Back again

Well, I’m back to where I was at the end of January before I had a look at the structure of the w-i-p. That is, about 60% of the way through. It has been an interesting journey and is beginning to pick up speed. I’ve even figured out the detail of a very vague section up ahead, a bit like hurtling along at 200mph and seeing the dense fog ahead of you begin to lift.

Of course, this is just the ‘first’ draft. I put that in inverted commas because the first draft committed to paper/machine only gets there by a weird process in the strange space that is the inside of my head. I have walked through a scene with the actors until I can see it from all directions. In the process, I have knocked a lot of the really rough edges off, leaving it ready for detailed editing.

I used to look at editing as a necessary chore. I suspect that stems from the amount of non-fiction I’ve produced. While editing is necessary to achieve clarity, it is also necessary to remove all ambiguity and layering. These are the very things that, if used properly, make a piece of fiction interesting – to read and to write. I am really looking forward to getting my teeth into this.

At the moment the text is both text and a series of notes to myself. In trying to conjure up an atmosphere for example, I will pile on the adjectives in the first draft. They are there to guide me. When I come back, the challenge is to find a word or phrase that will encapsulate the section of thesaurus I have thrown at the canvas. The trick also is to keep all the links to other bits of text that will work on the reader at a subconscious level so that one scene will echo another through mood, scent, movement or whatever other device is appropriate.

I’m currently reading a master at this sort of thing - John Sladek. I’ll post a piece over on grumbooks when I’ve finished, but I don’t think I’ve ever come across such a text that makes such enormous leaps. It’s wonderful. What seems a throwaway line in one chapter emerges a few chapters down the line as significant. Things going on in the background suddenly flower elsewhere. And all told in a fresh and engaging style. Brilliant. Inspirational.

And the real beauty is that my own work has developed into a four book cycle. Hard as individual words and sentences sometimes are, I am still so excited with the project and so much looking forward to the other three books.