The lighter side of scribbling

I often go on at length about what a chore writing can be, how it can be hard and lonely, where seemingly insurmountable cliffs of dread surround me at every turn. While this is all well-and-good it’s not the whole story. I gain an immense amount of pleasure doing what I do. There are many times when the words just seem to dance out of the ends of my fingers and onto my keyboard. Therefore, I thought it only right and proper to set the see-saw of life firmly on the other side of the playground, away from the muddy puddle of editing and writers block; setting it firmly on solid ground where imagination and daydreams dance merrily through the mind. The place where all of us imagined we would be when we first uttered those immortal words - ‘Do you know what? Today I’m going to write a book.’

So where to start? Well, like any good story, I guess I should start at the beginning. Writing is fun. This might sound strange but if it weren’t, nobody would do it. Writing is an escape from the humdrum of daily life. It allows you to place your mind somewhere else and sit back and enjoy the ride. No matter how boring your day has been, when you sit down at the keyboard and start to press the lettered keys a whole new world opens up in your mind and is usually a hell of a lot more fun than the ‘normal’ one. Before you open a realm where literally anything is possible. Stop and take a moment to think about that. Anything is possible. How often do we say that? In a story anything can happen. There are no limits, no boundaries. If you can think of it, a story can take you there. Do you want to experience a whole new life? A tale can transport you somewhere magical. This is the power of the written word and, as the author of the story, it’s your choice as to which way you go. Personally, I love the feeling brought on by plonking a couple of characters into a location and seeing what happens. Sometimes, I start a chapter with absolutely no idea what is going to happen. Then afterwards, I sit back with a slightly numb brain and chuckle to myself, realising that that morning I’d had no idea what was about to take place. This is the joy of writing.

Other aspects of writing that I enjoy are the building up of a narrative that transports my character through a plot, connecting the dots until that character arrives at his or her conclusion. After all, it’s all about the journey. Then again, I love spending time in a single scene; trying to work out how to portray the setting to a reader. Usually, at some point my characters have to deal with something technological. I go to great lengths in building that machine in text form. I have to work out a way to explain the item to the reader so that they can understand what I have built inside my mind. True, I sometimes do a piece of accompanying artwork to go with the scene, but the writing usually comes first. I sit at my computer and think, and re-think, how a device would work; how could it exist in the world I have created. Case in point: In Havoc I created a steam powered submersible. It had to manoeuvre, dive and surface. All without killing the crew. I had to work out how the machine would function, how the crew would breathe and how they would operate it. Writing in my study, buried in south-east England, I drafted and re-drafted version after version of this machine; each time adding further details to the craft as the story grew. I can honestly say, that when writing these scenes, the outside world seemed to fade out of existence. Building that craft and the story around it was immense fun.

Another part of the fun side of writing is fleshing out the world. If you’re a regular visitor to this blog you will know that each week I post a short history piece that adds detail to the world, delivering a back story to the main adventures in my books. I have them all collated into a timeline using a spreadsheet. It’s really the only way to manage the collection of anecdotes as they build up. The list already covers very nearly four hundred years of history and shows no sign of abating.

Finally, there’s a part of writing I find enjoyable that I never thought I would. Language. It never occurred to me that this could be something I’d find fun. As time has rolled on, I’ve found myself delighted in writing the actual words. Sitting down and working out how to re-draft a sentence so that it flows better with the others around it. At school I hatted doing such things. I found them a total drudgery. Yet now there is a hidden delight. The more I do it the better I get. I’ve quoted the phrase ‘your first draft is the worst your book will ever be’ before and it’s true. Adding the polish to a chapter is a delight in itself. Sure, I have plenty of room for improvement, who doesn’t. But it’s like anything in life, the more you do something, the better you get at it. Sure, it helps to have editors and proofreaders subtly pointing out ways of improving your text - some less subtle than others, but I still find myself amazed at the English language and what is possible with it. I’m no Shakespeare, but I still gain pleasure from my own writing. I repeat a mantra to myself most days - ‘I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it.’ Who’d have thought? Here’s me, an engineer in his ‘almost-fifties’, who struggles to spell and who is renowned for making excuses about why he shouldn’t do something - but I have actually published one book and have a second one near to completion. I can tell you, many of my friends and family doubted I’d ever finish, let alone publish. And yet here I am. Nine months after the launch of my debut novel and I’m still loving it. What’s not to love? And if you need even more proof that what I do is immense fun, just look back through the over-forty separate entries I’ve written about my experiences with writing on the blog. To date, I’ve penned almost twenty-five thousand words on the subject of my writing. As a real world measure, that’s approximately one quarter the length of my first novel! Now if that doesn’t say I love writing then I don’t know what does. And what’s more, there’s an old saying that “there’s a book inside all of us.” That means, no excuses!

Now, get scribbling.