Chapped

Oh the joy of Chapter Mapping - the exact point where I usually get bored, frustrated with the monotony of it, feeling that I am once again in school, trying to coax my learning resistant brain into working.

This is where the work really begins, and exactly why I usually jump ship. It. Takes. Ages.

Only this time, as I went along, re-reading each chapter, stripping it to the bare bones, I wasn't resisting. I was still scared, intimidated and confused, but alongside the usual emotions, strangely dedicated, geeking out on the process. Predictably, my notes got shorter, comments less useful, and fields were skipped as I worked through, but I had the gist. And the gist is what I needed.

I should point out, that at this stage, I'm using the word 'chapter' very loosely, because the first draft is not written with clear breaks. I decide to chop it up where the location changes, or something significant peters off.

I've included an example below. I abbreviate all my characters to their first initial for ease:

Chapter:	14
Tense/Narration:	H-First
Characters:	C
Summary:	H thinks about the big, cruel fight with P. C is rehearsing her lines with H. Relationship improves, C seems to warm to H. Learn that P had talent/wasted potential.
Main plot/action:	Hinting towards the ugliness of the last P and H meet.
Sub plots:	C and H relationship.
Character notes:	H as eager to win C over still. H showing regret for last words spoken to P.
Thoughts:	P set at 30 and working in a coffee shop. P as a talented artists - not used. Probably delete this one or move - ends really cliche. Would be funny if this relationship (H&C) improved as H&D disintegrated. Further argument to why should be third person, as H monologue goes against novel end.

Some of these maps are chunky, some are sparse, some feature big question marks in the field 'Main plot/action', making it glaringly obvious that the scene is fluff. Many contain pretty useless, vague remarks, which suggest either that the chapter is bad, or I'm not focused enough and it needs a re-visit.

I also have diary entries running through the novel, and decide to mark them as separate chapters for the time being.

Once completed, I took my time reading over it, absorbing what I'd flagged, particularly what I'd included in the 'Thoughts' field.

The biggest splinter was the tense. The first draft was in first person, but my ending would only work in 3rd person. The ending is a twist, a reveal (hopefully), involving the protagonist, so I can't really have her feigning no knowledge of the secret throughout the novel. A more experienced or daring writer might enjoy this challenge, but I wanted her to have a genuine, raw voice and didn't see a way around it.

The prospect of having to re-write every chapter from a new perspective was daunting enough, but it wasn't even that straight forward. I had terrible chapters, pointless chapters, several exploring a subplot that I knew I would drop, bizarre jumps in time, no sense of character, and frequent varieties of the conclusions, 'Nothing happens here', and 'Doesn't make sense.'

This sees me into January 2016.

The End

'This is as far as I usually get.'

That thought held me in December 2015. Aside from a few re-reads, half-hearted attempts at chapter mapping and a grammar edit, nothing more was usually achieved from this point.

Incomplete novels tended to be printed and stuffed in a folder, to gather dust on a high shelf with the others, and remind me that editing just wasn't my thing.

I'd managed to get a few short-stories and poems published - because their lengths seemed manageable. But the effort involved in tackling a novel, well, it quickly becomes a slippery, non-sensical thing that overwhelms. I never knew where to start with a task of that size. And, crucially (I now realise) I never had a clue how any of them ended.

It's definitely the right start for me - free writing for a month on a loose idea, and fixing it up later, but the 50,000 word target never saw me to the finish line, and was mostly just middle bits - entertaining possibilities lacking direction or structure.

Three weeks into NaNo 15, I was sat in a pub with my Husband, discussing TAWT (My novel - There Are Worse Things), realising that I was especially animated about it all. He politely listened whilst I tried to explain the gist, contradicting myself, rewinding, and descending into madness. I then scared him with my eureka moment, suddenly aware, I know how this ends.

It felt like coming home. Some restless part of me sighed and slept.

I couldn't wait to get back to my laptop and write my way to it.

