Should I Just Give Up Writing My Novel?

It’s a fair question. Writing a novel takes a lot of time and dedication. Some people will rush in to say “Nooo! Never give up!” But if you’re asking, it deserves consideration. Maybe that specific novel is something you’re ready to ditch; maybe it’s become an albatross around your neck. You don’t have to carry on if you don’t want to. It doesn’t make you a quitter.

Or maybe you’re having a standard creative crisis point, the ones every writer and creative gets, but you don’t know about those yet. And if you ditch this one, the next project will reach the same crisis points – precisely because they are standard.

It’s not a question I can answer for you. But I can pose the questions which will help you decide and I can tour you through the standard crisis points you might be having.

Is it an albatross?

When a student asks about downing tools on a particular story or novel, these are the questions I put to them, to help them work it out.

Do you still like the story?

This is the most important question. Not “Are you stuck on it?” or “Are you struggling with parts of it?” but “Do you like it?” If you’re going to spend evenings, weekends, even stolen bank holidays immersed in this story, you need to like it. You can still be frustrated at times, or stuck, or even despairing – all of those are valid creative crisis points. You can be all those and still actually like the story. Do you still like the story?

How long have you been working on it?

It’s not a bad thing to spend years working on a novel. It’s normal. It doesn’t even make you a slow writer, compared to the book-a-year writers, if they’re doing it full time. If the answer’s more than ten years, though, then the next question becomes pertinent. The reason it’s taking a while might be nothing to do with writing or the story: work, family responsibilities, health issues, etc, can all leave us with less time for writing. But once years have passed, it’s worth asking if you still relate to it.

Do you still relate to it?

The story a twenty year old came up with in 2001 might not be the story you want to write now. You wouldn’t take much of your younger self’s advice on fashion, finances, recipes, relationships; you’re not honour-bound to follow their story idea. Your concerns change shape as time passes: sometimes that idea, so cutting-edge to you at the time, looks a little threadbare to you now. To you is the pertinent phrase: many ideas and novels stand the test of decades. And some parts of your younger self will stay at the glowing core of you, as concerns and ideas you still care deeply about it. The question is simply, do you still relate to it?

Do you feel like you're not allowed to write anything else until you finish it?

The Never Quit Brigade can rule strongly in our heads. But that’s a nonsense. We’re allowed to stop doing things that don’t work for us anymore. Yes, by finishing stories you learn things that you don’t learn any other way, but it doesn’t have to be this story.

If you don’t like the story anymore, if you’ve been working on it so long that you don’t relate to it any more, and if you’re only carrying on so you can finish the damn thing and get to writing other stuff, you can stop. It’s okay. This is your permission. And now rises the spectre of…

But I’ve spent so much time on it!

That’s what we call the sunk-cost fallacy and that’s why the Never Quit Brigade is so dangerous. The sunk-cost fallacy is a standard-issue human bias: that once you’ve invested time, money, or effort in something, it’s a waste not to continue – even if it costs a lot more time, money, or effort; even if new evidence shows it’s not worth pursuing. It’s why businesses throw good money after bad, pushing a product that isn’t selling or doesn’t work. It’s one of the reasons people stay in unhappy relationships, loath to “throw away” five years, so they stay unhappy for another five, and then can’t bear to “throw away” ten… But the time, money, or effort is already spent. We have to decide afresh if we want to spend more.

A lot of the sunk-cost fallacy is an aversion to waste, so that’s a good way to unpick it, so you can decide afresh. Write down everything you’ve learnt from writing this novel so far: the craft of writing, your creative processes, your practical processes, the joys you had with it, the lot. Fill pages of your notebook with it. That’s a useful thing to do whether or not you continue with it.

That’s everything you’ve gained. None of that is wasted. And you’re now in a good position to decide if you want to keep writing this novel or use that experience on something else.

If, at this point, you do want to keep writing it, and are even quite cross with me for suggesting you stop, then it sounds like it’s not an albatross at all. You’ve likely hit a creative crisis point.

Standard Crisis Points of Creative Projects

Creative crisis points feel like dreadful immutable revelations when you hit them: stark and bitter truths. The floor vanishes from under you. The project dwindles to a vanishing black hole, a tiny terrible weight sucking everything in with it. But they’re not Truths. They’re like hiccups and they pass. I get them with every novel I write and with every course and workshop I create. I’ve learnt that other writers get them too. And with repeated experience, I’ve learnt not to think, “Oh no, the terrible thing is true” but “Oh, I’m at that point in the project, am I?”

So here are the most common, in the order in which they usually pop up. And for all of them, the solution, one way or another, is to carry on. Identify it as the standard stage it is, and carry on.

“I’m not good enough / It’s not good enough.”

Everything is messy, incomplete, and not good enough at the start, but it’s hard to remember that. We’re like bakers staring in despair at flour, sugar, and eggs, thinking, “This is a terrible cake.” Well, yeah. It’s not finished yet.

The same is true of us, as writers. If you show me pages of execrable prose and say “I should just stop, shouldn’t I?” I’ll just show you some of my own early-draft pages, and we can have a good laugh together. It’s not about the quality as it stands now, of the work or our own skill, because if we keep working on something, then we keep learning, improving it, and reshaping it.

