And so it's November...

Where on earth did the rest of October go?

Life has been busy here for the still-re-acclimatising Potty family, as I'm sure it is for everybody.  And also, as I'm sure is the case for everybody, most of what's been happening is not suitable blog-fodder; either too boring to share (do you really want to know what I thought of Netflix's 'The Crown?  I thought not - but fabulous, just in case in you do), or too personal to put out there.  Consequently, I'm taking the easy way out and will use this post as an opportunity to share another piece of writing I've done; the prologue to a novel I finished (in as much as you can ever finish writing an unpublished book) in the summer.

It's odd, finishing one novel and starting another, as I have done over the last few weeks.  I find it hard to imagine sharing the latter - it's still too fresh in my mind, I'm too protective about it - but god, I am SO over the former. After so long spent working on it I've lost all objectivity and can only see it's faults;  I can easily imagine sticking it in the back of a metaphorical desk drawer and never looking at it again.  That seems a bit of a waste though, so instead I'm putting it up here - at least then some of it will have seen the light of day at some point!

I hope you enjoy it - and no, this excerpt is not too long. At least, I don't think so... (see? No objectivity...)


Finding Katie (working title)

Prologue: October 1993

I strip down to my swimsuit on the nearly empty beach and look out at the sea, a flat grey in the early morning light.

And I know already that I’m not going to be able to do it.

When I woke alone in the quiet darkness of the caravan an hour ago, my mind was made up; this was the only way out.  As I folded my nightclothes and left them in a neat pile on the bed, I was resolute; this was the only way out.  Whilst I made my way through the dunes, purposefully avoiding any other early risers in case they gave me a smile I wouldn’t be able to return, I was still certain; this was the only way out.

Now though, as I stand shivering in the chilly autumn morning, I come to my senses.  This is a crazy plan.  I can’t just walk into the water and… go.  No matter what I’ve found out, I can’t finish it like this; it will devastate Mum and Dad. 

And my brother.  Oh god, my little brother...  It will destroy him.

The memories come rushing back, one after another, and I think back to when he was tiny, Mum was ill, and it was my job to look after him.  I remember his gummy smiles and warm compact little body, and how used to clamp his arms around my neck and cover my cheek with hot sticky kisses as I hoisted him out of his cot in the mornings. 

I think about him toddling across the living room floor pretending to be a car.  I think about the time I took my eleven year old eyes off him for one minute to read my latest copy of Smash Hits and he walked into the door, cutting his head open on the lock.  I think of how he hardly cried as I held his hand in the back of the car on the way to hospital to get the wound stitched up.  You can still see the faint scar in his hairline now, even though he’s fifteen.

And I realise again that I can’t do it. 

I can still call it off – one phone call, and I can still call it off.  And then, I can just head back home and… 

Oh god; home. 

Shivering slightly in the cool morning air, I pick my way gingerly across the sharp stones of the pebbled beach, and force myself to step into the water.  It’s freezing, and I give a sharp intake of breath as goose-bumps run like an electric shock up my legs but I ignore them; this is no time to be feeble. 

The cold laps around my ankles, then my knees, and I keep right on going until it’s at waist-height.  Then I take a deep breath, plunge in – fuck, it’s like ice – and start swimming, away from the shore.

Because it’s time to stop pretending; there is no other way out.

Well, would you look at that?

It's been a month since I last posted.  A month. How did that happen?  Actually, scratch that question; I suspect that all I need to say is 'Easter Holidays' and anyone who has, has had, or ever plans to have, children attending school will probably understand.

The little darlings are back in class today though, so life has resumed it's normal rhythm.  Which is to say, I have been kicked out of the office because Husband is 'working from home' this morning and so I've been banished to the dining room table.  Not, in itself, that much of a hardship since it's closer to the tea and biscuits.  And the chocolate.  And the left-over Dutch Easter bread.  And - oh, jesus, I have to stop this right now.

*casts desperately about for a change of subject*

You might have noticed that productivity has fallen off a cliff as far as this blog is concerned.  That's because I have been 'finishing' The Great Work, aka My Novel.

*pause whilst tumbleweed rolls through the streets of 'Oh, Who Cares?'*

(Apologies for the gratuitous use of caps in the last couple of lines; they are of course totally unmerited, but, you know, it's My Blog.  So...)

An explanation now for the use of apostrophes around the word 'finishing'.  (A few of lines above  this - come on, keep up...).   Anyone who has ever spent *mumbles incomprehensively* years attempting to write a novel will probably know how difficult it is to actually finish it.  Especially a first novel.  An un-comissioned, un-represented, probably un-wanted first novel...

But, you know, that's just detail.  The difficulty that I'm trying to communicate here is in the finishing.  Because every time you think you've completed your ms (short for 'manuscript' - get me with the writer talk), you spot another typo.  Or a novice mistake.  God, the novice mistakes...  For example, if you're writing an observational passage in which a man has an unspoken thought, is it necessary to write '... he thought to himself.'?  No.  Of course it isn't.  Because that would be foolish.  I mean, who else would he be thinking it to?

It is, therefore, worth bearing this in mind whilst editing your ms (cough) down to the requisite sub-100,000 words.  If you don't you will just have to go back through the damn thing again to take the offending phrase out, each and every time you've used it.   And during this exercise you will of course find a million other phrases that sound trite, unconvincing or just down-right unnecessary and which will also need to be removed from the narrative for the sake of your sanity and more importantly, to avoid sounding like a 12 year old.

So, when I thought I had finished the ms (feel free to substitute 'damn thing' for ms if that seems appropriate - it did to me), it turned out that actually, I hadn't; there was still a fair bit of weeding to go.  And whilst I was at it, it seemed like a good time to drop in the additional narrative from another character's point of view that not one but two people Whose Opinions I Should Have Taken More Seriously At The Time suggested almost a year ago.  Which of course required a fairly hefty rewrite of about about 30% of the book if I was going to keep it under the 100,000 word limit.

Anyhoo...

It's done now.  And just to make sure of that I've taken a couple of precautionary measures.

1.  I've started on the next one.  Well, when I say 'started' (again with the apostrophes), I mean I've drawn a few spidergrammes and written the first chapter - the one that I will no doubt edit out in time but which seems essential to the plot right now.

2.  I've submitted the first Great Work to a couple of competitions and a couple of agents.  Will anything come of that?  Who knows.  But nothing ventured, nothing gained, and at least the ruddy thing is finished.  (Well - until I open it back up and decide to start tinkering again...).

The suspense is killing me...

I've posted before about the fact that I'm writing a novel.  The 'Great Work', as I affectionately and optimistically call it, has been in progress for longer than I care to remember, but finally - FINALLY - I am nearing the end (of the first draft, you understand).

Unsurprisingly, when I mention to people that I'm writing a book, their immediate assumption is that it's chick-lit, or something like it.  Shoes, shopping, expat life, Woman in not so severe Crisis, that sort of thing.  However, it's rather different to that.

I am writing what I have been informed is a 'suspense genre' novel, with a protaganist who is a scruffy 30 year old man rather than a willowy 40-something brunette based loosely on myself, or Juliette Binoche.  (Because, you know, in a certain light...)  And rather than doing the sensible thing and putting a plan on paper before I started, I have allowed the story to grow organically.  The characters have taken shape almost by themselves, rather than sticking to any pre-planned format that I created.

It's been an interesting process, not least because I didn't know at the beginning how the story was going to end.  There's just one problem.

I am within a few thousand words of finishing the first draft - and I still don't know how it's going to end.

Like I said, the suspense is killing me...