Island Life, Word Birds & Process

It’s highly likely I’ve used the above title before. (Sans the parachute reference.) No matter – if the cap fits & so forth.

Two weeks ago I was feeling a bit aimless. After waffling on about Saggy Middle Syndrome (Except it’s Further On & a Bit Of  a Worry) & my options, I knuckled down. That was the plan at any rate. Monday morning found me knowing what I wanted to write (what I needed to write) only quite lost because the way in alluded me. It’s a thing with me – every now & then I find myself armed with a good scene or chapter & stumped, because I have no opening line.

It took me two days to write a single chapter.  I was all over the place – the words were there but without that essential first line, it had no heart. Good first lines aren’t confined to the opening chapter of a book. Every chapter needs to entice. (Closing ones are pretty important too.) My enticing skills had deserted me until – in the end (so to speak) – it was a simple as this:

She hadn’t closed the curtains.

Who knew? And don’t ask me where those five words came from – I have no idea, only that some dear bird took pity on me & left them in the edges of my hair. I was off & it’s been a lovely week. Writing early each morning – still in my PJs – putting in the hours before my bit of the internet woke up.

I still have no idea if this story is a flyer – I think it is but there are no guarantees. It’s well quirky & in places quite off the wall. Bits of it please me hugely – lots of it will need serious attention.

Above all – I’m mad about my new characters. I love them, even though a good deal of the time they lead me a merry dance & it is like going the wrong way up (or down) an escalator. If I hang on to the invisible parachute though, I’m fine.

As for my ghost, dear reader, I adore her. Would you like a little more?

   It isn’t my job to make things easy for you, Ida – I am not yet at peace. Until I am, I’m tricksy. I’m the tick of that old clock and the wordless whispers in your cobwebbed sleep. I’m the scent of apples and soot and feathers. I slip through open windows, in and out on your whim now, not mine. I drift through woman-shaped keyholes as easily as breathing. Slip and smile and you taste me on your bitten lip.
© Carol Lovekin

And that, as they say, is your lot!