{"id":1732,"date":"2019-06-01T09:13:44","date_gmt":"2019-06-01T09:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/?p=1732"},"modified":"2019-06-01T09:13:44","modified_gmt":"2019-06-01T09:13:44","slug":"the-soggy-middle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/?p=1732","title":{"rendered":"The Soggy Middle."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ve reached the soggy middle! Strictly speaking, I\u2019m not even halfway through the latest novel yet, but I\u2019ve reached that point where I\u2019m finding any excuse not to sit down and get on with it. I can\u2019t whip up the excitement and putting words on the page is a chore. I\u2019m trying to tell myself I\u2019ve been here many times before and it will all come right in the end, but I\u2019m beginning to have my doubts. I\u2019ve no idea where I\u2019m going with the plot. Yes, I know where I want to end up but how do I keep up the momentum? The big question this time is, have I left it too long?<\/p>\n

Life has a nasty habit of getting in the way and there have been several stop-starts in getting to grips with this latest novel. By now I should be well on the way to finishing the first draft. I started \u2018Undercover Geisha\u2019 back in January and things progressed well as they often do at the start of a new book when the enthusiasm for the new idea is still high. But since until mid-February then, for a variety of reasons, I\u2019ve only managed 4-5,000 words.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This last gap has been over a couple of months. I\u2019m just back from a two week history lecture cruise. In the preceding weeks, preparing each lecture took well over a week to research, then there was the putting it all together as a PowerPoint presentation, finding suitable illustrations, getting the timing exactly right and, by no means least, the numerous run-throughs to ensure a good \u2018performance.\u2019<\/p>\n

I really enjoy the research, the enormous buzz I get when members of the audience come up and say how much they enjoyed my lecture. It\u2019s similar to that rosy feeling one gets when a new reader emails to say how much they enjoyed a novel.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>If I was a plotter and not an organic writer, writing by the seat of my pants, perhaps the time gap wouldn\u2019t matter so much. At least I would have some kind of road map to follow. As it is, I\u2019m at a crossroads. Do I need to bring in the proverbial man with a gun? All I have is a holiday itinerary. Aunt Jessica and the rest of the tour group have reached Takayama, a town in the centre of Honshu Island, Japan famous for its Spring Festival celebrated with a parade of spectacular floats with giant wooden marionettes accompanied by lion dancers, singers and drummers. The setting is there but unless I can link all this firmly to a credible plot, the novel will simply turn into a travelogue. True, it would be easy to have something dramatic happen – I do have a couple of ideas – but sorting out the why it happened and what the consequences <\/span>might be, could take me way off-track.<\/p>\n

P D James famously plotted her novels in such detail that she was happy to write scenes out of sequence. As writing is a journey for me, enjoying the unexpected twists and turns along the way to my goal, I\u2019ve only ever written in sequence. Perhaps the only way out of my doldrums, is to jump to the next big crisis point and fill in later. The trouble with that is, I\u2019m not quite sure what that might be either!<\/p>\n

The best piece of advice for any writer, is to write something every day. Even if it\u2019s only a couple of hundred words, it means you are keeping the story alive in your head even if progress is slow. Good writing demands enthusiasm. True some days are better than others. Those last few chapters usually write themselves as you rush to the end. The words come more quickly than the fingers can type.<\/p>\n

And just to complicate matters, we\u2019re off on a proper holiday in a few weeks\u2019 time. It\u2019s a hard life!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve reached the soggy middle! Strictly speaking, I\u2019m not even halfway through the latest novel yet, but I\u2019ve reached that point where I\u2019m finding any excuse not to sit down and get on with it. I can\u2019t whip up the excitement and putting words on the page is a chore. I\u2019m trying to tell myself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,11],"tags":[74,73,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-1732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-inspiration","7":"category-writing","8":"tag-japan","9":"tag-takayama","10":"tag-writing-style","11":"entry","12":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1732"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1740,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions\/1740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}