How I Write - Names & Meanings

Having discussed the importance on naming my characters, earlier in this blog, I thought I'd share some research I've been doing this week.


It's been on Bedlam Maternity, which I'm now hoping to get finished in the next couple of months.  It's a horror based in a maternity unit in the East End of London.  Present day, although there is a connection back a few centuries.


I have five present day mothers-to-be to name.  As well as a main character.  All are involved in the mystery of deaths in the maternity unit.  All have special characteristics, that are important to the narrative unfolding.  All have a history - a specific age, and a specific class and family background. I could have stuck a pin in a phone book, but I'm not like that.  I love names, their meaning, and their power.  So, after some serious research, I offer you the following characters: all of whom could be found in the East End of London, on any street.


Rose Templar is our main protagonist.  Rose is a midwife, in her mid-fifties.  A Catholic woman who has lived and worked in the East End for over 30 years.  Part of her local parish community.  'Rose' as she is of an age where it was slightly old-fashioned when she was born, but fits entirely with her background.  Roses are strong, and fragrant, and can be wild and thorny, and not over cultured.  Our Rose is like that.  But there is a softness, in heart and complexion, and intent.  Templar.  This is our holy warrior, fighting for what is right and to keep the poor safe on their travels.  A lone warrior, dedicated in service to others, through religious belief as well as innate personality.  Rose is country old fashioned British, but I never make it clear which area of Britain.


Eliza Jennings -  Poor Eliza.  A name that evokes age old London, and street urchins.  A diminutive of 'Elizabth' which means 'God's Oath' or "God is my Oath'.  Jennings as we used to have a butcher named Mr Jennings, where I used to live.  A solid, working class British name. Eliza existed - see the later narrative.  But she was nameless.  I decided to give her a name, and hopes she forgives me my impertinence in fleshing her out as a person, with a name and background.


Shafiah Begum - my first dead mother.  (I didn't kill Eliza and her twins, someone else did.)  Shafiah means 'intercessor'.  And Shafiah is, indeed, an intercessor in the story.  Begum means an unmarried woman.


Mercy Nakalinzi - Mercy is from Uganda where many of the women are named for human emotions of care and concern.  Mercy does not receive much Mercy in her life.  The internet provides lovely lists of surnames that are popular and appropriate to different countries.  Therefore I chose 'Nakalinzi' as it is easy to read and in tune with her origins.


Omega - a lost soul.  Omega is 15, scrawny and homeless and desperate.  Omega is the name she chose for herself, for her street persona.  She thinks it means ''last" or 'the end', and she feels she was last in everything, so it is a good name.  But it actually means "great".  I'm aware of the irony, she isn't.  Her real name is Alice Smith, but no one ever finds that out.  Omega is so much more cool, honest!


Kaja Sobczak -  is a Polish immigrant, recently arrived.  Kaja mean 'pure', and Kaja is a pure and gentle maid.  Sobczak, her husband's name, means son of Sob.  It's a common Polish name and I chose it as it is identifiable and matches Kaja.


Cerys Roberts - is Welsh, as is her name.  Cerys means 'love' and 'Roberts' means 'bright fame'.  I wanted my final mother that Rose fights for, to shine with love.


There are several other females in the books (it is set in a maternity ward!) and it's quite hard naming a lot of women for their own time and geography.  One, Maggie Saro-Wiwa, is an incidental character who is Rose Templar's boss.  She is named after Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer who was executed by the Nigerian Government, for speaking out against human rights abuses undertaken to extract oil for Shell in his homeland. Maggie is Nigerian and fights for human rights.  The human rights of mothers and babies.  She has seen the worst atrocities of war, in refugee camps in Africa, before settling in the East End of London to help mother's birth.  I hope she is a small, but fitting tribute, to Ken.


We live in a world, where we still kill writers for speaking out, and I have never forgotten Ken Saro-Wiwa.  To this day, I'll let the car run out of petrol, before I'll buy from Shell... 

Drink For Me... First Vampire Feed...? Sample Sunday September 11th.

An excerpt that reveals the creative and self-editing processes this week: under the blue pencil.  Two earlier versions of a pivotal scene in the final book.  Neither made it through... the blue pencil scored through them.

The two excerpts below, are Very Old, and Quite Old.  Raw writing, no editing.  I did correct the spelling and grammar, but they have not seen the eyes of an editor.

