Life

As in “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” (from John Lennon).

I was on top of things this week. Or I was at the beginning. Blog posts, work, revisions all ticking along nicely. I even had a plan about how things are going to be in the next few months. Done, I thought. Now I can just get on and do my stuff. You know churning out x words a day, every day.

And that is when life came knocking. Nothing shattering, nothing awful just the unexpected which made most of those plans unworkable. So now the blog is late, revisions have stalled and the next few months are all over the place. I am discombobulated to say the least. Now every thing is whirling round my head as I try and juggle it all. The easy rhythm of revisions has stuttered to nothing. Damn.

It was a timely reminder that I have to be more flexible. I am a planner/project manager by trade and I instinctively take tasks and break them down to the basics and work out the critical path. This works reasonably well with IT projects and building projects but not so much with other stuff. Stuff where it turns out other people have been making plans too... and they got theirs out there first. I'm not sure everyone got the memo that I was in charge... ;-)

I suppose it isn’t any different to how characters in a novel feel.  There they are making plans when BAM we, the author, make life happen to them. Maybe this is my comeuppance? I have been being nasty to my heroine and she’s had a word with someone and I am getting my just deserts.

All I ask is that I get a happy ending…

Come back on Sunday to see what has been happening in Susanna’s life…

What's In A Name?

by S Fenwick

I have a challenge in front of me. I may have to change name of the house in THE CORNISH HOUSE...

Currently the name is Carnew which I had changed slightly from Carnewyth meaning 'new camp'. I wanted to keep it simple and easy to pronounce.

Many have heard the phrase...

'By Tre, Ros, Pol, Lan, Car and Pen,
Ye shall know the most of Cornishmen'

So I'm looking for a new name...here's the hitch. In AUGUST ROCK the house is Trevenen and PENDEROWN is the title and the name of the house...so that leaves me with Ros, Pol, Lan or Car...

When my mother-in-law passed away I was lucky enough to inherit her books on Cornwall and have spent many a happy hour or ten stuck in the pages and I'm back there again. The one that is missing from the rhyme above is Bos (or bot or bo which means house and in view of the name of book maybe this is where I should head...however I was thinking of Bosworgy (home above the water) for the cottage in the book brewing ENEMY.

Bosnowyth (new house)
Bosventinew (home at the head of the springs)
Boswarthan (shelter)

Now their are other beginnings that mean house... Ti, Ty, Chy....
Chyfenton (house by a spring)
Chy-an-gwel (house by a field)

I could go on...the name of the house is important because it is a character in the story and like naming my heroine or any other character is has to have meaning and resonance not just to me but to my reader.

Do you have a favourite house from a book? What was its name? Have you had to name a house? I haven't found the meaning for Manderley yet...and then there's Nancherrow in the Rosamund Pilcher books...

Happy Mothers' Day to those in the US, Canada and Australia....

Come back on Thursday to see what Biddy is up...

Inhibitions

Over on another blog we’ve recently been talking about feeling old, and how even when the outside is a bit weathered, on the inside we stay 25 (or whatever was the best age for us). I don’t like being judged by how old I am and really resent it when people expect you to behave in a certain way just because you’re not a teenager any more.

Of course I understand that there comes a point where you have to act responsibly, but does that mean you have to become really boring or stop having fun occasionally? Does it mean you’re not allowed to go wild, a little crazy or go with the flow? I had a weird experience last week which made me feel this is the case.

I went to a concert where the majority of the audience consisted of what would be called middle-aged people (not a term I’m fond of either – how do we know what’s going to be the middle of our lives?). Anyway, this was a rock concert, because the main attraction was Paul Rodgers, formerly of the bands Free and Bad Company. (If that doesn’t mean anything to you, then you’ll have to take my word for it, they were huge!) And when you go to a rock concert, you rock. Right? Not this time.