In my teaching and my feedback, I see people’s writing develop all the time, from clunky first attempts to breathtaking prose, from clumsy drafts to stunning stories and novels. My own first drafts have got much worse, over the years, as I’ve learnt to thrash things out more freely. I know from experience that I can and will fix it later. With time and practice, you learn the skills to improve and reshape it, and you learn you will improve and reshape it. Keep on writing.

"I can't do this and in fact it can't be done."

“I should give up on this novel.” “I have to email everyone who’s booked onto this workshop, cancel it, and refund them.” This one strikes without fail, for me. I was delighted to discover Neil Gaiman writing about the same thing:

The last novel I wrote (it was Anansi Boys, in case you were wondering) when I got three-quarters of the way through I called my agent. I told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot. I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I could abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook or marine biologist. And instead of sympathising or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm—or even arguing with me—she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, “Oh, you’re at that part of the book, are you?”
     I was shocked. “You mean I’ve done this before?”
     “You don’t remember?”
     “Not really.”
     “Oh yes,” she said. “You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients.”

These days, when this happens, I pull out more felt-tips, more post-its, take myself somewhere else to work, and keep going – and it all magically becomes doable again. Keep on writing.

"I can summarise this in one sentence. Why on earth would I write a whole book?"

All that work paid off – and now I can articulate the heart of the book, everything I wanted to say with it, in one clear sentence. So why bother with a whole novel?! Just write a two-line poem on the novel’s theme, right? Nope. I’ve just zoomed out too far.

Astronauts talk about the “pale blue dot” experience, when they see the Earth floating in space, a fragile tiny pale blue dot. That total overview gives them a wholly new perspective on conflicts, the environment, everything. Telling someone about the pale blue dot doesn’t give them that experience, though. And all of those changes need to happen on the Earth, back where the continents are huge and all those billions of people are human-sized.

My one sentence is what I want the book to do; the sentence itself doesn’t do it. I need to go back down to Earth: back down into the detail, with all the events and living characters. When you zoom out so far, it becomes tiny. As you zoom back in, it will all get big again – even, if you’re an overwriter like me, too big! Keep on writing.

"This book is fundamentally flawed and cannot be fixed. I've written it wrong."

This often pops up near the end of a novel or at the end of a first draft. I’m having this crisis now, two chapters from the end. A month ago, someone in my writing group had it with her freshly completed first draft. In fact, her crisis was what inspired me to write down all the crisis points, and now I’m laughing and blushing to realise that the Terrible Truth about my current novel is, again, just another standard crisis point. This crisis means that there are some structural flaws, sure. And at the end, with a complete reread of the entire story, the fixes turn out to be quite easy and most of it is actually structurally sound. Keep on writing.

"This is the best thing I could ever write! I will never be able to write something of this quality again."

I used to get this with every other chapter, if not every other page, when I was trying to write perfectly as I went along. Now I get it at the end of each novel, when I’ve resolved those structural quibbles and polished my prose. It’s always tricky to go from polishing a diamond back into the mud pit of creativity – but that’s where your diamond came from. I have two strategies for this. One is “Write it now, judge it later.” The other is to go back to the first draft / early notes of the diamond I’ve just finished polishing and have a good laugh at how muddy and rough it was before I did all that work on it. And so we go round, back to the beginning. Keep on writing.

The creative crisis points are, alternately, terrible and funny. Terrible when you first encounter them. Increasingly funny when you start to identify them and they keep cycling round, always trying to pass themselves off as The Truth. Straight-up hilarious when you’re writing a blog post about them and realise the thing you were so Wise about a month ago is where you are right now. You learn to laugh, ruefully shaking your head, and they don’t stop you writing.

Keep On Writing

If your current novel’s become an albatross, you’re allowed to stop writing it. Stopping one thing means something else can begin. If you’ve simply hit a creative crisis point with your novel, carry on with it. But I am never going to suggest that you stop writing altogether. I mean, you can if you want – no-one’s obliged to sing, dance, draw, or write – but why stop doing something that brings so much joy? And it’s such a joy, even when plot holes are baffling us or we’re roller-coastering through creative crisis points. Keep on writing – but you don’t have to do it alone.

If you want fresh ideas for a new thing, or if you want to develop your current story, this August's Summer of Writing workshops will help. Characters Unlike You will set your storytelling free in so many ways. Planning a Novel will teach you the tricks of mapping out mist, capturing the ideas and organising a story that doesn’t yet exist. And Page Turners will give you the strong-as-a-mast narrative spine that will carry you and the reader through the story, plus all the ways the story plays out along that to keep the reader gripped. And after the summer, if you want to explore new possibilities or polish your diamond, the Writing in Style course will take you on new adventures in language.

If you’ve done any workshops or courses before (or do any this summer or autumn), you can also join the free monthly Writing Boost on the first Monday of every month: live online sessions to help you, motivate you, and keep you in community with your fellow writers. And you can join the online Community Group, to stay in touch with each other, and get the weekly Writing Skills to keep developing your writing and stay inspired.

Only you can say if you want to keep on writing your current novel or not: that’s your choice. But you’ve read all the way to the end of this, so I reckon we can say you definitely want to keep on writing. Keep on writing.

The Characters That Let Your Stories Fly

When I started writing more keenly, I thought what I needed most was to plot better. I worked on that, hard, and my stories grew wings… but somehow they didn’t take flight. They felt like planes circling the airport, even with their immaculate flight plans.

What I actually needed to learn took me much longer, because I didn’t realise I needed that: to write characters unlike myself. Not just the wrong ‘uns, all of them. Especially the main characters.