Both concern the moment my erstwhile main protagonist, is offered human blood to finish her transformation to vampire.  Both contain a lot of ‘tell’ as opposed to ‘show’.  First draft.  But you may find the similarities, and the differences, between these earlier versions and the final version, interesting.  What happens, how it happens, is roughly the same.  Who she is offered, and how she reacts: different.  Most writers have scenes that disappear, or change substantially.  You might enjoy seeing the process...  

            It started as a dull ache in her jaw. Once, after she had had a wisdom tooth removed, she had developed a jaw infection. The pain was similar, like a throb that became so deep as to be painful. After a few hours, it spread round her whole mouth, the pain in her front teeth the worse, like the gums were being slashed with a razor. Another few hours and she was feverish, hot, sweaty and her spine ached. By the end of the second day, she was in a confusion of pain and fever. She had not slept. She could not eat. She could not drink. Water, when she sipped it, became like liquid glass in her throat, and she soon retched it up.

            The pain in her mouth faded, to be replaced by a dryness, a parched agony that took over all her other senses. All she was became thirst, hunger. She watched television avidly, watching as the phosphor dot images of people, walking, living, breathing people tormented her. She held her face next to the screen, and threw herself away from it in disgust. As the third day dawned, she found herself flinching from the sun as it rose. She knew this aversion was psychological, but as she watched the golden rays warm the garden, her heart shrank, and she ran from the light. Stronger even than the pain, was the need in her for him.

            When was he coming? Where was he? What was he doing?

            Each noise she heard around her, each rustle and sigh from the old house, from the garden, from the birds and animals around her.

            Was it him?  Was that the door?  Where was he?  How could he leave her, to suffer like this?

#SampleSunday - June 12th

Major Arcana XII:  The Hanged Man

Continuing the Back Work theme, this week is the first 25% of a short story I wrote in the mid 1980s.  It is the sort of stuff I wanted to write: fantasy.  Quite dark fantasy (It is me, after all!), but fantasy none the less.

It's not 'me', 'though.  It was who I was trying to be,  It was who I wanted to be.  In the absence of true connection, it is, in large part, story-less.  Sorta.  It is lyrical.  It is logical.  It does have a sequence of events.  If my hubby can get the rest typed up by next week, and we can find the last three pages, you may even see the end.  :-)  But it is what much of my early writing was: vignette.  Not complete.  A sketch.

I rewrote the original short short version, and added the title it has now, to signal it would be on story in a sequence of 22 short stories, for a Creative Writing element of my degree at the University of East Anglia.  The 22 short stories would range through the Major Arcana on the Tarot deck - from 0, The Fool, to 21, The World.  Each would illustrate the theme of the card, and in the entire sequence, would be the development of awareness through the journeys of life.  It's one of the things I keep remembering to think about finishing.  :-)

The Hanged Man, for those not in the Tarot know, is a card of isolation and self-sacrifice: from which comes mystical understanding and knowledge.  But a price must be paid.

I have resisted the urge to polish it up.  A great deal of effort required to do nothing, actually, especially in respect to the adverbs... *shudder*  I can only apologise for the first sentence.

Bedlam Maternity - Sample Sunday May 15th

As last week, this is a first draft.  The first half of the chapter has had some work, the last third was written today, and finished just a few moments ago.  So as with last week, it will be interesting to see how this chapter looks in the published manuscript.

You probably won't get more, until launch.  Probably.

----

Chapter Two

Rose Templar walked the frosty streets in the dark before the dawn.  Later on that day, a minor royal personage would be officially opening the maternity unit now under her tender care.  Not that she was in charge of all of it, in fact, she was just one of the tiny cogs in a massive machine named the National Health Service.   She had been given the duty shift that would see her ensuring that no ‘bother’ interrupted the press call and she’d found herself awake, and fretting, a couple of hours before the alarm clock.  So she’d decided she may as well just get on with it, and get to work early.

She usually enjoyed the long walk to and from work.  When her wreck of a Victorian hospital had been demolished and the new spanking bright and very expensive one they’d all dreamed of for years had finally been started, she’d been faced with a choice.  She could have moved out of her old flat, its mortgage paid off in the divorce settlement, and bought something snazzier near the new unit.  However, no matter how much house prices had risen in her old area, the new unit was in a now quite expensive and trendy part of the East End.  Her salary gave her a reasonable standard of living with no mortgage to pay and moving would cut into to that.  Equally, she’d spend a lot of money on transport if she’d stayed where she was.  When trying to make the ends meet in her mind, she’d determined that two birds could be killed with one stone.  She’d started to spread out around her waist, hips and butt, in a most annoying and middle aged fashion; which was appropriate in her mid-50s, but she detested it.  Exercise was something she knew she should be doing, but when to find the time?  And the average day in the wards saw her standing and walking for hours, wasn’t that enough?  Observing her clothes tighten as her breath quickened on stairs, she decided it wasn’t.  Faced with financial problems no matter what route she took to the new unit, she’d decided to take to the streets and walk the 4 miles every day, there and back. 