Here, the audience sat very nicely in their allotted seats and occasionally nodded their heads. They listened politely to the warm-up band (who happened to be Joe Elliott, lead singer of Def Leppard, and his new pet project the Down’n’Outz – trust me, those guys can rock!) and a few people clapped along to the last couple of songs. Then there was an intermission while we waited for Mr Rodgers and there were vendors selling ice cream from little trays in the aisles the way they do in theatres! I was astonished. I mean, who goes to a rock concert and eats ice cream? Never happened to me before. Beer, hot dogs, dodgy hamburgers and crisps maybe, but ice cream?

Maybe I’ve been going to the wrong kind though. The last few concerts I’ve been to were in the company of my teenage daughter, since I happen to like the kind of music she listens to as well. Those were attended by a much younger audience who didn’t sit down at all, but “moshed” and threw beer around while dancing in wild circles, crowd surfing and generally going mad. That may be a bit extreme, but they were showing their enthusiasm for the music. They were doing something!

Mr Rodgers eventually got his audience to stand up and sing a bit, even clap along to the beat, and a few daring souls tried a spot of head-banging, but they were in the minority. It was all so staid I wanted to scream. The beat had me tapping my foot and wriggling in my seat. I had to force myself to stay sitting down. I wanted to dance, punch the air with my fist, sing along tunelessly (that’s one of the great things about loud concerts, isn’t it, no one can hear how bad your singing is). But I didn’t dare, because no one else was.

It got me wondering – at what age do we get that inhibited? And do we, as authors, ever get to that point with our writing? Will there come a day when I think “nope, can’t write that, it’s too exuberant for someone my age”. I hope not! When I write, I let my imagination have free rein, the way I wanted to do with my tapping feet at the concert. If I want to be 25 again (via my heroine of course), I am and I would be annoyed if someone told me I couldn’t do it because on the outside I’m older than that.

How many of us have the courage to be who we really want to be on the outside? How many of us dare to let go of our inhibitions and act contrary to everyone else if we feel the occasion merits it?

Maybe next time I will, just to see what happens. What would you have done?

Favourite Things

I don't know if Julie knows that I sometimes have a hard time thinking up something to blog about (probably because I'm usually posting on a Sunday, when I'm all wound-down and empty-brained) or if she just thinks of me whenever she makes a cake. Which is by no means unreasonable.

Either way, she's quite right, I do have a Fine Appreciation of Cake. It's been dented in recent years by my wheat-free status, but that's okay - it's just reinforced my pavlova obsession.

And believe it or not, thinking about cake did actually bring me to a topic for this blog about characters and making them real.

Via cake stands and aprons.

Yes, cake stands and aprons. I have, at the most recent count, seven cake stands and nine aprons. I like them. I like to look at them, and I like to use them. They are pretty, practical and two of my very favourite things.

So, what are my heroines' favourite things? Those things that make them double-take on the high street, go ooooooh at a picture in a magazine, and beg on their birthday?

Thinking about heroines in my published and unpublished manuscripts, I mostly drew a blank. Countryside Ranger Jenny has a thing for trees, it's true, but it's subtle, and not of the common or garden birthday-present variety. Mari, growing up as sole carer for her ailing father, hasn't had much opportunity to even KNOW what she likes, a fact she acknowledges herself. Shiftless thief Lisa's two favourite things are pretty much her only possessions - her boat and an item of her mother's jewelry. And she abandons them both the instant she realises owning the boat has made her an unwilling accessory to murder. Another heroine has everything money can buy, but nobody's ever asked her what she actually wants. Another has been busy being a Mum since she was sixteen, and is only ten years later starting to think about what she wants out of life - even her three children have their favourite things, but she doesn't.

Now, I THINK this is because I tend to write heroines who are out of their depth and suffering, for whom favourite things are just not important. I HOPE this isn't because I write shallow characters, because I actually think little details like cake stands and aprons give a character depth. Especially when the character who covets them also has, say, chainsaw certification and dirt under their fingernails.

But I'll be thinking about this again when I'm editing the current WIP.

How about your (and your characters') favourite things? What springs to mind?

(And for the curious, the cake stand pictured is one I received from my lovely in-laws for my birthday last month, and the apron is a red version of the green one Biddy (who has impeccable taste) gave me some years back. Mmmmmm.....)

