The novel - An Update

I have felt somewhat uneasy with my novel of late. There are some concepts in the plot that I am not happy with at all. Although I have begun a new plot direction, it is discouraging. So late in the piece I am finding each page I turn I am further away from where I want to be. On a positive note however, the new direction has fleshed out some of the secondary characters in a way that I hadn't anticipated, and made the subplots more meaty as well.

My little one is on school holidays for the next two weeks, and I have been unwell, so I have decided to pack away the manuscript and not open up the file until he is back at school, in the hope that I will be able to start back in a better frame of mind.

Oh course, there is always one thing or another that a writer will dwell on, as an obstacle to some Divine prose that sprouts from the bowels of ones imagination. For me that obstacle is isolation, or more precisely a lack of it. And Isolation is one luxury that family life does not offer, but it is- unfortunately- something that I seem to need to focus my mind on my writing. Thank heavens, my husband is a quiet sort of man who also enjoys solitude, he is happy to sit for a long time together in silence. Although I am sure he would tell you that I am a chatterbox, and that what I write is untrue!

I suppose I am a chatterbox, but I also enjoy silence and need it to write. Since having my little boy however, my head seems always so full - like a shopping list that only ever manages to get half ticked off.

And what three year old is not a blissfully frustrating, and delightfully determined little chatterbox!