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Making it up as I go along

Making it up as I go along

Tag Archives: RiverBook

Defining procrastination

05 Sunday May 2019

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Book 4, Harper Lee, Procrastination, Quotations, Rewriting, RiverBook, Writing

Procrastination is a big word – it has a lazy ambition & is, frankly, a bit pretentious. I do my best to ignore it, in the hope it will go away. The other day though, I owned it. Hours past Virginia o’clock I was still messing about on Twitter. (I’d spotted a sister writer doing the same so what was good for the goose?) Nonsense of course & in any case, two geese are the beginnings of a gaggle & that way lies chaos. Eventually, we both flapped off to our respective typefaces & cracked on.

It’s easily done – disciplined or not (& I usually am) the temptation to lollygag around the interwebs is ubiquitous & wasteful. And me, in the middle of resurrecting an old story.

SCRIBBLING 2

Rewriting an existing story is complex. You might be forgiven for thinking that if you have the makings of an entire manuscript down, it’s just a matter of tweaking. The thing is, I abandoned it twice, because two other stories insisted on being written first. But I did, effectively, discard it which suggests there was something about it that wasn’t quite right.

There is a lot about it that isn’t at all right. Grace, my main protagonist, knows it too, which is why she doesn’t mind if I take my time to get it right. Just as long as I do, albeit, murdering most of it en route. (She doesn’t seem to mind that either – anything that makes her look good.) She knows she still retains the starring role & that the essential premise still works. It’s the detail that doesn’t.

Grace is like a determined gypsy with a basket of lucky heather. She shadows me & there is no respite. Having survived being dumped twice – her story all but relegated to the Dead Darlings File – Grace is persistent. She’s not a young woman – far from it – she’s old & something of a curmudgeon. Grace doesn’t care that her story is ‘old’ – her certainty of her place on my modest list of books is such that she makes it hard for me to resist her.

I read a quote by Harper Lee the other day: “To be a writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It’s sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it or not. Every day. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour in writing. In fact, it’s heartbreak most of the time.’

Harper Lee

Until that last line, I agreed with every word. Showing up, regularly, is what writing is all about, but heartbreaking? Not that, not for me. Writing feeds my soul. It makes me happy. Even when I’m embroiled in a massive rewrite, messing about in my river (there’s a river in this one, dear reader – a tricksy one), wild-eyed & certain I’m never going to get it right, I somehow manage to wing it.

Out with the old then & (Grace notwithstanding) in with the restructured, reshaped new. If, on the way, I take time out now & then to have a bit of a dally (tea, cake, Twitter break, more tea/cake), it’s only because writing is sometimes quite hard & every now & then I need time to think about it rather than actually do it.

I shall keep at it mind, & keep an eye out for my stray sister doing the same. I know exactly what she’s up to. Procrastination is the new research. Trust me, I’m a writer, I know about this stuff.

river water crow foot

Ritual

10 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Book 4, RiverBook, Word Birds, Writing, Writing Group, Writing rituals

This morning my writing mojo rolled out from under the bed. Somewhat dusty, tangled in cobweb but definitely made of words. And for the past day or two there have been CROWS.

CROWS - Copy

Far more than usual & although I imagine the wild, windy skies have tempted my feathered sisters to the dance, I like to think they’re here for me too. Eyeing my frustration, knowing that scribbling notes is not enough. Lousy, lazy ligaments notwithstanding (ha!) I need to work.

My new story (Book 4) is also an old one. Those of you who follow me will be au fait with Riverbook & know it’s history, be familiar with Grace – the central protagonist – a woman of a certain age. Twice, poor Grace has been set aside to make way for younger, livelier characters. At one point I wondered if I might be writing the wrong story but it won’t give up. Once the manuscript for Wild Spinning Girls was complete & I returned to Riverbook, out of the blue, it acquired a proper title: Underwater the Stars Shine Brighter & all at once there was a fresh connection.

It felt like validation – confirmation that the story wasn’t dead (pun alert) in the water.  And long before I broke my leg, at our weekly writing group sessions I’d tossed ideas around with Janey. (She’s very good at taking a glimmer & running with it.) Since I broke my leg I’ve filled two entire A5 notebook with scribbles – ideas, tangents, re-imagined versions of the story’s essential premise; scenes & all manner of scraps.

But it’s no longer enough. It’s time to crack on & return to the story proper. I’m bored by inactivity – physical & mental – & a sense of wasted days. And I’m an Aquarian – the mistress of the Plan. Ritual gives shape to my days & I need to reclaim one that works. A familiar one made of discipline & word birds.

