One of the problems with writing a blog
every week is that the writer's year includes a period when next to
nothing happens that can be shared with that writer's readers. You
could call this the blogger's desert and we are now in that.
It happens after all the excitement of
rushing around looking at places, watching Marcia listening to (and
sometimes talking to) her characters, discussing with her where her
thoughts are taking her and so on. In the old days (when Transworld
published Marcia in the summer rather than, as now, in the late
autumn) it included signings and other events triggered off by
publication day.
Then comes the day when the computer is
opened, a new document is created, it is given a working title and
Marcia starts to write. Then, for day after day and week after week
that is what Marcia does. Obviously there are still booky things
going on but apart from sometimes tempting you all by mentioning the
return of an old character, I am under strict orders to reveal
nothing at all.
There are a number of good reasons for
this. Once I allowed you to know the working title of a book – The
Ginger Jar – only it was
published under the title The Prodigal Wife.
To this day we receive emails asking us when The Ginger
Jaris going to be published.
Then there are the times when a book takes a totally unexpected turn
and some of the early chapters require changes. Then there are the
very weird times when something has happened in an early chapter that
really makes very little sense and neither of us know why it is
there. Some few thousand words later on the puzzle is resolved and
then, with the full picture there to see, Marcia returns to see
whether or not something jars or seems out of place. That rarely
happens (in fact I can't remember it ever happening) but usually
there is something to be added which gives the scene greater depth
and meaning.
And so
it was that, just as I was really thinking “this whole blog thing
was a very bad idea” your comments on last week's blog gave me an
idea. Whether or not you will all like that idea is, of course,
something else. Since you like photos, how about running a few photo
themes during these few months when Marcia has her head stuck in her
laptop? (That is a piece of imagery I could not resist.)
 |
| It seemed right to resolve this picture to monochrome |
So for
the next few weeks the theme will be trees. We will start next week
with trees devoid of leaf in the depths of winter allowing us to
enjoy their skeletal beauty, then look at them in spring, high summer
and lastly autumn. Now all I have to do is to hope that I have enough
photos in the files to meet that specification. What shall we choose
for the next theme? Any ideas?
