Category Archives: a writer’s life

The joy of lists for writers (and for normal people too)

The to-do list

lists of listsThis weekend, with the revisions for my second crime novel on my editor’s desk rather than on mine, I spent the weekend working through lists: essentially my “to do list”, catching up on housework, the ironing and reading a “treat” book.

They were on my mental list of things to do and, mentally, I ticked them off.

One of the things I did, once the heavy lifting was done, was sit down with a cup of tea. The radio was on – I love the radio – and Weekend Woman’s Hour was playing.

shopping list

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Lucy Ireland Gray was talking about the 200 discarded shopping lists that she’d collected from shopping trolleys (we’ve all seen those) and picked up from the ground. They went on display at the Museum of London Brands, in Notting Hill. 

One of her friends was horrified that one of the lists might be hers. Not so much worried that her shopping list would betray her inner secrets, but that it would out her as a litter lout. 

Why do we make lists?

lists for writersObviously as an aide memoire. This is a list of a colleague who is a lot of more organised than me.

My lists are messy, jotted down on the nearest piece of paper or notepad and maybe, later, transferred to this notebook.

I do, weirdly, have a book of lists.

This is from when I started using Instagram and was making a note of useful hashtags. I have lists for romance readers, for gardens, for cyber crime (they’re for my son’s books) and for food photographs.

I need a new one for crime fiction…

Looking through it, I discovered all sorts of lists I’d forgotten. Hero Names, a list of the events at the Tasting Rooms in East Grinstead, sadly now closed, a victim of the pandemic. Motives for murder. Poisons…

murder listsThis recent list, jotted down during a brain-storming zoom call with colleagues, needs to be transferred before it gets lost. (I could tell you what it’s for but then I’d have to shoot you. Writing crime…)

Do Lists Set You Up for Failure?

I didn't do the thing today by Madeleine DoreMadeleine Dore, author of I didn’t do the thing today: On letting go of productivity guilt, was on the radio programme exploring the tyranny of lists.

The ones we make at the New Year, for instance. She believes they set us up for failure. I am never going to start a list with Run Marathon so I’m safe there.

lists of New Year resolutionsI don’t actually make that kind of list. Mine tend to be more prosaic. But it did make me think about the lists I make.

The shopping lists that I always forget – although writing things down does seem to fix them in the memory. If all  else fails, I stand in the middle of the aisle, getting in everyone’s way, while I attempt to visualize my notepad lying on my desk.

Clearly, I need to get up to the minute and make my shopping list on my phone, which I’d have with me. One day…maybe.

But list-making isn’t all about remembering to buy cous cous, sadly forgotten this week. I had to use brown rice, which takes forever to cook. Never mind. It was good for me. Probably.

Writer’s lists

lists for revising a bookAs the contents of my notebook can testify, a writer’s to do list is often weird. Okay, there’s a list of goals… Write 1000 words a day, write 3 books a year (I can fantasize!), make the Sunday Times Bestseller List. (This list is thirty years old, okay, and mostly in my head!)

This is last week’s list as I worked through my revisions and renumbered the chapters…

Why?

These days my list-making is mostly  focused on the basics. Character names for instance. Romance is very focused on the two main characters, with walk-on parts as required, but when I started writing crime, I quickly discovered that I was going to need a much larger cast. Here’s the list…

A sleuth and her buddies – maybe a romance interest
A body or two
Cops
Suspects
People who know stuff
People who don’t know stuff but like to gossip
A red herring or two

Lists of names

lists of namesAll of those people require names.

Names that fit the character’s age, background, social status, bearing in mind that mothers will often give their child a name for a future they hope they’ll achieve.

Alexander Bonaparte Cust, anyone?

This is the book when I first started writing. It helps, but isn’t the entire answer and is no help when you’re not paying attention.

lists on a spreadsheetWhen, doing a global search to check up on what a minor character had said earlier in Murder Among the Roses, I discovered that I had three minor characters called Steve and, later, my editor pointed out that I had a Molly, Polly and Olly… Clearly snatching names out of the air when in full flow was not the way to do it.