Again and again, in my teaching, I’ve seen other writers hobbled by the same thing. It’s not a glaring lack, like plot, but it stops stories flying. And you don’t know why – because our selves are a blind spot to us. How we are, that’s just normal, right? But other people are different. And until all our characters can be too, including our main characters, we’re clipping our stories’ wings.

It is a blind spot, because our selves are our normal. So before we launch into why it's important, here are two quick tests of whether you’re stuck in characters like you:

The Three-Traits Test: Can you (and your writing group / buddy if you have one) quickly and easily write three separate personality traits for them? If you can’t, they’re not fully characterised, and likely a diluted version of you.
The Reaction Test: When your character reacts to something big (a heartbreak, discovery, thrill, frustration), can you say why they specifically react like that? Or is their reaction just “normal” to you? Because them being just normal might be them being just you.

If, in your writing so far, your characters are mostly you, especially the main characters, you have a wealth of discovery and joy ahead of you. Because this is what characters unlike you – again, especially the main characters – will give you.

You get more vivid characters

We don’t see ourselves as clearly as we see other people. Like fish not noticing water, we live inside our own traits without realising how much is specific to us, rather than standard-issue human, so we don’t describe those characters well. Without that clarity, our characters-like-us stay vague, undifferentiated. Worse still, to make the character “not us”, we often strip away what is unique and interesting, leaving the character not only blurry but bland. When your character’s not you, they become crisply drawn with distinct personality.

You vary your characters across stories

Even if your stories are wildly different, having much the same person at the centre of each gives them a sameyness. That gets boring for the readership you want to grow and boring for you as a writer. Different central characters bring fresh sparkle and variety to both your stories and the writing process.

You vary your cast within stories

The disjuncture between different types of people is a rich narrative seam. It increases your story’s depth, intensifies the point of view, and offers wonderful narrative tension as your disparate characters connect and clash. For that to work, all your characters need to be different, not just the “villains” of the piece. That also means learning to see the value in traits very different from your own.

You get wider scope for stories

As your characters open up in variety, so too do your storytelling possibilities. There are stories I’ll never be able to tell about a Meganesque character, even if I dress her up as an astronaut, a religious peasant, or a cursed child in a desert land. As soon as it’s not me, though, I can write about a Machiavellian commitment to social change, a status-driven ambition, a rigid adherence to minutiae, or a stone-cold indifference to others’ opinions, and how those traits play out to the good. When your characters aren’t you, your stories open up in exciting new ways.

You get more consistent characters

Once a character isn’t you, they start shaping their story themselves, because they have a distinct personality, which you can identify, and they act according to it. When your characters are still “basically you” and you’re trying to write a specific story, the events and character are often at odds. A Meganesque character doesn’t make sense as an astronaut: yes, she has the maths skills; sure, I can give her the fitness levels; but an astronaut needs the easy equanimity and (to me) near-bland resilience she simply doesn’t have. That clash will show in the writing. When your characters aren’t you, they stay in character – their character, not yours.

It’s easier to write about autobiographical events

The big things that have happened to you, which you want to approach in fiction or auto-fiction: surely, given they happened to you, perhaps even shaped you, this is where the character should be most like you? Counterintuitively, no. To make fiction about that, or even the thinly veiled memoir that is auto-fiction, you need artistic distance. That’s hard to get about something you feel so vulnerable, pained, or raging about. Putting clear blue water between you and the character – making them distinctly not you, or unlike you, in a few significant ways – helps hugely. It lets you write about it in a way that does draw on your experience, with all the insight that gives, and also with the objectivity that makes it the stuff of story.

You get to step through the magic doorway, regardless

There are times when writing seems impossible: when you’re so stressed it feels like you can’t breathe; when you’re crying so hard you can’t see the words. If you can step through the magic doorway into your story’s world, it’s transformative. You enter a flow state and your breathing returns to normal. Your tears dry and you rediscover a part of your life that doesn’t hurt. I’ve done both, but it’s only ever been possible when my characters weren’t basically versions of me. Having characters that aren’t you lets you step into your story world, whatever’s happening with you.

All your characters will always, in some way, be you: after all, you’re writing them. But instead of having mini-yous or bonsaied-yous enact every story, you get to act out being all those different people. Your stories’ freedom becomes your freedom.

And you do have the skills to do it. You live in a world brimming with people who’re very different to you. You socialise with them, work with them, and make a dozen accurate predications a day on how they’ll behave, without even noticing. That’s part of being human. That’s the same skill you can bring to your writing, to create characters unlike you and set your stories free.

If you want a rocket-booster to get your stories airborne, the Characters Unlike You workshop is on 17 August, 10am–4pm, in Oxford. You’ll explore 8 personality analyses (encompassing types, spectrums, and shifts) to heighten your awareness of your own traits and create characters unlike that. Across the workshop, you’ll also try out 7 different tools to develop those characters. You’ll leave with 3 new characters, totally different from you, whose strengths you admire, and an ongoing toolbox for creating characters who make new stories fly. See all the details and book your place here.

Summer writing food: Roast Mediterranean Veg

As always, perfect writing food is quick (either to make or to double up another day's cooking) so it doesn't steal your writing time, low-carb so your writing time isn't sabotaged by sleepiness, and as much a treat as writing itself.

