Jane Lovering's Blog, page 8

What it REALLY feels like to write a book...

Ooh, got an idea...well, more of an outline.  Need characters.  Got characters, now need actual story... Okay, first line will have to do.

Spend hours wondering what the cover will look like, reading Facebook and posting 'STARTED NEW NOVEL!!!' on Twitter.

Write first chapter.  Realise characters don't work. Delete all of first chapter except two lines which I really like, sit on Facebook, go back and delete those two lines as well.
writing a novel largely looks like this. With added sweat (not pictured)
Talk to anyone who will listen about idea for new book.  Whilst aimlessly telling perfect stranger the outline, hit accidentally upon perfect character and new storyline. Dash off in middle of conversation to the relief of stranger.  Sit and write like a lunatic for three weeks.  Get three quarters of the book done.

Suffer crippling performance anxiety and sit around the house in grubby pyjamas eating Nutella out of the jar and complaining that my art is being stifled by the need to work/wash/think of actual storyline. Moan about this to anyone who will listen, including perfect stranger who, I now begin to suspect, might have been original perfect stranger because of the way they back off at my approach.  Sit on Facebook.  Moan on Facebook.  Decide to give up writing and become a car park attendant.
Honestly preferable
Wake up in middle of night seized with inspiration.  Forget to write down inspiration.  Wake up in morning seized with desperation. Fill in job application for car park attendant - in middle of form decide car park attendant will make perfect antagonist in DIFFERENT novel.  Write that down (lesson learned last night).  Lose piece of paper on which it is written.

Pick up unfinished novel and re read.  Decide all is not lost.  Write two more pages, then go back to Facebook for more despair.  Drink much tea and go for long walks, trying to look moody and artistic but actually looking muddy and odd because have two different wellingtons on.  Friends give pep talks and gin.

Eventually, writing at the rate of one page per day, limp to the end of book.  Decide on title. Hate title but have run out of brain to think of anything else.  Send dodgy book plus terrible title to beta reader.  Beta reader loves book and title.  Fill in application for car park attendant again.  Drink more gin, eat more Nutella, decide to write completely different book, possibly the one with car park attendant main character.  Spend ages imagining cover for this book.

Eventually pull first book out of file.  Read first line. Laugh at first line. Go back and read whole book.  Decide is not as terrible as first thought, and begin editing process.

Finish editing, submit book, start writing about car park attendant.  Be mildly surprised when book comes out, having forgotten entire content.

Rinse, as they say, and repeat...

All fun and games until someone loses an i...

I used to play Scrabble a lot.  Serious, competitive Scrabble, with words like Ky and Hackamore, which always seemed to get on triple word scores and drive everyone mad.  As I've been producing more novels though, playing Scrabble seemed a bit like a busman's holiday.  I bet builders don't spend their downtime making Lego villages either.

Our Scrabble set, while I was growing up, used to belong to my parents.  I mean, technically it still did, they were still there and they played, or rather, my father played with my brother and I and my mother hovered in the background (not literally, she is as bound by the laws of physics as the rest of the family) and 'advised'.  We also inherited their 'Game of Life' which is nothing like the new Game of Life; in this one you had to collect diamonds or hearts or...other things which I can't remember. And you had to fill in bits of paper with how many of each thing you wanted...look, anyway, we liked it and it would keep us busy for hours on a boring Sunday afternoon.  Remember those?  When the shops were all closed and there was no television?  And you'd read all your library books and had to spend the morning cleaning your bedroom?

Forget endless repeats of Big Bang Theory, in the old days, it was this on a Sunday afternoon, or pumice the bath.

Secretly I wanted 'Mousetrap'.  A friend had the game and I used to spend hours round at her house trying to persuade her to set up the board so we could knock the little man into the trap.  But there were, apparently, 'too many pieces' and I was never allowed a set.  I repeat, Too. Many Pieces...whilst we were encouraged to play Scrabble and do jigsaws, to the extent that I could finally complete one of our puzzles (I think it may have been the Queen Mary in 500 pieces. Or maybe it was just Queen Mary, I am so old that she was practically current) in about five minutes, with one eye closed.