I had created a spreadsheet of all my major characters, their ages, anything significant and their basic role. It was the bit players that caught me out.

graphic of murder listWhen writing my second Maybridge Mystery, Murder Under the Mistletoe, to be published on 7 November (and this little list will give you a hint of what it’s all about) I had a group of characters that were using their bus pass.

I looked up names that were popular when they were born and added those to my spreadsheet, so that when I introduced a new character, I didn’t have to waste time hunting for something suitable. They might have been changed later, but the creative flow wasn’t interrupted.

By the time I was on my third book, and knew that I’d need an extensive cast list, I started a spreadsheet of characters as they appear on the page. And I now realise that I need an index-card system with cross-referencing for the regulars, and so that I don’t repeat names. They do tend to stick in the head and insert themselves.

Pause to add the  cards and box file to my shopping list…

retreat listMy next list is going to be a shopping list for my annual writing retreat, bearing in mind fellow retreaters’ dietary needs when it’s my turn to produce the evening meal. I’ve made a start…

Fortunately, I’ll be forwarding that list to someone a lot more organised than me who will be picking up the groceries. Remembering it will be their problem!

So, what do you do with your shopping lists? What other lists do you make? And what did you go home without the day you forgot your shopping list?

 

Liz Fielding

That Unfinished Book

e-reader stop micro-editingI’ve always imagined that most writers have that unfinished book in their files somewhere.

Often, I imagine, it would be one that came to a halt because of external circumstances. The day job gets frantic for three months and when you go back to the book you read the first chapter and think: who are these people? Yes, that happened to me.

Or you get ill. Or there is a sudden family crisis.

woman in grey blouse, long sleeves, hands on laptop keyboard

Image by Bartek Zakrzewski from Pixabay

Sometimes it is to do with the book itself — a publisher changes their mind, for instance. And yes, I have one or two of those. (One I was very glad to stop, to be honest. I’d really gone off the hero.)

I still have a 40K word file of a book I really liked. It was a sequel that the publisher decided, mid-creation, they didn’t want after all. Please could they have a romance  based on a (then) popular reality television show instead?

My reply was 1) ouch and 2) no.

Just Came to a Stop…

Dark walls with woman sitting on her heels and a single small lamp thinking the unfinished bookBut that unfinished book arose just as often because I came to a place in the story that I couldn’t get past. Sometimes several times and over many months. Even years.

Sadly, I have a whole cellar full of those.

Some were misconceived from the start. Mostly these are books I was trying to write to please an editor.

Nobody’s fault. In people-pleasing mode I would think, oh yes, that sounds fun. Then, when it was just me, the characters and the laptop, I couldn’t do it. The life had been breathed into them by the editor alone.

I’m really glad to leave those in the vault.

…but It Won’t Leave Me Alone

round dial showing the pressure in a section of machinery

Image by InspiredImages from Pixabay

And then there is that unfinished book that just won’t let go.

You can ignore its multiple files on your computer. You can bury the dog-eared, well-thumbed notebooks. and the box files of research. All that will do is increase the pressure on you to get it out and look at it again.

As many of my friends know, I’m editing one of those at the moment. I’m really glad to be doing it. Every treasured but unnecessary scene that I send to the cutting room floor, I cheer. I SO want the book off my desk and onto somebody else’s.

young woman in open necked shirt, with plait over right shoulder and crossed arms, looking annoyed

Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay

But even so, my constant companion the evil Perfection Prefect keeps pulling me back. The closer I get to the end, the more I a) slow down and b) panic.

Fortunately I have friends urging me on. Constantly. Some of them have even threatened reprisals if I don’t damn well get it done this time. Bless their pointed little heads. I really believe they’re going to get me through it, this time

Is it Just Me?

