Random Jotter
Labrador and egg situation
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Labradors: what are they like. Cluny got through ten stolen eggs yesterday, shells and all (and we thought they were out of reach). And it seems like yesterday when he was barely any bigger than ten eggs himself... Well, this has done wonders for his coat, but (stop me if this is too much information), not a lot for the hygiene of my kitchen floor.
All of which is yet another reason to be not writing. And even when it's cleaned up, it's such a gorgeous blue frosty day, and there's Christmas shopping to do, and kids to take ice skating (if I can detach them from the XBox controllers). I've always thought one of the best things about writing is that you can do it anywhere, while doing anything else, since you can do quite a lot of it in your head. However, I'm getting to the point with a few deadlines - Darke Academy 2 included - where it's high time I stopped writing it in my head and got some more words onto the laptop screen.
I read an interview with Terry Pratchett recently in the Independent. He's talking about his latest work in progress, and reaching what he calls the 'Delta Star'. "It's a physics term and I can't remember what it relates to," he says. "But suddenly, there's a point ... You've got your characters working and you know how a book's supposed to go...
"It usually happens because a character says one sentence to another character and somehow, yes, it is around that quote that this whole book is now starting to spin, not because that quote is particularly memorable but it was exactly the right word at the right time. I now know a lot more about this character, and now this character knows a lot more about himself."
He puts it so much better than I could, but that's what I'm after in my new manuscript. It's not always a word or a piece of dialogue for me; sometimes it's an unexpected event or a new arrival in the cast of characters. But like most writers, I desperately need to get to that point - preferably yesterday - before the book will take off and fly.
It is the point, of course, where I'll stop making excuses about What The Dog Ate And Subsequently Did, and leave the housework to the nice housework fairies, and start spending everyday with my head properly inside a book. It's the most fantastic part of the job. I can't wait.
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