What I Am Working On

Well, first and foremost I’m working on blogging again. Quinn’s last six months of life were a sort of tour de force. When we got back from Florida at the end of September, 2013, I had all these grand plans for beta reading, handcrafting and novel-writing. Then the longer we were back the more it sank in that a large portion of my good hours were going to be spent taking care of him. I think back on it and I wonder if it was stupid to spend so much energy caring for a dog at the end of his life and then I realise that love and commitment are love and commitment. You don’t kill ones you love simply because it would make your life easier. He wasn’t suffering and we had a good long last year together. Thing was, I didn’t realise until he was gone just how much of my time (and more critically, energy) was spent on him. I feel like my days have doubled in length as I come out of the more intense grieving and I look around to see all the stuff I left behind. Like blogging. And so I’m back to blogging tentatively but eagerly nonetheless. And a good start to it is to answer this four-question writers’ survey put to Jay DiNitto by Jill Domschot.

1.WHAT NOVEL AM I WORKING ON?

My current work today is a fake celebrity biography. (A book about a famous person who doesn’t really exist.) I’m always tinkering with my Big book too…the one about the Welsh and the history of medicine. But that one continually morphs. It’s sort of like my Pillars Of The Earth; I’m not ready to tell it yet, but it’s there in my head. In between I work on these “little” books. General women’s fiction type things that are about the various kinds of love that women have in their lives.

2. HOW DOES MY WORK DIFFER FROM OTHERS IN ITS GENRE?

I’m writing it. Really, there’s so much out there in the women’s fiction/aga saga/bonkbuster category that the only difference is that this one is told with my voice, with my humour, with my worldview. It’s a story that I mean to make others happy.

3. WHY DO I WRITE WHAT I DO?

I agree with Jay that this is poorly-worded. I am assuming they mean “why do I choose to write this type of work as opposed to the many other types of work out there?” The answer to that is that these are the stories that bring me comfort. I write to connect with others and I’d like for my books to bring them a comfortable escape that also gives them little nuggets to think about. (My heroes in this type of writing are Lois McMaster Bujold and Maeve Binchy.) People have hard lives. Everyone. I want to write books that make people feel like they’ve given over however many hours of their life in exchange for a bit of happiness.

4. HOW DOES MY WRITING PROCESS WORK?

The characters are in my head already. I take them through dialogues while I exercise and do housework. The process of inventing dialogue (talking to myself, but not really–it’s the characters talking to each other) moves the story in the directions it needs to go, usually. Then I sit down and write when I am able. The rest of the time I make notes and sketches in my iphone or ipad if something strikes me while I’m about something else.