Bird girl - Copy

Onward & sideways, dear reader.

Suspending disbelief

18 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Ghostbird, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Old Ways, RiverBook, Snow Sisters, Wise Women, Witch Women, Witches, Writing

Island Life, Word Birds & Process

Dear reader – I know, poor, neglected blog. My writing process being the point of this thing (& I am writing, I promise) you’d think…

Book 4 is emerging & now being written in third person present which is interesting. Those of you who’ve followed me from the olden days will remember me referencing a story I called my RiverBook. It’s been set aside several times & almost drowned to be honest. I’m firmly of the belief that some stories aren’t meant to be written & ought to be allowed to pass peacefully. (TreeBook anyone? I think not…) RiverBook refuses to let go however – largely because the central protagonist is old[ish] & curmudgeonly. She keeps nagging. I’m acquiescing then & embracing Grace…

ranunculus-fluitans1

The other thing – & why I really came here this morning – concerns a conversation I had last week with my writing group sister, Janey. We were discussing the nature of magic & how, in authentic magical realism, the author asks only that her reader suspend disbelief. I wondered if it was sometimes a lot to ask & perhaps, I write for a fairly niche audience.

Alongside my sisters, mothers & daughters, I write so-called ‘witchy’ characters: wise women with one foot in the ‘normal’ world, the other on the threshold between the veil. Ordinary women who happen to have that wee something that sets them apart. An affinity with the natural world & a heritage connecting them to the Old Ways.

OLWEN

Janey made an astute & very smart observation. We live in a land steeped in magic, in myths & legends. Unlike almost anywhere else in the world, as a nation we Brits (Welsh, Irish, Scottish & English) have magic embedded in our history, our bloodlines & our collective psyche. We find it easy to believe in ghosts & spirits & the supernatural. We love a haunted house, a ghost story, a dragon & a faerie; we relish fantasy & myths brought to life in ways we can relate to. The huge success of the BBC drama series Merlin (2008-2012) is a terrific example.

Other, older ones, Janey pointed out, are numerous: from Mystery and Imagination (1966-1970) & Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers (1980s) to The Secret of Crickley Hall (2012) to the recent re-imagining of The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. Documentaries & dramas – we love them equally. And if we don’t, it’s more often than not because we’re too scared to watch them!

Yes – skeptics abound – but I’m less concerned than I was a week ago. I shall continue writing my ‘wise women’ characters, place them in their odd cottages, twisty houses & magical gardens. Set them baking good spells into bread, stitching protective ones into curtains; healing with herbs & kindness. I shall write them wrapped in mystery & concealing clothes, allow them to conjure what enchantments they will.

20180817_113212 (2)

The characters I conjure come from my own ancestral memory bank. Lili in Ghostbird & Mared, the grandmother in Snow Sisters. My own ‘disbelief’ is non-existent, frankly – I’ve been wandering between the veil since forever. Nothing to frighten the horses, but I know stuff & every now & then, it’s as real as breathing. And my characters know it too.

The two-trick pony & the ghosts in her machine

28 Sunday May 2017

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ghostbird, Quotations, RiverBook, Snow Sisters, Virginia Woolf, Writing

Island Life, Word Birds & Process

Although I like authors who reinvent themselves, I’m partial to familiarity too. Publishers, agents & editors tend to like ‘more of the same’ & in my experience, readers lap it up. This is not to say a writer shouldn’t stretch herself. ‘RiverBook’ – the story I thought was going to be a follow-up to Ghostbird – has no ghost. It has a much older main protagonist too. I first abandoned it to write Snow Sisters – which came out of left field insisting ghost stories (& sister stories) are what I write.

With this book accepted for publication, the one-hit wonder is on the road to becoming a two-trick pony. And what larks that evokes! I’m a book-writer now & no mistake. I need new shoes at the very least!

While Snow Sisters waits patiently in the copy-edit queue, I have to write something. It made sense to reacquaint myself with ‘River’ which I did, only to be ambushed yet again by another ghost. Once more, poor ‘River’ has been usurped (there’s no other word for it) by a sneaky interloper dragging a spook behind her…

If the cap fits we are told, wear it. And so I shall. Once again my cap is made from mist & secrets & stretches of endless Welsh sky. It’s decorated with raven feathers & when I set it aside, I swear it whispers fragments of words which can only be the voice of a ghost…

Currently, it’s a muddle; the usual random scribbles but as I place them on the page, something more solid begins to emerge.