Roast Mediterranean veg is quick to prepare, easy to make lots of, and freezes well. You can play around with the exact ingredients and quantities, add extra protein for omnivore / veggie / vegan eating, and get creative with herbs and spices to change it about.

It's also ideal for whatever extreme of summer we end up getting. In a heatwave, cooked food is less physical work for your body to digest than raw salads, so roast vegetables that are delicious at room temperature is perfect. As soon as a heatwave is forecast, I prep trays of roast veg for the week ahead. In veils of rain, you can serve it hot or reheat it, and enjoy all the flavours of summer while admiring how very green everything is, through the rain-streaked window. Possibly with a summer-themed blanket wrapped round you. I'll keep any further witter to after the recipe!

Scroll on for the recipe or download it as a PDF here.

To use the PDF as a scrollable on your phone, download Adobe Acrobat Reader free from Google Play or the Apple Store. When you open your PDF in the Adobe Acrobat Reader app, tap the Liquid Mode icon at the top for easy scrolling.

Roast Mediterranean Veg

Serving and times

Active time: 15 mins
Oven time: 40 mins
Serves: 4–6 (easily doubled or more)

Ingredients

Approx 1.5 kg of mixed Mediterranean veg, eg
1 aubergine
2 courgettes
3 peppers, any colour or a combination
300g mushrooms
2 small red onions
½ head of garlic (about 6–9 cloves)
4–6 Tbsp olive oil
½ – 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper
Optional: 4–6 whole mild chillies

Optional extras: protein

We often serve it as is, or with grilled chicken or sausages. You can also add more protein to the dish, partway through cooking or at the end:

Chorizo: 5mm slices, 20 mins before end
Halloumi: ¾ cm slices, 10 mins before end
Walnuts: 5 mins before end
Cheese (goats, camembert, brie) when serving

Optional extras: additional flavours

You can add whatever herbs, citrus, and spices you fancy, to vary it. Eg rosemary, thyme, sage, mint, basil, tarragon, chives, parsley, lemon, lime, chilli, cumin – though perhaps not all at once! My favourite combos are: mint and goats cheese; rosemary and lemon; chilli flakes and lime; cumin, leaf coriander, and lemon.

Method

Heat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan).
Chop the aubergine, courgettes, and peppers into chunks about an inch / 2.5cm big – err bigger than smaller.
Rub the mushrooms clean of dirt and trim the stalk ends if necessary.
Halve the onions, peel them, and trim the ends leaving as much on as possible. Chop each half into quarters or thirds lengthways.
Break the garlic into cloves, the skin still on.
Get an oven tray large enough to hold all the vegetables in a single layer. (The oven’s own tray does well, lined with foil if necc.)
Toss all the vegetables in the olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Put the tray of veg in the oven for 40 mins.

Optional Extras

Before roasting: Toss any lemon zest, chilli, and whole spices (eg cumin) with the veg. Tuck any woody herbs (rosemary, thyme, sage) under the veg, stalks and all.
While roasting: Set an extra timer for when to add your chorizo, halloumi, or walnuts.
After roasting: Add any chopped soft herbs (eg mint, basil, tarragon, chives, parsley, coriander), any citrus juice (eg lemon, lime), and any cheese.

Notes

Avoid dishes with high sides for roasting: A metal tray with low-ish sides is ideal. Higher sides keep more of the moisture trapped, even when the dish is open at the top, making the veg boil in its juice more than roast.

Fridging, freezing, re-eating

Keep for up to 5 days in the fridge.
To freeze, portion into tupperwares (don’t squish it down) & label with masking tape & a sharpie. Defrost overnight in the fridge for maximum food safety.
For hot days, take it out the fridge an hour before to eat at room temperature, with a dash of extra olive oil and balsamic or citrus juice.
For colder days, reheat for 10–15 mins in a 160°C oven. Add a splash of lemon or lime to brighten it.

Further witter on roast veg, chillies, and variable summers

In 2022, with the Summer of Writing workshops finally set to happen in person again, a massive heatwave was forecast. I leapt into action. For me and my partner, I roasted heroic quantities of Mediterranean veg, throwing in some of my freshly homegrown jalapeños: the perfect chilli-heat to add some zing but still eat whole without blinking. For everyone coming to the workshops, I laid in extra ice, double quantities of iced teas, two electric fans, an extra large garden umbrella for lunchtime, and a water-mister and hand fan to pass round. The front room, where the workshops are held, is north-facing and always the coolest, but even so I pinned thick white cloth on the conservatory side and the stair windows to block any heat from the south side of the house. The roast veg was delicious, and everyone at the workshops was kept as cool as humanly possible.

After two weeks of heatwave, I made another batch of roast veg, with the new jalapeños that had grown. I ate one, and... I didn't even get the laughing chilli high. Just straight to crying with pain, half a pint of milk, brushing my teeth (while crying), more milk (still crying), and then collapsed into a pain-induced nap on my partner's lap. I couldn't even finish my dinner. Heatwaves, it turns out, make chillies hotter as well as people.

In 2023, I was even better prepared to keep everyone cool. Everything as before plus a second even bigger umbrella for the garden, more bottles for iced tea, cream black-out blinds installed on the south side instead of cloth... and we had the other kind of summer. Cue piles of towels to dry people who arrived soaking, coathangers for sopping coats to dry off, hot chocolate alongside the teas and coffees. All the veg I'd bought to roast made cosy warming dinners for wet evenings and welcome hot lunches for writing days. And the chillies, even the superhots, offered the humblest zing of heat, right at the bottom of their respective Scoville scales.