Everyone had scoffed at the idea, and declared she’d be shelling out bus or Tube fare quickly.  And, as she’d struggled through the first two weeks, done thankfully when she was on leave, she’d thought they were right.  It was madness.  But Rose very rarely left off on anything that she’d set her mind to, and by the time the new unit had opened up enough for her to start work there, she could do the 4 miles in 45 minutes if she had to, and in an hour and 15 minutes on most days.  The walk home took longer, as it would, after a 12 hour shift.  She’d slowly dropped a dress size and found a lot of her clothes more comfortable to wear as a result.  She hadn’t faced winter yet, ‘tho, and had ordered a pair of ice grips well ahead of time.  The weather proof clothing she’d bought had been more than a match for London so far.  She’d always enjoyed walking in the rain anyway.

The walk had become her down time, a soothing space to settle herself into.  Time to relax into the day on the way there, and unwind from it on the way back.  It was particularly useful in coping with shift work and she’d wished she’d found this balm long before economics had pushed it on her.  But there was no peace to be found this morning: she was just winding herself up with all the thoughts that could go wrong.  Some of those thoughts were about what could go wrong with the opening ceremony, the security, the minor royal who was famed for rubbing the patients up the wrong way when chatting to them, and the general behaviour of her team.  Most of the worries were for her women ‘tho, which is how she thought of her patients.  Labour and birth had their own rhythms.  Unlike most areas of a hospital, it couldn’t be controlled, scheduled and made to conform to routine.  At least, not here, not yet.  She’d spent two months in New England, working on an exchange of medical knowledge programme, and had been horrified by how American business has taken over birth.  She’d certainly learned a lot when there, and used that knowledge to bolster her in fighting encroachment here.   Echoes of that worry were pinging through her thoughts.  The new Chief Executive of the Trust had a very presidential attitude to both the patients, and the staff.  Fresh from working on a team that had lost millions of pounds of tax payer’s money on the railway system, he’d taken over his new fiefdom with a massive grin for the cameras and an iron grip on resources.  He’d already made it clear he wanted no cries, screams, sweaty labouring women or bloody babies being spotted when the press were in the building.  Particularly the bloody baby.

Bedlam Maternity - Sample Sunday May 8th

Hogarth Cruelty in Perfection

Well, isn't it interesting what happens, when you launch a major novel you've been working on for years?  You find more room in your mind.  This may seem obvious to some of you, it wasn't obvious to me.  But launching Changeling, and getting reader feedback (thank you everyone who has commented, either in Amazon or Goodreads reviews, or in email or on other forums) has been amazing.  I was prepared for a barrage of criticism, I wasn't prepared for just how positive the comments have been.  It's lovely to know my writing is touching others, in the way I hoped it would.  I am at the mercy of my readers and it's inspiring to see you all reach out and tell someone else about the book.  Keep it up!  :-)

Anyways... back to this chapter here.  Whilst I am working on Lucifer's Stepdaughter, the space from launching has allowed a new story to grow in my brain.  A short, sharp and savage little novel, I'm introducing you to here: Bedlam Maternity.

The following chapter notwithstanding, it's set in modern day London, in the East End.  It should be out in a few months if this rate of work continues.  As soon as I've saved up enough money to get it edited, and found a cover, really.  Something to attract a more mainstream horror audience to my work, as I work off and out, the rest of the trilogy.  I may, in fact, aim, to do two short novels in-between books 2 and 3 of the trilogy, we'll see.  :-)

The following is also something of a How I Write entry.  It is a first draft, with the ink still drying.  If you spot any typos, comment me.  I won't change them here, but I'll change them on the main manuscript.  At some point in the future, you'll be able to compare what's here, with the final product.  That should be interesting.  I'll let you have Chapter 2 in a couple of weeks.  It needs more work, and was written before this one.  This one was written in two days.  And I typed the last word about 15 minutes before posting this.

I won't say enjoy.  You won't.  But bet'ya you shiver.

