As you may gather from the category this post has been allocated, a large proportion of my time is currently occupied attempting to write a novel. It is my first attempt at a colossal piece of work. Short stories are normally my forte and hopefully one day, I’ll be lucky enough to gather them altogether and publish them as part of a book. Until then, my focus is fully on finishing this novel.
I’m learning all the time. It’s a complex process that shouldn’t be undertaken lightly. I realised this early on in the project and have made my fair share of mistakes.
When I started the project, I wanted to go at it from a certain angle. Rock bands tend to do this sort of thing and it has turned into a bit of cliche now. After they make their initial breakthrough album and they’re lauded for their originality and freshness, the second and third albums never quite live up to critics expectations. By the time the forth album is released the lead singer normally trots out the same guff from the ‘Rockers that have lost their way’ handbook.’For this album, we decided to go back to our roots…’, in the vain attempt to allay any fears that they might be perceived as too commercial, too mainstream and keep the hardcore fan base happy.
So they make the next album with an assortment of cobbled together instruments or whatever they can get their hands on and start to make the next album using coconut shells, spoons and pubic hair for strings. All in the hope that their rustic instruments might transport them back to the so called glory days. For the band, the whole point of this exercise is to get back to basics, it worked in the past so why can’t it happen again and good luck to them.
I decided to try and buck that trend. Why wait to get published a few times, then realise after my third or fourth book that I needed to go back to my roots, back to basics? If I do it now, hopefully I won’t fall into the trap that many rock bands do and it will save the embarrassment of a reviewer questioning the merits of my third book and suggesting that I should revert to my initial winning formula. I don’t want to be a pretentious, adored author who went too hippy for the readers of the day.
So after I went shopping for coconut shells, spoons and fished out a handful of pubic hair from the bath plug hole, I was ready to write my masterpiece.
On reflection, my metaphor is not totally accurate. In fact, no exotic food, cutlery or discarded hair have been used during my initial effort to construct this novel. However, the humble pen and paper combination has. Initially, it seemed like a good idea, carrying a laptop and using it efficiently wasn’t always possible, but it was simple enough to whip out a crisp piece of paper and a pen and jot down my moments of inspiration.
Before I knew it, I’d completed the first few chapters and felt that handwriting my novel was really helping my creativity. I got deeper and deeper into the story, but then hit a massive road block. I had an idea that absolutely needed to get out of my head and and on to paper. I was a victim of my organised mind, I couldn’t face putting it down on any old bit of paper, through fear of losing it. I wanted to weave it into the story constructed so far. I didn’t want an addendum.
This particular idea needed to fit in the first few chapters, which meant major revisions to some of the work I’d slaved over for a few weeks, but I had to integrate it somehow. The only way I could make it work would be to bring my old pal, technology, to the party and start to type up the work I had already handwritten. Although I found repeating the work a mind-numbing exercise, it allowed me to craft and mould those early chapters whilst incorporating the new idea. After a few weeks of changing tact and letting technology take the strain, the story had taken shape and had not made me any less creative as the ideas were still flowing at a great pace. My advice would be to make use of auto-tune, synthesizers and any other widgets that will make your work sound great, its working for me.