Category: Working on

How it changes

PeterLeave a comment

I was going to the drafts folder in my email and came across an email. I wrote a couple of years ago and never sent it. It describes some of the processes I go through writing and specifically address the second novel I began to write. It’s the novel I hope to finish within a few months. Here it is

The second novel I’m working on came to me pretty well, complete as a story, from whence I don’t know. I reckon a lot happens in the subconscious. It’ll publish the idea to the conscious mind when it’s ready. In my case, I woke up one morning with it in my head. I shared it with someone at work, and they said great, go for it, and that’s what I’ve been doing.

Generally, when I have a novel like this in my head, I’ll have the beginning and the end and bits and pieces in between. I’ll know what the story is about and what I want to say, but there’ll be a lot of gaps in the storyline. It’s like planning a trip from Melbourne to Sydney and knowing you’ve got to go through Upper Kumbucta West, but otherwise, you don’t know what route you’ll be taking until you’re in the car driving.

What I’ve found writing this is that while the story was clear to me, many of the underlying themes only became apparent as I began to write. I knew the headline themes and could have explained to anyone who asked this is what it’s about. But then you get into the nitty gritty, and there’s much more complexity than a sheer headline. You advance carefully, feeling your way, like walking through a minefield. Many times you retreat knowing it’s not quite right. That’s when you sit in front of your screen looking blank while your mind goes a million miles an hour. You live the moment, searching through it and clarifying details with your mind. Is this right? Or this?

You’re searching for truth, but it comes from the story, the text, and not anything you impose upon it. By now, the story has its own life. It’s your job to understand and to chart it. That sounds a bit of a toss, but that’s how it is. Quite often, I start writing thinking it’s about one thing before discovering there’s more to it than that, and my job is to listen well and get it right.

I had the experience halfway through writing this novel when I read of Homer, specifically, of Achilles, the mighty Greek warrior. As I read, I reflected on my story, seeing the parallels for the first time.

 In the Iliad, Achilles is nigh on invincible. By myth, he was held by the heel and dipped in a magical pool that made him immune to injury. He’s a proud, somewhat arrogant character, though capable of great complexity. Ultimately – beyond the pages of the Iliad, he will perish victim of his only flaw – an error to the heel left unprotected.

 But what if Achilles doesn’t perish? What if he lives on well after the sacking of Troy and the death of so many mighty characters? What if he passes into middle age, a warrior of legend but creaking, aching, and grey now? His days of might have passed. He has defeated thousands in battle, but in middle age, he has settled into an existence where he wonders what it all means. Looking back, he knows it was real but feels distant and lost, as if he is a different man. It is this he must reconcile.

 That’s what my story is, in a way, though inadvertent. It’s modernised, and instead of a warrior, the protagonist is a once great sportsman.

 I’m not far off finishing the first draft of this novel, and there will likely be a couple of rewrites before I’m happy. The point is that I started with an idea that still holds true, but I’ve found unexpected complexity as I’ve gone along. That’s not surprising, but I learn from it myself as I reappraise, reflecting on its depth and meaning.

 One thing I know is that this has a strong theme in me—we tell our own stories. I’ll post something about that another time.

Getting into shape

PeterLeave a comment

I’m midway through the second draft of my novel, Unknown to God. I first began writing this several years ago and had completed the first draft before I was diagnosed with cancer. That hit my writing for six; it was over a year before I began on the second draft.

The sole novel I’ve published went through about five drafts. By the end, I was tweaking elements of it, trying to make it perfect. The heavy lifting and significant changes happened in the first few drafts.

I’m not an expert on this – I’m making it up as I go along – but I’ve got a fair idea of the editing process as it applies to me.

The first draft is pretty much a mind dump. You have an idea that’s ticking in your head like a bomb, and, in my case anyway, I’m dead keen to get it on paper before it goes off and there’s nothing left. Throughout this, I’m afraid the inspiration will leave me before I finish. I don’t know why. It’s almost as if I fear a sudden onset of amnesia. So, I’m not fussed over much with the first draft, and it can be pretty messy, and I’m mighty relieved once I’ve got it done.

I’ll take a break from it after that. Working so intensively it can get in your head in an unhealthy way. When that happens, it’s hard to think objectively about it, which is what you need. I take a few months off from it and work on something else. In the background, a part of my mind is still labouring on it, considering the changes I need to make. By the time I get to it again, it’s pretty ripe.

