Hearing voices

I have Good News - my characters are talking to me again! I stuck out the awkward party, I made small talk, I listened and eventually  they started letting me into their conversation.

The excellent advice I had - to get my characters to explain themselves to a new character - was a turning point. I wrote pages and pages cringe-worthy info-dump dialogue, which will NEVER be seen by another human EVER, but which helped me to really understand them again. I began to feel their conflicts, rather than  just know them.

That's not to say that there aren't some ongoing issues. My characters are still making me work really hard for their cooperation. They will only speak to me if I'm writing longhand, away from my desk, for example. And they like to talk when they feel like it, not when I do. I remind myself I mustn't indulge them in this last point - it isn't the best way to get a novel finished, after all, and the more I talk to them, it seems, they more they'll talk to me.

So for anyone out there being given the silent treatment by their characters - please don't give up. They are still in there somewhere: keep writing, and they'll come back to you.

Ellie x

Late to the party

Have you ever arrived late to a party and known straight away it's going to be a very long night. Everyone's a few glasses ahead of you, there's a new in joke, (whenever anyone tries to explain it they end up saying 'you just had to be there') and the food's looking a bit manky. You're convinced you stick out like a sore thumb, and you think you'd be better off leaving.

Well, this is what my characters have done to me. Last time I was here I was all excited to get back to work on Food Glorious Food. I'd been looking forward to it for ages, and I was prepared to dive right in. Unfortunately, my characters were less happy to be woken from a six-month nap. Turns out they were pretty happy being ignored, and they don't want to let me back in.

This doesn't feel fair. I created these people. I'd spent an age doing prep work: building the characters in my mind, creating character profiles, writing the first few chapters, writing more character profile. I thought that I'd be able to sit, read through my notes, remember everything about who they are, and start writing.

But when I sit down and write, the words don't want to come. When my critique group helpfully point out the plot hole in chapter one, I can't come up with a way to fix it. I just don't understand these people any more.

So, I've done what I would have to do at that party. I started talking, well writing. It doesn't matter that my conversation is stilted, or that the person I'm talking to doesn't make much sense. I figure I'll write my way through this conversation, and the next and the next, and as long as I am putting pen to paper, and doing my best to figure my characters out (and perhaps with the help of a small glass of red) I'll find my way back into the party spirit.

Has this happened to anyone else - any advice gratefully received!

Ellie x

Food Glorious Food

With Hollywood finished, and Old Friends resting I'm very excited to be revisiting a much-loved project I started last year - I've been waiting ages for the right time to give it the love and attention that it deserves.

My heroine was inspired by the warm glow on the faces of cookery show contestants - the pure, unadulterated pleasure of seeing someone love something you've created. I wanted to explore how this love of food, and love of pleasing people might fit into a relationship, and my heroine blossomed onto the page. I knew exactly the man who would challenge and push and irritate her, and the sparks started to fly as soon as I got them into a room together!

So for the coming weeks, or months, or however long it takes to do their story justice, I'm going to be exploring the relationship between food and love. Because as Virginia Woolf said: 'One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.'

Ellie x

Old Friends: An update

Hello!

What a crazy couple of months. NaNoWriMo has come and gone, and I'm only now finding my way out from underneath the annual December laundry mountain.

But, and here's the happy news, I won!

My first draft of my first historical novel is complete, all I need to do now is finish my stack of research books, add more details about setting and atmosphere, check all my facts, check the dialogue is authentic ... OK, so I'm not going to think about all that just yet (otherwise my head might explode).

But in case you were wondering what was going on between my two old friends, here's an introduction to my story.

When Bess's childhood sweetheart arrives with the news that her husband has died, she's shocked, and overwhelmed by the attraction that still sparks between them. But her delight in seeing her Tom is tempered by the reminder of the promise she made him long ago - that she would marry him if she were ever free of her arranged match. 

After years of separation these old friends must learn to love and trust one another in order to find happiness as man and wife, before one - or both - of them decide that their marriage was an irreparable mistake.

So there you have it - that's where I've been for the past few weeks, with my head stuck firmly in early-sixteenth-century Warwickshire. Now ... back to my books.

Ellie x

Two days to go...

NaNoWriMo is nearly upon us!

