social media was one of the pieces of advice Google gave me. So I created on Instagram and Facebook accounts dedicated to my writing. And I “met”, on both media, lovely writing communities where both would-be writers and established authors are able to discuss and share their difficulties, their progress, their journey to publication, whether they are traditionally or self-published.

So I asked all those people for advice by posting my question on a Facebook group dedicated to writing. Some said I should be ruthless and delete my chapter (*gasp!*), some said I should ignore my readers, and some said I should add a prologue that would, hopefully, make readers want to go on reading, because they would be desperate to know what happened.

The third option seemed like a good compromise. The problem was that…I actually really, really dislike prologues. Maybe because I always fall for it: I open a book, I read the prologue, the suspense is too much and I cannot rest until I know what happened, what lead to the situation described in the prologue and so on. I find prologues annoying. I think that prologues are nothing more than a trick to lure the reader into the book. But…they tend to work, don’t they? 

So should I add a prologue? The structure of my novel had been the subject of much thought. A prologue would unbalance it. My novel is not a thriller, or crime story, or commercial fiction. It’s literary. It’s already very long. Why make it longer? 

I also had arguments in favour of a prologue. One was that I want my book to be read, and if a prologue could give it one chance to convince one more reader to stick with it….well, I should add a prologue. The other was that when I first started to think about the story that would become As Winter Came and Went (too many years ago…), it didn’t start where it does now. Now, the first chapter shows the main character on a ship bound for England where he goes back after two years spent in Africa. But the initial story (before the first draft was written) was meant to start in Africa, a few weeks before this first chapter.

I pondered on this as I was trying to decide whether or not to include that prologue. And this last argument swayed me in favour of it. I would add a short scene, in Africa, where the story was at first meant to start. Because it would, hopefully, make what follows more understandable. And make the readers ask themselves questions the answers to which they would seek in the rest of the novel. And, because the style is a bit easier than in the chapter that follows, with a bit of luck, it will draw the readers in. At least, that’s what I hope!

Writing by hand

 

Though all the editing and formatting of my novel As Winter Came and Went was, is and will be done on my computer, the first draft was written by hand, on actual, real paper. And the first draft of this novel’s sequel, which I’m currently writing, is also being done by hand. Why is that? 

I like writing. No, not being a writer (well, that too, but not just). I mean writing in the “physical” sense of the term. I like the feel of ink flowing onto the paper. I like holding a pen. I like my manuscript to have a physical incarnation. I like seeing it grow physically, the single page that started it becoming a dozen pages then a whole stack of them. I like to feel the weight of a nice, plump little manuscript. I like to have a tangible proof of my achievement. 

Another good thing with writing by hand is that there’s only one way you can go: forward. Unlike when you’re writing on a computer, you cannot go back and edit/delete/move a whole section. So, in a way, you have to think, to decide if those words you’re going to write are really worth anything, if you do want to waste a whole page and your time writing them. And at the same time I find that this tends to ward off the dreaded blank page syndrome: you go on writing, knowing that now is not the time to edit, that you’ll have all the opportunity to do that later. It prompts reflection, but also a definite sense of freedom. 

Writing my first draft by hand means that when I edit it, I have to do it thoroughly: I do it at the same time as I type it on the computer. It is very time consuming, but it forces me to go through the manuscript, to see what works and what doesn’t. When I typed the different chapters of As Winter Came and Went, I deleted whole scenes that were present in the handwritten manuscript. And I was also able to correct incoherencies: because it had taken me so long to complete this manuscript, many things had changed, concerning the plot, concerning the characters, between the first page and the last. Since this round of edit was more like a rewrite of a story, I was able to tie loose ends and include those changes relatively smoothly. 

But my favourite aspect of writing by hand is that you can write anywhere. Outdoors, in a garden, by the sea... Sitting on the floor, sprawling on a sofa… All you need is a pen and a piece of paper. No need to worry about your laptop or your phone’s battery. No need to worry about saving your work on an USB disk, when it’s midnight and you’ve just finished writing a scene of your novel and all you want is to go to bed. No need to worry about Internet connection. It is a way of regaining a freedom that the electronic world took from us, at the same time as it gave us remarkable advantages.

I have to admit that when I first started to write the manuscript of As Winter…, I wrote by hand much, much quicker than I typed, which meant that I was able to write by hand as fast as I was thinking. Now I type much faster, but I still prefer writing my first draft by hand, for all the reasons named above. 