So, whatever kind of summer we get this year, beware of heatwave chillies, happy eating and happy writing!

Mapping Out Mist

The Chaos of Art

The thing we’re creating doesn’t yet exist.
We’re sat in the mud pit, banging our rocks
and shouting at flowers. Suddenly adult, insist
on a Timeframe of Output, firm, at a desk,
mapping out… mist. We can’t yet exist
in such untrammelled time. Thought-barges collide,
now huge in the fog, already. A list?
We detail the tips of our icebergs and teeter,
the swaying unseen bulk dismissed,
placating the busying Protestant mind
while we grow things that don’t yet exist.

I wrote that in 2023, while I was planning a new novel and also the Planning A Novel workshop. It’s a strange business, planning things that don’t exist, which also can’t exist without a bit of planning. You might have an exciting heap of ideas (as I did with the workshop) or reams of first draft (as I did with the novel). It has a definite existence in potentia, but… well, it doesn’t exist.

I plan a lot of things that don’t exist. Novels, courses, workshops. Every year, when I find out the two new Summer of Writing workshops, I set about writing the workshop descriptions: a line or two introducing the topic, fine; a paragraph of what we’ll cover, cool; and then a paragraph beginning “By the end of this workshop, you’ll have…” My brain skids to a halt so fast it leaves tyre tracks.

How can I possibly say that? I don’t know! The workshop doesn’t exist yet! I haven’t made it! I frown, scribble, cross out, panic, go for a walk. At some point, in the next day or two, my brain will leap forward confidently and declare, “Come on, it’s easy. If you went on a workshop described like that, what would you expect to have done by the end? Cos that’s probably what that bit should be? Duh.” And I briskly scribble that final line.

I’ve tried writing down that sage impatient advice, for future years, but it doesn’t work. I still need the “frown, scribble, cross out, panic, go for a walk” routine. Somewhere in that process, I’m working it out: mapping out mist.

Fog

Fires, canal-side grey. The
faint sparks drown in air. Light
fades and swells, ballooning
flimsy round a lost lamp.
Follow the path – but it’s gone.
Feel for barbed, bare hawthorn:
find where escaped thoughts hide.

The frown-scribble-crossing-out bit is feeding your brain all the puzzles you want it to solve. The moments that you’re walking, or staring out the window, thinking you’re not thinking but actually thinking very hard, are often the most productive. But you also need to capture all those mist-emerging thoughts, and order them so you can find them again. But how do you order something which has no order, because, again, it doesn’t exist yet? And you can’t have too much order, too soon: you need to keep the possibilities open.

Focus

Fixed stare – at nothing – I
float: the brambles have spread…
folding origami
flowers with unseen hands…
Focus! But as my dreams
flit, I see their work: they
fix what I’m not watching.

That’s wild mental work. During this work, I often painstakingly devise the exact thing I need to help me capture ideas. To draw these felt-tip rectangles, it would help to have a straight edge – a piece of cardboard, perhaps? I could mark the length and height of the rectangles on the cardboard, so they’d all be the same. Something firm enough to press a felt-tip against, with regular units of measurement I’d have to create… Oh, look, I’ve invented the ruler. Well done, me.

These pieces of paper: they belong together. But their order might change: I can’t staple them. I need something like a staple, but which I can easily put on and take off. Something that slides on, instead of piercing the paper. Perhaps, with a longer length of thin metal than a staple, I could twist it to fashion some kind of… Oh. I’ve invented paperclips. Again. I’m the Elon Musk of stationery.

When your mind is that full of half-seen story, you become simultaneously absolutely brilliant and very stupid. It helps to have stationery, for a start. A lot of stationery, if only to save yourself the trouble of inventing it from first principles. I’ve gradually learnt to add all the relevant stationery to my writing bag. For the first Planning A Novel workshop, I put in my biggest ever order, to create what we variously termed the “stationery villages” or “non-stationary stationery”:

Gif showing assorted stationery turning on a lazy susan.

And alongside the stationery, techniques. Over the years, and some eleven or so novels, I've worked out principles and processes, strategies that now seem as simple as paperclips. I lay my notes on those next to me, alongside the paperclips, the post-its, the slide-binders and felt-tips. I know that even though I haven't yet mapped out this mist, I have the tools of my creative cartography right there: the approaches for how to map out mist.

Esoteric problems often have deliciously simple solutions. "This is how you join pieces of paper you'll later re-order." "This is how you turn a series of brick story walls into things you can explore." "This is how you free your mind to work on one piece of the puzzle, without the whole Jenga-tower of thought falling down." Because if you can sort out the practicalities, the rest of your head is free for the esoteric. We need both: the simple solutions, and the respect for the esoteric, the seemingly-invisible work we’re doing.

And as you veer between the mapping and the mist, in strange ways, with a lot of apparently mindless staring at starlings and some seemingly pre-school-style Busyness With Felt-Tips, you’re conjuring up something that will, and increasingly does, exist.

Lapse

Light slips, between soft sounds:
loose as humming, it’s a
lilt of a moment, mind,
life – a caesura in
liturgy: we forget
lists, briefly, slide into
liquid thoughts, lipid ways.

The Planning A Novel workshop is running again this August in Oxford, alongside the two new workshops, Story Poems and Multiple Viewpoints, whose final lines I have now written. And that non-existent novel is now a couple chapters away from the end. You can see the complete list of workshops, past reviews, and how to book here.