So my vocabulary was trained up on Scrabble games, played round the dining room table, with my father and my two-years-younger brother (whose star turn came during a game of I-Spy..'something beginning with C'...it was seagull.  So you can imagine him playing Scrabble), where I learned the art of spelling, increased my range of words, and also learned the value of a well-placed two letter word. Plus, having a horsey turn of mind, I had a whole range of words at my fingertips..crupper, surcingle, pelham...
In case you were wondering. Or were mid-way through a particularly competitive Scrabble gameSo, if you want a writing tip... play more Scrabble! It's great for picking up new words, and for filling in the time until you have to go upstairs for a bath and to do your homework...

Having a hygge moment...it's not rude, honestly. Although, the way I do it, it might be.

I'd heard about 'hygge' a few times, (it's pronounced 'hooga', but more like 'Huga' than 'Who-ga' and there was even a programme on the radio about it, just before Christmas, which just reinforced what I'd thought up until then.

...I am secretly Danish.

'Hygge' is a Danish concept, which translates (very roughly) to 'cosiness'.  Only, of course, if you're Danish you have the added inbuilt advantages of long dark nights and snow, which we all know add to the general 'cosy' factor.  But, what with all the rain and the general 'blurghness' of the weather lately, I have been trying to indulge myself in hygge, and I have found it to be a most satisfying thing.  It's not just 'being' cosy, near as I can understand, it's more about 'experiencing' the cosy.  You know that lovely moment when you snuggle down into a warm bed on a cold night and listen to the wind howling around and think 'I don't have to get up in the morning'?  I think that is hygge.
Two of my dogs, getting the concept.

So, for the unititiated into the whole 'cosy/hygge' thing, here is a small list of things I have found necessary to fully immerse myself into the experience:

Onesie - or other garment unsuitable for actually wearing outside either for reasons of practicality (ie, totally made of fleece or some other fabric that lets the wind in) or decency (bits of food, general tattiness)

An open fire - if you don't have one, try setting fire to the curtains.  It gives you long enough to toast a marshmallow, if you're quick.

A good book - can I recommend one of mine? Or a magazine or something on the telly.

Hot chocolate - this must include whippy cream, marshmallows and a flake.

Cushions - honestly, how did I spend so much of my life not knowing about cushions? Anyway. Cushions, Loads of them.  If you don't have any, use a cat.  If you don't have a cat, I'm not entirely sure what you're doing reading this blog, but anyway.

Now.  Just lie back and indulge yourself.  Listen to the wind, preferably outside, but, you know... embrace the snuggletudinosity of the moment.

Yes, I know it won't last.  But, we tried...
Picture from http://www.thehyggejournal.com/2015/1.... Yes, there are whole blogs about hygge! It isn't just me, for a change.

Come on, 2016, do something...just not that.

All right, so I'm a couple of days late, but I'm just surfacing from the rigours of Christmas. In this house, Christmas is a little bit like white-water rafting, only with more turkey, so it takes a while and a lot of deep breathing to shrug off.  And anyway, I hate to judge anything on first acquaintance, so I felt it was only fair to give 2016 a few days to get its feet under it before I started making judgey-pants comments about its weather and general demeanor.

So....  Here we all are, then.  How is everybody?  I know some of you had truly dreadful 2015s, so I'm hoping 2016 will be an improvement...it's a lot curlier, so that bodes well.  I like curliness in my dates, so I'm really looking forward to 2018, anyway, we're all here now, and there's that to be thankful for.  Anyone for a marshmallow?  Or some cheese?  I seem to have seriously overbought this year, probably due to the transitory nature of my children, who sometimes descend all at once and stay for weeks, rather like locusts, and at other times they sort of hover in and out of view, like ghosts, manefesting only occasionally to lick the middles out of cherry liqueurs and drink the milk. Since this year has been more of a manefesty year, I have a serious backlog of foods that it's going to take me well into March to eat my way through.  Sigh.  I'm sure I'll manage...

