The working title for this latest book was Monkey Crossing. Quite simply it was where the idea started, with monkeys being taken across a desolate landscape by a girl. I hadn't a clue why or how or anything. The title has stayed as it often does because now I can't separate that original idea and feeling with the finished work.

I began the story in August 2013 and finished the first draft April 2013, final draft August 2013. It's currently about 72,000 words.

AND what I'm asking myself now, is why was it such a struggle? Because it was. I spent hours writing myself up against brick walls and having to backtrack and start again. Why did I have so much rewriting and such sticky tangles? Is there an easier way of doing it I asked myself as yet again I trawled through the manuscript changing the way someone spoke or the intention with which they spoke because I'd set off with them being like this and now they were like that?

I'm sure I could have made it better in every way if only I'd PLANNED it.

If anyone mentions the dreaded words, synopsis or book plan, chapter breakdown, character traits ...blah blah, my eyes glaze over and I stop listening. I can't do it. I won't do it. It's too difficult. I just want to write interesting sentences and have fun getting my characters in and out of the complications that I put them in.

BUT everyone says it's easier with a proper plan. Everyone. Even other writers who also hate plans and maps and things. So THIS TIME I'm going to plan my book. I really am. After all, I have just about every book under the sun about writing: 'How to Write' 'The Creative Writing Process' 'Write a book in a Week' 'Basic Plots' 'How to Plot' etc etc and I do admire them sitting there in my bookshelf, pristine as they day I bought them. I open them. I shut them.

OK, but this time I'm approaching it differently.  I'm going to try and keep track of how it feels to write using a plan and see if it is easier with a bit of ground work (not much - I'm just too much of a corner-cutter), done before hand.  My next book will be simpler and shorter, aimed at  a younger reader and so I know it won't have the complications that Monkey Crossing did and so I suppose it's a bit easier, but we'll see. (And what's wrong with making things easier?)

I knew I was going to be writing about fairy stories and characters from nursery rhymes so the first thing I've done is uploaded some photos on my pin board at Pinterest. This is a splendid way of wasting time while pretending to do 'research'. Don't you love that word? It makes me feel so important.

Next I went back to a story that I'd written called Little Blue Legs and re-read it. I knew there was something wrong with it but it was only after having left it to compost that I could see what.  (And in this case the composting was over a year). I could see what was wrong immediately.

  My main characters didn't know what they wanted.

How to put this all right (plus everything else)?  The most important part of any story, I think, is what makes the characters do what they do. SO what did my main characters want?  I sat and thought about it. I played with this problem and that idea and it was pretty straightforward really:

Tizzy does not want to be a witch.
The imp in the bottle does not want to be in the bottle.

Why hadn't I thought of thinking about that before? WHY? Because I'm always so keen to get on with my writing that I won't stop and think. Well now I'm thinking. Now I've got the beginnings of an idea because I know what they want and this will make them behave in a particular way. It will form their character. Hooray.

Next step I'm going to have to open one of those books and learn how to PLOT.

Wish me luck.