Why Can't They Remember?!

It’s one of the most maddening things. You excitedly present the next instalment of your story to your writing group, your writing buddy, your friend who’s eagerly reading alongside your writing. You can’t wait for their reaction: their shock at your Dramatic Reveal, their thrill at the plot twist, their emotion at the most moving thing you’ve ever written…

Instead, they’re drawing a blank. They can’t remember who the character even is or confuse them with someone completely different. They’ve forgotten that plot thread, so your carefully constructed Dramatic Reveal lands with all the impact of a wet dish cloth. They’re asking “Is this about X character?” when it’s clearly five hundred years before: for crying out loud, it even says so on the page, right there, in the middle of that paragraph, see? “Five hundred years”. And that character: there was a whole scene about her, in chapter four! And that Dramatic Reveal: you have your notes from before; one of them spotted your foreshadowing and guessed what was coming! Are they even bothering to read your writing? How can they not remember?!

Sometimes, in writing group, we’ve discussed whether it’s because we’re not reading like “real” readers. “Real” readers don’t have to wait a week or a fortnight for the next instalment; they can just turn the page. “Real” readers aren’t following the story over a couple of years; they might finish the book in a month, a week, or even a single day of holiday.

It’s true, we’re not reading like “real” readers. We’re reading with our pens out, underling favourite bits, spotting repetitions, scribbling notes in the margin. We’re going back over the whole section in group, discussing it at length. Sometimes we’re reading the same scene again, rewritten with its previous issues ironed out. We’re paying incredibly close attention.

And those “real” readers, with the complete book in their hand? They’re reading in the bath. On the bus or the tube. In bed with their eyes drooping. On the sofa, curled up with a head full of flu. They’re listening while they chop vegetables for dinner or while they navigate the traffic on their way to and from work.

Every time, the group comes to the same conclusion: the gaps in time are more than balanced out by the incredibly close attention we’re paying to each other’s work. So if we can’t remember those details, the “real” readers don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.

Of course it’s frustrating and disappointing. Of course we’re tempted to pull up the exact passages that our writing buddies seem to have not even read or had wiped from their minds. But if they can’t remember, that’s a problem in the writing, which needs fixing in the writing.

As a teacher, I have a mantra: if a student doesn’t understand, that’s my fault, not theirs. It’s literally my job to help them understand. The same is true for us as writers: if readers don’t remember, that’s on us and it’s our job to help them. If two people in my group remember and one doesn’t, it still needs fixing. That’s a third of my readers confused, so why not make it clearer?

There are lots of things we want our readers to be wondering about. What’s going to happen next. If X is a bad ’un or is going to turn out trustworthy. Whether Y and Z will end up together. If that’s a clue or a red herring. We want to save the reader’s headspace for all of that, not squander it with them trying to work out the basics of who characters are, what happened before, and when even is this.

Frustrating as it may be to encounter the problem, fixing it is blissfully rewarding. It’s not like ironing a bug out of some code or correcting a spelling error, a dutiful necessary task. It is rich with discovery and delight. As you go back to make those characters more memorable and find ways to sneak in reminders, they leap to fuller life than they ever did before. As you seed memory-hooks into that past scene and weave them in to the new one, both turn thick with vivid detail and new story possibilities. When the phrase “five hundred years before” isn’t registering and you make everything look, feel, smell like it’s five hundred years ago, you discover astonishing new depths to draw on.

And even if you had to bite your tongue so hard it hurt, when you were getting feedback, now you can loosen it to thank them – because by flagging up the problem for you, they’ve helped you discover all this.

Then the next time you’re writing, you remember to create and seed those details in from the start, which embeds them even deeper in the story and opens up richer story possibilities. And then, when you’re asking the group if they remember X, they’re saying “Of course, how could I forget her? She’s the one…” and “Yes, absolutely! That was the bit where…”

If you want whole rafts of techniques for orientating the reader in who characters are, what happened before, and when things are, the Shifting Between Scenes course has just launched, to help you with exactly that. It’s a brand-new Freestyle video course, full of hands-on activities, which you can use with your work in progress OR with the practice materials I give you. You can use it whenever suits you, as many times as you like, and it’s fully accessible and chunked into short sections. Plus, as part of the course, you get permanent membership of the Writers’ Greenhouse Community. So if you don’t have a writing group or writing buddy yet, you can start meeting other writers.

Click here to see the full course and get started.

Shifting Between Scenes. The border shows a collage of memorabilia in pale blue: cameo brooches, old newspapers, a playing card, etc.

Writing Skill: A Fond Farewell

In the run-up to the Story Elements course, I'm posting a trio of Writing Skills, one a week, to get you exploring the different ingredients that go into story creation: premise • characters • place • time • plot layering • tension & stakes • plot point of view • beginnings • themes & symbols • subplots • detail & dialogue • endings.

Bookings close in just three days!

This week's Writing Skill is A FOND FAREWELL, to play with the final four topics of the course: themes & symbols, subplots, detail & dialogue, and endings. It's also a delightful way of using epistolary fiction (stories told through documents) to make a short story, with a side-helping of exploring subtext, reveals, and voice.

Your character is writing a farewell letter – in which they are (rather badly) hiding that they're in love with the person they're writing to. Their badly-hidden love becomes increasingly clear to the reader, but they remain convinced that they're managing to hide it.

