3 Writing Wreaking Balls

It was all going so well.

I was getting up in the early hours, unfolding my laptop and pounding words like a Victorian playwright. A few hours in I went running on autumn roads then returned to the page to write more. I connected with other writers. I went to the Isle of Wight literary festival.

I felt like a novelist.

One who likes writing in bed.

The words were flowing, chapter by chapter, and I tended them with the same care I would give to a newborn baby. Then, at around 25k words and 8 chapter in …

Three

Bastard

Wreaking Balls

Came

Swinging by.  

Wreaking Ball One:

I made the fatal mistake of printing the first 3 chapters out and reading them through. Bad idea. This is like breaking the forbidden seal. To do it can take a writer back into a cycle of revision before the story is even beginning. My face explains the rest.

Wreaking Ball Two:

My beloved man started his cancer treatment in the same  week that we sold his flat, meaning that whilst he was plunged into radiotherapy, I was thrown into 10 hour days of tip runs, scrubbing, dragging, unscrewing, painting, filling, sanding and restoring. There was no time to eat, let alone write.  But, I do know how to use power tools now. So. Bonus.

Wreaking Ball Three:

The printing of the chapters led to me seeing that the plot wasn’t working. A deeper investigation resulted in the eye-watering realization that my main character was a wet wipe with no agency and the victim of everyone else’s whims. Damn. Worse still, by remedying this young woman's debilitating passivity, I would have to alter the entire course of the story.

Basically, I’d have to scrap everything I’d done.

As you can imagine, a combination of these three things cranked my writing to a halt like a rusty tractor in a chewing gum quagmire.

Yet weirdly, what should have been a week of writerly devastation, has actually resulted in some real breaktrhoughs.

How? Well ...

(Wreaking Ball One)

... looking back  at my first 3 chapters illustrated who I was when I first started writing this book many years ago and it turns out that since then, I have changed.

Before I'd needed to write those scenes as I did, but they didn’t work, I didn't know why and became blocked in the process. To make matters worse, each time I tried to push through, I’d get frustrated and then end up like a toddler trapped into a duvet cover, punching, kicking and fighting my way out but never finding the opening. I wasn't in the right place to see WHY the plot wasn't working and therefore, it just made me rageful.

And yet, I can now see why those sections don’t work, what needs to happen to make them work and it would appear that I am a much more mature and wise toddler. I've recognised that if I just calm the fuck down and think logically, I can rewrite the plot and make it work. I don’t have to think “I can’t” and give up. I can work it out.

Basically, I’ve grown up. (See face of grown up toddler, free from duvet trap, below).

Wreaking Ball Two

My novel is about someone propelled into an underworld journey. It is seeded in the myth of Inanna, in the journey of Persephone and the curious adventure of Alice. For me to be unexpectedly plunged into a composting heap of flat debris clearance and cancer elimination, weirdly reflects the journey that my character embarks upon.

Flat clearing this week has given me grimy, exhausting, determined time to pause and consider the deep themes of my story. Though my own soul-searching whilst filling holes in plaster, I realized that the reason my plot wasn't working was because my main character wasn’t working and then I worked out who she needs to be to BE THE GODDAMN MAIN CHARACTER and therefore drive this plot forwards. All this happened while I got covered in paint and messed up three sets of running clothes with white gloss.

Wreaking Ball Three

What began as a wreaking ball of realisation that my character was a wet lettuce has turned into me falling head over heels in love with her. She is NOW the Thelma to my Louise and I'm fully ready to drive this forward, with her at the helm.

Yes, this week ahead I will have to start writing the whole story from scrach, yet rather than feeling unhappy about this, I am instead, boundlessly excited. It feels like a timely rebirth, a fresh start and the opportunity to recreate my novel as the punchy, powerful, potent package of brilliance that I know it can be.

So, there you have it.

The first three weeks of the Winter Writing Challenge.

Back to square one - but not really.

It's been powerful, transformative and a juicy reminder that creativity is a tricksy beast and to engage with it is like climbing onto the back of a wild, circus dragon, who is going to twist, flip, coil and take you on the most breath-taking rodeo of heavenly heights and also the deepest, quagmire of mess.

It's an exhilirating ride.