Here we are again ...
I love this time of year. It's cold during the day again. There's mist over the fields in the morning. It's actually dark when I go down the garden for my writing each evening, and the winter stars have returned in all their glory. When writing in my studio, I need the electric heater to stop my fingers from freezing. The owls are hooting all night long. And, of course, NaNoWriMo is about to start.
Late October is a time of change for me--it always has been. Particularly it's a time of change for writing. Last year, I had just started The Twilight Trilogy at this time, which was my first novel that I actually liked. I also started doing the research which would eventually lead to where I am today--putting the finishing touches to Project Cold Witness ... my greatest achievement to date. Perhaps most importantly, it is the feeling of this time of year which stimulates that change in writing.
As I finish Cold Witness, I believe it is crucial that I find the original inspiration again. What inspired me to start writing the book in the first place? Was it a particular place, feeling, time of year, or a combination of many things? To get the mood right, it is important that I'm as excited about the story now as I was a year ago.
I'll admit, there have been moments of despair. There have been times when I've been convinced that the novel is fundamentally flawed, that it deserves to be contributing to the greenhouse effect by burning on a fire somewhere. Perhaps most depressing of all, there have been times when I haven't been able to get through a particular scene, and this frustration has led me to believe--albeit for a short while--that I'm useless as a writer and will never create anything of worth. But we all go through those phases. They're what make us writers.
However ... I am glad to say that the experience of writing PCW has been an overwhelmingly positive one. This is the first story that I really feel I own. Conversely, it is also the first story with a strong grounding in reality, and somehow this has helped me see it as mine (don't ask me to explain that). And now, when I'm halfway through what promises to be the penultimate pre-submission read-through, I still love the story. No writer can ask for more than that.
How can I describe it? The images of the novel are powerful, and have remained constant through a whole year of change. They're simple images: a starlit winter sky, with a single red light pulsing on and off; tracer rounds skipping over the bleak shingle desert of Orfordness; the sound of a Geiger counter and American voices in a still, misty forest of pine and birch. And the colour grey. These basic images, each powering a pivotal moment in the book, have kept me going for an entire year. And I still feel the drive of the original inspiration, unclouded by the process of writing--a process which is, as far as inspiration is concerned, a highly destructive process. But it hasn't destroyed the spirit of Project Cold Witness.
Something tells me that this novel won't be put down so easily. I'm following this one through to the end.
I love this time of year. It's cold during the day again. There's mist over the fields in the morning. It's actually dark when I go down the garden for my writing each evening, and the winter stars have returned in all their glory. When writing in my studio, I need the electric heater to stop my fingers from freezing. The owls are hooting all night long. And, of course, NaNoWriMo is about to start.
Late October is a time of change for me--it always has been. Particularly it's a time of change for writing. Last year, I had just started The Twilight Trilogy at this time, which was my first novel that I actually liked. I also started doing the research which would eventually lead to where I am today--putting the finishing touches to Project Cold Witness ... my greatest achievement to date. Perhaps most importantly, it is the feeling of this time of year which stimulates that change in writing.
As I finish Cold Witness, I believe it is crucial that I find the original inspiration again. What inspired me to start writing the book in the first place? Was it a particular place, feeling, time of year, or a combination of many things? To get the mood right, it is important that I'm as excited about the story now as I was a year ago.
I'll admit, there have been moments of despair. There have been times when I've been convinced that the novel is fundamentally flawed, that it deserves to be contributing to the greenhouse effect by burning on a fire somewhere. Perhaps most depressing of all, there have been times when I haven't been able to get through a particular scene, and this frustration has led me to believe--albeit for a short while--that I'm useless as a writer and will never create anything of worth. But we all go through those phases. They're what make us writers.
However ... I am glad to say that the experience of writing PCW has been an overwhelmingly positive one. This is the first story that I really feel I own. Conversely, it is also the first story with a strong grounding in reality, and somehow this has helped me see it as mine (don't ask me to explain that). And now, when I'm halfway through what promises to be the penultimate pre-submission read-through, I still love the story. No writer can ask for more than that.
How can I describe it? The images of the novel are powerful, and have remained constant through a whole year of change. They're simple images: a starlit winter sky, with a single red light pulsing on and off; tracer rounds skipping over the bleak shingle desert of Orfordness; the sound of a Geiger counter and American voices in a still, misty forest of pine and birch. And the colour grey. These basic images, each powering a pivotal moment in the book, have kept me going for an entire year. And I still feel the drive of the original inspiration, unclouded by the process of writing--a process which is, as far as inspiration is concerned, a highly destructive process. But it hasn't destroyed the spirit of Project Cold Witness.
Something tells me that this novel won't be put down so easily. I'm following this one through to the end.
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