About 1,100 words today. That’s not bad. I shut down the computer thinking there hadn’t been any fireworks again, but I was premature.

Shortly after saving and exiting, I suddenly realized why one of my characters had done something he’d done. I wasn’t entirely sure at the time, and thought maybe it was inappropriate to the scene. But afterward I figured out his motivation, and said, “Yes! Of course! That’s exactly what he’d do!”

These are the “that’s my boy!” moments for a writer, when characters you aren’t sure have any life to them, suddenly show signs of getting a job and leaving home. It’s a sort of pale imitation of parenthood, in a remote, attenuated form.

I’ve never written a book in quite this way before. My standard novel-writing system, as I’ve said many times, is to scribble notes on slips of paper as characters and scenes and themes occur to me, and then arrange them in an MS Word document, in more or less the order I expect them to occur. When I’ve got enough stuff there to qualify as an outline, I then begin writing my story at the beginning of the document, and removing each plot point from the end as I use it. Eventually I have a completed book with a little rubble of discarded mental detritus at the end, which I then erase (although it was pointed out to me recently that I ought to keep my character lists, at least, in a separate document, for use in sequels, if any. Good idea).

But this book is being written blind. I’ve got characters, setting, and a basic idea for the book which I can best describe as a sort of rhythm. There’s an “impossible” event which happens, and then happens again, and then happens again, at intervals in the story. Everything else reacts to that.

So this time, the writing itself is an adventure. I keep discovering my own story. I’ve always considered writing without an outline kind of a lazy technique, but it might be the best way for me. I suspect that, sometimes in the past, I’ve twisted my characters’ arms to do things they didn’t really want to do, in the service of a predetermined plot.

About 1,000 words today. Odd that I got up earlier than yesterday, and managed to get less accomplished.

No great fireworks, but a workmanlike job, which is the whole point.

Yesterday was my first day of a week of stay-cation, devoted to getting more sleep, and doing more writing, than customary for me.

The sleep hasn’t been bad, but I’m pleased to say that the writing’s already been beyond my expectations.

Here’s the situation.

I’ve been worrying a particular story concept for quite a few years now. I had a basic idea—transfer the traditional hard-boiled detective story from a modern city (such as New York) to the Viking Age and an early medieval town (specifically, old York in England, which was a Viking town for some time). The mystery would have fantasy elements, because that’s the sort of thing I write.

But whatever I did with it, I couldn’t seem to make it come alive. I don’t know how many starts I’ve made on the thing, but they all lost momentum and rolled to a slow stop. Continue reading Notes from a writer’s journal →