However, writing by hand does not only have advantages! If, like me, you like writing outdoors, rain can be a hazard (but it would be a problem even with a laptop…). Or the wind… There have been several occasions where I’ve had to run after pages from my manuscript which were flying away, all in different directions (a good thing I almost always number them!)… And inevitably, as your novel grows and your story develops, the number of pages does the same until the whole thing becomes rather…unwieldly. But isn’t it the proof you’re actually achieving something?

Going on for too long

Do you sometimes think that there are book series that go on for too long? I do. I’ve been wanting to write a post about it for some time, and since I’ve realised that I’m a little behind schedule and need an article for my blog, I’ve decided this could be a good subject – and I’m short of ideas, and it’s 11 pm, and I’m writing this in bed, and I want to put the article on the blog tomorrow morning (which will be today for you, and no, I’m not going to reflect on this time distortion thing or I’ll get a headache – now I’m starting to write utter nonsense – I really need to be more focussed on what I was meaning to write... what was it?... ah, yes...), so...

I’ve also been reflecting on this recently, because I’ve just finished the fifth book in a very popular series (which will remain unnamed for now) and… Well, I found it so disappointing I’ll probably give up on this series: I had already noticed the quality of the books was irregular, but this one really was quite awful.

No, awful is too strong a word… It was well written and quite enjoyable. A bit on the long side (well over 1000 pages), but the author seems to have the knack to keep you reading, even when nothing happens… That, actually, was one of the biggest problems. Nothing happened. Now, if people who beta-read my own novel read this, they’ll probably shake their head and think: “what! She’s criticising someone for having written a book that’s too long and where nothing happens? When she’s done exactly the same thing?”

Yes, maybe, but the problem is that things were meant to happen in this series! It was meant to be about action and adventure and romance! That’s what the first books were about: love and war and fighting and... and I’ll say no more or you’ll guess which series I’m talking of, and that’s not my point. So I was expecting this volume to be in the same vein. About people being torn by love and war and the weight of time and history, not about people wandering aimlessly from one place to another and back, gathering herbs, and breastfeeding babies, and having babies poo on them, and wanting to have sex with each other. For...more...than...one...thousand...pages... Ugh...

So I finished the book thinking, this series has been going on for too long, and I’ve been reading it for too long. This volume lacked the freshness and originality of the first, which, in a way, is inevitable. Some of the interesting aspects, because they were repeated too many times, became formulaic and boring. New characters, introduced in the course of the series, did not necessarily excite my sympathy as much as the original cast had. And these original characters... Well, I have to admit I do not like them as much as I did before. Partly because, in spite of the series having gone on and on, they have not matured, they have not really evolved and they keep doing and thinking the same things all over again.

This leads me to wonder: does the author of this series go on churning book after book because she actually has something to say about those characters? Or because the series is successful and she wants to make the most of it? Or because there is a demand for sequels on the part of devoted readers? Or is it a mix of all those reasons? Is there anything that justifies the story going on and on? Is the evolution of the characters meant to span decades? Does the story legitimately need a dozen books to unfold? Or can it stop earlier?

Good things have to come to an end. There is a moment when both the reader and the author have to say goodbye to the characters of a novel. Not necessarily because their story has come go an end, but because it has to stop being told. Because they have to live their lives beyond the pages of a book.

A satisfactory ending is important. A conclusion. A farewell to the world of a story. I sometimes feel that series that go on for ever cheat you out of that ending, out of those goodbyes, which can be sad, but are also necessary. You read on, book after book, longing for that conclusion, not wanting to give up, because you know something else has been written about those characters you love, defining their fate, making if real in a way. And you have to know.

And for an author, I guess it is easier to go on writing about those characters you know and love and are used, to rather than give them an ending. It’s easy to go on for too long, and the good thing, for me, about writing this article, is that it’ll remind me, when I pick up my pen to begin writing Book 187 in the As Winter Came and Went saga, how annoyed I am as reader when series go on for too long. And maybe I’ll think twice, or maybe I’ll just shrug and say: “who cares? I’m the author and I make the decisions!”

Writing the book you want to read

 

 

In a previous post, I wrote about the many rules that sometimes hinder the act of writing. There is one, however, with which I cannot but agree, though it is more an advice than a rule, and I cannot really remember when I first came across it. This advice is: write what you want to read.

