On the couch

Room with a view at the Hurst

My pretend mentoring scheme kind of worked. I stuck to my daily word targets until I got to 85k which was when I began to relax and congratulate myself on how close I was to my 90k goal. I think the pause for self-congratulation also cloaked the fear of the finishing.  I was close to the end, but could I do it? Would it fall flat? How would the characters get untangled from where they were now to get to where they were supposed to be at the end? The last 5k was like doing the 5k Race for Life which I signed up for when it was months ahead in the far off land of the future and for which I didn’t train very well. Through every bit of training I swore I would never run again after I’d done the race. I never did manage 5k before the race, but on the day itself I did run every step of it (very, very slowly) thinking at various points I would die, but I did cross the finish line, my cheeks the deepest red they’d ever been from the exertion, my legs a trembling wreck. Of course the final 5k of writing wasn’t physically the same as running - I can’t say I’ve ever built up a sweat while sitting at my desk - but that horrible sense of not being able to carry on was often weighing me down. Finding the right words and the right pathways to shepherd the characters through to the ending seemed impossible at times, but somehow they got through the maze.

In the woods of the Hurst

The bluebell woods at the Hurst

Because it wasn’t a real mentoring scheme I wasn’t actually getting any feedback on the draft so how could I tell if the 90k words were any good in their current configuration? I could have given it to my Beloved to read, but as he hasn’t yet acquired the art of a praise sandwich (or a shit sandwich, depending how you view it), I didn’t much fancy the inevitable maelstrom that would follow. I could have sent it to friends but I didn’t want to infect them with first-draftyitis – I imagined them wading through it, worrying how to tell me it was terrible and then my shame of them thinking it was the best I could do. Arvon stepped up with a possible helping hand. I couldn’t resist the lure of a tutored retreat at the newly renovated John Osborne Arvon Centre in Shropshire - a complete luxury which I could only indulge in because I’d been squirreling away a small amount of money each month for a couple of years for any such personal emergencies. I’ve done a tutored retreat before and sending off the chapters in advance for the tutors – Monica Ali and Jacob Ross - to review for this retreat wasn’t any less excruciating than the first time. To cut a long story short, after my sessions with Jacob I felt I’d got this novel licked, but after my sessions with Monica I felt like my characters had been psycho-analysed to within an inch of their lives and had been found wanting. In the saying out loud to Monica of a couple of the plot points they suddenly sounded a bit, well, far-fetched and delusory.  The couch was the right place to be.

I hope that post therapy, the current draft is all the richer for the intervention. Now it’s out there with a friend, being read and I’m feeling a bit lost without it.

Breakdown

I’ve had enough of this commitment lark. The old ball and chain is weighing me down. That nagging voice hovering in my head when I stay away too long is making my brain hurt. I just want to leave it all behind and succumb to the new stories and adventures tempting me away every time I come to a sentence I’ve read a million times already. I keep shouting 'I don't know what I ever saw in you! Why am I wasting my time here?' The spark that lit the fire for the story raged out of control for a while, but now it’s burnt itself out. A tiny ember tries to reel me back in with the promise of better behaviour. I agree to give it another go as long as we get some therapy, try a new approach.

This is therapy Admin-Queen style. A way to get to the nub of things, find out what’s important and what areas need work. But it’s not Relate I’m off to, it’s Excel. I love order and I especially love spreadsheets: All those neat headings and columns, all those cells just waiting to be moved around to places where they fit better. And of course my finger hovering over that delete button.

The therapy is a chapter by chapter breakdown with columns for Setting, Characters Present, the Purpose of the Scene and the Main Action (taken from one of Sarah Duncan’s blog posts). Sarah Duncan does this with index cards, but I don’t have any. I’ve also added a Cliff-hanger Rating column.

  

My novel of around 120,000 words, broken down into chapters as a colour-coded spreadsheet, looks like this:

It’s a good way to hone in what the purpose of a chapter is – what it boils down to in a couple of sentences. It’s also a great way to see when characters need a kick up the backside. You can see at a glance when someone is still belly-aching about the same problem three chapters along. It is especially good as a reference for checking what happens when and if it is logical.

As to whether I fall back in love with the story once the issues have been thrashed out remains to be seen. Here’s hoping.

 

Upwards and onwards



Trespassing into the lofty heights of the University Library is a new adventure for me.  After climbing the steps in the shadow of this industrial behemoth, the revolving doors do not welcome me. Trapped in my little glass segment I push hard on the brass bar and slowly force myself through this portal to another world.

It’s taken several hundred years to give university assistant staff the same borrowing rights as academics, so here I am, making the most of my newfound privileges. But I’m just borrowing time and space and peace and quiet to think, write, edit, re-read and tweak. I’m replacing the noise and distractions of home with young whippersnappers half my age but with twice my IQ. I’m feeling older by the minute.

The map the kind librarian has given me of this vast building and its treasures is useless to me; as a maplexic it just adds to my sense of disorientation as I take random turns and find myself amongst darkened book-stacks and come across pale, earnest students surrounded by ancient tomes. I skulk around, hoping no-one will ask what I am researching or what I am ‘reading’ or, more likely at my age, ask me what I’m lecturing. It’s all so far from the truth. It wouldn’t be so bad if mine were a literary pursuit, but trash fiction? I’m blushing already. A story perhaps more suited to the library’s fondly named ‘tower of porn’ where no visitors are allowed. The tower that stands tall and proud and makes its presence known in many views across this University City.

Eventually I find the reading room, its high windows offering glimpses of the sky, and that tower.  It takes a while to find my perfect place, to settle in and to stop bristling when people come within sight of my Work in Progress.  But, after the fidgeting and settling, my mind is finally free to relax and focus on the job in hand. The odd sniffle, the shrugging off of a coat, the movement of a chair, the rustle of paper and the gentle tap-tapping of keyboards become companionable sounds of endeavour.

It is my first visit, but strangely this is where my story began to take shape several years ago. It is where my research first led me to a book called Nothing, Nobody: The Voices of the Mexican Earthquake[1]. My partner, who has borrowing rights for life as an MPhil, was dispatched to get the book out on loan for me. It was its first ever outing. It is a book which left its mark on me and which has hopefully filtered subtly through to my protagonist’s elusive father whose life was derailed when he was caught up in the 1985 earthquake.

120,000 words later, this is where I have come to finish what I started. Or maybe it will never be finished. THE END has been written but that was many edits ago. Maybe I’ll still be here in thirty years time; that mad old woman with the tangled mass of curly grey hair, always sitting in the same corner, scowling at anyone who comes near, muttering under my breath about f**ing agents who don’t know talent when they see it.

---

[1] Poniatowska, Elena, 1995, Nothing, Nobody: The Voices of the Mexican Earthquake, Temple University Press

Photo of University Library by Nick-in-exsilio

 @BettyMcFab