The second draft is about cleaning up the obvious crap and refining it into something more agile and readable. The story remains, but I’ll adjust the plot here and there, taking things out and maybe adding some in. I’ll look at the language and consider the motivations more deeply. There are more drafts to come, so it’s not about making it perfect but getting the shape of it right.

That’s my main focus, really. I may change things up in later drafts, but 95% of the story should be there after the second draft. I want to come to the next draft and know what it’s about without having to do all the thinking again. I can get stuck doing that, but it’s important.

The later drafts are about further refining it. It’s a bit like an athlete training for a big event. He starts fat and unfit but motivated, and as he goes along, he settles on a training plan, losing the fat and adjusting the program as he gets fitter and stronger, fine-tuning it as he closes on his goal. One day, he’s ready. That’s when I hope the book is ready, too – though it never is, really.

That’s where I’m at, midway through the second draft, and it’s been torturous. That’s partly because I got so busy with other things I couldn’t get a good routine going. In my experience, you need a pattern of work to get in the zone properly. When that happens, your mind remains fertile and productive so that when you return to the page, there’s plenty of stuff to go on with. But, up to a couple of months ago, I failed to get a work pattern going, and the writing came hard.

For the last little while, it’s been going well, but then I got stuck again. I didn’t know the right ‘shape’ this time. When that happens, I stare into space a lot, trying to figure it out. I want to get inside the story so the way forward becomes organic and natural. But it’s not always as obvious as that.

Sometimes, I’ll hook something I’ve written out to someone for feedback. What do you think? Does this work? How about x and y? It’s so choked in your mind you feel you can’t see clearly for yourself.

I reckon I must have rewritten this chapter five or six times. I’m tempted to go on to the next chapter sometimes and return to it later, but that doesn’t work. To start with, one chapter informs the next. It’s like trying to build a house without all the framework. And I’m pigheaded, too. I get so pissed with it I won’t move on until I’ve got it beat. I’ve always been like that.

It’s important though. It’s got to be authentic and move the story in the right direction. If I get the shape right now, it’s easier the next time. (By shape, I mean the basic plot and events of the chapter, the pacing and balance and, most importantly, the motivations that influence behaviour and action. It has to feel legit and make sense in the overall context.) If I get to the third draft without getting it right, I might find the story forks in a different direction from what I thought.

Finally, I’m nearing the end of the chapter and am satisfied with it – I think. It has the right balance now, which often equates to less is more. There’s been a lot of trial and error, a bit of experimentation, and everything short of mind-altering drugs. In the end, it’s a tried and true method that seems to have worked. I’ll write about that another day, but basically, it’s using the greats to inspire you to look at things differently.

Excerpt from Send to Darkness

PeterLeave a comment

No spoilers, you’ll need to buy the book – but here’s a tease:

You might think by the way that Helena Ryle spoke about me that I was a someone, except I wasn’t, not really. It was not fame I possessed but infamy, and even that, after two years, very much faded. People thought they knew me. I was one of those faces that stirred distant memories. Aren’t you that footballer, they might ask? Or was it you that…? And so on. Occasionally, they happened across the right story – oh yes, you’re the policeman, aren’t you, the brother? Even then, though they might look at me sideways, they made little of it – they expected to see something, some evil, horns or something, and instead, they found someone quite normal.

One man’s normal is another man’s weird, of course. It was different for me. I didn’t know what normal was anymore, and even if by now my story was one among millions, it was my story, and though I don’t like to admit to it, as fresh to me then as it was when it happened. It still burned in me, and because it did, it was not something I ever dwelt on. It was one reason why I didn’t stop to wonder why it was important to Helena Ryle, regardless of the clues that it offered to me.

My brother, Ray, was eight years older than me and shone so bright that I was lost in the shadows until everything changed. In his prime, Ray had been the pin-up boy of the force. When he turned it on, he was an oversized personality who was also – as the newspapers loved to proclaim – ‘police royalty’. Not just the son of the commish, Ray was also the decorated head of the drug squad and, to the tabloid audience, the cop they knew best. He was writ large, the police go-to man, the cop every punter related to and rooted for because they knew him and because he spoke their language. For a while, Ray was everywhere. He was a pugnacious, witty, almost comic-book version of what a 21st-century cop should be. None of it was false, but it was not altogether real either. Ray was more complex than that, and not just in the ways we soon learned. He was my brother, and I saw him as the public never did, felt the easy affection of an older brother for the younger, shared with him my exuberant hopes and witnessed the rare occasion when he was less certain or less boisterous.