I don’t suppose I’m the only one in this situation, but as a reader, I tend to get a little frustrated at times with some novels, even ones I love. There’s always something that doesn’t really work for me. A scene I don’t like. A character I love being killed off. Too much or not enough romance. Too much or not enough adventure…

I will love the style of one novel, the characters of another, the plot of a third. But I have yet to find my perfect novel. And the “my” is important: this is all down to personal taste and I don’t expect my ideal novel would necessarily please another reader. And maybe I’m just a really fussy, annoying person who’s always finding something wrong and complaining about finicky little details. Probably. But I’m sure I’m not the only one like that. Please tell me I’m not the only constantly unsatisfied reader!

All right, not constantly unsatisfied. But still looking for the perfect novel I could call my all-time favourite, I could rave about for hours on end, I would have absolutely no reserves about. I mean, I’ve got favourite novels. Novels I liked. Novels I absolutely love. But I’ve realised recently that I haven’t got an all-time favourite book. Or I think I have, for a couple of years, and then I reread the book in question and see that after all, no, I don’t like it so much (all right, all right, I’m just a fussy, annoying person). 

And this leads me back to the initial subject of this post, writing the book you want to read. That’s the wonderful thing about being a novelist (or a would-be novelist): you can write, or try to write, your favourite novel of all times. You can create your own favourite book. That doesn’t mean it will be a masterpiece, or that it will be another person’s favourite. But you, but anyone, can write (and even publish!) the novel they want to read, the novel they need to read, the novel that will allow them to escape in a wonderful fictional world, the novel that will help them understand their own world better, the novel that will entertain, uplift, please them. 

When I started writing my novel, I wasn’t thinking of that. I wasn’t thinking of writing the book I most wanted to read. But I realise in hindsight, after having reread and edited and reread it for a hundred times at least, that it’s actually what I’ve done. As Winter Came and Went contains a number of elements I would want my perfect novel to have. And I’m not saying it is everyone’s cup of tea. Another person could find it boring and uninteresting. Another might like some aspects and not others. But I think I’ve written the novel I, personally, wanted to find in a bookshop and read and enjoy.

It all comes down towriting what you want and enjoying the process. You are the sole decision-maker when you create your novel. You can take your characters wherever you want them to go. You can write the story in whatever style you want. You are completely free.

And anyway, it’s important to enjoy the writing process. If you’re bored by your own story, well… I don’t suppose other readers will enjoy it then. If you love your story, you’ll have at least one satisfied reader: yourself. And even if everything else fails, if your novel doesn’t sell, if no one wants to read it, writing the book you wanted to read, writing a book you love will have been an achievement in itself.

Rules, rules, rules!

When I decided to self-publish my novel, one of my first moves was to join writer’s groups on the internet, in order to learn more about the tricks of the trade, to discuss, to exchange and to connect with people who were going through the same process as I was. However, the discussions on those groups did not only revolve on what happens after a book has been written: the majority concerns the actual act of writing fiction. And I was surprised to see that this act of writing is subject to an immense number of rules.

Show don’t tell. Write about what you know. Thrillers have to follow this formula. Romances have to follow that formula. If you do otherwise, then your book isn’t in the right genre. You must limit yourself to one type of point of view (aka POV). You must not have too many POV characters. If a scene is not useful to the plot, delete it. You must not change POV in the middle of a chapter. Do not use too many adverbs. Do not use too many adjectives. Do this, do that…

All right, maybe I exaggerate. Just a little. The fact is that there seems to be a great number of rules that should, ultimately, allow you to write a good novel. Good according to the criteria they have set. A recipe is given to would-be novelists (like me), and if you don’t follow it… Well, editors, agents and Co won’t follow you either, because what you write will not be what they expect to read. Or what the market expects to read.

 There seems to be a general tendency, according to which people, and what they write, are put into little boxes. Well-defined little boxes. Little boxes defined by a specific set of rules. And I’m both appalled and frustrated by that

Not that I refuse to admit that rules are important, and even useful. When you’re a beginner, they give you guidelines. They can help you to sort of tame your imagination while spurring on your inspiration. They pave a road for you that, ultimately, could lead to publication. They help you to write better. But the road they allow you to follow is lined with huge walls over which you cannot see. Which block out any view, narrowing your horizon, and your fiction as well.