Unfinished book, Jane Austen's portraitI’ve beaten myself up about this a lot. Even though I knew I wasn’t alone. Jane Austen had at least two books waiting to be finished when she died. But I did think my failure to finish set me pretty much out on my own.

Only then I read this piece by Jennifer Crusie, one of my all time favourite writers. She’s sharp, thoughtful, funny and warm – and she writes like a dream. Her Welcome To Temptation has stayed in my top 5 ever since I first read it, umpty-um years ago.

And yet here was Jenny Crusie owning up to exactly the same thing. And she has a brilliant solution. She’s co-written novels with Bob Mayer in the past. They do His and Hers chapters, turn and turnabout, and it works like a dream. So ‘in 2022 she turned to Bob Mayer and said, “For the love of God, get me to the end of a book.”’

The first book of that life-saving collaboration is Lavender’s BlueIt’s out now and on my Kindle.

At three chapters in, it’s a cracker.

And there are at least two more to come.

And my optimism about my own possible recovery has just doubled in strength. If you’ve ever suffered from the same thing, here’s hoping it does the same for you!

Sophie Weston AuthorSophie

Deadlines, Distractions and Displacement Activities

There I was, trying to find something to blog about, but my head waswriters staring into space, distractions too full of deadlines and other distractions. It’s difficult finding time to write the darned book, let alone anything else.

Then inspiration struck. I am a published author. I have been writing to a deadline for decades. What on earth is my problem? So I decided to share some of the tricks that have helped me over the years.

Words from the wise?

Well, maybe. These are things that have helped me avoid distractions: some are tips from fellow writers, but they come from other sources, too. It’s a little tongue in cheek, perhaps, and it’s tips that helped me most when I was a working mother. Not all of it will work for you, but it helps to clarify the mind (or at least, it does mine).

Let me start with a quote:

Continue reading

Poisonous plants lurking in the border

Gardening…

When I started writing my Maybridge Mysteries series, the opening scene for the first book had been in my “ideas” file for years. And I already knew that my main character, Abby Finch, was going to be a gardener.

I had a title in my head – A Rose for the Dead. Since I envisaged a series, it seemed like a really good idea to have a plant name in all the titles.

However, since it appears to be the convention for cozy crime is to have either murder, or death in the title, my publisher, Joffe Books, changed it to Murder Among the Roses.

Having spent thirty years having my working titles changed by my publisher, this didn’t come as a huge surprise. I still prefer mine but whatever sells the book. And I had my flower.

Since the use of plants was going to be part of the branding of the series (next up this autumn, Murder With Mistletoe), I fell down the research rabbit hole looking for plant life that can kill. Continue reading

Superstitious? Who me? Nah (touch wood)

Botswana, fish eagle in bare tree ©JoannaMaitland2019Earlier on this week, I caught myself saying “Touch wood” and started to wonder where the expression came from. Was it me being superstitious? Or was it just a cultural thing, like saying “Bless you” when someone sneezes, or “Goodbye” (= God be with you) when we leave them?

As is the way of such things, it started me down a whole warren of research rabbit holes. What’s not to like? At least for a blogger like me, rooting around for something to write about.

Where does “touch wood” come from?

I assumed that “touch wood” must be ancient, perhaps dating from pre-Christian times when sacred groves of trees were venerated.

Shades of the wonderful Asterix and his Druid, Getafix. (That’s a classic example of the humour of Asterix’s brilliant English translators, Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge. The original French name was Panoramix which isn’t nearly as clever, I don’t think.)

According to Wikipedia, I was sort of right about the Celtic history of touching wood (or knocking on wood) as a kind of protective magic to turn away misfortune. The proper term is, apparently, apotropaic. (No, me neither.) However, there’s a later Christian explanation, relating to the wood of the cross. And an even more modern derivation, from a game of tag called “Tiggy Touchwood”.

Personally, I prefer to stick with the Celtic origin theory. “Touch wood” or “Knock on wood” seems to be in common use in loads of countries which might suggest that it is very old.

