Rod Humphris's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
WALKING AND WRITING
I regularly have to get up and move my feet when my brain stops working. One answer, of course, as with many things, is to get a dog. When I’m really stuck I walk in the woods. I think it’s better to be in the enclosed space of the woods, rather than out on the hills. Somehow the view and light and space intrude, but in a wood you’ve got the gentle white-noise of the trees. And the physical connection between our bodies and our minds and our stories is undeniable. I sometimes take it one step further and say out loud what I’m thinking. I walk through the wood and tell myself - out loud - what the story I’m working on is; what’s happening, who thinks and feels what; and what the problem is, why I’m stuck. It does make me feel pretty self-conscious, but self-consciousness is very helpful for writing. I often feel extremely self-conscious at times when I’m writing; like all my nerve endings are on the outside of my skin. A nice, containing, wood is a good place to do that.
Mind you, it helps that I have the dogs with me. They act as a shield and give me privacy. They notice anyone else about before I do and let me know, so I can try to appear less like a nutter; walking along talking to myself.
Talking of physicality, I also find that lying down is very helpful sometimes. Lying on my back under a tree. Or just lying on the floor of my work-room. Perhaps it’s that when you’ve struggled and struggled, you have to let go. And lying down on the floor is a physical surrender. When you’ve chased it and chased it and not caught it, lie down on the floor and let it catch you. And when did a quick nap ever do any harm?
And then, of course, a story is a journey; a physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual movement from one place to another. We often take our journeys while physically stationary; in a car or helicopter, or whatever; but if you walk somewhere, you go from one place to another by your own physical volition; often returning to the place you started, but not arriving quite as the person who left. Just as you, and your characters, and hopefully your reader, do. And of course when you go for a walk, you almost always arrive at the end. That’s encouraging for a writer. Let’s face it, starting a book is one thing, finishing it, quite another.
One important feature of the walking writer is trust. You have to be able to trust that what you find, will stay with you even though you’ve not written it down. That feeling when you suddenly understand that of course Joan wouldn’t have put the knife back in the drawer because she’s really in love with John, and that means that Sam hates her and… When it all suddenly makes sense and the pattern is there. Raise your hands and punch the air and celebrate, and feel the feeling of it all coming together in your mind, in your body too. And trust that when you get back to the office it will all still be in your mind and you can make a few notes and then go for a beer with the lads, knowing that you’ve done your work for the day.
Read Blog Post on the Rat's Tales website
Mind you, it helps that I have the dogs with me. They act as a shield and give me privacy. They notice anyone else about before I do and let me know, so I can try to appear less like a nutter; walking along talking to myself.
Talking of physicality, I also find that lying down is very helpful sometimes. Lying on my back under a tree. Or just lying on the floor of my work-room. Perhaps it’s that when you’ve struggled and struggled, you have to let go. And lying down on the floor is a physical surrender. When you’ve chased it and chased it and not caught it, lie down on the floor and let it catch you. And when did a quick nap ever do any harm?
And then, of course, a story is a journey; a physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual movement from one place to another. We often take our journeys while physically stationary; in a car or helicopter, or whatever; but if you walk somewhere, you go from one place to another by your own physical volition; often returning to the place you started, but not arriving quite as the person who left. Just as you, and your characters, and hopefully your reader, do. And of course when you go for a walk, you almost always arrive at the end. That’s encouraging for a writer. Let’s face it, starting a book is one thing, finishing it, quite another.
One important feature of the walking writer is trust. You have to be able to trust that what you find, will stay with you even though you’ve not written it down. That feeling when you suddenly understand that of course Joan wouldn’t have put the knife back in the drawer because she’s really in love with John, and that means that Sam hates her and… When it all suddenly makes sense and the pattern is there. Raise your hands and punch the air and celebrate, and feel the feeling of it all coming together in your mind, in your body too. And trust that when you get back to the office it will all still be in your mind and you can make a few notes and then go for a beer with the lads, knowing that you’ve done your work for the day.