----

Bedlam Maternity


Chapter One


London, 1754

      The rain had cleared some of the thick soot from the air of Seven Dials, but it had done nothing to reduce the stench from the streets.  The man scraped mud, rancid pig intestines and human shit off his boots, before slipping into the back door of the tavern.  He didn’t want to be seen, and not being seen often meant walking through the worst of the back alleys, ignoring the smell and the slime.  He was momentarily blinded by the thick layers of tobacco smoke that hung in the stagnant air.  It was of no matter, for his ears soon located his prey, the thick Scottish accents leading him to their table, tucked as far back as possible from any door way.  He seated himself without invite.

            The two men nodded greeting, but the newcomer said nothing in return.  For a moment, silence fell between them.  The older Scot nudged the younger one, who rose and went to find service.  The silence remained until he returned and placed a pint pot of gin down on the rough wood of the bench that served as table.

            The newcomer lifted the pot up, and drank deeply, before saying ‘Thankin’ ye both kindly.’

            They both nodded their own reply, and waited out the other’s pleasure.  He drank half way down the pot, and then fumbled in his pockets, drawing out a pipe.  A few moments of searching revealed no tobacco.  Once again, the older man prompted the younger.

            ‘John, offer our friend here some o’yer baccy.’

            The younger man sighed, and fished out his leather pouch.  Faced with handing over the contents in a lump, or just handing over the pouch, he chose the later, resigned to never seeing it again.  As he suspected, the man filled his pipe, tapped it, and pocketed the pouch.  John attended to taking a long draught of his ale, in order to cool his temper.

            The visitor filled the air up between them with thick streams of smoke.  It helped make them even more invisible, not that anyone else in the tavern was paying them the slightest attention.  You didn’t come in here, if you required anyone to notice you.  The silence held until the newcomer leaned forward, encouraging the other two to lean in to attend to his words.

            ‘She be near her time, like I said.  Ahv spoked to the Mother, right, and she’s in agreement, for the right amount.’ He rubbed his fingers together for emphasis. ‘And she is happy to go somewhere special, since there’s two o’them.’

            The older man leaned in closer. ‘Yer sure, o’ the two?’

            ‘Aye.  No bother aboot it.  Ahv no seen her m’sel, mind, but the Mother says she’s seen twins afore, and it’s for sure.’  He sat back, content to have unloaded his information.

            The two Scots also sat back, in unison.  The younger attempting to swallow down a smug grin.  The older and more business hardened needed no effort to maintain his stone face, or the silence.  After several moments of drinking, and contemplating the streams of smoke, the elder spoke.

            ‘Three.’

            ‘Six’

            The silence returned again.  The newcomer had slowed down his drinking, to make sure there was still some left to finish upon.  There would be no more free drinks, he was sure.

            ‘Four.’

            It was more than he’d expected, and it caught him on the hop.  ‘There’s the Mother, she’ll need her share.’

            ‘Four.  And we pay the carriage to and fro, and hire the man.’

            He was caught and he knew it.  He nodded, and drained his pot, then slammed it down.   ‘Right, four it is.’  He rose and shambled out of the tavern, the way he’d come, taking a second to adjust to the street’s light, before moving off to disappear in a growing fog.

            A fog that helped the two Scots mightily in their unseen and un-noted journey back to more affluent streets, the older man refusing to allow the younger to speak his excitement, whilst they were in public.

            Eliza Jennings shifted her bulk on the thin straw mattress, feeling the strain as she heaved her hips round to the other side, trying to gain some relief from the pain.  The straw did little but hold the dirt to the wooden boards she rested on.  Her thin bones were not grateful for the wood’s embrace.  No matter how she turned, no matter how many times she turned, all she gained was a few moments’ relief before the bones started up their ache once more.  This time, in response to her efforts, her swollen stomach started up a drum beat of protest.  

How I Write - Sharing Ideas And Such

Well, since sharing what I do, seems to be going down so well, I thought I'd share today with you.  And since it's you, I've done a little research fun for you.

The past week, we've been driving across country on a short break.  We started from our home in the Scottish Borders, on the East Coast of Scotland, on the shores of the North Sea, on Saturday, and have driven down to Oxford, from whence these words are being formed.  Today, we went to Avebury, one of the most spectacular places on the planet, a World Heritage site, no less.  We've been visiting Avebury for decades, and it's where my son's naming ceremony was held.  But this visit, today, was one of the most special I've ever had.  The second half of Changeling, features the area around Avebury.  Savernake Forest and Marlborough feature in the narrative.  And whilst we used to live very close, and visit the area a great deal, we've not had much direct contact with it over the past decade.  Since our move to Scotland last year, Wiltshire has seemed a long way away.