Now I feel that 2016 and I are sufficiently well-introduced to one another, I do need to take it round the back and ask a few pointed, Jeremy Paxmanesque questions about what it's doing with itself...I mean, I hate snow and cold weather as much as anyone who can't afford to put the heating on, but, honestly?  On Christmas Day it rained so much that the dogs shrank, (I know that I have 2015 to blame for that) but now we've had three days to get a bit of chilly winter sunshine into the house, and what is it doing?  Well, nothing, is the answer to that. There is a total absence of any weather at all, and, as someone who spends the majority of their time working behind a till and making conversation in thirty-second chunks, a lack of weather is simply not good enough.  What am I meant to say?  How can I chat about the weather when all there is to say is 'I see it got light again this morning'.
It's not thick enough to be fog, it's not raining, there's no sunshine, it's just sort of...hanging there.  And this means I shall be forced to make conversation about my Christmas socks and my Christmas Eve rendition of YMCA (with moves), whilst standing behind the till and fully spotlit.



Hang on...a branch moved!  I'm sure I saw a branch move, and it wasn't because a rook was doing its New Year exercise regime...oh, thank goodness!  I am saved! 

"It's getting a bit breezy out there again, still, good for drying the washing..."

My Christmas Secret....

Oh dear.  I have a small confession to make.

I don't know much about wine, but I have friends that do.  No, that's not the confession, I mean, lots of people have friends, it's not something one generally has to confess to. Unless one has friends of a Dubious Nature, which you don't usually confess to, so much as just pretend that you really believe their story of being given a car that someone didn't want any more.... Anyway. I have friends who Know About Wine.

One of those friends was kind enough to give me a bottle for Christmas.  I left it sitting on the worktop on Christmas Eve whilst I went to work...(no, you don't know where this is going; besides, it was red wine and nobody in my family really drinks red wine apart from me.  And I don't so much 'drink' it as...well, you've all seen sword-swallowers, you know how it goes).  So, anyway.  Picture the scene, if you will....

I headed off to work at quarter to eight on Christmas Eve morning, and returned, exhausted and with my cheeks aching from smiling at people, at quarter past five in the evening, to rush out and walk the dogs and start sorting food for Christmas Day.  Food, including a large joint of beef which had to be roasted over Christmas Eve because there wasn't room in the oven to cook it on Christmas Day.
It looked a bit like this. Before it was cooked, I mean, we didn't sit down to a large lump of pink meat on our plates.  So.  There I am, it's nearly six o clock on Christmas Eve and I have been at work for nine hours and my brain is fried (come to think of it,. we could have served my brain for Christmas dinner, it was already cooked and I would barely miss it at all). I have to cook the beef.

I think we can all see where this is going, can't we?

There was a bottle of £4.99 Merlot bought expressly for the purpose of cooking the beef in. This bottle was Somewhere.  My brain was not capable of searching for Somewhere, not when there was a bottle of red wine sitting right there on the worktop... Yes, I did wonder, when I had to hunt down a corkscrew (I mean, I haven't had to open a bottle of wine with a corkscrew since about 1990)...

Well, that beef was delicious.  I'm sure the wine - which turned out to be a really nice 2001 vintage - added immeasurably to that deliciousness.  I sometimes wonder what the wine would have tasted like had I drunk it?  Probably delicious too. But we will Never Know and neither will we Ever Tell the Person Who Gave It To Me...
It wasn't actually this wine, but I can't bear to google the one it really was.  My nerves, you know.

You all know how to keep a secret, right?  There's a glass of £4.99 Merlot in it for you, if we ever find it...

A Christmas Card from me....

To all the lovely people who stop here on their way to somewhere more interesting, and leave a comment.  To those who say that reading this blog makes their day (yes, I know, but a lot of people don't get out much, all right?).  To those I love, and those I've never met and those who fall somewhere in the middle on that sliding scale. To everyone who's bought one of my books and enjoyed it..in fact, even if they haven't enjoyed it, at least they took the time to hand over money for something I produced. To those who've had an awful year, with commiserations.  To those who've had a fabulous year, with congratulations.

To all of you.



Lots of love
Jane x

Robert Downey Junior, yes. Dustbuster Hoover, no.

Okay.  This blog is about to be full of sweeping generalisations and gender stereotyping, for which I apologise madly, but rigorous scientific testing (ie, me talking to people - people I know, I mean, not flagging randoms down in the street which, I agree, would be more scientific but, hey, I've already got a reputation here..) has shown it to be true.*

Christmas shopping woman: "Well, Friend A collects (insert collectible here), so I could get her one of those for Christmas. I'll ask Friend B to casually enquire which are missing from A's collection, and then I'll order one.  There's still four weeks to go, so I've got time to order it, wrap it carefully and deliver in person."

