I doubt that wise man ever tried writing, moreover a work of fiction.
So here goes this writers evolving and guaranteed not to be right first time, daily routine.
I get up, make a cup of tea and read emails, check-up on a few bits and pieces for about twenty minutes.
I'll open up Scrivener, find the section I finished up the previous day or if applicable the bit that feeds what I'm writing next. I'll read the section, fiddle a little and get going. It's a combination that really helps me to get into the headspace.
I start writing two lines below where I left off the day before, even if I'm starting a new chapter, because lets face it, who likes starting writing on a blank page.
When I've built up a few paragraphs or am ready for my second cup of tea, I'll split the new text into a new chapter. I'll keep writing and drink lots more tea.
Sometimes I'll reach a stage like I did today, where I'll realise the conversation I have in chapter fourteen, that takes place in a white house, needs to take place after chapter seven in a hospital.
For something like this I will stop right there and move the chapter and blend it into the required location. References to the white house become the hospital and conversation will reflect the new scenes need. I'll build a fresh chapter fourteen, hopefully paying off this extra work.
This of course is not productive if you're only focused on word count. I have tried lots of different approaches but I cannot continue writing if I realise the structure of the early story doesn't hold together at a high level. I'm not so worried about the line by line perfection of prose.
I have found it is unlikely I'll have more than a thousands words before I'll hit a point that will require lots of thinking, walking about and looking like I've entered a catatonic state. Invariably the background processes will throw out a solution sometime during the day.
At some point I'll sit down and start writing again. This will be a harder session to initiate but it will also be the more productive because everything has been busy brewing through the day. I'll still be in the zone from the earlier session.
I've sometimes written upwards of 3-4k during a day but tend to find the narrative becomes increasingly disjointed or bland and will require a disproportionate period of time editing or even re-writing to make it feel right the next day.
I tend to produce about a thousand words of good prose in a three hour morning session and about the same in a two hour afternoon or evening session. Which means I can churn out about 2k of decent fiction a day. This will by no means be the end product or close to it. It will represent about 70% of completion at a line by line level, as long as I've got my planning correct or don't later think of a better way to progress that section of the story. Or realise it needs to be dropped altogether.
Writing the first draft of the story represents about a quarter of the total work required to eventually make the story anywhere close to entertaining. For me at least.
As an example, here's the very first chapter of The Handyman as it currently stands. This is the first time I've written third person present tense. I have got better at it but this isn't quite there. What I learn about the needs of the characters and story will evolve this chapter during the writing and further in the editing. It will be crafted to give a greater sense of the moment, the desperation and fear and more technical detail on the weapons sounds etc. Then it'll be given to proof readers. Anyway:
It is early afternoon. A sunny day with powder blue skies, wisps of cloud chased by energetic breezes. There is a junction of roads and open grassland, cars parked on the gravel verge. Picnic tables and walkers in small groups. Horses roam free and graze.
Angela is sat at one of the tables, occasionally brushing loose hair from her eyes as she reads, sometimes looking up at Daniel and Molly, her daughter’s excited yelps and his deeper, joyful shouts. A kite skits over and between the breezes, a yellow trailing tail. She returns to her book, grateful for these happy days and this holiday.
The breezes carry the sound of a distant motorbike, the pitch of it’s small engine rises and falls as it climbs and descends the low rolling landscape. Molly in her excitement of holding the kite, lets go and it is carried away, the string and the handle bump across the gorse and grass and lift into the air. Daniel sets off after it and Molly shouts encouragement as it bucks and twists higher. Her voice fades as Daniel chases, knowing the mischievous plastic cannot stay up forever. A broad happy grin on his face. There is nowhere he’d rather be
The motorbike engine hitches, an almost silent break in the pitch, a bungled gear change. The momentary break in noise carries a singular sound on the same blustering eddies carrying the kite. A latch, a mechanism, a spring and Daniel is running. No longer chasing the kite, barely even recognisable as the happy man he was a moment before. His legs and arms piston, angled towards the road, between his daughter and wife and the approaching motorbike. His eyes are wide and there is nothing to see in his face but intent. Daniel runs fast, upwards of 25 mph over short distances, in the right shoes, a flat surface. Can run faster than a pushbike for longer than anyone would want to cycle. He bares down on the road, limbs and heart and lungs working to the same goal, towards the space he has calculated the bike will be the moment he makes the road. He can see it at his right periphery. The sort of small motorbike you see learners riding, jeans and a beige jacket, a red helmet. Daniel sucks in air, blows it out, takes in everything, Molly at this left periphery, 150 yards now, Angela a hundred more beyond her, now standing and watching, hand up to her mouth, dotted cars on gravel beyond the road, beyond Angela.
The red helmet has seen him arrowing in, thirty, twenty, ten yards, one arm directing the motorbike and the other up to rest on it. Aiming. Daniel weaves as mud and chipped stone kick into the air, spray his face, a tug on his arm and then his side that spins him around and off his feet, felled and rolling and back up and running. A wet stain above his hip that does nothing to slow him.
Now he is the wrong point of the triangle, the wrong side of the bike as it heads towards Angela and Molly. The sun glints off the cars parked on the gravel beyond the road and he runs harder. Angela has her back to the motorbike, running across the grass, dragging Molly behind. She knows what Daniel can do, she just has to stay alive long enough for him to do it.
The motorbike is on its side, front wheel spinning, the man in the helmet aims and fires, successive cracks carried across the landscape. The wrong gun for distance, the woman and her daughter more than a hundred yards and still running. The man from the motorbike runs too. He wasn’t expecting this, he’s wearing cheap shoes, a crash helmet. He quickly gains on the woman dragging a panicked child.
Daniel is moving faster, a jack-hammer punch to the base of the man’s spine, mid-stride and he has hold of the gun arm before he hits the ground, the arm twisted and the gun loosed with the body’s momentum as he kick through the arm at the joint, a muffled scream as the helmet hits the gorse and Daniel switches the weapon between hands and fires twice through the visor. Turns and immediately fires three times in the direction of two cars parked across the road. A BMW, a man is stood, a tall silhouette against the skyline, using the roof to aim, a long barrel. The windscreen etches cracks and gravel kicks but it cannot stop the heart breaking roar, a drifting cloud of cordite and Angela is no longer running. Molly stops bewildered, the warm hand pulling hers is gone, a billowing floral dress and sobbing tears and Daniel is closing in on the BMW. He knows he will not make it, fires hopefully, knows the gun too, its strengths and weaknesses, held straight in front as his legs carry him, the windscreen shatters, the dull clunk of the car’s bodywork. Another roar and now there is no Molly.
Daniel doesn’t stop, makes the road and a different kind of sound, a lower calibre, from the car and a punch high on his chest and he’s on his back looking up at the sky. The pop of gravel beneath tyres and a face looks down on him, inquisitive and dark, a gun poked through the open passenger window, a camcorder. Daniel only feels the impact as the bullet buries itself in the tarmac beneath him, the taste of exhaust as the engine is gunned. Soon it is only his ragged breathing he can hear, the taste of copper in his mouth, the echo of the heartbreaking roars. Then distant voices, cautious shouts. Eventually footsteps. He can hear Angela’s voice now, he is sure, coaching and soothing.< NaNoWriMo The Handyman Day 8 - NaNoWriMo The Handyman Day 12 >
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