Writings from My Novel

My novel is mostly set on a Greek island. It is about love, loss, passion, fear, taking chances and sharing both laughter and tears.

My novel is about life.

I suspect that there will be readers who will find it neither particularly profound, nor life-changing, but my hope is that it will offer the inspiration for adventure for at least some.

But the process of writing fiction is a curious one. You have to climb right on in there, into the mind and the body of your characters; feel them, know them, love them, hate them and of course, give them time to grow before your eyes.

This, to me, has been the strangest sensation.

When I wrote my first book it was relatively easy because it was about my life. I had the story! I knew the beginning, the middle and the end. All I had to do was get it down on paper.

There is a quote:

"If you know the whole story in advance, your novel is probably dead before you begin it. Give it some room to breathe, to change direction, to surprise you. Writing a novel is not so much a project as a journey, a voyage, an adventure." ~ Tom Robbins.

And so, this is a new concept for me… to write not knowing exactly what might happen. I catch my characters doing surprising things that are out of my control and as I get further and further into their minds I realise that they can do things that I never could, they see things in a way that I have not.

I remember meeting an author friend and asking her about writing fiction: ‘Do you have a plan?’ I said, and she replied that no, not really, ‘I just kind of write and wait to see where the words take me.’ At the time I found this strange – how could that be? But now, here I am, deep in the pages of Chapter 9 and my senses are tingling, my hand scrawling furiously as if I simply cannot get the words down quick enough. They race along at lightening speed like the unrolling of a red carpet in my mind, down the 100 steps they go, so fast I can hardly catch them.

Sometimes I think it would be easier and quicker to write on the computer, but the romance is just not the same. To see my book growing before my eyes, reams of handwritten pages, the weight of the material-covered notebook in my hand, the soft thud of pages as I flick through it – there is nothing quite like it.

I hope to finish the first draft by the end of the year. I hope that it will be decent enough to share. I hope that my characters will be good (and sometimes a little bad), kind, passionate, exciting people who I can send off out into the world with the hope that they will help readers to identify with life.

Nothing more, Just life.