With just two days to go the annual NaNo nerves and excitement are building, and I'm itching to get started. Whether you're new to NaNo or an old hat, here's a checklist to make sure you have everything you need come the 1st of November:

1. An idea If you'e falling at the first hurdle, try one of the story prompts on this blog, the ones at Writer's Digest, or trusty old google.
2. A plan It doesn't need to be enormously detailed, if that's not the way you like to work, but some idea of where you want to be on the 30th November makes the 1st to 29th so much easier.
3. Write or Die An amazing writerly tool. Set it to kamikaze and it'll start deleting words if you stop typing. Not for the faint-hearted, but brilliant for stopping procrastination.
4. Plenty of tea Or coffee, or orange squash, or mashmallows, or wasabi peanuts, or ... You get the idea. Something nice for when you've hit your target, written your way out of a corner, or done something else reward-worthy.
5. A NaNo buddy If no one you know in real life is writing this year, take to the forums and twitter to find someone like-minded for mutual support and encouragement. A little friendly competitiveness never hurt the word count either. 

Just a short post this evening as I'm hitting the books, trying to fit it as much research as I can before the madness begins! Please (no, really, please) share your NaNoWriMo tips and tools in the comments :)

Ellie x

How NaNoWriMo is like knitting a scarf ...

No, really, stick with me here. It is.

When you start knitting, it's pretty hard. Finishing a row with the same number of stitches you started with is an impossible task. Extra stitches appear from nowhere; even though you could swear you'd knitted every single stitch, holes appear at random and with disturbing regularity. Unless you are some sort of knitting prodigy, your first piece of knitting will probably resemble a bedraggled and sorry-looking dishcloth.

For me, learning to write was exactly the same, and I guess I'm not alone.

Chances are your first draft of your first chapter of your very first novel will look equally bedraggled, with holes and diversions and a strange mess in the middle that you've no idea how it started and no clue how to fix it. So what do you do? How to remedy this mess? You keep going, because by the time you've knitted long enough to make a scarf, your stitches will be even and you won't have dropped a stitch for days (OK, maybe hours).

When you finish your first scarf, the only way to improve it might be to rip it back and start again. There are only so many dropped stitched that one can fix. Your second might still have a few holes. You might want to rip back some sections and put them right. Find all the dropped stitches and repair them. But by the time that you make that third scarf, it might just need a good blocking, and it's good to go.

I think of NaNoWriMo as a sequence of scarves. The first was/is a big, holey, patchy nightmare, which one of these days I'm going to sit down and rewrite from scratch (I love my characters and setting too much to waste - much like a lovely yarn). My second was better, but still full of scary moments. It'll take a lot of work to fix, but I don't think I need to pull the whole thing back. And the third? Well, it needed more than blocking. It needed rewrites and edits and critiques and more edits, but now, I have to say, I think it's a really rather lovely scarf, sorry, novel.

So, who knows, maybe scarf number four will just need a quick spin in the washing machine and be good to go... watch this space!

Ellie x

Five reasons to sign up for NaNoWriMo

As November is rapidly approaching, and the research for my new novel is gearing up, I thought I'd take a minute today to remind myself of why I love NaNoWriMo. And because I hope that some of you out there are thinking about doing this mad, crazy, brilliant thing with me, here are five reasons to sign up this year!

1. It helps you find time for your writing. It's the one piece of advice you'll find in almost every book, lecture and blog post about writing: you have to find the time to write regularly, every day if you can. The intensity of the NaNoWriMo month with help you to work out where your writing can fit into your life, and what your writing's more important than. Is it more important that that extra hit of the snooze button? Is it more important than EastEnders? The washing up? Hot food? Basic personal hygiene? Obviously (I hope) your writing can't be more important that all of these things, but it's surprising the time that you can find if you really want to.
2. It gets you past the first chapter. I've written before about the possible dangers of writing and editing simulateously - namely having a drawer of perfect first chapters, but never having got further than that. Break the habit with NaNo. It may not suit everyone. There may well be a middle ground between editing too much and not editing it at all, but trying a new way of working could be just what you need.
3. The pep talks. They're brilliant. When you're having one of those days where it feels like every word is being dragged kicking and screaming from your brain, a email will pop into your inbox reminding you that we all have days like that, that tomorrow will be better, and that you can do this!
4. It makes your writing better. Okay, I don't actually have any scientific proof of this, but having finished NaNoWriMo three times, and having edited one of those drafts into an actual, proper, finished novel, I can tell you that the writing at the end was an awful lot better than at the beginning. It's like anything, yoga, baking, knitting, if you practice it for two hours a day, every day, you are going to improve.
5. Because you love to write! What other reason do you need?! Every day, for a whole month, you'll sit down, start typing, and create people, places, smells and sights that didn't exist before you thought of them. You'll make your characters, and yourself, laugh and cry and probably, at some point, very cross. Frankly, what better way to spend a cold, damp dreary month (apologies to those of you in the southern hemisphere, I can't think of November in any other way) than in front of the fire with your notebook on your knee?

So there you have it. That's why I'm signing up this year. Will you be?

Ellie x

P.S. Have you read the first chapter of Hiding from Hollywood, and the other entries for SYTYCW yet? Voting's open for two more days!