March 2025 …
A little while ago I formally retrieved my draft of Trials of Henry from my little wooden vault. It was a token thing to do but an important acknowledgement of restarting a project that has been in hibernation. After ‘clearing the decks’ of other writing tasks I started working on it – mostly reading it through, documenting scenes and summarising the structure. During that process I identified a number of story holes. These holes gave me plenty of incentive to rework some scenes, along with my plans to add new sections, inspired by my trip to Zurich.
I had also completed a course with the Australian Society of Authors about the necessary preparation to pitch a story or writing project to potential publishers. A key point of the course, for me, was; when is the right time to pitch a story? The answer (which is perhaps somewhat obvious), is: when the story is complete. More precisely it’s when you feel you have no more to add to the general writing project. It doesn’t mean it has to be perfectly edited; no publisher simply presses ‘print’ when they receive a manuscript from an author. But the story, from your point of view, has to be complete.
Story completeness also includes the results of early feedback from the so-called ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’ readers. They are the people who give feedback as to whether they think the story is complete; and if not, why not.
So, to get published, you need to have a completed work.
Recently, I sat at my desk with the intention of writing the additional scenes for Trials of Henry. My view was clear, the potential was there, the target was visible – and yet on that first night as I attempted to write the additional material, I struggled to launch into this next step. I knew exactly what I had to do and why – and I even had the outline of scenes in my head – and yet, the drive to start was absent.
So I resorted to a technique I use routinely. Every morning, before breakfast, showering, and preparing for the day, I sit and write in a journal for about 20 to 25 minutes, by hand. Sometimes I recount events from the previous day, other times I reflect on my feelings about a situation, or I might develop story ideas and characters. Some days I don’t know what to write, and I find it hard to get started. On those days I will ‘literally’ start writing the words “Blah, blah, blah” or “I don’t know what to write this morning …” or “I’m too tired to think about writing …”. Before I know it, I have written for 25 minutes, around 500 words, and I’m writing faster and faster and getting annoyed because I have to stop. I find this a very enlivening way to start the day.
And so it was, that evening, with all the incentives present to write for my project but not feeling the drive, I picked up my fountain pen and started to write – something, anything. It was a little aimless at first, sketchy ideas about a particular new scene. Before I knew it, two hours had passed with over 1,000 words filling the pages and feeling an energy and excitement for the unfolding story.
Handwriting has long been a cleansing, clarifying experience for me. