Editing and Motherhood...

You may wonder what editing has to do with motherhood, but for me they're interchangeable at the moment.

I'm having a short break from the novel to work on a short story-it's been waiting for me to get back to it for over a year. I knew it wasn't quite right, and I think I was lacking confidence in my ability to produce a saleable story, so the more I tried, the more the story went into reverse or that was how it felt. So I left it, believing it was never going to work.

I've also felt like that whenever I've gone to the parents consultation evenings at school. But yesterday (Wednesday) the milestone of the last ever consultation evening was reached. Never again will I have to go with my long list of teachers to talk to (would I ever get through them all), with my notebook and pen to record the comments from each one, so I could then report back the (correct) details to the appropriate son...

(This is the one aspect of multiple birth families that never gets mentioned in books- parents evenings post primary school are long, tiring and require a lot of brain energy.)

In a few months the GCSE exams will be in full spate- in fact next week it's the art exam. With all the revision classes coming up, stress is building, but there is, as they say, light at the end of the tunnel...

I'm making the most of any calm spells to concentrate on shorter projects, hence the short story editing.

I can now see the light in the story too. The structure problems that I couldn't solve previously are resolving themselves as I change sentences, choose a different word here, adjust a description there, and take lines out- or put them back in.

I'm finally starting to gain that confidence I previously lacked.

I know I'm competing in a tough market with a high standard, so my story will have to be as good as I can make it.

Then it will be up to the sifting readers/editor whether it's a yes or no.

My previous attempts have always received the standard rejection letter, so I can either improve or get the same rejection letter again.

I'll let you know when I finally send it out, and no matter how long I have to wait- and I know it will be months-which type of reply I get. :-)

When Characters Interrupt...

Over the weekend I was being creative- making cakes.

Now I have to say I feel calmer than I usually do on a Monday morning after a few days of not having peace to write-having my other half and teenage children around is not conducive to my ability to concentrate on writing anything.

(My weekend blog post is usually written late Friday night when it's quiet.)

So it was quite unexpected when Sunday morning one of my characters interrupted me while I was brushing my teeth.

Now Jago is a secondary character in my Dorset novel. He is most definitely an alpha male, and he does have his own story, but that's for the future- even though he'd prefer his story done now. But as I don't know all of it he will have to be patient.

In fact his story starts a few weeks after his last appearance in the main novel. I know how he meets the future love of his life; I know her name and some of her back story, but that's about it. It all goes in the notebook specifically for his story.

So there I am, toothbrush whirring in my mouth and Jago springs into my conscious to tell me why he goes against his own rules at the start of his story. It's all to do with his sister.

And then, assured I was eager to go and write this insight down, he strode away, back into that area of my brain where my characters wait and continue developing until I'm ready to work with them.

Now I know to a non-writer all that would sound like I'm a little crazy, but to those of us who write, our characters don't always wait until we're at the keyboard to arrive.

Quite a few of my past characters have popped in to give me information when I'm in the middle of cooking a meal, or doing some other domestic chore.

(A few have even intruded while I've been writing a completely different story.)

So next weekend I'll make sure I've got a notebook and pen handy just in case one of them turns up...

Have any of your characters arrived at an unsuitable or inconvenient moment?