I rest my case 😉

Superstitious, moi?

Continue reading

Chelsea and its Flower Show

Mary Poppins arriving with open umbrella and Gladstone bag constructed of dark blue flower heads, with a bush of pale orange and cream flowers filling the bag and almost the same size.Chelsea in Bloom 2023

Mary Poppins, Royal Avenue, Chelsea

Last week was the Chelsea Flower Show. I aIways beam at the enthusiastic visitors who pour down the King’s Road on their way to the Show. (Love a good enthusiast!) But somehow this year the excitement has seemed a bit muted.

Normally the Flower Show People — you can tell them by the floral outfits, exciting hats and sensible shoes for hours of walking — are a pretty cheery bunch, even in the pouring rain. This time, the worst excess of the weather has been no more than overcast. But too many of the visitors have looked harassed.

It made me really grateful for the display at the end of Royal Avenue: a Mary Poppins of indigo flowers, Gladstone bag in hand, flying in to save the Mr Banks in all of us. Her author, P L Travers (her blue plaque currently obscured by builder’s fencing), lived two streets away in Smith Street,

Chelsea in Bloom

Carousel ponies among flowers in the Mary Poppins floral display, Chelsea 2023Mary Poppins, together with her accompanying carousel ponies, are entries in a floral street art competition, supported by the Cadogan Estate, in conjunction with the Royal Horticultural Society. Since 2006, it has become a traditional companion celebration to the Chelsea Flower Show itself. Continue reading

Scottish myth, history and engineering

Falkirk Wheel. Marsupium photography via Wikimedia Commons

Those of you who dropped into the Liberta Blog over Easter might have noticed I was a tad slow with my replies to the comments…

That’s because I was busy exploring a little more of Scotland. The Falkirk Wheel and the Kelpies, to be exact.

Most of you will know that my main interest lies in the history of the 18th and early 19th century, but although the Falkirk Wheel did not open until 2002, its heritage and engineering dates back way beyond the Industrial Revolution.

As far as Archimedes, in fact.

Let’s go back a bit for more engineering

Continue reading

Not Mrs Beaton: Sarah Mallory tries Regency cooking

Fellow authors will understandWoman businesswoman working, files, clock this foray into Regency cooking.

I was having a very busy time, planning a holiday, sorting out the family, finishing one book, starting another, looking at the dust highlighted by the spring sunshine…

So what to do first?

I decided to take part in an online course on Regency cooking. What else??? Continue reading

Do troubles always come in threes?

Troubles always come in threes. Isn’t that what they say?

I’m writing this on April Fool’s Day and, boy, do I feel like an April Fool.
Let me explain my trio of troubles. Continue reading

Plotting the perfect crime…

Switching Genres…

Image by Davie Bicker from Pixabay

I’ve been a published romance writer for more than thirty years now. That’s seventy books for Harlequin Mills and Boon and a few more for other publishers.

I was in a groove – some people might call it a comfortable rut – but I was producing books that enough people loved to keep me in contract and an advance and royalties coming in.

It’s hard to give up that up just because you’ve had a story in your head for a very long time that refuses to go away.

When you’ve had that security for thirty years, to write a book in a totally different genre — crime — on spec, with no publisher, no advance or promise of publication is like stepping off a cliff.

Sink or swim?

Image by J Garget from Pixabay

Maybe it was lockdown, the sense that life was out of control and might never be the same again. The sense that if I didn’t do it now, then when? That if I didn’t take the risk, would I go to my grave regretting that I didn’t have the courage, or the self-belief that had the “do it now” bells ringing.

I’d delivered the last of the books on my current contract. I could take six months out for a passion project – I knew the story – inspired by a documentary I’d seen. I had my victim, I had my murderer, I had my “sleuth”.

I’d lived with them in my head for a long time. I could give them six months of my life.

The Beginning…

Continue reading