Rewriting ...

Question: What happens when you cut the first 20,000 of your novel?

Answer: It makes a vast improvement! 

I have spent the last month revising my first full-length novel, the one about the ghost that I mentioned in an earlier post. It stood at 71,000 words, and although I felt very protective of my writing, I had to accept that it just didn't work. 

Hemingway advised discarding the first chapter of any book, so I decided to go one better and cut the first 20,000 words! 

And you know what? It became quite readable. After some determined editing, it is now 52,000 words and the next task in the reincarnation is to find a new cover with a new title.

The whole experience has been very liberating and the theme is suitably apt: it is about the coming of Spring and the metaphorical re-birth of the narrator after a long and difficult winter. These words from Wordsworth's Prelude were an inspiration:

  

''....... I began 

My story early, feeling as I fear, 

The weakness of a human love, for days 

Disown'd by memory, ere the birth of spring  

Planting my snowdrops among winter snows.''

Motivation

I have never had a problem just sitting down and getting to work. I know many writers need to sort things out first, sharpening all the proverbial pencils and tidying out already pristine cupboards, before allowing themselves the mental space needed to write. Maybe I'm just a slob and don't mind chaos around me - having juggled four children and a full time job, I got very good at utilising any spare minute that could be salvaged! However, writing can become self consuming, where minutes turn into hours, meals get missed and conversations with nearest and dearest become non existent. So, I do like to take complete breaks from writing, especially when there is tennis to watch and books to read!  

My trusty Kindle is never far away - my lovely children bought it for me a few Christmases ago and I just love it - most of my favourite authors are free to read and I recently switched allegiance from Dickens to Trollope - he is much funnier by far ... and I am really enjoying working my way through the complete works of John Buchan. It's also great just to watch the life of our little village. We bought a place in Lazio a few years ago and slowly we are settling in.  It does help the creative process having no TV or internet but it's not good for the figure because I can only get online at the local bar where they serve really great coffee and sweet pastries!

The Creative Journey Continues

Sadly, The Daily Telegraph's short story club is no more, but it did lead to a creative project: seven of us got together online and wrote an anonymous, collaborative novel which was published by Harper Impulse in April 2015. 

Having a contract with a publishing company gave me the impetus to try writing romantic fiction and I finished my second novel during the summer of 2014. I am waiting to hear if it will be published before I give anything away but meanwhile I am well into my next book which is set in a small village in Lazio, Italy and was inspired by DH Lawrence and his writings about Vetralla and Cerveteri. It has the working title La Fenice- The Phoenix. 

The Phoenix by DH Lawrence

Being a member of the Harper Impulse community has been wonderfully inspiring and offers great moral support and inspiration. The hard work of the writers and the eclectic mix of genres is amazing and I have had great fun reading and reviewing many of their titles. 

Reviewing is a very useful and rewarding pastime and has helped me to develop my own creative skills. I have also discovered the joys of Book Bloggers and the hugely enjoyable websites of other authors who are willing to discuss their own creative journeys. 

Two Very Short Stories

A New Challenge

I needed to find a happier and more optimistic writing challenge and I found one in the shape of The Daily Telegraph's Short Story Club with its tempting monthly Short Story Competition and the wonderfully friendly and entertaining members. I had been part of the Telegraph's Novel In A Year, led by Louise Doughty and had been lucky enough to be short-listed, so I was very pleased to see the birth of her new column. I created my pseudonym, made an avatar and Bonnie Lass was born! 

Apart from the monthly 2500 word short story, we had fun writing weekly challenges; perhaps it would be to write a short story in 6 words, like the one Hemingway is alleged to have written ...

''For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never worn.''

... or maybe it would be to write a story in less than 200 words.  The brevity was appealing and some of us posted several in the course of a week. It became addictive! Friends were made, jokes were shared and the creative support was amazing. 

I found all of my stories on an old memory stick and will post a couple of my favourites next time. Meanwhile how many 6 word stories can you make up?

An Empty Space

I went very quiet for a spell. Horrible things happened in the family; having already lost my sister to breast cancer several years before, my dear brother died very suddenly after a short illness. He had been absolutely fine until one day he couldn't breathe. Turned out that he had cancer of the kidney which had spread to his lungs. What was really upsetting was that the scans showed he had been born with only one kidney, something that no-one knew about. He died three weeks after diagnosis, the week before Christmas.  On top of that, my sister-in-law had died of lung cancer a few weeks before and I lost the remnants of my already poor hearing. So there I was, with no siblings and no hearing and there was so much to do! 

The three of us 

Work became impossible because I couldn't use the telephone and despite attempts by Occupational Health to find something suitable, I decided to give up. Thankfully, this gave me the space and time I needed for the huge task of sorting out my brother's flat. He lived alone and had collected thousands of books. I had very little choice but to take them home. They sat piled up, three-deep, against the living-room wall for over a year until I felt able to deal with them. I gave most of them to Oxfam. 

Through all of this, I was still trying to write but everything was too soulful and morose. I needed a new and optimistic challenge and I was to find it in a very unusual place!

Back to Being a Poet

Being a little despondent about my novel writing attempts, I decided to go back to writing poetry. My work as a Health visitor gave me so much inspiration, the people I met, their joys and their sorrows. There was no shortage of subject matter and I eventually wrote over 200 poems. One Scottish publisher expressed an interest until his funding from The Arts Council dried up! 

Being a poet is not a very lucrative pastime. But some day, as with the short stories, I will sort them into bundles and pubish them to Kindle. A bit like sorting out all the old photographs - a task for my old age!