Christmas shopping man: "What the hell does A like? They've got some of those...y'know, things, but they've got enough now, nobody needs more than four of anything...what else?  What about those super-powered hammer drill things that have been on TV? I like the look of those. Everyone likes drills. I'll get one. Only it's Christmas Eve, so I'll have to nip out at lunchtime to buy it...A won't mind if they don't get it until New Year, will they?"
No home, apparently, is complete without one of these.

I have an Amazon Wish List. Not for me, you understand, for I wish for nothing (other than Robert Downey Junior with a bow round his neck, but, sigh...)

 but during the year I add things that I see that I think people might like for Christmas or birthdays.  When I say 'people' I mean people I know again, whilst I am sure that other people may also like these things, I am only equipped to buy for the first kind of people.  Anyway.  I go down my wish list and use it to remind me of things that I might like to buy other for Christmas, having had 364 days of warning.

Some men become panicked around about the 18th of December, fling themselves upon the One Click button, which they mash with their fingers and toes in an attempt to become fully Christmas Presentified, all the while shouting things like 'does your mother want a fully illuminated magnetic screwdriver? Why not? Everyone wants one of those - I've just bought myself two, in fact! I'll get her one. It's the thought that counts..."

* Disclaimer.  Some men are very good at Christmas presents, my own dear brother is one. Last year he bought me train tickets to go to visit my mother, the year before it was tickets to see the Monty Python Live show in London, and my Other Half has given me some very thoughtful gifts too. But, trust me, I've been on the receiving end of dustbuster hoovers, food processors and other 'gifts' that take surgery to remove too.  But I suppose it was the thought that counted - the thought that a clean house and home-prepared food was what mattered...

So, no. I don't know what I want for Christmas (other than RDJ as mentioned above).  But, while a hammer drill might be useful, I already know that I don't want one of those...

It's not just a big one with bits taken out...

I'm really amazed by how well 'The Art of Christmas' has been going. If, perchance, you haven't read it yet, go ahead, I'll wait, it won't take you long...



Right.  When Choc Lit asked me to write a novella, you should have seen my face! In fact, as you were likely pressed against my front window at the time, you probably did - no, it's no good denying it, I know you stalk me from time to time.  Well, if it's not you, then who is it? Somebody has been trampling through my undergrowth and I don't mean that in a euphemistic way because I distinctly heard the cries of 'ow, ow, ow!' as somebody limped away through the waist high nettles.
Does this look familiar to you?Anyway.  I'd never written a novella before. In case you're not sure, a novella is usually somewhere between 20,000 words and 50,000 words, much less and it's a long short story, much more and it's an actual novel, which is pretty much how Wiki defines it. I've done short stories (a few for Your Cat magazine particularly.  They tend to have quite a lot of cats in them).  And, of course, I've done novels.  But a novella is a strange beast.  It's got plot enough for a book,  and it runs across the savannah grazing on bushes...oh, no, wait, that's antelope. Novellas are the ones where you concentrate on just the central characters and their journey and don't wander off into subplots and additional characters and, like a short story, you have to tell a lot with very few words.

It's tough.  Not enough words to explore everyone's backstory (no, that's not a euphemism either), and half way through I started thinking 'why don't I just make this a novel?', but I was determined to write a novella, so I refused to be sidetracked by motivations (although I was sidetracked by many HobNobs and cups of tea), and I stuck to writing the story of Harriet and Kell and whether her marriage to the deceased Jonno had ever been quite what she thought it had.

It's a bit like...say a novel is like a film.  You've got three hours (or more if it's Lord of the Rings, but I'm presuming that you aren't writing Lord of the Rings because I think that one's taken) to tell a story, so there's plenty of time for lots of loving panoramic shots of the countryside and sunsets, and telling close-ups of people's faces.  In that case, a short story is like a photograph, a snapshot of a particular moment, and you have to get a lot of detail in to that one frame; a single tear on a cheek, a figure in the background staring longingly in through a window (yes, I am seriously affected by your stalking me, you can tell, can't you?).  And a novella?