Pop back on Thursday for Christina's next post!

Cakes and Novels

I've been making cakes all week for the street party we're having in our neighbourhood for the royal wedding tomorrow. I've also been working on my next book; I'm about 20,000 words in. Baking is a nice break from writing; it's satisfying and creative and of course you have a cake at the end of it. So I've been thinking about the ways that the two activities are similar, and different.

Why Baking A Cake Is Like Writing A Novel

• It's quite a precise process. You have to concentrate. If you mess up or forget an ingredient or make an unwise substitution, the whole thing can turn out to be a sticky horrible mess, or possibly make someone vomit.

• It's creative. After you've finished and it comes out well, you feel an enormous sense of pride.

• A cake and a novel aren't quite complete until someone else enjoys them.

• At some point, magic happens. A wet, shapeless batter rises, takes form, and becomes something wonderful.

• You should always wait for a cake and a novel to cool down before you ice/revise them.

• While you're baking or writing, your house will most likely be a complete mess.

• They both require lots of butter. What? You say you don't need butter to write a novel? Have I been doing it wrong all these years? I mean, no, of course not. You don't need butter to write a novel. How silly of me. *hides butter under desk*

Why Baking A Cake Is Not Like Writing A Novel

• If you muck up your novel, you can go back and fix it afterwards. With cakes, you're sort of stuck with the horrible sticky mess, unless you're good at emergency buttercream fixes.

• Baking a cake, you have to follow a recipe, or at least a basic process, quite strictly because there's a science to it. You can improvise, but if you leave out the baking powder, you're in trouble. With writing a novel, every once in a while, you can break the rules.

• You can bake a cake with a hangover.

• You can let your children help you bake a cake, whereas if you let them help you write your novel, it will consist entirely of explosions, aliens and princesses in tiaras.

• A cake tastes good at almost every stage of its process. But you wouldn't want to lick the bowl of the first draft of my novels. They are really, really crap before they're finished.

• Novels have a lot fewer calories than cakes. In theory. I've never eaten a novel, so I'm not 100% sure (though I do seem to consume a lot of chocolate while I'm writing one). But cakes and novels are both very nice with a cup of tea.

Any other ideas?

(Come back on Sunday to hear from Anna, who has A Fine Appreciation of Cakes.)

Damaged Heroes

On Friday I was chatting on twitter with Marg in Australia about one of my fictional men—Gareth in Named of the Dragon—for whom I've always had a "thing", and Marg agreed he was attractive. "Broody, damaged type," she said, and meant that in a good sense. Later on that night, in that serendipitous way that sometimes happens, I went to see the new film adaptation of Jane Eyre (starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, above) whose hero, Mr Rochester, could be the dictionary definition of the "broody, damaged type". And reader, I adored him.

Loved the film so much I went back for a second time today, to see it over. And with Rochester AND Gareth sitting brooding in my mind, now, I've been thinking about why I find some damaged heroes so attractive.

Notice I say "some", not "all", because with my apologies to Brontë-lovers everywhere, I have to tell you Heathcliff's not my type. I mean, there's damaged, and there's Damaged, and some brooders have gone so far to the dark side that the only thing to do, in my opinion, when you meet them is to run.

No, damaged heroes only work for me if they are of a certain type, like Rochester, or Mary Stewart's Raoul in Nine Coaches Waiting, or the Captain in The Sound of Music, men who aren't psychotic but are cut off in their way from life, grown cynical and disillusioned. Men who have the strength of mind and character to function well, to hold their own, but who inside are heartbreakingly lonely.

It all goes back for me, I think, to my love of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale in childhood, with the kind and generous beast who needs the girl to save him. Only her love, freely given, can restore him to his true self.

In a way, that's true of all my favourite damaged heroes, only in the stories that I love the best the woman's not the rescuer so much as she's a catalyst, an independent equal who brings meaning back into the hero's life and gives him someone else besides himself to care about, and want to be a better man for.

