Pace

There's nothing like a deadline. World War II may still raging, but my characters have had their final clinch and flown off into the sunset. I printed out the first draft of the new book just before picking the children up from their end of term celebrations yesterday, and sat late last night reading through it wondering where all the pages had come from. Maybe you're the same - you get no sense of a manuscript on screen. It isn't until you have it in your hands it comes to life. Over the summer these pristine pages will get covered in sand, river water, and red ink. It will go where we go - and as I'll be fighting to get on the computer for the next eight weeks (my home page has already mysteriously changed to Moshi Monsters), it's just as well for it to be portable. There are a few red letter days for it - quiet hours in archives sitting next to original documents written by some of the real characters who interlink with my fictional ones, but for the most part it will be thrown in the beach bag, dragged on long car journeys to Suffolk and Devon and kept up late after everyone is asleep. The manuscript is not going to look so pretty by the end of the holiday but I hope the words within it will be buffed and polished like a prizefighter.

Those of you juggling dayjob work with full time childcare maybe recognise this scenario. As Stephen King put it - art is the support system for life, not the other way around. No matter how much my thoughts are still with the book, characters clamouring to get a few poignant last lines in, Rufus Wainwright's sublime sonnets lilting as the final scenes unfold ... this morning we have Sponge Bob Square pants on full volume, two tired and cranky children (death by whining sound familiar?), the hound has eaten a rubgy ball, I've just been presented with a nappy (Did I do a poo Mummy?), the 3 year old is dressed as a gladiator, wielding a loud plastic Black and Decker drill like a flamboyant serial killer - and the pilot is in Sardinia.

It's been a tough few weeks, but I'm determined this book is going to be the best yet. There have been long hours burning the midnight oil transcribing hand written notes, (thank you to the terrifying Mrs Leach of my Bristol secretarial school for teaching me to type so fast - amazing how fear can get your fingers moving). You can't do this over a long period of time - you have to pace yourself. Several of you do NaNoWriMo each year and know it's impossible to keep writing like that month after month.

We've said 'writer's bum' is an occupational hazard from all that sitting, but writing must surely burn some calories (she says hopefully) - think of those days when you stagger from your chair shaking, easing your limbs into a standing position? Writing a long piece of work is like running a marathon (some of you have said before it's also like giving birth, or unrequited love - depending on how painful it is :). Any of you who run know you have to pace yourself - and writing is the same. You have exhilarating downhill moments when the words are buzzing effortlessly around you, but sometimes you hit walls where you feel you couldn't possibly write another word. You just have to push on through.

Several friends are doing charity events this week - a 10k London run, a 100k walk, another is cycling from Paris. It's inspiring, it takes dedication and pace - writers can learn from that. When you feel like giving up, when it feels like no one, ever, is going to take a chance on new work, keep putting one step, one word, in front of another. A friend confessed to me she burst into tears of frustration this week when she read of another 'I just jotted an outline on the back of an envelope and landed a £1m deal' story' - does that still happen? Who cares. Keep going. 'You have to get lucky at some point, but you can only get lucky if you are still on the road' as Mr Maas wrote.

TODAY'S PROMPT: I can vouch for the importance of pacing yourself from personal experience. When agent #1 encouraged me to get the second book written as quickly as possible ('we all love it!'), I spent a cold wet Christmas in a damp basement writing like a maniac. Idiot. Fool. I finished the book, but it finished me - I ended up with pneumonia. It was a good lesson - a book that as far as I know no one has read, and may well be the 'difficult' (ie hopeless), second book, put me in hospital and has permanently damaged my health. Getting the balance right between pushing yourself to produce good work, and pushing yourself too far is vital. If a long summer is stretching ahead of you too, why not have a think today about how you can pace yourself, take better care of yourself (sleep, vits, exercise, water?). You need to be physically fit to write, I've realised. Do something you love - swim, tango, ride, run. 'Pace' means peace too - if you can grab five minutes peace sit back and listen to today's clip. It's my favourite sonnet, a good reminder not to look sideways at other's success and count yourself lucky for having the things you love. Until you make it, love is the only reason to write. As the wonderful Alice Munro put it: "If you're going to be a writer you'll probably take a lot of wrong turns and then one day just end up writing something you have to write, then getting it better and better just because you want it to be better, and even when you get old and think 'There must be something else people do,' you won't quite be able to quit."

Nocturnes

Have you made a Bucket List? All those things you want to do before you kick yours? I had a look at mine yesterday because I was able to tick one thing off - I've been accepted to do my Masters in Creative Writing which I'm relieved and over the moon about. I was really nervous before the interview - maybe you always are when it's something you really care about. It was an interesting conversation, more about what I'm reading than writing, the writers I love like Anne Tyler. If the course gets me one step closer to being anywhere near as good as she is it will be three years well spent. She is wickedly good, weaving convincing lies, holding a mirror up to everyday home life. I don't know if 'writing as well as Anne Tyler' can be added to a bucket list, but it's something to aim for.