This meant that when I looked upon my malnourished book with the usual fear, I at least had a spotlight on the last scene; I knew where my protagonist ended up, and why, and how that would look. I just needed to figure out how they arrived there. I would need to get to know my shallow, copy cat characters to the point where I carried them around with me in my head. I would need to pull out all the clumsy stitches and start over. But finally, I had a foggy destination.

I also realised in February 16, that I wanted to achieve this in a year. By February 17, I will have several copies of my book professionally bound and distributed to those I can rely on to gently point out the cracks, before I prepare to send to publishers.

My twelve month journey kicked off with some intensive Chapter Mapping.

The Magic Kindle

I love the smell of paper and the weight of a book in my hand.

I love judging a book by its cover.

When I walk into a book shop or a library, my head goes quiet. I don't want to talk to anyone, or think about anything. There's just a sense that I am home, stunned, and in complete awe.

Before I had friends, I had books.

When those friendships imploded, or weren't quite enough, I had books.

And before I knew that I wanted to write them myself, I inhaled them.

To my mother's horror (and she still mentions it) I once, upon being told that I needed to look up from the page and spend more time with everyone, protested, 'But books are more important than family.'

Perhaps not the healthiest of perspectives, but luckily, or unluckily I grew up, and life got in the way. Jobs, relationships, decisions, the outside world, they all pushed books into a smaller, less prevalent place.

I could no longer have five or six on the go in different rooms of the house, to be picked up when I entered, then forgotten until I found myself back there. I didn't have the time, but even worse, I didn't have the brain capacity. I can no longer hold so many stories in my head. It's hard enough to keep up with the intricacies of one.

The main thing I was convinced I would never relinquish was the physical books themselves, adamant there wasn't an eReader out there which could tempt me away from them - spine to spine, colourful and present on my shelves.

But I caved, for the most part. Why? Well, sure it is much more convenient than lugging eight thick books to Thailand with you, but if I'm honest, I was bought. Oh the money you save. You might think that as an aspiring writer, my priority would be to give more money to the author, to support them, to pay the full whack for what it took many of them five years or more to generate.

You'd be wrong.

In this case, the greedy reader and bargain hunter in me have teamed up and won. I still allow myself the occasionally splurge. And when we move in a few weeks, the majority of our boxes will contain books. But the future looks Kindle.

What I am proud of, in contrast, is the discovery that I can upload my own writing, as if it were as published and successful as the others it now sits alongside. It feels like a cheat, like a fast track. When I read it, the editing part of me sits back, assuming it's not needed, not relevant, leaving only the reader to enjoy (or not in parts) the journey.

This is how I found myself giddy with the possibility of my novel. I cannot recommend this tactic enough. After reading it once (bearing in mind that at this point it's a stunted, underdeveloped little thing - 50,000 words), I re-read it and made one list (examples below):

Immediate Thoughts
-Harriet’s working life makes no sense - timeline.
-No one has any friends - weird.
-Charlotte is a cliche.
-Too much ‘in head’ writing.

In total, I recorded 18 significant issues with the first draft. And I knew that this was a kind sum, and that dozens more would reveal themselves during the substantial re-writing. I knew that I hadn't even begun to scratch the surface of plot, and structure, and the quality of the chosen words. But they were the starting point I needed, in December 2015.

Nano and the lull

Admittedly, me trying to get words on a page last week was just about as far away from Kerouac's feverish output as you can get. But I did force myself to sit down on occasion and do it anyway.

There's always something salvageable, even if it's only a string of three words from an hour. Even if it's a tangent, which with enough attention, can spread out into a subplot.

I'm convinced that after the Public Edit  tomorrow, and my writing group on Wednesday, I'll be back in the creative headspace. It's often just a top up of writing chatter that I need to set me back on track.

Whilst I am very much wading through the sludge, I want to do a check in of progress so far, going back to November 15.

Every November for the past six years, I have taken part in NaNoWriMo, a national challenge to write 50,000 words (a very short book) in a month. When I tell people I've completed this in five out of the six years, they typically say, 'Great, what did you win?!' And I reply, 'Nothing, well, five books I guess.' They are very confused indeed.