Rochester, in the book, calls himself "Heart-weary and soul-withered", and says of being around someone like Jane that "such society revives, regenerates; you feel better days come back—higher wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy..."

And I find it rather interesting that in each story—Beauty and the Beast, Jane Eyre, The Sound of Music, and Nine Coaches Waiting—the heroine not only leaves, but runs away...returning later of her own free will to give the hero what he needs to become truly whole again: her love.

Of course, in my own damaged hero book, the heroine stayed put after she'd left until the hero came to her, but that's just me. And if I ever meet a real-life Heathcliff I'll be getting that restraining order...

What are your thoughts on the damaged hero?

(Don't forget to come back Thursday, to read Julie's next post)

KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid

via YAY! Everyday website

One of the cardinal rules of writing is of course KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid. I have a key scene in a library in my book. It is pivotal. The heroine meets the baddy for the first time and also starts discover strange powers and the power of the Stone. So pretty much THE SCENE!

Personally I thought it was a brilliant bit of writing. Some incredibly descriptive bits that are my darlings of the whole book (kill them, you say? Never!) Keeping this in mind I sent draft 2 of the book to Julie Cohen to read. Of course she was going to tell me it was the most amazing piece of fiction she had ever read and how I should send it out to agents ASAP! I am also delusional and given to grand dreams if you didn’t already know. She called me back once she’s read it and I came to earth with a bump. She gave fabulous feedback all of which I agreed with one exception. I had too much going on in the library scene and I should probably simplify it.

Ha! Simplify it? Hadn’t she read it? Didn’t she realise the blazing importance of the scene? Everything in there HAD TO BE THERE! I conceded that I could clarify it better and deepen the conflict. But simplify! Was she CRAZY? I did a quick re-write and sent it back to her, settling back with a smug grin waiting for her to come to her senses. It came winging back saying that it was still too complicated and she really wasn’t sure what was going on.

The woman was OBVIOUSLY STUPID! I mean really… it was all there in black and white! Was she BLIND? I obviously replied in softer terms than that and she should realise a, b and c because it was all there in the scene.. Well that isn’t what came across she replied. Honestly… some people.

Determined to prove her wrong I threw myself into Draft 3 of the book and soon stumbled into the library scene again. I rolled up my sleeves. I’d show her!

At the end of that weekend I was floundering. The deeper I dug the emotion the more complicated the scene became. I had bodies being taken over supernaturally, I had people being mind controlled… all by different entities. But still EVERYTHING had to be in that scene, I knew best because it was MY story and I could make it work.

The next weekend I went back to the same scene, digging deeper and realising how much better my writing was becoming from having to do this. Maybe Julie could have had some point about this whole revising thing but I wasn’t simplifying. Have I mentioned I can be a tad stubborn?

I finished the scene but it left me with a bitter aftertaste… I knew it wasn’t quite right. So I left it and my book for about a month and when I picked it up again I decided I wouldn’t worry about that scene just yet. However like a scab I couldn’t help picking at it and I rewrote it again.

By this time the scene was about three times the length of the original scene and me and the heroine were heartily sick of it. I had left her pinned to the floor of the library by a supernatural force for much longer that she expected and it was making her cranky. But I wasn’t going to be beaten! And about two weeks ago I got my heroine out of the library. YES! In your face, Julie Cohen, the scene was done! To celebrate I took myself off to the cinema to see ‘Source Code’. Halfway through the movie I had this feeling of dread trickle down my spine. Good storytelling needs clarity in each scene, a need to keep it simple (Source Code does this well, I think).

And as I watched Jake Gyllenhall blown up for the fourth time I realised Julie was bloody right. The scene WAS too complicated. I needed to have either a body snatcher or a mind controller but not both in the same scene.

I dragged myself back home and opened the book again. My heroine screaming in my head to not make her go into the library! Not again! I made notes of what needed to be cut and slowly moved on with the rest of the book. The scene is still there though, fat and bloated and bloody complicated all because I failed to follow Julie’s advice:

KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Bugger.