If you prefer writing to discover, you can just leap straight in and find out the rest through writing. Start "Dear H—," and just keep writing. If you get stuck at any point, then have a glance at the suggestions for planning below, to feed in further ideas.

If you prefer to plan a bit first, then take a few minutes to brainstorm / jot down notes around these three things:

How they're leaving (eg ship, train, plane, etc: whatever appeals to you for vibe / time period)
Why contact will be difficult once they're gone
How they know each other (eg visited town, holiday, friend of a friend, roommate, working together on something, went through some hardship together, etc)

I suggest you start writing once you have those bits of info, and let more details emerge through the writing. Planning can be useful to give us enough of a springboard to start writing, but never plan so much that you don't get to make discoveries through the process of the writing itself. Discovering through writing is part of the joy, and what we come up with that way is often more organic. Don't worry if your letter seems to go "off topic": follow it and see where it goes.

If you need more ideas of what to write about, then you could include...

their supposed purpose in writing (eg to thank the person, clear something up, info they forgot to pass on when saying goodbye)
reminiscences of particular moments, objects, etc that they treasured
things they discussed together before leaving
references to people they both know
their current surroundings and the contrast of that with where they've left

Sometimes we can find a story's end through pure writing-to-discover; sometimes we need to step back a moment and do a bit more planning. So...

Towards the end: To make it a short story, you need some sort of pithy ending. Some possible endings you might consider are:

a reveal (to the reader) that the other person loves them too, though the character writing the letter remains unaware (SO TRAGIC 😭)
a postscript of how / when / where the letter is found, and by whom (that could be tragic, untragic, or anything in between)
a factual detail that gives the reader foresight (eg if the ship they're catching is The Titanic) – that could be a date, a place, a specific transport with a famously disastrous end, etc (the delicious chill of prescience)

or anything else that occurs to you!

Why this skill?

This Skill is a lovely organic way to explore the final four elements of stories: themes & symbols, subplots, detail & dialogue, and endings. A letter written by someone in love immediately gives you its theme, whichever approach you take to it, and the intense focus of love, how it latches onto and treasures the smallest objects, will spoil you for choice with symbols. That same focus also allows you to explore detail & dialogue, because every texture of every moment and every word of the beloved's means so much, when a character is smitten – and, of course, the letter itself means you're using the character's voice. Making it a short-story of a letter also lets you explore the possible endings. And through that ending, the letter itself can become a subplot of a larger context: of the person who finds the letter, or the factual detail that tells us the inevitable end.

These are the final four elements we explore in the Story Elements course, starting at the end of April / start of May, as live online classes OR in person in Oxford, your choice.

Bookings close 23 April, in just three days' time. Read more about the course and heaps of reviews, and book your place here.

Writing Skill: Scene Bookends

This week's Writing Skill is SCENE BOOKENDS, to play with the middle four topics of the course: plot layering, tension & stakes, plot point of view, and beginnings. Scene Bookends are those first and last lines of scenes that drive the tension leading into the scene and create DA-DA-DAAAA! moments at the ends of scenes. What's the question that's driving the scene? What changes as a result of what happens? What does the reader hope or fear will happen next? That's what the starts and ends of your scenes should flag up, and here's how to make that happen.

For this, you need a story to work with, so you have a couple of options:

Grab a chapter or two of your work in progress, if you have one,
OR
Pick a fairytale whose shape you know pretty well and jot down five key scenes. For example, for Cinderella: 1) Weepily cleaning while sisters plan ball, 2) Day of ball and Fairy Godmother does her thing, 3) Ball itself from arrival, 4) Fleeing at midnight, 5) The next day's true-love-by-shoe-size discovery.

Now you're going to write the first and last lines for those five scenes. Don't worry if you don't have the rest of the scene written, that's absolutely fine! You just want to make your first and last lines as dramatic as possible. You can do this completely by instinct or, if you prefer, use some of the tricks and techniques below – up to you. Sometimes it's helpful to go by instinct first, then compare with the tricks and techniques, to see what you can refine.

Tricks and techniques

If you're using a work in progress, look near the starts and ends of your scenes: what are your most dramatic lines? Could you move those up/down to bookend the scene? Could you start the scene a bit further down, with that dramatic line, and end it a bit sooner, with a dramatic line? Some writers (me included) tend to have a bit of "throat-clearing" at the starts of scenes, and carry on writing a bit longer than necessary.

For the first lines, think, What's the narrative question that's driving that scene? In the first scene of Cinderella, maybe that's Will anything nice ever happen to her? or Why are the stepsisters so awful to her? or Will she survive their brutality? Most of the time, you want the first line to flag up that question. For example,"Cinderalla edged into the kitchen, hoping the stepsisters wouldn't notice her this time."

Alternately, you can play a little guess-who/what game with the first line: "A foreign princess approached her, dripping with diamante, more elegant than Cinderalla could ever dream of being." And then it turns out, a few lines into the scene, that she's seeing her reflection.

