Reminder

This week I have been to see the dentist about a tooth which has been worrying me for weeks, and the osteopath about my shoulder. The tooth is now filled and the shoulder is getting better. I realise that I should have sought help for both much earlier.

Why did I not? Several reasons I think – not wanting to admit defeat, a workaholic upbringing, and putting writing above my own health.

Will I know better next time? I hope so. And this blog will serve as a reminder.

Recuperation and change

I’m taking a break from novel-writing this week, partly because my shoulder is worse again and I want to see if a rest will help, and partly so that I can gear up for the final section of the novel.

Because my characters are going to change, I need to change before writing about them. I need to let the end brew. And, most importantly, I have to be full of energy so that I can end with a bang (not a whimper).

Apart from all that, the 'to do' list is growing, so I'll catch up on one or two other things. Probably not the tidying/sorting of my writing-room however ('mucking-out' as Jilly Cooper calls it) as I find it hard to write if the room's too sterile. I shall look forward to doing that when this draft is finished.

Synchronicity or what

The Novel has steamed ahead over the last three days. I’ve now finished – I think – the truly painful part of the book. I now have to work out how to put everything right. Lots of scenes and lots of possibilities are floating around in my mind, but how on earth I’m going to make them into anything coherent, I don’t know. I shall just take it one chapter – scene – word – at a time, as I’ve been doing so far with this draft.

It’s very exciting and I do miss the novel when I’m not working on it. However, as I’ve said SO MANY times before, it’s essential to have breaks.

I’ve been writing about a time thirty-five years ago and on Tuesday, out of the blue, a friend whom I haven’t seen for probably about thirty-five years rang and suggested we meet for lunch as she is coming down to Devon for a 60^th birthday party.

Synchronicity or what?

Rest and thinking time

I was glad to read in the university student newspaper Exposé (which Frog brings home) that Hilary Mantel – author of the multi-page novel Wolf Hall (which I couldn’t read) – considers three hours of writing new material more than enough for one day. (Working on material you’ve already written is another matter.) And as far as I remember from his autobiography, Roald Dahl wrote for two hours in the morning, then had an alcoholic drink, some lunch and a rest, before tackling another one and a half hours.

Rest, and thinking time, are vital to creative writing, as I keep telling myself – and keep forgetting – but walking is one of my ways of finding both.

Here some pictures from my walk this morning. It was my favourite sort of day – cloudy and still – and there was a Christmassy nip in the air. This is my default walk. It takes an hour and I can get to it straight from the garden.

I love this view, from the top of the field behind the house, and today the light was so mysterious. The sea is just over the horizon. You can see it from slightly higher up.

This path goes uphill for half an hour and gives me my aerobic exercise (or would do if I didn’t keep stopping to rest). It was looking particularly beautiful today, now that the leaves have started to turn.

You’ve seen these three beech trees before. They stand sentinel in the field at the top of the hill. I sit underneath them to look at the view and write my daily pages. They seem to accept me.

A giant spell

My shoulder is still painful and I’m still writing a painful part of the novel, but there’s not long to go now until I’m able to start turning around the lives of my characters.

What is fiction-writing? Why do I do it? Every time I ask myself that, I give a different answer. A couple of days ago, I came up with this.

A novel is a giant spell. First you describe life as it is and then you describe life as you’d like it to be, hoping somewhere in the process to make it so in reality.

Not the only one

Well, after I wrote the last post (about the goblin on my back), my back started to feel better. I then however came down with a two-day migraine, the result I think of getting in such a tizz about my back.

Today I’ve surfaced, although I still feel achy in all sorts of places and not a little wobbly.

I’m right in the middle of the book at the moment and I think it’s that taking things out of me. The good news though is that I feel completely involved in it – committed and bound up in all the emotions I’m writing about.

I had a long talk with Frog this morning about the plot and he made all sorts of suggestions. It’s so helpful to have a sounding board. Not to say editor, technical adviser and all-round encourager. As the writer Marian Keyes says of her husband, ‘On bad days he even has to wash and dress me.’

So I’m not the only one.