Naturally, there is a level of apprehension attached to writing ‘more of the same’ but I comfort myself with the thought that it’s good enough for some of my literary sheroes. And I have no particular desire to take a different direction. I have no need to reinvent myself – at this stage I’m barely invented! I know my place if you like & it suits. In the end, it will be down to my reader. If Snow Sisters suits then why not write another ghost story? Why not set another book in my beloved Welsh hinterland among the bones of dragons, conjuring spells and listening for the voice of a ghost?

And who knows, perhaps ‘RiverBook’ will one day make it out of the shallows. She has four drafts to her name & the tenacity of a terrier.

NPG Ax142596; Virginia Woolf (nÈe Stephen) by Lady Ottoline Morrell

How are we to account for the strange human craving for the pleasure of feeling afraid which is so much involved in our love of ghost stories?
~ Virginia Woolf

Miscellaneous meandering…

19 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Editing, Island Life, RiverBook, Writing, Writing Group

Island Life, Word Birds & Process

The mist took a while to lift giving an authentic island feel to the morning. A scattering of birds on the still stark branches decorated the birch tree. This leaves the process – & where I vaguely falter…

At last Thursday’s writing group with Janey I talked about being run aground in the third draft of Book 3 (nicknamed RiverBook) at around 15k. Due to Vital Plot Changes the rest is now an unholy muddle. I confessed to a wobble: knowing where you need to be is one thing, how to get there is another.

walter_follen_bishop_silver_birchs_on_a_wooded_river_bank_d5409449g

Talking through our various wobbles (& the glimmers of what’s needed to smooth them) is the foundation of our writing group. I never leave a session without feeling encouraged. There were places I needed to be over the weekend but in the gaps I thought hard about why my story was stuck in the shallows. Even though, technically, it still is, as I began reading yesterday, I realised how daft it is to be afraid of my own writing. One of the glimmers has become ‘An Interesting Aspect’ & I’m running with it.

I’m wearing Wellies which may mean more miring. And yes, alliteration is a favourite writing thing.

If it was good enough for Shakespeare…

First drafts, learning by experience & writing to keep up

13 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Drafts, RiverBook, Word Birds, Writing

Island Life, Word Birds & Process #25

I fear I have confused the word birds. Having cwtched down for the past however many months, the ones making up the first draft of my next story have had time to bed in – feel secure and imagine their contributions safe from any mucking about on my part. Yesterday they were rudely awakened. Having opened the document, sadly (for the word birds) inevitably for me, mucking about is what I must now do.

The story was written before book two (which I have recently completed), when I still had a good deal to learn. I’ve known for a while now that a major aspect of it would have to go, that the entire thing is in need of paring down and simplifying. The reason I know is because of the process I’ve recently been through with book two. The structural edits and the rewrite were done far more quickly than I expected, largely because I’m getting better at it. Once I knew what I needed to do, the doing of it came relatively easily.

This next story is a departure – I’m writing an older central character for one thing. Still meddling in the magic but trying my hand at a more immediate story, something rooted in the present and only vaguely referencing the past. It isn’t easy for me. I adore backstory. I love writing it – I like the way the past informs the present and I’m rarely put off by books that make a feature of backstory. I do know there’s a trick to writing it. It’s something I’m absolutely learning and it’s a revelation.

Damn, I love this writing lark – I have a head full of stories, each one more easily conjured than its predecessor. There’s no help for it – I have to keep at it, keep up and live to be a hundred.

4584035977_c6f456aff5

You have to write something, don’t you?

24 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Ghostbird, Mythology, River Selkie, RiverBook, Snow Sisters, Writing

Island Life, Word Birds & Process # 14

One upon a time I wrote a story with the working title RiverBook. I began writing it before I got the deal for Ghostbird intending it to be my next book. Once it was done (by which time, Ghostbird had been accepted) I put it away and concentrated on the process of being published. But still, in between the edits, copy edits and general excitement, you have to write something, don’t you? Out of somewhere, I got the idea for SisterBook. It kept me occupied and would be my third book (assuming I even got a look in for a second.)

By the time Ghostbird was published, I realised Sisters was likely to be a better bet as a follow-up so River was virtually banished. Sisters is now finished and submitted and I’m back to square one. While I await my fate, what do I write? Got to write something etc… Out came River and with the benefit of distance I immediately realised it was wrong. It had something but it wasn’t right. Too complex – my default setting – for one thing.

One of the best aspects about writing Ghostbird was having a myth to hang my story on. A mise an abîme I could return to that kept me connected. (Sisters doesn’t have a myth – it’s a different kind of haunting.) River – to say the least – as it stood was a muddle of mythology. And therein lay my problem. Out of an over-indulgence in research I’d created a mini-monster. I wanted another legend but I wanted a simple one.

