Tag Archives: Letter to America

“The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace…” *

08 Sunday Jan 2017

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Island Life, Word Birds & Process

Earlier, writing my daily Letter to America, I mentioned the mist (it’s an Island Life this morning, dear reader & no mistake) & that only a small, solitary bird graced the highest branch of the birch tree. It never lasts, this daring do. Sooner or later, Crow arrives, evicts the interloper and claims her place. Today she came with friends, three dark shapes against a rain-drenched sky, elegant itinerants.

They’re gone now. Crow has business elsewhere. If the mood suits her, mine tarries long enough to leave a few words, a line or two I may find a use for. Lately, I’ve sensed her shaking her black hoody head – Kraa – you are procrastinating, writer.

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She isn’t wrong. It is however procrastination thinly disguised as editing. When I set aside my current new story (was Book 2, now Book 3) to write The Snow Sisters (the usurper) it was a vague second draft. I knew it was chaotic, that parts of it were going to need serious attention. In the back of my mind, a confused muse wrestled with chunks of ubiquitous backstory (my nemesis) pronouncing it superfluous to anyone’s requirements.

Knowing I was about to embark on another draft, my first reader (the recipient of my Letter to America), put up her hand. Her eye is astute & she asks the right questions. Checking ahead, I spotted where the chaos began & faster than a rat up a drainpipe, scuttled back to Chapter One. I’ve spent the last week meticulously & very, very slowly, editing the first ten chapters: back & forth like an over-keen copy editor on Kalms. These chapters are so edited they are faint with exhaustion, begging to be left in peace.

And still, Chapter Eleven waits. Or as I like to call it, the place where it all goes pear-shaped, backstory crash-lands onto the page & I have no idea how to deal with it. I’ll work it out – it’s only words, yes? Kill a few (several hundred) off; tidy up the telling, dump the debris…?

If I ask nicely, maybe the words birds – my beautiful vagabonds – will take some of them back…

* John Burroughs

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A sense of an ending

15 Sunday May 2016

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Island Life, Word Birds & Process #5

By nature I’m a lark. I go to bed early, get up early & I’m rarely out after dark without a note from my mother. I’m known for my early starts. After tea & a read – maybe some hand-written notes – I attend to the chores, write my daily Letter to America, see to anything urgent in my inbox, take a peek at Facebook & begin work around ten o’clock.

Over the past week, instead, I’ve been at my desk around seven o’clock. Still in my PJs & with only the tea drunk, the book read & the cat fed, I’ve ignored everything else and written my heart out. I have no idea why, only that I’ve been waking up excited & single-minded & the result is a huge number of words.

It’s a double-edged sword mind. I’ve reached the tricky third quarter of the tricky second book. I’m aware of sag & clutter, of wandering off on extraneous tangents. It’s highly likely the thing is rubbish & I’m deluding myself it’s going to work. I know a lot of writers give up at this point, abandon the story & begin a new one. It smacks too much of the revolving door to me. And I know the ending, even though it isn’t in sight. I’m in too deep to give up and start again.

At least I can sense it, which is an improvement on a week ago.

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