Without fail, I despise Week 1, fall enthusiastically behind in Weeks 2, and 3, turn into an over-caffeinated, sleep deprived, frightening thing in Week 4, and emerge very dazed, the light hurting my eyes, yet victorious on day 30.

The elation does not last long. At first, I greedily dine out on replying to the question, 'What have you been up to?' with 'I finished a novel in a month.' I then quickly add that it's messy, and confused, and sort of, well awful, and manage to talk myself out of any real hope for it.

My 2014 book was left to stew for a few weeks, then uploaded to my Kindle. An approach I can't recommend enough, if, like me, you can trick yourself into seeing it as any other book, downloadable from Amazon. It affords me a welcome distance, and I become an almost independent reader. Unfortunately, this did allow me to see that despite the odd nice line, my efforts to construct a dystopian world had fallen a little flat, and the effort it would take to inflate it, seemed too daunting.

I abandoned it to the slush pile, and, true to form, experienced another December - October of pushing the writer part of me into a dark corner and trying not to think about it.

November 15 - My sixth Nano. The only difference with this year when compared to the others, was that I had even less of an idea of what I wanted to write about. Up until a few days before, my entire novel was to revolve around the line, 'My mother decided to die in my favourite place.' This didn't end up launching my book, or even featuring. In fact, no mothers were harmed during the writing of this novel.

It's blurry, but a story suggested itself to me, in a genre I'd never attempted - murder mystery. I had nothing to lose - true of every attempt. I spent four weeks making it up, hating it, loving it, hissing at my shallow characters, tangling myself up in an unruly, nonsensical plot, changing names which began to grate and celebrating epiphanies.

This time, reading it back on my Kindle, I was pleasantly surprised. Was it still bad? Of course it was. You really have to lower your expectations of yourself during speed writing. The difference is that for a change, I wanted to fix it, and I felt it would be worth the significant time required to shine it up.

And so, it began.

Excuses

I have to fess up and admit that I've achieved very little in the past week.

Two of my flaws which regularly intervene with me getting words on the page:

1. Quickly breaking what appeared to be a solid habit.
2. Deciding that I'm way too tired to produce anything of value.

Granted, as far of my excuses go, prepping for moving house and city is pretty high up there. But you'll be amazed at how good I am at convincing myself that spending two hours searching for a vintage writing desk in Chester, is a better use of my time than cracking on with the novel.

Even though I know that hanging around talking with other writers spurs my creativity, I shunned it last week in favour of box sets and comfort food. The effort of tapping away at keys and asking my imagination to produce a world, just seemed like way too much.

Of course I tell myself things to make it fine:

1. Your life is too mentally overwhelming right now for writing.
2.You'll write so much in Chester, that this break doesn't matter.

Sometimes writing is just like a job; you don't want to show up.

In some ways, that's encouraging, because I'm acknowledging that it can be hard work, that it can't always be an easy rush of words, inner smugness and tea. In other ways treating it like a job helps me let myself off the hook, dishing out an endless amount of indulgent sick days and clock watching.

Every two weeks I have a full week day off to focus on my writing. The majority of these days over the past few years have been eaten up with lay ins, reading, guitar practice, seeing friends, and travelling to see my family. All worthwhile in their own way, but certainly not the intention of my once purposeful salary sacrifice.

2016 saw me start to actually use these days; rising early, setting out plans, letting loose with a red pen. But once again I'm watching the poor little defenceless things disappear through March on moving house and packing boxes.

That's inevitable. What I know I have to do, is what many other writers do out there, make room for it alongside the 9-5, push it into the weekend, persuade my tired brain to put the time in.

And so, I'm slowly ramping back up, squeezing in the odd half hour before work, and picking up my laptop instead of the remote.

I'm working my way through 'A Writer's Book of Days,' one of the truly useful guides out there. The first quarter is heavy on insisting that you plan time to write, just as you would plan dinner with a friend, or a dentist check up - book it and honour it.

I guess (unless you're very lucky) no one's going to have a go at you for not writing. The only penalty is that deep rooted feeling of failure, knowing that you can do better.

It's a choice then, only your choice - when are you going to care enough to shut up and just get on with it?