Rules should be followed and used carefully. They should be guidelines, not obligation, when it comes to fiction, at least. For fiction, in a way, is the celebration of imagination. Fiction should be rich and luscious, at times innovative, at times a little unruly. Fiction should break away from rules. Fiction is creation, and as such it must constantly recreate itself, lest it should become stale.

Rules are comfortable, and safe. Rules give an illusion of control. If you do not follow rules, you are judged. But look at literature, look at past writers. Look at which one we remember today, which ones are studied at school and universities. They often are the ones who broke the rules, who reinvented fiction, who breathed a new life into it. 

So every rule should come with this label: “use with care.” And if it has to be broken, why not? Who cares if what you write isn’t what agents and publishers want to read? Self-publishing options make it much easier to become published and get your book out into the world. And also to make your own choices and decisions. 

So all of you, would-be novelists, if you want to break the rules, do so. If your book does not fit into any given genre, invent another one. If you make mistakes, if your book doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter. We are here to learn and experiment. We are here to keep literature alive. We are here to create. We are here to write what we want to write, not what people expect us to write. 

To plan or not to plan a novel?

 

 

I suppose every writer has a different method when it comes to planning or not planning a story. Some will map out their entire plot, and sub-plots, and sub-sub-plots. Others on the contrary, will not do that and let themselves be carried by the flow of words, discovering their story at the same time as their characters.

I’ve tested both those methods, with more or less success. When I first had the idea for As Winter Came and Went (which was not yet called that), I was very excited about it and couldn’t wait to write my novel. But actually, I think I was more excited about the plot, the action and so on, than in the characters and the prose. So I decided to write a sort of synopsis, which ended up being a dozen pages long. I just found it again, in the recesses of my computer and read it… It actually dates back from 2013, is very detailed, which means I have a good idea of what I was meaning to write at the time and… I cannot believe it is the same novel as the one I’m getting ready for publication. I really can’t. And actually, it’s not the same novel.

The one I would have written if I had followed the original plan would have been a swashbuckling romance, with murders, poison, elopements, duels, and a cast of characters who were for the most part lords and ladies… And it would probably have been very entertaining (I’m wondering if I shouldn’t write another novel based on this plan)! It has little in common with my manuscript, save the female lead character (she’s probably the one whose personality changed the least, though she did become more complex and interesting) and the mystery surrounding an expedition who disappeared on the way to Timbuktu. There are still lords and ladies and sirs (it’s 1820!) but the most important characters hail from a “middle-class” background.

The structure I had intended isn’t the one I used. Neither is the narration. And the main character changed so completely that he really gave a new direction to the story, which became less of a romance, and more literary. New characters made their apparition, including one who, I think, tends to steal the show in an almost infuriating manner, though beta readers seem to love him, and I have to say I have a soft spot for him too (oh, by the way, this character is a horse…). The setting, which was not so important in the initial idea, took on a new meaning.

So in spite of my synopsis, which I remember spending the summer holidays writing, my novel evolved organically as I was writing it. And I have the impression I created this plan to better not follow it. A similar starting point, and then I took another road from the one I had initially outlined. However, it did not mean that I stopped having any sort of plan: I had one, at first in my mind, which I then jotted down and which consisted of… the name of chapters, dates and roughly what happened, so nothing half as detailed as what I’d done before. So I sort of knew where I was going.

As Winter Came and Went has a sequel: I’m currently writing its first draft and have reached the fifth chapter. I started to write it with a good idea of where it was going (since it was not actually meant to be a different book), but no plan so to speak. But as the story evolved organically again, with new episodes weaving their way into it, new characters and new settings, I realized that I did need a plan of sorts. So I made a very rough, very quick one (it fits on one page), so I know where I’m going. I’m glad I did: it made me realise that there were some structural issues that needed fixing. It also helped to make the story more concrete and to see what was likely to work and what not.

There are other novels that I started, without an initial plan. I’m afraid that I’ve reached a blank page with them, for several reasons, whether almost half-way through the first draft, or after the first chapter. The main one is that I’ve decided to concentrate on As Winter Came and Went and its sequel (there will be two more books). Another is that, because I didn’t plan, I’m not quite sure where the story is going. Having an idea of the succession of events and episodes in a story can be a way to ward off the blank-page. 

