5 steps to arse on seat 1st drafts and Tomsk steals my heart

I greet you over a plate of pancakes from Tomsk. The cheapness and wide availability of pancakes is not why I have been so happy in Tomsk but I won't say it hasn't played a large part.

           

Tomsk is a beautiful university town, full of old wooden buildings, alongside the usual tower-blocks and squat government buildings, the sleepy but vast River Om runs through it. It feels far removed from any of the places I have visited so far on my journey through Russia. Long a home for political and creative dissidents (and the one time distribution hub for prisoners going to Gulags) Tomsk continues to be, to my observation, a cosmopolitan and intellectual town – young, vibrant and welcoming.

           

It is also a romantic city, in the night-times the streets fill with couples dressed in their finest, clutching roses as they promenade or maybe sit in each other's laps next to the fountain blasting out 90's music. Alongside the lovers, in their satin, heels and diamanté encrustations, are wolf-life waggish stray dogs, roaming the streets in lazy packs. My favourite six or seven lay sprawled each night in the evening sun outside the supermarket, occasionally flicking a tail to tell a sparrow-like bird to buzz off

        

I have loved Tomsk for all these reasons but mainly I have loved Tomsk because I have been so productive. I mentioned a few posts earlier than I was scheduling myself fairly tightly throughout Russia - redraft in the morning, research afternoon, write new scenes in the evening – in a bid to make the most of this time. Tomsk has been incredible for writing, I cannot say why this is, but just as I found in Vietnam when writing my first novel, occasionally on the road - you, a place and your writing are just meant to be.

This sudden spike in words and pages got me thinking about method. Had you asked me even a few months ago what my method was, for instance how I wrote Tony Hogan in six months, I would say 'Well I just sat down every day and wrote 1000 words and when I had a draft I sat down every day and redrafted a certain amount of pages and then I had a novel.' That is the whole truth to my method but of course it's not quite that simplistic. There are several things that make up this 'arse on seat 1st draft methodology' of mine:

1)                  I do not mythologise writing or overthink stories. Storytelling is as old as time itself and that's all writing, or certainly my writing, is - telling a story as I see it in my mind and imagination, fuelled by what interests me, my perspective of the world, what I feel passionate about. Every time I sit down I tell myself that the only thing I have to do is sit and tell a story. The women in my family have been doing this for generations long past, usually after a glass or two, and I am no different. Though my words might one day be printed and I tend to be less drunk during the telling.

2)                  I allow my mind, the creative unpredictable side, an entirely free reign when I write 1st drafts. I literally turn those typing hands over to my mind. I tell the story as I think it and see it. There will be time later to think about pace, characterisation, theme, conflict, climax but I'm always amazed by how much of this comes out intuitively if you really allow yourself to write uncensored. And occasionally the most wonderful details emerge from that blurry mess, things I wouldn't have known myself capable of thinking or communicating. Just occasionally, but it does happen.

3)                  You know when it is going well? The times when you cannot type past enough, when you finish and have to shake yourself back into the present, when you believe you could write all night and tell a whole world not just a single story within one? Well those are to be cherished but let's be straight, they are rare. More commonly the words need to be coaxed. I often sit and write brittle word after brittle word until I've written what I targeted for that day (usually 1000 words). Sometimes, part way through something will click and I'll finish in a sprint, my fingers racing to capture all that has just flooded into my mind. Sometimes not. Often not. But I keep typing anyway. You can fix the words you have later, you cannot do this if you have no words at all.

4)                  I treat my work with respect but not reverence. You are just telling a story. It is not a cure for cancer or the secret to world peace - well my words aren't anyway. Knowing this means I don't drown under the pressure of my own expectation unnecessarily, especially when it is just me, that 1st draft and the characters getting smoochy in a hot little room in Hackney.

5)                  Laugh at yourself frequently and allow others to do so on your behalf regularly. This isn't a 1st draft ethos but a lifetime one.

So there we have it. I leave for my 35 hour train to Irkutsk tonight and even further into Eastern Siberia. I'll spend some of that time writing some more 1st draft scenes to insert into what is rapidly becoming a 2nd draft Thirst. I'll eat cous-cous and tomatoes and drink tea and use sign-language to share my food and think a little more about the methodology of writing. Or maybe I won't, I think half the effort is leaving the beast undisturbed and dreaming like those wolf dogs outside the supermarket. I do hope I haven't already said too much.

Next: Irkutsk and writing on trains