For the last lines, think, What's changed as a result of what's just happened? What does the reader hope or fear will happen next? You want your last line to flag that up like a giant arrow pointing to continuing the story. You have a bunch of different techniques you can draw on here:

cliff-hanger (end at most dramatic point) eg The clock clock strikes 12 and Cinderella's gown starts to fade into rags
dramatic irony (we know something the character doesn't) eg "Behind Cinderella, unseen, the clock stood at one minute to twelve."
false dawn: ("What could possibly go wrong!?”) eg The Fairy Godmother sending Cinderella off, confident everything will go exacty as planned
near miss: (“Whew, that was close!”) eg Cinderella panicking about time as the clock chimes – no it's okay, it's only 11. If she then relaxes, that can also become more dramatic irony: as readers, we know she mustn't relax, because she'll forget the time again! We know how the story goes; she doesn't.
straight-up plot plan: Use the last line to set up what the character's planning to do next. eg a dirty tired Cinderella, just finished cleaning the kitchen, resolves that whatever happens, she will go to the ball.

Have fun!

Why this skill?

This Skill plunges you right into the middle four elements of stories: plot layering, tension & stakes, plot point-of-view, and beginnings. By separating out your scenes and working on the first and last lines of each, you're paying close attention to the plot purpose of that specific scene: that's part of your plot layering,. And by creating strong narrative drama in those lines, you're highlighting the tension & stakes of each scene.

Some of those techniques also highlight the plot point-of-view vividly: dramatic irony, for instance, can jump outside the character's point of view (us seeing the clock that Cinderalla doesn't) or can rely on the character's restricted point of view, compared to the reader's knowledge (her relaxing when it's only 11, not knowing the story because she's in it). And plot plan explicitly centers their point of view as protagonist.

These hooky lines to start and end also build the skills we need for beginnings of stories: ways to draw the reader in, before they know what the story's all about or what's going to happen.

These four are the middle four elements we explore in the Story Elements course, starting at the end of April / start of May, as live online classes OR in person in Oxford, your choice. Read more about the course and heaps of reviews, and book your place here. Bookings close on 23 April, just ten days' time.

I'll be posting another Writing Skill next week, so if you want it delivered to your inbox, you can also subscribe to the mailing list below / on the side of this post.

Writing Skill: The Pretence

This week's Writing Skill is THE PRETENCE, to play with the first four topics of the course: premise, characters, place, and time. You have two characters, each of whom is pretending to be something they're not. They might be pretending they have a different job, status, class, nationality... whatever you fancy. I suggest you choose a different type of thing for each character. And both characters are trying to impress the other. For example, the CEO of a big finance company is pretending to be the janitor, to seem more practical and down to earth, and the new hire is pretending to be French, for reasons I haven't quite yet worked out, but which might emerge in the writing. NB: The reader already knows the truth about both characters, so we know they're lying, and we're giggling away and half eating our hands with the tension.

To start, spend a couple of minutes deciding what each is lying about, being reasonably specific. For example, if they're lying about their job, what's their actual job? What are they pretending is their job?

In choosing their lies, you'll also be generating the setting for the scene (the place and time). For example, with my CEO of a big finance company, I've immediately got a setting of the City of London, a towering glass building, a corporate environment, and I can keep that present day or jump back a bit in time. How about 2009, when bankers were deeply unpopular? That would give my CEO added motivation to hide their real identity!

You don't have to stick to your own lived timeline either: one of the characters could be a pyramid builder, lying about being the pharoah, or indeed the pharoah, lying about being a pyramid builder.

Once you've got your two characters through their lies, and the setting, spend the rest of the time (about 8 mins if you're doing a ten-minuter) writing their interaction. You can stick to dialogue mostly, throwing in action/description where it's relevant, as this is very much first-draft stuff. And play it for laughs!

Why this skill?

This Skill gives you a swift, nifty way in to the first four elements of stories: premise, characters, place, and time. I've given you the premise: two characters lying to each other. That's enough to start you off writing, and how you develop it is what will make it unique. Your characters are created through their lies: an unusual start to character development, but a fun one to loosen up your powers of invention, and it instantly creates character complexity. And those lies in turn give you your setting, your place and time, which immediately makes it easier to start writing and suggests new avenues of story and character possibility – such as my CEO's lie being in the context of the global economic crisis.

These four are the first four elements we explore in the Story Elements course, starting at the end of April / start of May, as live online classes OR in person in Oxford, your choice. Read more about the course and heaps of reviews, and book your place here. Bookings close 23 April.

I'll be posting more Writing Skills in the coming two weeks, so if you want them delivered to your inbox, you can also subscribe to the mailing list below / on the side of this post.

Spring Writing Food: Italian Frittata

Perfect writing food is quick (either to make or to double up another day's cooking) so it doesn't steal your wriitng time, low-carb so your writing time isn't sabotaged by sleepiness, and as much a treat as writing itself.

In spring, I start hankering for fresher food than winter's roots, stews, soups and braised veg, but with a nip in the air, I still want something hot. Italian frittata fits the bill perfectly: flash-fried fresh salad vegetables in an open omelette, topped with cheese. It's ready in 5–10 mins from start to finish, packed with freshness, and piping hot. And unlike its Spanish cousin, no pototoes! (I love potatoes, but boy do they make me sleepy.) It's also super-flexible for whatever fresh veg and cheese you have about, and whatever herbs, chillies, or spices you fancy adding.

I got a little shy about suggesting it: it's hardly avant-garde or innovative, and I thought of another much more glamous recipe instead... But this isn't a cookery school or a place for me to show off a new recipe I've nicked; it's easy ideas to make the most of your writing time. And actually, now that it is spring, this is what I'm throwing together almost every writing day. So here you go!

Scroll on for the recipe or download it as a PDF here.