The First Draft of the Second Part in the Third Person

For the past six months, this message from Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes has been my writing proviso:

“Just in case needed: Just write/create at will; let the ocean in your heart and head flow out. Keep going. Don’t try to shape it yet. That's later. After you have the ocean in a notebook.

This comes with prayer for sluice gates to remain wide open and cleaned of debris. Stay focused on 'the one thing.' Completion comes from focused hard work daily. I know you know what I mean. Don’t meander all over the place. Remain committed as you promised”

So I commit more than I ever have in my life. To give form to the flurry of linguistic bricks and mortar that is building the quickening story I carry in my head. As the words appear relentlessly unchecked, badly spelt, back-to-front in my notebook or up on the laptop screen I repeat to myself the reassuring mantra 'The first shitty draft…the first shitty draft…the first shitty draft.'  (Thanks Anne Lamott. )

Then joy of joys, I hit the point last week when the crashing chaos of the creative ocean began to coalesce into a calmer body of water. I could see the story begin to emerge as an entity, characters beginning to command their destinies, themes at last visible to the naked eye, gratuitous back stories dropping away and at long last, a shimmering mirage of structure suggesting itself.

So, now I turn to the engineering. Before I discovered Larry Brooks’ Story Engineering , this was a part of writing that I found both mystifying and gruelling – like trying to run a marathon without any idea of pacing myself. I thought that, provided I had enough material, the structure would just magically appear. It does for the gifted few, I’m sure. But I need help, and I am perpetually grateful for Brooks’ guidelines which have empowered me to fashion a novel from ‘the ocean in my notebook’.

Setting my stories in the 17^th/18^th centuries does demand a certain amount of research. I’m not a slave to historical accuracy, but I like to have the means to imbue my stories with a sense of authenticity. It’s particularly exciting to stumble upon a historical fact that beautifully ties in with a line of independent creation and so that one feels as if an instinct for the period and the setting is beginning to develop.

It’s easy to be distracted by research, though. I’m in the final throes of reading around West Indian zombi myth and reality, which is so fascinating I could easily read several more, even though it is but a small aspect of the story. So, I need to leave it there – at least for a little while – and focus on the dirty work.

But then, I find myself thinking, there’s the title of book two…yet another excuse for procrastination!