I suppose I will finish these novels, one day or another, or rework the original idea. But I think I’m one of these people who needs to have a plan of sorts. I will not follow a well-built, well-cemented road, but I need at least a signpost or two, to lead me along a winding path with many cross-roads. I guess that every writer has to find the method that works for them. I hope I did at last!

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…

"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? 

Places you know, places you don't

 

Write about what you know! Which would-be novelist never came across this piece of advice, given by established authors, in writing magazines, and such? A wise piece of advice. But is it one that should be followed, especially when writing about different places?

 

If you were to write only about what you know, you would not be able to write about places where you had never been. And actually, you could not write about the past either, since, except if you are the lucky owner of a time-travelling machine, none of us have experienced it first-hand (or only through reading books, and visiting museums and old houses). Should that stop you? I don’t think so. At least, I didn’t let this piece of advice stop me from writing about a time that is not mine and places I have never visited. 

Yet, I do understand, that what this advice truly means, is that if you write about what you do not know yourself, there are more risks of using clichés, of being boring, of being to descriptive, as if we tried to make up for our ignorance. How to avoid that? 

In my soon to be published historical fiction novel As Winter Came and Went, I wrote about two types of places. Places I knew and places I didn’t:

• One place I know very well worked itself into the novel. Though the plot is set in the 19th century, the landscape of this place I wrote about changed very little, allowing me to describe it as I know it. It was easy and very agreeable to be able to set a good part of my novel in this place, which I really love, and I hope that this enable me to make my descriptions more authentic, effective, attractive.

 

• Then, a chapter of the novel is set in a place I never visited. I know about this place, I saw many pictures of this place, I’ve got a good idea of what this place looks like. This could have been enough to make it a credible enough setting. But I chose a different course: instead of describing the place I had heard of, I described another place, where I’d actually been. I sort of swapped the place I didn’t know for one I did, giving the second the name of the first. Why did I do that? Because the atmosphere of the second place and the impressions on my sense of sight, touch, smell, were both strong and interesting, I thought they could be worked into my novel and attributed to some of the characters. This resolved the problem of authenticity.

 

• But not every place can be exchanged for another. Another location of As Winter… was difficult to write about: though I had been to a place nearby, I had no direct experience of this specific location. So what did I do? Did I look at touristic brochures? Did I watch films set in that location? Actually, I did a bit of both, but this is not what made me able to describe this place. What I did to achieve that was very simple: I took the liberty of completely imagining the place I was describing, using but vague geographical references. In fact, I decided I did not so much want to describe a place as its effect on the main character’s mind. And I took the decision to wrap it all in magical realism and symbolism. So in that case, I exchanged a specific location for an atmosphere.

 

I’ll give more details about those different places (and give their names!) once I have published my novel.

 

I’ll conclude this post with my advice relating to writing about places you know and places you don’t:

 

• Writing about places you know well is easier and can help you be more authentic. You can also lend your characters your own feelings about this place and thus give depth to their personality.

 

• Being able to use those personal feelings about a place can help you steer clear of clichés and stereotypes, even if that place has already inspired many authors over the centuries.

 

• Yet not knowing a place should not stop you from writing about it. You can “exchange” it for a similar place you do know. For instance, if you want to set your novel in the Himalayan range, where you have never been, but know the French Alps very well, why not use that knowledge? The Mount Blanc cannot be substituted for Mount Everest but the feelings the mountain arouse, the cold, the rugged landscape, the hostile beauty of the mountain-range are so many elements that you can use in those descriptions.

 

• Another solution is to read touristic brochures, watch films, read books, find as many pictures and maps as you can of the place you want to describe, while trying to find an original angle for your description.

 

• And the last solution is to use the symbolism of a place instead of its geography, and be imaginative. After all, imagination is a writer’s most precious tool! 

"5 things a writer needs"

 

Right, so I've got the cat, the notebook, the pen... Now I'll make myself some coffee and have a piece of cake! Except that the cat is staring at me reproachfully... All right, all right, I'll eat some fruit instead...  

Old houses and historical fiction

 

I love visiting old houses. Medieval castles, 17th and 18th century châteaux, Georgian houses… Houses lived in by famous people. Houses preserved in such a way that time seems to have frozen, for hundred years or more… Stepping into the lives of people gone, of people past, feeling all the while as if I was the ghost, intruding into a world that is not my own. I love looking at the quaint, antique furniture. I love imagining what it would have been like to live in such a place. And for that reason, I find that old houses are an invaluable source of information and inspiration to write historical fiction.

