Welcome to the writing shed
Because we all love to see behind the scenes
Pull Up A Chair is a weekly newsletter containing all the things I’d like to be chatting about if we could hang out together in real life.
📚 Historical Romances. It’s been a tough few weeks of work lately, and one thing that has helped me get through it is ending my evenings (whether they involved working late, a ballet class, or a workout) with a hot drink and a silly romance. I have, in particular, devoured Tessa Dare’s Spindle Cove series, and Cat Sebastian’s The Queer Principles of Kit Webb. The first Spindle Cove book, A Night to Surrender, included this quotation, which I absolutely adored: “These are not your normal spinsters. They’re… they’re unbiddable. And excessively educated.” (It’s me, hi). The series continues with A Week to be Wicked and A Lady by Midnight.
🎧 Books Unbound podcast. This is a new addition to my podcast slate: Ariel Bassett (who you may recognise from Booktube) and Raeleen Lemay discuss the books they’ve been buying and reading, and the bookish lives they lead. I’d recommend starting with episode 178 from January, in which Ariel and Raeleen rate bookish things out of ten. I related so hard to ‘the feeling of wanting to buy a book, but every edition of it is unappealing’, and felt very called out by ‘buying a book in hardcover but by the time you read it it’s in paperback.
📺 Teletubbies. The Teletubbies seem to be having a resurgence recently; there’s a new series narrated by Tituss Burgess, and the Instagram feed is delightful. It’s just a ray of wholesome sunshine; whoever’s managing that feed deserves a promotion.
While the day job is tough at the moment (not helped by this week’s IPCC report reinforcing just how high the stakes are), I am absolutely loving the new manuscript I’m working on. I’ve put together this cute (and shamelessly self-promotional) graphic to summarise what I’m doing in terms of writing at the moment:
(The photo is of me taking part in Clare Twomey’s 2017 project to rewrite Wuthering Heights, line by line, at the Brontë Parsonage)
I’m just about 20,000 words into the new manuscript, a second-chance friends to lovers romance, featuring a makeover scene, professional rivalry, and key scenes in Paris and Milan. I wanted to lift the curtain a little bit and bring you into my writing shed (by which I mean all the coffee shops around Edinburgh whose staff so graciously let me sit tapping away on my Bluetooth keyboard)
So far - and I’m conscious that the 20-30,000 word mark is where the wheels can fall right off - it’s going really well. I’m writing it at pace, not worrying too much about the quality of the prose.
In the words of the recent #AmWriting podcast, ‘Good Writing Comes Last’:
I tend to follow a ‘flashlight’ method of writing, where I have an outline sketched out in Google Docs, with just the bare bones of each chapter and in what ways it will move the story forwards. This book follows a dual-timeline structure, so I’ve done some thinking about when various points of information are revealed in each timeline, and what the reader will learn when, but it’s still a pretty cursory outline (less than 4,000 words for the whole novel).
Then, as I reach each chapter, I plan out in a bit more detail, who needs to speak to who, which minor characters need to come back, and how I’m going to move the characters around the narrative chessboard. I also have a ‘draft Bible’, containing all the biographical and geographical details of the people and places that appear in my novel, which I’m filling in as I write. To reduce flipping between documents (as I mainly write on my iPad Mini, which has a pretty small screen), I copy and paste the chapter outlines into the draft document as I reach them. (This logistical detail may have been pretty boring to some of you - I promise, it’s finished now!)
Underpinning this is that now I have finished one novel - the book I’m querying at the moment (no news yet) - I feel far more confident than I did at this stage of the first book. I know I can write a novel. I imagine this is what being a few miles into your second marathon must feel like?
Something that Becca Freeman (whose debut, The Christmas Orphans Club, comes out later this year) does on Instagram that I love is share some of the bizarre internet browsing tabs she opens in the process of writing.
So I thought I’d do the same, and share a list of some of the Google searches I’ve done while writing this draft so far:
Mediolanum Forum
English version of St Mungo
Paris Milan high speed train
Grainne spelling (sic)
The Stable Bristol menu
Middle schools in Hertfordshire
what do you call it when there's something modern in an old book
WhatsApp typeface
Milan Duomo
Milan Uniqlo opening times Sunday
Investment companies Milan
How to fly from the Isle of Man to Paris
Silly little walk for my silly little mental health
How to get from Bristol to Gatwick
Irish kids TV 90s
50/50 TV show
Are Panzerotti fried?
Get Your Own Back TV show
Aperitivo hour Milan
Chicken Milanese
Paris conference hotel
Ant and Dec
Improv games
If you’re able to guess any details of the plot points from these bullet points, I’d be super impressed.
The book, so far, is completely unhinged - no hinges remaining - and I’m absolutely loving the process. It’s just really darned fun and I think it will be a fun read too - one to read with a big glass of wine - or an Aperol spritz - in hand.
Speak soon,
Lily
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