The second in a series discussing the method behind the madness.
My weekday writing day is split into two halves. The first twelve hours span the moment I leave home at 07:30, to the moment I return at about 19:30. The morning commute into London takes one hour. The train I catch is an inter-city and usually has a buffet bar. I write with the netbook on the bar for the hour. This used to be a great time to write but more frequently now it isn't because more people know what I'm up-to. If the train isn't delayed into Paddington I'll walk the 2k into the office through Hyde Park. I'll be listening to Moby. His music plucks at my emotions, which transfers to the characters as I listen to them debate and react to different ideas and scenarios for the story. I call this process writing in my head. The point in this process I hear the character's voices, is the point I know I'm into the story.
I try not to write at lunchtime but if I'm hard into something then I probably will, or if I'm coming to the end of the book I will too. I do like to run lunchtimes around Hyde Park, which is an incredibly liberating process for this creative mind.
Of course I can often find myself frustrated at not being able to write during the day but will have moments that throw me into a scene or idea. Sometimes I'll be found stood in a corridor or waiting on a meeting, staring blankly into my imagination and writing in my head. Answering enquiring questions from colleagues with a 'just thinking through a problem.' Which may sound convincing as I'm paid to solve technical problems. As many colleagues have read the first book I suspect it isn't convincing any more.
On a good day I'll leave work at 17:30 and walk back to Paddington listening to Moby and writing in my head. As the trains out of Paddington are crowded to the point battery chickens travel in more comfort, I usually find myself a corner with a little shoulder space and read my Kindle. I love this reading time although I hate being a battery chicken for this hour.
If all goes well I'll be home for 19:30, listening to the Prid's (Mrs Potter) travails of the day while playing with the cat and cooking my dinner. By 21:00 the Prid will be winding down and the cat will be alternating between the two of us. By this time we're over fifteen hours into the day. I'm mentally exhausted and creativity seems like the last thing I want to do. My mind will do it's best to convince me anything but writing is the best course of action. The book isn't going to write itself though. So that there are minimal barriers to me sitting down and writing, my PC in the study is set-up so I can get a chapter on-screen in less than a minute. I'll start editing the chapter I'm currently writing and before I know it I'm drawn into this wonderful world and away we go. I've never been much of a sleeper, not consistently. If I have the wind in my sails I might write through to one, if there's a gale blowing in my mind I've been known to write through three. If I was a full time writer I know I'd write through the night, like I did when I was a full-time programmer. Usually I stop sometime about midnight. The cat is often my companion, usually on my lap or on the desk, sometimes on the keyboard if she's not had enough attention. If the creative spark goes out or there's nothing in the tank I'll not force the issue, I'll turn my attention to a blog.
I'm often asked: 'Where do you find the time to blog?' The reality is any post I write is the cumulative effort of thirty minutes, or an hour here and there. Sometimes over days or weeks. I'll have multiple posts on the go so when I drop out of creative, whatever's on my mind is what I work on. Blogging is important to me because not a lot of people are into what I'm into. Not at least people I spend any time with in any given day. Blogging allows me to chat away as if everyone is listening. Switching to blog mode is not difficult, it's not creative. I can be almost asleep and still be typing a blog. I collect my thoughts and express them in the fewest words possible. As such blogging is therapy.
Depending on what time I get to bed and the stage I'm in the book, the next morning's start will vary from five or six AM. If it's early in the book I'll wake up at six and lay in bed and daydream key markers in the story. If I'm on the long slope to the end I'll get up at five and write for two hours. This is usually editing and expanding what I wrote the day before. At seven all is synced and my focus becomes leaving for work at 7:30.
Occasionally nothing works like this at all. A good book will sometimes grab me like American Gods and The Hunger Games did recently. Sometimes I know where I need to get to in the story but can't think how. Or I've dreamed up a brilliant way to turn everything inside out and upside down, but for the life of me can't conjure a way to make it work. These moments are daunting because they're time consuming as I figure it all out, but they're also incredibly rewarding in knowing how it will play in the readers mind. I hope. Sometimes my brain is stuck on a blue screen and I'll crawl into bed to reboot.
Next in the series is Writing Method.
The first in the series was Interface
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| Walking across Hyde Park in March 2012 |
I try not to write at lunchtime but if I'm hard into something then I probably will, or if I'm coming to the end of the book I will too. I do like to run lunchtimes around Hyde Park, which is an incredibly liberating process for this creative mind.
Of course I can often find myself frustrated at not being able to write during the day but will have moments that throw me into a scene or idea. Sometimes I'll be found stood in a corridor or waiting on a meeting, staring blankly into my imagination and writing in my head. Answering enquiring questions from colleagues with a 'just thinking through a problem.' Which may sound convincing as I'm paid to solve technical problems. As many colleagues have read the first book I suspect it isn't convincing any more.
 |
| Not waiting to get off Waiting to leave Paddington. |
If all goes well I'll be home for 19:30, listening to the Prid's (Mrs Potter) travails of the day while playing with the cat and cooking my dinner. By 21:00 the Prid will be winding down and the cat will be alternating between the two of us. By this time we're over fifteen hours into the day. I'm mentally exhausted and creativity seems like the last thing I want to do. My mind will do it's best to convince me anything but writing is the best course of action. The book isn't going to write itself though. So that there are minimal barriers to me sitting down and writing, my PC in the study is set-up so I can get a chapter on-screen in less than a minute. I'll start editing the chapter I'm currently writing and before I know it I'm drawn into this wonderful world and away we go. I've never been much of a sleeper, not consistently. If I have the wind in my sails I might write through to one, if there's a gale blowing in my mind I've been known to write through three. If I was a full time writer I know I'd write through the night, like I did when I was a full-time programmer. Usually I stop sometime about midnight. The cat is often my companion, usually on my lap or on the desk, sometimes on the keyboard if she's not had enough attention. If the creative spark goes out or there's nothing in the tank I'll not force the issue, I'll turn my attention to a blog.
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| The worlds worst writing assistant. |
Depending on what time I get to bed and the stage I'm in the book, the next morning's start will vary from five or six AM. If it's early in the book I'll wake up at six and lay in bed and daydream key markers in the story. If I'm on the long slope to the end I'll get up at five and write for two hours. This is usually editing and expanding what I wrote the day before. At seven all is synced and my focus becomes leaving for work at 7:30.
 |
| This is where it's mostly at |
Next in the series is Writing Method.
The first in the series was Interface
2 comments:
You actually write thrillers and have a Winnie the Pooh mug on the desk. I'm mightily impressed with the second screen though. Is that the story outline to make logical progress and keep consistent?
Winnie the Pooh holds about half a litre of tea which makes it the mug of choice while writing. When I'm working on violence I make sure it's facing the window :) On the main screen is the copy of CI you sent me that Katie Green had worked her magic on. The photo was taken while I was going through (lamenting) the copy edit changes. The screen on the right contains my summary doco which breaks down the whole book into six distinct chunks I un-originally call parts. Each part has a line for each chapter with a summary of what happens in that chapter. Mostly I use the summary doco to keep a handle on what is going on around the chapter I'm working on, or for pacing while editing. For Chasing Innocence I also used it to chop and change chapter order for best effect towards the back-end of the story. Each line contains a URL to the actual chapter, so I work out of the summary doco. This is currently a LibreOffice doc but is soon going to become a Google Docs site so I can edit any time any where. All of which is probably more information than you were expecting. Always grateful for comments :)
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