Chapter 7 - Starting to write

Once I’d planned the world, the story and my characters, I nervously started writing. I had no idea if I could write a book, whether the words would flow or if it would just be such an embarrassing process that I would give up before I’d really started. To my surprise, the words came pretty easily and not only that, I loved the process; I found it strangely liberating to be in total creative control of what I was doing, something very rare in daily life. Equally, the journey was constantly surprising; initially I’d thought I was writing a standalone book, but soon realised there was just too much content for this, so it turned quickly into a trilogy. Furthermore, characters who I’d thought wouldn’t play a main role to start with (Marcus for example), ended up taking centre stage, and new characters (like Anderson) appeared out of nowhere.

I’m a very visual person so I imagined everything as I wrote, taking inspiration from things and places familiar to me; St Andrews for Kingdom, Devon moorlands and Scottish highlands with their bleak landscapes and meandering rivers for the land around Empire, Tuscany for the weather and feel of Empire, cathedrals for the Temples - Lincoln cathedral providing inspiration for both the Mind Temple (its gothic choir) and Body Temple (its low arches), and others such as Salisbury’s and Exeter’s naves for the towering, simplistic spaces of the Spirit Temple.

I wrote a little at a time to start with, re-reading several times what I had written before moving on, but as I gained confidence, I wrote much more quickly, writing several thousand words per sitting towards the end. I think what greatly helped with this was a clear plan of what would happen at each stage of the book. This way I always knew what was coming next and could easily refer back to what had gone before. It provided me with obvious goals of where I needed to get to each time I sat down to write and also meant I saw real progress, ticking off sections as I made my way through, with a clear idea of how far I was from completion.

But also, because of the new and unexpected twists and turns that happened along the way, it was exciting for me to see what would happen next. I would daydream on my way to and from work, imagining (as I do when I read other peoples’ books) what would happen next, but the wonderful thing was, when I got home, I could write my thoughts down and incorporate them into the story as I went along if I wanted. This was the thing I loved most; the only person who could limit what I could write was me, so the only limits on what I could write were those of my own imagination.