The Journey to a New Book - Part 2
Writing in Lockdown
Progress is good! The manuscript is almost 50% complete, at just over 40K words. It’s time to begin the slow build up to the denouement and the end of the saga. Before that I need to pause and reflect, re-read to be sure the plot threads are working and plan out the next sections.
The trickiest aspect of writing this book has been having no access to archives, museums, libraries, etc. Everything has to come from the internet. Normally, I would visit every site, every county and even country where my books are set. This time I have had to make do with Google.
Fortunately, as this book is re-visiting a previous theme – The Spanish Civil War – I still have the photographs, notes, pamphlets and so on that I gathered on my previous visit. Mercifully, my memory is good, so I can recall in detail the two crucial places – one town and one village – that will be a premier feature in ‘The Soldier’.
One big challenge has been to describe a journey by road through France and into Spain, one which I last undertook about twenty years ago. The photograph is of the border pass. Once the action moves on to Catalonia I will be on much firmer ground, literally and figuratively!
The next scenes to be written will include ‘Charlie’, about whom I wrote briefly at the end of ‘The Policeman’. He will rise to prominence in ‘The Soldier’. More about him next time.
Progress is good! The manuscript is almost 50% complete, at just over 40K words. It’s time to begin the slow build up to the denouement and the end of the saga. Before that I need to pause and reflect, re-read to be sure the plot threads are working and plan out the next sections.
The trickiest aspect of writing this book has been having no access to archives, museums, libraries, etc. Everything has to come from the internet. Normally, I would visit every site, every county and even country where my books are set. This time I have had to make do with Google.
Fortunately, as this book is re-visiting a previous theme – The Spanish Civil War – I still have the photographs, notes, pamphlets and so on that I gathered on my previous visit. Mercifully, my memory is good, so I can recall in detail the two crucial places – one town and one village – that will be a premier feature in ‘The Soldier’.
One big challenge has been to describe a journey by road through France and into Spain, one which I last undertook about twenty years ago. The photograph is of the border pass. Once the action moves on to Catalonia I will be on much firmer ground, literally and figuratively!
The next scenes to be written will include ‘Charlie’, about whom I wrote briefly at the end of ‘The Policeman’. He will rise to prominence in ‘The Soldier’. More about him next time.
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