Book of Lost Nights

The first draft of Sleepwalker is continuing to be troublesome. What I’d planned seemed fine when I planned it, but on the page the lead up to the denouement came across as a little pedestrian, lacking the bite I wanted it to have.

Lots of work has gone into thinking about what can be applied to make it a bit richer, a bit less “Oh, he’s just a very bad man and he needs a smack on the bottom.” Plus, I hadn’t thought through the amazing amount of historical research it takes just to appear merely incompetent rather than utterly clueless. I mean, it’s been fascinating – a great opportunity to do the Wikipedia Trail through pages on religion and geography and torture and Mediterranean piracy in the Classical world  – but it does take time, and not least because it constantly generates new ideas, makes new connections apparent, and some of these are almost impossible to resist implementing. For instance, I found out that Carthaginian priestesses wore robes embroidered to make them look like they were wearing birds’ wings. What’s not to love about that, with my bird-named quantum-phenomenon heroine currently disguised as one?

However, Sleepwalker is late, and it was starting to get me down. So I decided to run away. After I got rear-ended by Boy Racer a few weeks ago, (my neck is still killing me, actually) I was provided with a rental car, and packing up the laptop, and the knitting, and a bunch of DVDs, and something to read, and some make-up, and some bath soaky products, and… well, about three rucksacks of stuff for a single night, to be honest, most of which I didn’t touch but could if I wanted to, I took off to Canterbury and a country hotel I found on laterooms.com.

I ate noodle soup at Wagamama and then drifted through the cathedral (the horrid weather prevented much else). The visitor traffic was tiny – large tracts of the building were effectively deserted. The vast cavernous echoey space lent room to my thoughts, which eventually stopped racing, grew quiet and contemplative.

After an evening spent drowsing my neckache away in a warm old country house, watching the rain fall on the gardens in the dusk, I finally felt it all start to come together. I wrote for a few hours, and then fell asleep again, the laptop humming away on the bed.

The next morning, I drove the coast road home as far as Hastings. I stopped in Sandwich, and received one of those little gifts that synchronicity sometimes hands out to writers. I had just walked through the muddy but charming Gazen Salts Nature Reserve and was in a church called St Mary’s – still consecrated, but now used as an arts centre. This meant that the pews were gone, just leaving a beautiful timber-roofed space full of light and stone floor, with original painted knightly arms and mottos.

One of these was Mors Ianua Vitae: “Death is the door to Life” – which was just so gorgeous and appropriate I could have wept. The search for John de Rievaulx’s family motto is now over.

Currently Reading: The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

6 Comments | In: History, Research, Travel, Weird, Writing | tags: canterbury, carthage. | #

Word Count:1162

So, finished Chapter One in rough draft – yay! Not great, but will do for now.

I decided to pile into my car and do a research/pleasure jaunt with my day off work. The plan was to look at potential sites for Hansley, Astrid’s ancestral home. In the original draft, this was near Canterbury in Kent. This was because when I was a teenager, I went on holiday with my mate Niamh and her family, and I was blown away by how clean, beautiful, and relaxed the place was compared to our grotty, gritty, Mancunian lives. It struck me as the sort of posh upmarket place the Saint-Anges would have favoured for the past few hundred years.

However, there’s now a kind of image system in the book, and when I woke up in the morning, it occurred to me that since Astrid’s element is air, she really would live somewhere more elevated. I’d read the new story from sumitsays which focussed on a cliff, and I remembered Beachy Head which I visited last year – maybe that or Devil’s Dyke might be the place. As quite a bit of action takes place at this location, it’s not just a character building exercise, so I do need to focus on somewhere.

So Violet and I rolled on out to Beachy Head, and it was beautiful and inspiring and terrifying in equal measures… but sadly, not what I was looking for. It was all far too wild for Astrid, who I think would favour efficiently farmed estates and tidy formal gardens. So back to Kent or possibly Sussex.

I suspect Canterbury was the right hit all along. And it’s a nice opposition to ancient York, where John’s story is happening.

1 Comment | In: Research, Travel, Writing | tags: beachy head, canterbury, t party, york. | #

A complete waste on the work front. Well, mostly a waste. I drove two and a half hours (it’s meant to be just over an hour and a half, but the traffic was thoroughly obnoxious. Actually, I don’t know why I say this about the traffic, as it’s bad more often than not. The M25 is just all over awesomeness.) to Canterbury. Shitty, shitty weather (I nearly skidded into the back of a bus when I got to the university – those terrifying adrenaline jolts are just where it’s at, don’t you think?).

First appointment – the guy clearly hasn’t read my email before agreeing to the appointment. So that’s a complete bust. The second guy is a bit more with it but clearly just considering writing something from a very speculative kind of place right now. I’m going again in September, hope it’s better then.

It was far too miserable to consider doing anything else once work was over, such as going into Canterbury itself, so I just came home.

Got in, and was so dispirited I lay down for a nap and didn’t stir again until 10pm. Most of the evening has now gone. Bah! Too cranky to actually cook anything, even if I had anything in the house. I’ve had an apple and I do, happily enough, have most of a bar of Green and Black’s chocolate in my bag.

