A Writing No Man's Land

 This is my first Novel Points of View blog post, so hello! And it comes at the perfect time, because at the moment I am in my favourite place in my writing cycle. One that I eloquently call my 'in-betweeny' time. A no man's land in my writing process, those few weeks/months when I have no deadlines and the sun lounger and my to-be-read pile beckons. If only I could indulge, but there is still work to be done!

My latest book is now away having those final tweaks and edits done and so it's time to be thinking about what I'm going to write next, and this is without doubt my favourite part of the process. It feels as though there are a million possibilities. I know which era I'm going to write in (I think!) but everything else is undecided.

At this point, I may not have any firm ideas, but I do have my 'little black book'. Which is in actual fact a little yellow book, and it contains a physical list of potential book ideas - I don't quite trust technology enough so although I have a list on my computer I like to copy them so I also have a hard version. These ideas usually come as lightbulb moments that strike me when I am driving with no chance of writing them down (when I have to find a parking spot before they drift out of my head, lost forever) or in the middle of the night when I scribble on a piece of paper and subsequently cannot decipher it the following morning!

Sometimes when I go through the list I realise that what I had once considered to be genius inspiration isn't robust enough or there is some other reason why it won't work and those ideas are jettisoned from the yellow book, but with the ones that may have potential I start the most exciting part of my writing life. Because while I'm quietly plotting and planning I'm also, by necessity, having to do a lot of research and that is without doubt my favourite way to spend my time. Every true event I uncover, every historical character or wonderful old house or ruins I visit leads me further down a rabbit hole of investigation and although often what I discover doesn't get used, everything is so fascinating I can lose whole days - sometimes more! - learning about people who lived more than five hundred years ago. The lives they lived, the people they loved and the dangers they faced.

Because of my love of history, I've always enjoyed reading historical fiction that includes real events and individuals so quite naturally these are the books I want to write. And that's why I like to consider myself a detective (I quite fancy being Sherlock Holmes, the cool Benedict Cumberbatch version!) searching out that story hiding in the background, looking for those real people who were living their lives which were just as interesting, fascinating and as full of love, violence and intrigue as ours are today.

Although I love to just dive in and start reading and investigating, I do however at least try and have some sort of proper process. Otherwise I use the time as a long enjoyable reading holiday and when it comes to the day when I have to produce a book pitch or synopsis I have nothing to show for my research. Often the initial idea blossoms into something else, but I still plot everything out on good old-fashioned paper (actually I have a tablet on which I can write and then convert it to text, but that may need to be the subject of another blog), but that's further down the line from my in-betweeny time.

Because I write dual timeline I'm not only thinking about my historical story, I also need to be thinking about a present day one to weave through, and although that's still lurking at the back of my mind (hooray for lightbulb moments!) it's definitely the historical research that I love - so many stories to uncover.

So that is how I spend this very special in-betweeny time; no deadlines on the horizon, a whole world of story possibilities spinning around in my head and a pile of research books waiting. Perfect! Now, where's my sun lounger...