Old houses and gardens can provide wonderful settings for historical fiction. As you walk on their grounds, as you gaze upon the ancient stones you can easily imagine the people who once dwelled there, who once walked on these paths, who looked at the same manor/chapel/castle as you do. When I create a novel, I tend to “play” the scenes in my head like the scenes from a film: for that reason, the setting and the costumes are very important to me, to help me visualize and produce those scenes, even if I do not describe them in the actual written passage.

 

For the same reason, interiors are very important. What better way to have a glimpse at the way people lived centuries ago, than to look at their drawing rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, furnished as they were all those years back, as if they were still lived in? A copper pan, a Chinese vase… A pile of scones, a painting by Constable. Dueling swords above the mantelpiece… Meissen plates, silver forks, sweet-peas picked that morning in the kitchen-garden… Morris wallpaper, letters on a writing desk… A goose-feather quill, a gilded clock... Small details, tiny details that somehow call back to life a patchwork of different historical periods.

I try to imagine my characters, the ones I’m currently writing about, others whose story I still have to invent, pushing the door, entering the room. Choosing a book from the shelves of the library, sitting down by the bow window. Or embroidering a cushion, as they look at the gardens and at the hills afar and a spaniel, tired out from a walk in the forest, sleeps at their feet. I take in the different details, some of which will make it into my novel. Objects, rooms, views, buildings...

As Winter Came and Went is set in the early 19th century and the characters live in and visit a number of fine houses, manors and such. I based myself on real houses to write about some of those fictional ones. Others are a mix of many different historical ones, with the architecture of one and the interiors of another. Gardens also play a role and I work in the same way, drawing inspiration from the different parks, woodland-gardens, kitchen-gardens, orchards, etc. that I visit.

 But I was not only inspired by “grand” houses. Stables, farms, longhouses, churches, thatched-cottages are so many historical buildings which are essential to the setting of my historical fiction novel, and to the feeling of authenticity which I strive to give it. A pub on the road-side, a cluster of cottages… An old post-office, a tiny village church… All quaintly historical. And with a little imagination, what stops you from going on a time-travelling journey as you walk along the cobbled streets of a small fishing harbour and look at the same horizon on which the wives and children of sailors projected their hopes and their fears?

 

The blank page

The blank page syndrome. Feared by writers of fiction and non-fiction alike. Being in front of an empty page, or computer screen, and thinking that it is fated to remain that way for ever and ever… Searching for inspiration, or for ideas that will not come. Not managing to write a single interesting, or even coherent, sentence. 

This often happens to me when I want to write short stories. I love to read short stories. I’d love to be able to write incisive, gripping, short stories. I even have ideas for short stories, but when I try to write one… I am met by a blank page. I have only ever completed a couple of short stories since I started to write and I’m beginning to think that the short format does not suit me that well. I need 160,000 words to express myself… 

Yet it does not mean that I escape the blank page when I write my novel(s). Inspiration and ideas are like a flowing river, running, running, and then, suddenly, sometimes without warning, or without any apparent reason, it dries out. And I’m stuck in the middle of, say, Chapter 5, realizing that the story has become stagnant, and that the characters are going round in circles, and that though I know what happens to them next, I do not know how to get them out of the situation they’re in, whatever it is. And I stop writing, and I look at the messy pile of paper (hundreds of loose sheets, some numbered, some not, loosely held together) that is my first draft and I wonder: why on earth did I waste so much time writing this? It’s going nowhere! 

When that happens, the trick is to go on writing, anything, even something very silly. And there is a magical thought I find very helpful, because it is so liberating: “this can always be edited later” (aka “write all the nonsense you like, writing is the fun part, why bother about the boring one – grammar, syntax, a coherent plot – today when you can do so on another day?”). This usually work and I plod on with my writing, even if it is something of a battle. Or, if I’m really, really stuck, I let my story rest for a few days, weeks (or more…), leaving it to mature (like cheese!), until I have a new idea, or I come to understand that some of the characters aren’t really as I thought they were, and that this is why I’m stuck. 

I had blank page moments when writing As Winter Came and Went. I did manage to fight them off and actually completed my novel!