Never mind. I’ll do some bits and pieces. Possibly watch a DVD and knit a bit. For some reason, I fancy a bit of Harry Potter, which isn’t like me. But I did like Goblet of Fire.

No Comments | In: Travel | tags: canterbury. | #

Free at last. Prof. Shouty is done (he’s given me a lavish dedication in the book, which improves my temper no end).

My parents came and went last week. They were frogmarched through a rigorous programme of amusements which they appear to have enjoyed. My sister suggested taking them to Greenwich and we went via the water taxi from Westminster (great value, by the way). I was delighted on two fronts, as it was a lovely but cold day and also it was something I’d meant to do for research, same with the London Eye. We had some resistance to things like the Eye and the Observatory (for height reasons) but once we bullied them up there they seemed to dig it and I could tell that it would be the occasion for some showboating once they got back to France, so I consider it all a job well done.

We had a day out in Canterbury with a guided tour of Canterbury Cathedral, did Mass at Westminster Cathedral, saw Greenwich Observatory, stood on the meridian, met my sister’s boyfriend (a nice fellow), and on Thursday when they first arrived, my mother declared a desire to shop. My Dad and I shivered inwardly, as shopping in London near Christmas isn’t remotely funny. At any rate, I left her to it, left my Dad to it (he was supposed to be dispatching towards a pub, but ended up wandering the streets, doubtless cursing English dominance over the Scots which is kind of expected of him in these situations) and I was left to do my own thing. Since my copy of Marlowe’s Complete Plays (which I bought in Oxford about a fortnight ago) proved to be unexpectedly expurgated (about 50 pages were suddenly missing from the middle of Edward II) I took that back for a replacement and after that thought I would check out the John Lewis in Oxford Street.

See, for a little while now, I’ve had this feeling I would like to get back into doing some crafts. I’ve been watching djinnj’s journal for a while now and it always gives me an itchy feeling in my fingers. I used to be quite big on tapestry, but kits are so damned expensive, and besides, I thought I’d like to try knitting. When I was a kid, I was shit at all needle/clothy activities except for macrame, which I was unexpectedly adept at. So I thought knitting might be my thing. Plus, it’s winter and cold and good sweaters are expensive. If I knit my own shit, I can make what I want and am also not contributing to the miserable slave-like existence of some poor bastard in a sweatshop somewhere. Unless of course they make the yarn. Then I’m screwed.

At any rate, I went in and picked up a little book, some needles, yarn, bits and tricks like stitch holders and scissors and darning needles, and nearly bought a £20 knitting bag. Common-sense triumphed unexpectedly though, as it finally dawned on me that I would be better off finding out if I liked it or not before buying a special very expensive bag when a placky bag would do. I was spellbound by all of the beautiful yarns though, and the magazines full of gorgeous designer patterns. Clearly things had moved on in the pattern stakes from when I was a lass.

So I had a bash, but the instructions weren’t terribly clear, and the only things to make in the book were baby clothes. I have no children and whilst I do know some babies, I wouldn’t say I knew them well enough to contribute weeks of spare time to clothing them. So I ended up getting this book at the Books Etc at Canary Wharf called “Stitch ‘n Bitch” and that did the trick. Very clear instructions, nice patterns, and that’s been it.

I was actually pretty wiped by the time my parents went back on Monday (I’d been Mr. Shouty’s bitch right up to the moment I had to leave work to collect them from the airport, and since there isn’t a lot of room at my place I had to sleep on the floor whilst they had the bed) so I was too exhausted to write, plus I’d lost a lot of momentum. I tried, and nothing came. Furthermore, it felt like horribly hard work, and I don’t want it to feel like work.

Knitting, however, was just the ticket. So far I’ve finished a small swatch of blue fabric (don’t laugh, I had to rip it up and restart it THREE times!) and a scarf in this rather lovely trio of wools in chocolate, cream, and a kind of taupe/oatmeal mix. It’s 100% chunky merino wool knitted on enormous needles and I’m very proud of it, and once I work out how, I’m going to post a pic of it.

Next project up is a ribbed scarf in a kind of kingfisher teal colour, at which point I shall learn to purl. I am actually really, really excited by this. Maybe I need to get out more, but hey.

Of course, none of this is getting the book written (I did TRY knitting and writing, but it didn’t work. I could have wept…) so the plan is now to forget my previous word shortfall, what with Mr. Shouty and the Parental Units visiting, and just start again from scratch. As of last night. During which I didn’t write. I knitted my scarf and watch “The Two Towers”, because sometimes you just need a bit of Faramir, I’ve discovered to my surprise.

But I know what I want to do next, and it’s Parkes, my third strand and the Exposition Lady. She is about to have a nice long chat with my villain so that should be done tonight.

I’m currently working on three story strands (which is enough – one to cover Em, one to cover Danny, and another to cover the world and things that Em and Danny don’t know about but which the audience needs to). My agent in this case is the cold and adulterous Parkes, and I better get back to her before my dinner finishes cooking.

So, yeah, say it loud and say it proud… my life is my own again!

Current Reading: Marlowe: The Complete Plays

4 Comments | In: Books, Research, Travel, Writing | tags: canterbury, christopher marlowe, knitting, london. | #