Sunday morning started for me at around half three. The Chinese from last night was loaded with MSG and the varnish-like flavour enhancer and I do not get on. I lay under the kitchen tap for a while, drinking cold Thames Water to try and rehydrate my head[1]. No matter how much I drank, I would need more water in a few minutes. By the time I had managed to flush away the last of the MSG, Tinkerbell and Marlowe (The Cats) were ready for some attention. Whilst Tinkerbell is happy with simply climbing on top of me and purring loudly. Marlowe takes a hard-boiled approach and will reach under the duvet, hook a hand with his claw and pull it out and put it down on his head for a stroke. Whilst I adore the ability of the cats to communicate with me, I do not adore a 4am demand for attention.
So I am sitting here, clutching a mug of coffee for fear of falling and switching between writing projects. I've started a really fundamental re-write of Saying Goodbye to Amy[2] (SGTA). So much so that I have written a new character, introduced a new character who will need to be woven in to the main story, and planned some changes to the story that will make it a
lot darker; however I also think these changes will turn it from a 'story' into a novel. I've also made two really big decisions. One is that it
is a fantasy novel, and no matter how much I try to wriggle out of it, The Story will be happier if I acknowledge that it is a portal fantasy and let it abide by the rules of the form. The second is that as much as I love the working title of "Saying Goodbye to Amy", that is not what the piece is about any more and I need to move on.
Like naming a band, or a pet, naming a novel can take longer than writing the whole thing in the first place. I've got "Wychwood End" as a title in my head, and yet it doesn't seem to belong to
this story; There is "Fiddle Man", but I don't feel right, naming the piece after the antagonist; The
Fantasy Novel Title Generator was quite serendipitous when it gave me "The stringed Princess", (but less so with "Twilight's Chaos"). I guess "Wychwood" might work? However, these things are less important than the actual editing and re-writing - there will be plenty of time for being precious about what it is going to be called when it is finished.
In another window I have my college piece open. We're looking at prolepsis this week. The first piece I wrote, which actually belongs to SGTA, has a flash
back rather than a flash
forwards and so I am experimenting with something else which I have lifted from an earlier piece and tweaked.
In yet another window I have a copy of Final Draft open. I do not know how it works.
FADE IN:
INT. CLOCK-MAKER'S WORKSHOP - NIGHT TIME
The workshop looks like a Rebrandt painting. Most of it is
in shadow. The workbench is lit by a gas lamp. There are
ordered tools on velvet rolls either side, but in the
middle a jumble of tiny cogs and springs and screws. The CLOCK-MAKER, the sort of old man who makes people smile,
reaches for a strange pair of spectacles. They have lenses
in front of the lenses which can flip up and down for close
work. He puts them on and then reaches for a miniature screwdriver.
CLOCKMAKER (SINGING)
Silent Night
Holy Night
All is Calm
All is --
There is sudden movement from the pile of cogs in front of
him. A mouse, about the size of the "tube mice" who live
on the London Underground, runs out from under the pile,
scattering the cogs everywhere.
Clockmaker (JUMPING)
Oh goodness!* * *
I am going to have another coffee, and a shower, and then see if I can't trick my battered body into thinking it has had a full night's sleep in the last week by repeating the exercise again.
[1] The rest of me was fine, just my head and brain were dessicated
[2] I wrote the first draft of Saying Goodbye to Amy in a week in February of 2005. I have been re-writing it ever since. (Even though I have thought it was finished, it keeps surprising me)