Lying in my bath about a fortnight ago, I worked it out. In the absence of a known myth, why not create my own?

Myths and legends evolve out of unconscious processes in the oral tradition. There is rarely any historical evidence for their veracity but the repeated telling of them renders them charismatic and ‘true’ and for our ancestors they became part of the collective psyche. And like religion or any spiritual path, myths have their roots in our human desire for a rationale: a cornerstone patterned with symbolism to hook our frailties and fears on. We create them out of imagination and random moments of connection to the natural world.

In other words, they’re all made up. There is no rule to gainsay this. We can all be the author of our own mythology.

Before I get too cosmic for my own good, here’s the point. I’ve made up a myth of my own and in doing so, now know exactly what RiverBook is about. Well, you have to write something, don’t you?

undine3_beautiful_girl (1)

Meeting my muse in my bath

23 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Bath, Muse, RiverBook, Second Book, Third Book, Virginia Woolf

IMG-20150820-00987

In my perfect, fanciful world, Virginia Woolf is my muse. In my real one, all she has ever done is lead me to abandon punctuation & paragraphs while I, in the mistaken belief that I understand ‘stream of consciousness’ well enough to make it a viable motif in my own writing, follow like a witless fool. I freely confess to having wasted a lot of valuable time in this pointless pursuit.

My actual muse is a creature who lives somewhere in my bathroom. (She is probably a Daddy Long Legs or a small spider. Or even a helpful cobweb.) I know this because, without fail, each time I run a bath with the specific aim of mulling over a particularly puzzling writing-related issue, once I lie down in the water, I invariable mull usefully.

It happened this morning. With Book Two finished (draft zero – see above) & tucked away in a drawer to marinade for a week or two, I need something to do. (I’m not one of those writers who can amuse themselves with a short story or a bit of poetry. If it isn’t the book I’ve finished, then it has it be the one I’m about to start.)

For the past two days I’ve been outlining Book Three. The idea has been hanging round for some time & all at once, I got it. Apart that is for a small but crucial plot strand.

Cue a delicious, lavender & rose scented Sunday morning bath…

Job done.

It’s embryonic of course, but I do think it has [Daddy Long] legs… And it’s another ghost story…

‘When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness – I am nothing.’ *

11 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Authors, Ghostbird, Honno, Quotations, RiverBook, Virginia Woolf

Well, almost. Maybe with a little less drama?

That said, at present the only words I seem to be dealing in are answers to questions. (Great questions & both they & my answers coming soon to an interview blog near you.) It’s part of the ‘author’ thing & I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying the fact of being asked. Of course I am. And it’s lovely getting to know my sister writers at Honno.

I was invited to my first Author Group lunch last week & made to feel like one of the family. There is a lot to be said for small independent publishing houses. Everyone knows everyone. I appreciate it more than I can say. What a great group of women writers: talented, generous & encouraging. What with one thing & another, this is an amazing experience which I am determined to embrace & enjoy. The days are flying by & I am flying with them.

It is also true to say I’m keen to get on with my next book.

Even when I know what I’m going to call a new story, I still give it a working title. The current manuscript is nicknamed RiverBook. When I set it aside – to bask in the momentary ‘glory’ of Getting a Book Deal – it stood at 79k. There have been days recently when I’ve wondered if I’ll ever find time to get on with it & make it to 90k which is roughly my goal. Fortunately these moments are rare & I take heart from other writers who assure me, if you have another draft in progress, at this point in the publishing process it’s normal for the wordcount to suffer.

The infamous ‘they’ say a second book is the hardest. There are expectations. Because I began writing RiverBook with no solid anticipation of a publishing deal for Ghostbird, I felt no pressure. I’ve been enjoying the writing for its own sake, pulling together the randomness that is this new story. (I use the word ‘random’ deliberately. I am an irregular writer by which I mean my story construction isn’t linear. I write the story as it comes & a great deal of it comes in no particular order.)

I need to crack on though. See if I can do it. And however RiverBook looks when I do get back to it, it’s good to know I have an almost complete first draft to focus on. It’s a mess, but it’s my mess & I can’t wait to dive in again.

Unlike Mrs Woolf, I’m not remotely concerned about ‘darkness’ or the lack of regular writing. I think I understand what she meant though. When I’m not writing regularly there is a sense of something missing. I definitely need to conjure some smoke.

* Virginia Woolf

My novels

Wild Spinning Girls
Wild Spinning Girls
Snow Sisters
Snow Sisters
Ghostbird
Ghostbird
Only May
Only May
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