Summer is kind of a stressful
time around here. It’s not that’s it’s
not lovely to have a change from the long and freezing months of winter – it
is, totally – but seasonal weather in this part of the country always seem to
swerve from one extreme to the other. Winter
is about snow on your car, frozen pipes, sleet in your face and whether you’ve
got enough firewood to last until October.
Summer involves heat so intense it could kill you if you sat in your car
with the windows up, keeping water supplies up to the animals, monitoring the
dam level, and bushfires.
The past month we’ve had
three evacuation scares near where we live – one was literally down the road,
when a 20 acre grassfire looked like it might threaten us depending on the wind
change. Check out the pic of smoke haze
near our washing line – nice, huh? (I’m
being ironic, it’s nerve-wracking)
We’ve high-tailed it to
Melbourne twice, when the heat got too crazy for the kids – it’s hard to sleep
when your bed feels like it’s baking you.
Most nights have involved a quick moonlight skinny-dip in the dam (watch
out for the leeches!) to cool us all down enough to sleep. We don’t have air-con, so we just swelter, and
turn the fans up high, and spray ourselves down with water bottles when it gets
too sweaty.
Working in the heat has been
difficult, you might say, but I’ve had my head down a lot over the past month, putting
the final touches on Every Word. I’m happy to say that it went to typesetting last
week. Phew and yay! The timeline for this second book has been rather tight,
but I’ve been in a unique position to release this book quickly, as I wrote Every Word soon after finishing Every
Breath. It was a very pleasant
feeling, to be able to hand my editor a complete manuscript for book 2 while
the ink was still drying on the pages of book 1. Of course, I wasn’t doing as much other work
then as I am now. I hope I can stay
ahead of deadline for every book I write – it’s a much more comfortable place
to be than writing under pressure – but I guess we’ll wait and see…
Lots of you have written to
me, asking about the publication date for Every
Word. I’m going to give you an
update on that in my next post, which will happen within a few days (a ‘double
event’ this week, to coin Jack the Ripper terminology).
In the meantime, I’ve been asked to join
in this Writing Process Blog Hop, answering a few questions about process below. My lovely mate, Kathryn Ledson (Rough Diamond, Monkey
Business) is a writer of adult romantic crime fiction, and she tapped me on
the shoulder to jump aboard. Kathryn's up on FB and on Twitter @kathrynledson. You can read Kathryn’s
responses to the same questions here, and before her, the hop started with Jennifer Scoullar here.
So here we go…
1 What am I
working on?
Currently multi-tasking – doing
final touches for proofread/typeset of the second book in the Every series, Every Word. Also writing the first draft
of Every Move, the third book. Also,
getting lots of ideas for a new book (working title: The Circle Game) which I’m jotting down when they come - longing to
get into that.
2 How does my
work differ from others in its genre?
Well, there’s not loads of YA
crime out there, although I have a sense it’s picking up. I guess, in comparison to other local
(Australian) YA crime, my work is kind of gritty – I don’t really pull too many
punches with descriptions of blood and the processes of autopsy and death. The
characters focus on forensic detail during the investigation of the mystery,
which I hadn’t really seen done before – forensic procedurals for YA, with a lot
of humour and action and romance to balance out the grit!
3 Why do I
write what I do?
Um, why do birds fly? The
characters start developing personalities and talking, and I just write it
down.
I guess…I did make a
conscious decision to write YA crime. I
had been looking for it in libraries and bookstores, and I realised it was in
short supply. So I knew there was a
niche there. But I already had the characters in my head by then, I think I
still would have written it regardless.
I’ve written in other genres, and the process is the same – these weird
people start talking in your head, and you begin jotting it down just to shut
them up! They could be part of a crime
novel, or a lit fiction piece, or a space opera…the genre and plot and setting
begin to take shape as the dialogue emerges.
4 How does my
writing process work?
I get up and make a big cup
(or thermos) of tea, take it into the study at about 5.30am, and then I just
sit there and read through what happened yesterday – or the day before, or
whatever – and then I put my fingers on the keyboard and kind of force myself
to start typing. After a little while, I
lose the feeling that it’s an effort.
And on good days, I have to force myself to stop, so I can go get
everyone ready for school.
But it’s not all dreamy-muse
stuff. Sometimes I HAVE to finish a
scene or I’m struggling with something. Then you need to have a stock of the
old writer’s remedy that Stephen King heartily recommends – bum glue. Screw
your bum to the sticking place and just keep typing until you’ve got something
down, and worry about whether it works later.
You can craft it later – the grammar, the poetry of it – but you have to
get the material out of your head first.
I keep a series of notebooks,
little school exercise books, where I jot down scraps of dialogue, or phrases,
or beautiful words – things I try to incorporate during the writing, or later
when I edit and pretty things up. I’m a
big fan of rewriting. Some of my best
work comes in the rewriting!
And that's the end of the Blog Hop! I’m passing the Blog Hop baton to Nansi Kunze, another YA writer and all-round cool chick – check out her responses to the questions on her blog very soon.
Can I say a big thanks, at
this point, to everyone who’s encouraged me to keep going with the Every series
– all of you who’ve emailed/texted/tweeted/FB’ed me to say how you loved Every Breath, and can’t wait for Every Word. It’s made working in this heat much more bearable!
Now that the weather is
starting to change, things are looking up - keep tuned for Every Word release date info very soon! Stay cool, and stay safe this summer.
Xx Ellie