I'm not much use for anything at the moment, 40,000 words into the new book and my head is there with the characters (put it this way there's not a lot of dusting going on). This week I've done a review for Bookbag, and a short piece for the Bookseller, but apart from that I'm 100% with the new work (so we will probably be eating rice and beans for the summer - poor long-suffering pilot). I really, really like this new book so far - the true stories that have inspired it are staggering, and as the characters are rising up, slotting in with the real people and events in the novel I'm hoping they're going to be half as inspiring, brave and downright sexy as the men and women I've been researching.

It's made me think about the people I've known who lived through World War II. My grandfather gave me an ivory elephant pendent a 'friend' gave him in France during the war (obviously a love affair), and by coincidence my old piano teacher left me a matching brooch when she died. Mrs Day was a concert pianist in her time - incredibly beautiful (I remember elegant studio portraits of her in an evening gown at the keyboard of a gleaming grand piano). She told wonderful stories about performing, beating off ardent suitors in open top sports cars. When I knew her, she was frail and in her seventies, but when she talked of those years they were clearly the best in her life, and her eyes were like a young girl's. A lot of the biographies I've been reading over the last few weeks say the same - these were ordinary people living through extraordinary times. There was an urgency to love, loss - a sense that they were really living everyday. I've pinned the little elephants up on the storyboard of the new novel next to the rather lovely pic of Mr Firth - they're a link to a different time which is still in touching distance.

TODAY'S PROMPT: The Arthur Rubenstein recording of Chopin's Nocturnes is my default work music - it's perfect, sublime. What do you write to - if you've got any recommendations do share them. Something about Chopin makes it the ideal music to write to (for me at least), and people I've recommended it to have found it helpful - why not give it a go? I tried playing it on the piano at my parents house recently and found I couldn't any more - it sounded awful, ten years of lessons as a child had left me. Once we're settled, piano lessons and a piano are up there on the bucket list. What skills do you have that are a bit rusty? Things that make you happy, but you haven't done for a long time? If you haven't made one, maybe start your own bucket list. Or if you're looking for inspiration for a new story, why not have a root around in your jewellery box or desk drawers, find a keepsake you haven't thought about for a while, tell its tale? It's not only psychics who hold rings and intimate objects to uncover the story - for writers they can be channels to whole new worlds.

and PS: Happy 4th July to all WKDN's American readers x

Icons

It's been a sad week for the Baby Boomers and Gen X losing two of the great popular icons of our time. Farah Fawcett was the all-American blonde we all had pinned to our bedroom walls, and Michael Jackson provided the soundtrack to our childhood. We take it so much for granted that we will live - if not forever - well into our eighties, even nineties, that to lose two people who embodied youth at such an early age is a wake up call for us all.

It makes you wonder whether there will ever be icons like this again. At the age of 50, Jackson had a career spanning four decades. Can you imagine that happening now when slebs are turned over at such a rate? His life is epic - dazzling god given talents, immense wealth, global adulation and a crashing fall from grace thanks to a tragic personal life that was at best eccentric. Did you ever buy a Jackson record? I didn't, but know most of his back catalogue - his music was part of our pop culture growing up. Who doesn't remember seeing Thriller for the first time? You have the feeling this story is going to run and run - the vultures are circling, and no doubt more lurid tales of abuse will be sold to the highest bidder. Let's hope Jackson's real legacy - his incredible music - will eclipse the fairground freakshow.

We live in less innocent times now than when a fresh faced boy sang 'ABC' and danced on air. It's like pop culture is eating itself - the tabloids say we want prurient inside scoops on sleb lives so they report it, but do people just read what's on offer? Personally, I like it when stars are just that - retaining mystery, star quality. I don't want to know what they eat for breakfast, who they are shagging, the reason they don't talk to their brother, or that they sleep under an energy pyramid. Is it not enough any more to be an accomplished artist or performer? Every culture needs its icons - larger than life individuals we can pin our hopes and dreams on. It makes you wonder who is going to step up on the empty pedestal.

TODAY'S PROMPT: Back in the olden days a writer would have the chance to grow their audience. Now expecting little from the first two or three books isn't an option. Writers are brand names in the same way celebrities are. If you're working on a book or story right now, how can you make it stand head and shoulders above the other submissions? One of the classic mistakes every new writer makes is to have a central character that isn't really that interesting. They are 'the writer in disguise' - probably perfectly nice characters, but they are observers of what's going on in the story rather than the dynamic. Let them experience things - good and bad - that few people will. Writers are attached to their characters - maybe you feel protective of them? Dig out that 'chip of ice' all writers are supposed to have in their hearts and throw the works at them. Give them things people dream of - love,wealth, beauty, talent - then take them away. Give them obstacles to overcome, conflict to survive, quests to undertake. Learn from society's obsession with celebrities - their fascination is that they are not 'normal', their lives are not like ours. Your characters need star quality - today why not have a look at how you can raise the stakes?

It's the end of our 6 week summer kick start - let's check in below. And for anyone writing short stories at the moment, why not check out Tonto Books' competition, which is being judged by author and blogger the lovely Caroline Smailes:

http://www.tontobooks.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=Even-More-Short-Stories