To the broader world, to the media, to the public who wanted to know which nag ‘Razor’ had tipped for the Cup, and to the police PR department who egged him on, Ray was a commodity. He knew it and lapped it up. “Give ‘em a little of what they want,” he had once said to me with a smirk, “and there’s nothing they won’t give you back.”

Then it changed. There was a tip-off: Ray was dirty. From one day to the next, Ray went from folk hero to public enemy number one. It was a circus. The tabloids shrieked his name, and the talkback lines choked with outraged callers shocked that Ray had not lived up to the image they had thrust upon him. Ray was guilty of the one thing that could not be forgiven: he had betrayed the trust of the people – and the people’s proxy, the media.

Ray became Judas, and not even his death could appease the baying crowd. There was no satisfaction in that. Like a scorned lover, they were furious with their shame. They wanted answers. They wanted to hold him in the palm of their hand, and in their power, they wanted, should the law permit, to hang, draw and quarter the dastardly traitor. They got none of that. He’d played them for a mug and got away with it. Now, he was gone. But I remained.

None of you can understand what it was like. I wasn’t sure that I did. When the blood’s up, when tabloids scream headlines every day, and carnivorous reporters stake out home and work, the presumption of innocence is nothing more than a judicial precept. If I was not Judas, then at least I was Judas’ brother, was I not? I was guilty by association, if not in fact. At best, I confused people. I was the inconvenient reminder of their shame and cupidity. What I said or did or if I was guilty or innocent was beside the point. The point was they needed a living, breathing fall guy, and I was it.

There were TV cameras there the day I left. The sun blazed from a blue sky, and the cameras pointed at me. I stood where I was told, numbed by disbelief. There were speeches made and a presentation while I continued to play my compliant role. I was lauded for my service, praised for my accomplishments, commended for my sacrifice, and publicly consoled for the shame wrought upon the family name. You see, I was one of theirs, after all, officially, but the fine-sounding words did nothing to disguise their smug hypocrisy. As far as the world was concerned, I was innocent only because they couldn’t prove I was guilty, and that was that…

No rest for the wicked

PeterLeave a comment

A couple of weeks ago, I finished writing my second novel. I thought I might finish it sooner, but the closer I got to it, the further it seemed to get away from me.

I don’t know how it is for others, but I feel incomplete until I’ve put that final word on (virtual) paper. It’s a funny thing to explain, but until then, you’ve got all these words in you and a vision of something, and you feel as if you’re racing against time to get it out there, lest you get hit by a truck – or, more scarily, the inspiration, the vision, disappears. It feels like a kind of magic, and that’s great, but it’s scary, too, and until you get it all in the bottle, there’s no rest.

The sense of relief – and release – once you’ve got it on the page is immense. You type the final full stop, sit back in your chair, and think, “Phew, I did it.”

It’s a fleeting emotion because, almost immediately, you’re aware of all the flaws in the manuscript. By the time you’ve got to the end of writing a book, you generally know the things you should have done differently and need to change, on top of which you have a sneaking suspicion that it might all be crap anyway. You think you’ve finished, but you know there’s a lot more work to do – but at least now there’s a version outside your head.

Finishing a book is tough. I’ve only written the two, so I’m not sure I can apply the term ‘generally’ yet – but, so far, I know the ending well before I get to it. I may even know how to approach it, what the tone should be, and so on – I did in the first, not in the second.

With this book just finished, I fluffed around, uncertain how to get from where I was to where I needed to get. There are many different ways to write the same scenes, and when you consider the scenes are apt to variation, there’s a lot to figure out. That’s why it took me longer than I hoped to get it finished. I couldn’t get it right and spent a lot of time staring off into the middle distance. I’d ask myself: what does it mean? What am I trying to say? What is he thinking? She? How would they react?

All of that is accentuated by the fact that nothing comes after this. There’s a full stop at the end of this, which means it has to make complete sense in itself and that all the myriad loose ends need to be addressed – if not tied up – in the few pages remaining to you.

But anyway – I did it. And it’ll do until I come to the second draft.

For now, it goes in the bottom drawer. I’ll clear my head of it, and when I get around to it again, I’ll approach it with fresh eyes. More of that later.