In the Absence of Daydreams

I've been struggling to write recently. Not so much in finding time, or in knowing what I want to write. The struggle has been in the word to word creation of the imagery. I sit down and it feels like I'm writing in black and white. It takes a while for the mental picture to colour itself in. The trouble is, time is a premium. If your daily writing is split into two chunks of two hours, you're not going to be productive if it takes you an hour each time to get warmed up.

I've been deliberating this for a few weeks now. If I'm honest it's been like this for a while. It's not a lack of motivation. Chasing Innocence is now selling and my book is sitting on a lot of Kindles. As a writer knowing your work is being read is second only to hearing it was good. This is the thing. I know I'll need several good books to build long term success. Ideas certainly aren't the problem. So what is?

The good lady Prid offered her take on my dilemma: 'Your not into the characters like you were last time. You knew everything about them, you heard them talking, you knew their favourite colours.' The good lady can sometimes sound like a wise old Jedi. She's rarely wrong.

Sam Worthington aka Marcus
 Hangiman

It wasn't so much that I wasn't invested in the story or characters. What I have planned sends shivers down my spine. It's hugely exciting. What she said did get me thinking back to the 'last time'. It was four years ago that I started my last book. Of course writing about those characters now feels like writing about close friends, but at the beginning, I now remembered, I struggled. I had invested a huge amount of time visualising them. I had picked actors who I thought would play them in the movie. I montaged pictures of them and hung it on the wall. I'd daydreamed endlessly as I made the twenty-five minute walk across Hyde Park in the morning and back at night. I'd written a huge amount of dialogue for these characters as they talked to each other as I figured out who they were. Almost all of it was edited out later once I'd figured them in my mind.

Rie Rasmussen aka Angela Hangiman

This time around there aren't any pictures on my wall because, well, I'd got a little over confident. I'd forgotten just what it takes. The narrative of book two is first person, so it's almost all dialogue of a sort, so it's going to be hard work getting the voice right. Most of all though, all my time outside of writing is currently consumed by work or being a mostly obedient husband, or scheming on marketing Chasing Innocence. The reason it was taking me so long to get warmed up each time I tried to write is because I'd stopped daydreaming. The things you forget. I'd dreamed up the last third of Chasing Innocence as I walked back and forth across Hyde Park each day. Before that I'd daydreamed during the long drive along the M4 to Bristol every morning. Daydreaming was a vital element of my story creation.

It was a wonderful re-discovery. I now have pictures of Rie Rasmussen and Sam Worthington pinned to the cork-board on my study door. More importantly I trotted passed the entrance to the tube this morning and then passed the bus-stop as I headed towards Hyde Park.