When I put the pen down after correcting the last set of page proofs of my seventh novel Between a Mother and Her Child, I honestly believed it was the last act of my writing career. Worse, I knew it was me who had derailed it. The truth was, I had hated writing it.
I’m not necessarily the kind of author I sometimes read about who adores every minute of their writing process, and who cannot conceive of a day when they don’t write something. I have many days when I struggle to sit down in front of the laptop, and am often found engaging in mundane domestic tasks like cleaning out that kitchen drawer instead. And with my first five novels, a familiar pattern had emerged, so that I had come to expect a bit of a love/hate relationship with the process – a writing rollercoaster.
Ideas had never beenbrain. Luckily enough, the next idea would have stuck before I finished the previous book, so I had never suffered from the blank first page syndrome I understand afflicts some. I was always excited about starting a new book. I love getting to know my characters. I create whole profiles for them as they live in my head for a while, so that I know everything about them – from their dress style to their voting history to their musical tastes. Even if I never use the information within my narrative, I know it makes them more plausible and authentic, and it helps me tremendously when creating a distinctive voice and speaking style for each of them, as well as, when plotting, knowing how they would react and behave. (I once tried to make a character begin an affair – I wrote the scene several times and was very dissatisfied with it, until I realised that ‘Natalie’ might get as far as the bedroom door, but wouldn’t, in the end, be able to go through with it. When I wrote it that way, it worked at once.) This is the stage when it looks like I’m not really working, but I know it works for me. The first 30,000 words are heavy going. I look at the word count too often, my plot is still too woolly for my liking and finishing seems unlikely if not impossible. But there is a tipping point. That disgruntlement with the project seems to plateau out, and after, say, 50,000 words, the story and the characters take on their own momentum and speed, and there are whole, glorious days when it almost tells itself and I just hope I can type fast enough.
