Let the work be what it wants to be

(And other things I never thought I would say)

Photo by Laura Vinck on Unsplash

Before I had written a novel I had certain ideas about the process. I saw it as primarily an intellectual endeavour - one that involved the imagination certainly - but an activity very much centred in the brain. I used to think people made up things like ‘the characters had ideas of their own’ or ‘the plan I had went out of the window when I started writing.’ I pretty much thought people said things like that to make them sound mysterious and arty. That won’t be me, I thought.

I’ve since discovered that the best bit about writing a novel is the mysterious creative alchemy that occurs. It feels like actual magic when it happens; when things slot into place in a way I hadn’t forseen, or a whole new facet to a storyline pops up that I didn’t plan for. It makes me feel as though ‘the work’ has a life and identity of its own, which somehow turns the volume on my inner critic down. After all, it’s nothing to do with me.

What I DON’T like is that I can’t explain it or control it. Especially the timing. I am controlling by my very nature, and have lists, plans, spreadsheets galore - for everything. I run my life like it’s a military operation. Strange then that the principal activity I’ve chosen for the second act of my life doesn’t work that way (don’t come after me plotters - I’m still one of you!) and can even be smothered into submission by the overuse of those tools (again, don’t come after me, this is just my personal experience).

How do I know this? Well, some of you will know the story of how The List of Suspicious Things came to be. Before I wrote it, I had attempted a psychological thriller and had abandoned it after 20k words, after reading it back and realising that the words were flat on the page; that it had no life or heart, and worse than that, I just didn’t care. I went back to the drawing board and listened to Stephen King’s On Writing, while spring-cleaning the house. A few days later I took the dog for a walk, and while tramping through the Somerset countryside, the idea for The List of Suspicious Things appeared in my mind, fully formed, including the title (which has never changed). I ran home immediately and started that day, writing an outline of what I’d seen, late into the night.

My job was essentially to write it down, not make it up.

I am a lover of, and voracious reader of, crime fiction. So, when I eventually sat down to write the book, I had that in mind and set out to write a crime novel. I went into my usual mode of reading, planning, scheduling. I joined a ‘Write your Novel’ programme run by Curtis Brown Creative to help, part of which means getting feedback on your work-in-progress, and a few weeks into the programme, I put up the (then) opening to the novel for everyone to read.

When I got my feedback, I was actually a bit baffled. People kept commenting on the warmth and humour in the story. About the friendship between the two girls at the heart of it, Miv and Sharon. About their love of Aunty Jean, the matriarchal figure in Miv’s family. I wondered if I was doing something wrong, and pondered whether I should turn up the seriousness of the story?

Thankfully, something in me - that deeper, unknowable, creative part of me - said no. Instead, I chose to lean into the warmth and humour, and I ended up writing a book that is more about kindness and community than it is about the murders that underpin it.

There is something beautiful about that to me; that others can see the things I can’t, and that the work has a quality all of its own, separate to me and my limited brain. It is also why editors are so very important. They can see the whole when we are stuck in the parts. It’s one of the reasons that I actually LOVE working with my editor. That symbiosis is the reason The List of Suspicious Things became the book it is now.

As I write book two, I am finding myself in a similar situation. I cannot see the book for myself. If I am being really honest, I am not actually sure what it is I’m writing, but I know someone will tell me, and there will probably be some surprises in what they see, versus what my conscious brain thinks it is.

But I am learning to trust that deeper unknowable part of myself, it knows better than my conscious, controlling surface.