Fossil Hunting

In his book, On Writing,  (another wonderful desert island choice for a no nonsense, inspiring book on writing)    Stephen King describes stories as found things; like fossils that you have to chip away at  in order to reveal. 

Writing  a novel is very much like fossil hunting  for me. I have to root around for my story and gradually uncover it  layer by layer. I’ve been doing some of this digging around for the past ten days or so and the reason for this is that I have begun a new novel! How exciting is that?

My current novel Bad Girl is now with my agent, so fingers crossed! She tells me that this is not an easy time to sell a novel- I wonder if there has EVER been an easy time – but she is not without hope. In the meantime of course the best thing to do is forget all about the book out there, apart from wishing it well every now and then, and start the next one. Michelle Roberts, one of my favourite writers asks, ‘What’s the best book in the world? Her reply – ‘The one not written yet. It waits in the darkness, like a ghost, like the unborn.’
I’ve been thinking about my new book for sometime now so it’s more than just a ghost, but it still has that shadowy, vague presence that could be described as ghostly and the baby is still very much in the womb, although definitely kicking.

Writing Tip – So how do I go fossil hunting? Here is one method- the only tools you will need are pen and paper and your emerging characters. Take each of the characters in turn and write a piece in their first person voice. In doing this you will discover all kind of things about them, how they got to be in your story and about the story itself. You may be surprised by how much you write.This is also a very good way of deepening your knowledge of your character and devloping their unique voice. It can be done at varying stages of the novel not just the beginning

So that’s what I’ve been doing in my beautiful cream Pukka vellum notebook. Now however I have put it aside as there is less time for writing. Now there are more important things to be done, (can there be anything more important than writing? Yes – but only rarely) and top of my list are my preparations and packing  for France

On May 2nd I am off to Agde in the Languedoc – for two months! Yes two whole months of writing and sun -my own outside writing room – with my writing buddy Wendy. It’s hard to believe that our plan hatched in the dark, cold days of winter is about to be realised but excitement is growing: cases bought – clothes, passports and cameras unearthed, lists begun…we are on our way!