Work Surfaces

'You are where you work', said nobody, ever.

Today I had a moment of clarity about the standard of my work. The great problem I have is being in the zone and unless I am in the zone, I find it virtually impossible to write. I need to be in a comfortable space, free of distractions. I need to have a reasonable book for writing in and a good pen. I need to be sitting at the right angle and I need to make sure that people aren't going to distract me. It's a long list of things that can go wrong. Even simple things. For example...

I might not have enough battery on my phone to listen to music.

My pen might have run out/got lost/been stolen.

My wife, (Yes, I got married last summer, I don't think I blogged about it) may want to talk about Grey's Anatomy/Glee/X-Factor.

Any body else might want my attention. 

My book may have run out of pages.

Anything else, like the temperature or a fly or the fact that the rosé I'm drinking on this warm summer's night is too sweet for my palette. (wine is almost as important as writing)

Actually, while we're on the subject, I never drink and write. I write much better when I've been drinking, though slower, I'm frightened of the idea of the alcoholism slippery slope. If I ever feel that I need a drink to create, I'll stop writing forever. George Orwell said that writing must come first and I'm inclined to agree. I would sacrifice a lot of things to follow my dream but a line has to be drawn somewhere. I'm writing the best book I possibly can. If it is not good enough, so be it. In the end, it's only a book, even if it's my life's work.

All that, however, is an aside. 

I wanted to talk about my bag. I put my bag on my lap and use it as a writing desk. I always have. Maybe eighteen months ago, I swapped a beautiful soft leather briefcase for a nylon computer bag. I wanted to work more on computer for the day job and I didn't want to destroy the leather case my wife had bought for me. Today, I use this nylon case as my writing desk and today I understood why I have been writing less. The nylon fabric slips. This may not seem very much but It throws me out of my zone. I am no longer at the right angle, comfortable and undisturbed and I think this may be why I have written so much less. Simply because I am not comfortable writing. I don't know what to do about it. I suppose that I am going to have to change bags. We will have to wait and see. I am trying to reclaim my mojo and this may be one of the steps that needs to be taken.

All that said, I have actually been doing some writing over the last few days. I made a start on the next chapter today and got through about half of it.

Just imagine what I could do with a bag that has a higher friction co-efficient...

DR

Trees, or, how to keep track of a plethora of Characters

As you may have noticed, this is another blog post.

I know, I know. They are like London buses. You have nothing for ages and now suddenly two crop up. Well the truth of the matter is, as I mentioned, that I bought a Chromebook. I'm enjoying it and trying to be more organized in my ways of working. It's why I bought the Chromebook in the first place. It seems to be working. I am on an organizing drive. Images, documents, mp3s and anything else that I can lay my hands on. I have done a reasonable amount of internal organization too. I have turned ephemeral ideas into things that are a little more concrete. I have started compiling my notes into something useful. I believe that it is Terry Pratchett, someone whose work I greatly admire, who has a directory on his computer called 'The Pit'. I have ended up with something very similar. A great morass of junk, duplicated documents and irrelevant information. I have been trying to render it less morass-y and more reclaimed-farmland-y. It has been going well.

George RR Martin, another writer I hold in esteem, has huge long lists at the back of his books in order to keep track of all the different characters. I think that I am going to need something similar. I'm not really stealing his idea, I certainly wouldn't want to include them as appendices, more that he has had a good idea that I could perhaps share relative to organizing my characters.

I know he can be spiky about people reusing his ideas so I hope that he is OK with my reproducing a little of his organization. I don't have houses per se in my book so I think that I will need to organise them in a tree structure relative to their geographical location. Different characters have different interactions in different places at different times which means that my geographical structure may not work. But a tree structure is almost certainly the way forward. I think I may colour code them. Principle Characters, Major Actors, Medium Actors, Minor Actors, Foreshadows and Mentioned.

For example, I have a character called 'Tom'. He is a barman and has been repeatedly been mentioned through the chapters as some of the action takes place in his bar in the town of Outpost. Other then pleasantries, I don't think he has much to say. He would be a Minor Actor but his two daughters, also mentioned by name and who have virtually nothing to say in the book would be Mentioned.

Why is this necessary? You do like to ask questions don't you.

The answer is because I am on an organizing drive and getting that organized and keeping it up do date will help me write. I haven't been writing of late and so I have tried to drive that inactivity to place myself into a situation where when I go back to writing, everything is where I need it. Plus, I can never remember names when it comes to mentioning them again and I don't always have the Notebook to hand.

I hope it works. If it doesn't, it will be George RR Martin's fault.*

DR

 *Seriously George, it won't be your fault it will be mine.**

**What will be your fault is not getting the Winds of Winter out soon enough.