It's like one of those three minute adverts on TV.  Like the one where the boy mends his father's scarf and then loses it on the bus when he's grown up and the lady finds it and brings it back, or the boy delivering bread through the century.  Or the girl sending a Christmas present to the man in the moon (and yes, all of the above make me sniff and get something in my eye, I am so suggestible it's almost frightening. But, in my defence, I can't tell you what any of them are advertising. Except the bread one, that's pretty obvious. It's bread. No idea what kind though).  A small story, but enough of one to tug at the emotions.
It's John Lewis, apparently. I looked it up.  If John Lewis ever decide to bring out a novella, this will be it..
And I hope The Art of Christmas gives you a good tugging...

Procrastinisation and even my writers' block is running late...

Well.  Yesterday was my birthday, during which I attempted to double my bodyweight with a judicious application of lemon cheesecake, preceded by a Friday takeaway of proportions so massive that several people had to be carried out in shock.  Today things are back to normal. So, if there is a redolence about this blog, it may be due to broccoli.  Pretend not to have noticed.

Anyway.  The whole thing was a giant excuse not to do any writing, which is an art I have been perfecting lately.  I even moved all the furniture and hoovered underneath! I've been saying that it's writers' block, but it really isn't...

The fact is that it's cold in the house and my brain doesn't work well in the cold; it's hard typing when your mouse hand is numb.  Also, I have reached a point in my WIP (Living in the Past, otherwise known as the Bronze Age Time Slip one) where I'm three quarters done, I know how the story goes from here to the end and yet...somehow...I just can't squeeze those words out.  You know toothpaste, right?  When you leave a tube so the end gets all crusty and then one day you give it a really good squirt and you get this little plug of dried toothpaste before the proper stuff comes out? 

That's my brain, that is.

But in fact, I know what the problem is. There's a little bit, right at the end of what I've done so far that I need to change.  It's written from the wrong POV.
So, all I need to do is go back in and change the last little bit. Easy, right?  Yeah, that's what I thought. Turns out, it doesn't matter how easy it is to change, if your brain just can't get around changing it, you had better resign yourself to really clean carpets for a while...  But I know I will get there, because I go through exactly the same thing with every single book.  Usually it strikes earlier, of course, at the 'Pile of Stinking Pooh' stage, but this time it's late.

Or maybe my brain is slow...

Prickliness and how to handle it...help my hero to not say 'I don't believe it...'

No, not like that...

I'm talking about prickly heroes.  Now, I'm a huge fan (along with a majority of the female population) of Kate Johnson's hero, Harker, from The Untied Kingdom.  He is probably best described as 'a little prickly'.  Jack, my male lead in Star Struck, is another one. 

I got to thinking about this, because in my Work In Progress (provisionally entitled, at the moment, 'Living in the Past'), my hero, Duncan, a Scots archaeologist (he's from Dundee, he doesn't deal solely with fossilised kilts, if you see what I mean), is prickly.  In fact, at the beginning, he is downright rude, and it got me thinking...

At what point do our characters cross the line?  I am well known for my dislike of the Alpha Hero (oy, mate, nobody tells me what's best for me...), but at what point does the person trying to get you out of the way of danger become a bossy, overbearing idiot?  Likewise, at what point does the prickly, touchy hero (Duncan is under permanent suspicion by the police for something he may (or may not, I'm not giving away my plot here) have done.  It makes him a little bit...tetchy, shall we say), become obviously rude and unpleasant?  At what point does a character lose our sympathy and gain a smack around the face (and/or laxatives in the coffee, if one is a non-directly confrontational person)?

At first I thought it might be down to how the heroine handles him.  If she seems to sweep away his remarks and dismiss his bossiness, can we overlook it and see if for what (presumably) the author intended?  But then I thought about all those books I've read where I have wanted to seize the heroine by both shoulders and shake her until she wees herself, whilst shouting 'run! Run far, run fast, this man wants you compliant as soon as possible!' while she is simpering at the hero and going along with his, usually quite frankly scary, suggestions.
No, love, it's not erotic. It just means you can't run away very fast...

So, come on everyone, tell me.  Is it your own prejudices and experience that makes a hero cross the line?  Or is it the writing?  When does that attractively irritable hero become an abusive, angry man?  When does the protectively commanding behaviour become bossy oppression?

And you'd better let me know fast, before Duncan degenerates into Victor Meldrew...