Read Blog Post on the Rat's Tales website
THE MAKING OF BLOODSTOCK
The curse of the second book!
I know it’s the fourth in the series, but Dead Ground and Starlight are novellas. Bloodstock was my second full-length story and it was a challenge. It was like I was having to learn again from scratch. I nearly accidentally rewrote Go Fast in another form. And then my first draft was so self-indulgent and unfocused that it was pretty much a pile of poo. Which my initial readers, for which I am very grateful, told me. And I had to dig in and focus and work and work. I think I threw away almost as many written words as I kept.
It took me a year longer than I wanted it too, and it was very good for me. Writing books is very good for me. Sometimes they’re like the difficult bits of life; they aren’t fun at the time, but they move you on. Writing Bloodstock moved me on. In the end it came out well and it feels like a whole complete thing. As more and more readers tell me about it, I’ve come to know it again through them, and I’m really proud of it now.
It’s more complex, more intertwined than anything I’d written before. I’m not surprised I got a little lost sometimes. But, as always, it’s the characters who pulled me through. I always come back to them; what they want, what they’re thinking, feeling. It ended up being quite a cast. I was almost sorry that some of them had to die, though, some of them, we may meet again. Who knows.
I always say that a book doesn’t come into being when I write it, but when you read it. And, of course, I don’t know what book you’ll read. It’ll be different to the one I wrote, I know that. But the things that were behind it, whether they come through or not, were things I was really interested in. They captured my imagination and I still think it’s a privilege to be able to spend so much time diving into things and working them into a story. Robert Graves’s White Goddess started the process and I have my own pagan roots to draw on. And drawing in characters from acquaintance, girls seen from café tables, people from the past. The feelings of the countryside and the city. And the feeling of powerful women. Powerful in their own right and on their own terms; against the tide of the last couple of thousand years. It was inside me wanting to be written and I have written it.
Now, for me, it’s a done thing; it’s in my mind, but not on my mind. It belongs to my readers, more than me. It’s off out into the world now and can get on with that without me. I’ve other things to think about.
Read Blog Post on the Rat's Tales website
I know it’s the fourth in the series, but Dead Ground and Starlight are novellas. Bloodstock was my second full-length story and it was a challenge. It was like I was having to learn again from scratch. I nearly accidentally rewrote Go Fast in another form. And then my first draft was so self-indulgent and unfocused that it was pretty much a pile of poo. Which my initial readers, for which I am very grateful, told me. And I had to dig in and focus and work and work. I think I threw away almost as many written words as I kept.
It took me a year longer than I wanted it too, and it was very good for me. Writing books is very good for me. Sometimes they’re like the difficult bits of life; they aren’t fun at the time, but they move you on. Writing Bloodstock moved me on. In the end it came out well and it feels like a whole complete thing. As more and more readers tell me about it, I’ve come to know it again through them, and I’m really proud of it now.
It’s more complex, more intertwined than anything I’d written before. I’m not surprised I got a little lost sometimes. But, as always, it’s the characters who pulled me through. I always come back to them; what they want, what they’re thinking, feeling. It ended up being quite a cast. I was almost sorry that some of them had to die, though, some of them, we may meet again. Who knows.
I always say that a book doesn’t come into being when I write it, but when you read it. And, of course, I don’t know what book you’ll read. It’ll be different to the one I wrote, I know that. But the things that were behind it, whether they come through or not, were things I was really interested in. They captured my imagination and I still think it’s a privilege to be able to spend so much time diving into things and working them into a story. Robert Graves’s White Goddess started the process and I have my own pagan roots to draw on. And drawing in characters from acquaintance, girls seen from café tables, people from the past. The feelings of the countryside and the city. And the feeling of powerful women. Powerful in their own right and on their own terms; against the tide of the last couple of thousand years. It was inside me wanting to be written and I have written it.
Now, for me, it’s a done thing; it’s in my mind, but not on my mind. It belongs to my readers, more than me. It’s off out into the world now and can get on with that without me. I’ve other things to think about.
Read Blog Post on the Rat's Tales website