So today, driving down to Savernake from Oxford, and them across the A4 through Marlborough and up the Avenue into Avebury.. I was in a different space than I've ever been in before.  So much of the road I was travelling, is named in Changeling.  And Changeling has now been read, and is about to launch.  It was filled with collywobbles and goosebumps.  Anticipation and happiness, and some trepidation, but mostly, just sheer excitement at the route.  I drove off into Savernake for a few hundred yards, to breathe in the forest's scents, and remember how it feels to be deep in its embrace.  And to think of Joanne, and her journey out of the forest, and how I'm finally sharing that journey with people.  :-)

So I thought I'd bring you all a gift, from Avebury.  In joy of the day.  Something I'd noticed on the walls of the church in Avebury, many years ago, and had been meaning to incorporate into a story many times, and have never done so far: a story carved in stone, in one of the Churches.

This gift to you, carries on from my post about naming characters.  And this is the gift...

On the wall of Avebury St James, there is a wall plague.  It is in Memory of a John Mayo of Bath, who died on 3rd May 1830, aged 86 years, and his wife Jane, who died in 23 Nov, 1836, aged 76 years. John was the son of a previous vicar of the parish.  The plaque also remembers his 5 sisters, all deceased.  They are:

Barbara, died 1793, Elizabeth and Thermuthis, died 1797, Mary, died 1819 and Lucy, died 1820.

And that's my gift to you - Thermuthis.  The daughter of a vicar of Avebury St James, who died in 1797.

Why was she called Thermuthis?  It's such an odd succession... John, Barbara, Elizabeth, Thermuthis, Mary & Lucy.  How did that look in the day?

And she died the same year as her sister, Elizabeth.  Twins?  Some joint disaster, disease?  And the wall plaque - raised after 1830, no doubt, and then the predeceased sisters named.  Did none of them marry?  Did they all die 'Mayo', and that's why they are on the plaque?  Or was the memory of their father, who had been vicar at the parish, so strong, that all his children were named, after John died and his estate bought the plaque?

Such a little slice of stone, with a few words carved on it.  And a whole world of mystery opened up by it.  This is how I write... I take small things I notice in the world, and ... wonder... how did that come about...?

And why, was she named Thermuthis?  And who is Thermuthis?  Have fun with it.  I have, for decades!  :-)  Thermuthis Mayo, it's a bit of a shock when you google and find out there was more than one....

How I Write - Naming Characters

I was up 'til 6am this morning, driving myself wild with a new character.  This vampire doesn't show up until book 3, Moonchild, and I didn't know anything about him, until 4am this morning, when someone I'd thought was this character, turned out not to be.  A new character completely, was needed.

This drove me daft.  For the entire third book suddenly changed shape and emphasis.  In a good way, but in an overhaul and refit fashion.  My characters lead my writing.  Scenes where they are appear, and are doing or saying something, or an expression on their face as someone else does or says something.... these are my clues to the narrative.

Imagine a writer, sitting at a desk, scribbling.  Behind them a ghost of a character, stands, impatiently tapping their foot, and awaiting their birth on the page below.  That's me and my characters.

Now imagine the poor writer scribbling away, with several full formed characters standing behind them, arguing amongst themselves as to WHO GOES FIRST.  With several minor ghosts whispering about on the edges, trying to get noticed.  Writer constantly being poked in the back, for them to pay attention to the character that made it to the head of the queue.  Writer trying to ignore them and write sequentially....

Welcome to my life!

So anyhows... last night a new character popped up.  Which means that today, I've been obsessed with name meaning searches.  I can't hold this vampire in my head, until he has a name.  I can't slot him into the narrative, until I know what his name is.  Names, and their meanings, are fundamental to my writing.  Sometimes a character is named for a person I've met, and trait that person has.  Joanne, my main character in Changeling, was named for a Joanne I knew, who was the most selfish, self obsessed, and destructive person alive.  No, Joanne in the book is not like that.... but... the selfishness of the Joanne in real life, was driven by her need to keep alive, no matter the huge burden of pain she was carrying.  You could look at her behaviour, and be repelled by it... but she was driven.  Driven by needs unmet, from early childhood, that slowly destroyed her. That she fought to overcome at all costs.  She was anorectic, and was driven by hunger and longing, and was ridden hard by her disease.  In fact, the selfishness was an aspect of her illness.  She was not a close friend, so I have no idea what her true personality was, I only saw the one distorted by hunger and pain, and the one fighting for attention whilst at the same time locked in a battle no one else could understand.  