Yet is a blank page necessarily something negative, to be feared and avoided? A blank page is a blank canvas. A blank page is a world to be discovered. No, it is a world to be created. Yes, it is daunting, but also inspiring. A blank page is the freedom to create, the freedom to express yourself. There are two sides to it. On one is the absence of ideas. On the other an opportunity for them to emerge. Duality. Complementarity, maybe. A test for writers. A challenge, to accept, not avoid. 

And you can also see the blank page as the only means your novel has to tell you you’re not going in the right direction. Is there always a reason for the blank page? I think it is the case for me. If I can’t go on with my writing, it’s that something is wrong with it, that the direction I want to take isn’t the right one. The blank page that stares at me then forces me to stop and think. So perhaps writers should learn to love blank pages for the lessons they teach them. 

Mistakes!

Ah, mistakes… Spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, historical mistakes… They are a writer’s nightmare. They are my nightmare, haunting me as I write this very post. Because I make a lot of mistakes, especially spelling mistakes. It’s not that I can’t spell. I can spell. It’s just that I’m a scatter-brain and that I hate rereading what I write so I tend to leave a trail of mistakes in my paragraphs (I do try to make an effort though and I apologise if you stumble upon a few as you read my posts). Tiny mistakes (and bigger ones), stupid mistakes. Mistakes I could have avoided and that make me cringe when I discover them later (for instance when I go through the first draft of a novel: this is what I tried to show in this cartoon).  

I hate these little mistakes that weave their way into my prose, almost as if of their own accord. Sometimes I could swear they do, that the letters and the words twist themselves out of shape on purpose, and that it is not the doing of my slow, lazy brain, or of my fingers which are typing too quickly on the keyboard.

I hunt those mistakes down as I edit, and read my manuscript again and again, but feedback from first-readers shows me that in spite of everything, mistakes, even the most obvious and stupidest of obvious and stupid mistakes, remain. But there are mistakes more embarrassing than typos: for instance mistakes in a word I have taken a fancy to and use throughout the novel but cannot actually spell (usually because I can pronounce it and write it sort of phonetically). It’s like when you discover a nice, new, long word in a book and use it later in casual conversation and the look on the other person’s face makes you realise you pronounce it all wrong… And this is where I say thank you to Word and its red, wiggly lines.

There are the typos, there are the real spelling mistakes, there are the grammar mistakes and there are, when you are writing historical fiction, historical mistake. Those are the worse… For they are insidious. They are treacherous. They are at the core of historical fiction. Well, maybe not, but I wonder if there is a single historical novel which has not at least one historical mistake. After all, none of us historical fiction writers has managed to travel in the past and to have a first-hand account of what we’re depicting, so…

Part of me (the historian in me, the person who delights in pointing out that “this film got it ALL wrong, because a knight wouldn’t be riding a Friesian horse in the 13th century!”) is obsessively concerned about them. Another part of me has a more relaxed attitude: it’s fiction! It’s just a pack of lies. I made it all up, and who’s going to check if the 25th of February 1820 was indeed a Wednesday? Or if it was snowing on Christmas 1821? But actually, those are mistakes no one cares about. More troublesome are mistakes about the food (i.e. if you make 15th century people eat tomatoes), dress, conventions, etc. … And even if you do your research well, there will be mistakes, because so much is open to interpretation.

Yet there is another side to all those mistakes: they reveal a lot about the people who make them. This struck me as I was doing research earlier this year for my master’s degree in medieval history. I studied a manuscript, written in middle French. The manuscript itself was a translation of the original Latin text, so I didn’t know anything about the scribe whose writing I painstakingly deciphered. And in a way, he was not important as what mattered was the gist of the text. Yet his choice of spelling (the spelling of middle French words is…haphazard at best, and since there is no fixed spelling, there are no spelling mistakes so to speak) could have reflected his accent, or his regional origin. And he made mistakes in the manuscript: for instance he repeated one word twice, which could show that he had stopped copying for a moment (to go to the toilet? To have a drink? To pray, if he was a monk? Or simply to daydream?) before going back to his task. And those mistakes made him come alive. He wasn’t just an anonymous scribe. He was a real person, human, with failings, with dreams, with a personality. And those mistakes are what made him become human to me.

So now I try to stop hating my mistakes. Not to the point of embracing them, not to the point of not minding if some are left in my manuscript, but I try to see the funny side of them. After all, we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t make mistakes from time to time! And they symbolize, more than anything else, the rawness of a first draft, this material that writers shape and sculpt, and the mixture of malleability and fixity that is at the core of the written word.