"Joanna passed the grave-like hole in the ground, drawing the goat along at her side. Mike heard the approach of the scythemen behind him and stumbled after her..."
I’m an advocate of writing in public. I find it keeps my writing flowing pretty regularly and encourages me to hit my weekly targets, as well getting me to try out new coffee shops. Let me tell you exactly why I prefer writing in public places.
It Gets Me Out the House
Firstly, writing in public means I will get out the house and find somewhere to write. Usually this will be a friendly cafe, though I’ve employed bars and pubs as well. Getting out and active prepares me for some hard work. Leaving the house and walking, cycling or even driving somewhere is an ideal primer for writing; you can think about what you’ll be writing whilst you’re getting there.
Back in January I made these New Year’s Resolutions. There weren’t many – only three – but as the longest day has been and gone and the mid-point of the year is here today, I think now would be a good time to check in on my progress. Which vows will I need to renew? What midyear resolutions should I be re-resolving?
The Whitby trilogy by Robin Jarvis is one of the best trilogies… ever. This is a Whitby Witches review of sorts, but one which explores the trilogy’s place in literature instead of trying to rate it against other books.
I first read Robin Jarvis’ The Whitby Witches when I was a child. I can’t have been any older than ten, because by the time I finished the series I had yet to leave primary school. And actually, I didn’t read them – my mum read them to me. It was probably her eyes that first alighted upon that fateful tome, bound with a leering hound front cover that arrested both our attentions in that little library up the road. We devoured it swiftly and ordered the sequels shortly after. After reading and loving those too, I requested the boxset from my Grandma for Christmas. She even lived near Whitby! Finally, I owned those fantastic stories for myself.
The trilogy: The Whitby Witches, A Warlock in Whitby and The Whitby Child
I re-read the trilogy a few of times as a child. Yyou can see how well-loved those books were in the picture above. But I hadn’t done so since before my late teens. By the time I took them from the shelf a couple of months ago it must have been ten years since I’d indulged. I thought I’d give them a read for a bit of a nostalgia hit, but even before I’d reached the halfway point of Book One I knew that I was reading something truly special. It wasn’t my childhood love of The Whitby Witches that was informing my enjoyment of it. It was simply that it is a fantastic, gripping and scary book. I finished the trilogy’s finale, The Whitby Child, this very morning – and I can’t wait to laud its brilliance.
In between writing stories and blog posts I like to drum. It’s a smashing hobby; cathartic as well as creative. I started when I was sixteen, but I’ve improved since my first off-beat battering of Smells Like Teen Spirit. I bought my own drum set, a Mapex Tornado Rock Fusion, back in 2013 after finishing university. But it’s evolved and spread a bit since then, and received a DIY tattoo on the bass drum. Today I pulled it out of its usual corner and gave the whole thing a polish and spruce up. Let me show you around the anatomy of a drum kit…
The Novice
I actually learned the drums on my dad’s Arbiter Flats Lite set. It’s a great set for a beginner since it’s so much smaller (and quieter) than a full kit, yet still acoustic. I’ve replicated the setup on my Tornado here.
My Mapex Tornado modelling the setup I learned on
This is called a ‘two-up, one-down’ setup. This means there’s two toms racked above the bass drum, and one floor tom off to the side. Toms, or tom-toms, are the bouncy-sounding drums; the ones that Phil Collins (or that gorilla from the Cadbury’s advert) use for the big fill in In The Air Tonight. Some drummers use a few as two toms (Ghost’s ghoul drummer had just one!) but fancier drummers can have loads. The bigger the drum, the deeper the sound. So drumming on them from left to right produces the descending roll that is featured in loads of songs.
It’s been about three months since I started work on my novel, Rosetta, and a little over two months since I described my first impressions of writing it. I hit 50,000 words last week. That’s a little over half my forecast completed word count, which means I’m near enough halfway through. At the very least, I’m in the thick of things! And I’ve got some new reflections on the subject of writing a novel to tell you about. Some of them are pretty surprising; at least in light of my first impressions. It’s taught me a lot about how to write a novel.
I’m so glad I have a plan
A quick one this. I’d never have made it this far without a plan, telling me who is where and what they’re doing at any one time. Using a plan means that everything is always facing the right direction, even if I can’t keep track of every plot strand at once. Not everyone writes using the same techniques. But I couldn’t imagine taking on this, or indeed another novel, without a plan. It’s not an especially detailed plan, more just broad strokes of the plot. But I wouldn’t know how to write a novel without it!