How I Write - Stitching

I’m starting to get a feel for the social media aspect of this. Don't get me wrong, I'm not new to da internetz. I go all the way back to good old fashioned Usenet, in the early 90s. I'm a battle scarred veteran of the early days, when you never let anyone online know you were female, and when trolls had yet to be named. 

A survivor of the Great Flame Wars. Youse lot are amateurs, mostly, nowadays. I've been blogging, with a substantial following, for several years. But that's another story, and another me.

The bit I'm getting used to is being on here as a writer, promoting my fiction, my work and craft; even just talking about! It's not something I'm used to, and am only doing, prior to the run up of Changeling being published on April 10th.

But I'm finding my feet, so to speak. And one part of that, was deciding that this blog was also going to include snippets of How I Write. It's something that can be useful to other writers, and something I find I like to share, as I'm talking about something that is such a part of me, and I usually don't talk about it at all. It's also idiosyncratic, as we all write in so many different ways.

So, without further ado... How I Write: Stitching

Stitching is an awful thing. It's the worst thing about being a writer, if you write the way I do. I do not create full blown narratives, from the beginning, and work through them until the end. Far from it. I start with one scene in my head. One idea, usually an interaction between characters. Full formed, and usually high tension.

From there, I get to develop a sense of character. And snippets of a story line. Everything I see and do, plays into this. I watch a documentary on Ancient Rome, a snippet of info comes my way from it. I think "Oh that would be useful for..." None of it builds logically, or sensibly within a narrative structure per se. I have a set of scenes, a set of characters, and a sense of where I need to get to. 

Therefore,I end up with a narrative written in starts and fits. The first written page of Changeling appears in the first chapter. That was a good one. The next main written section was the ending. Oy vey!

Of the middle sections, most of the last half of the book, was written first. In fact, the second half of the sequel, Lucifer's Stepdaughter, was written before most of Changeling was. I always knew I was writing to one crucial scene, in the last narrative section of Lucifer's Stepdaughter.

Go figger.

This is not without its problems. Whilst the golden moments of a new idea, a new scene, a new character interacting with my hapless heroine are... well, wonderful. (And make no mistake, those muse ridden moments of inspiration, when you start writing and fall into the hole in the page, emerging many hours later to find you've burnt the dinner... are hugely wonderful. And satisfying. And sexy.)

They are also few and far between. Mostly, it's hard slog. Mostly, it's sitting there, gritting your teeth and making yourself Write. One. More. Word. 

And that's stitching. When you have to sit and slog and slog and slog. Each word literally pulled out of the you, and stitched onto the page in front of you. And another word, and another word. And then it's a sentence. And. You. Keep. Going. 

Eventually, you have a paragraph, then a page. Then a chapter. And when you started at the end of Scene A, you have finally written your narrative out Word. By. Bloody. Word. to meet the beginning of Scene B. You have stitched the two together. Then you move on, and start stitching that bit, to the next one.

Sometimes it's not so bad. Scene A and Scene B turn out to only be a chapter apart. Sometimes, it's half a book. Between Chapter 1 of Changeling, and what was a main narrative sequence later down the line... I had to stitch 8 chapters. One. Word. At. A. Time.

Hell on Earth. Nothing is more hard work, more mind boggingly, painstakingly awful, than crafting out a story cold. No muse, no inspiration, no hole in the page to jump into. Just sheer, hard slog.

But you keep at it. You keep going. The story has to be told, the canvas has to filled. The needle of your mind, has to keep pulling the threads through your sections, and stitch together whole cloth.

Seamlessly. There's the rub. Nothing more fun than writing an opening chapter, a decade after you wrote the ending one! 

I often envy those who write in linear flow. I hesitate to think it must be easier, as I don't think any one of us, can ever know what another writer is going through, when they craft a narrative. But when I'm faced, as I am now, with one half of a chapter and then the last third of a book... and I have to stitch the entire next two thirds of a book... I think there must be easier ways to go stark staring mad, than being a writer. 

So there you go. Now you know what I'm doing, if you see the hashtag #stitching.

And. It's. Bloody. Hard. Work.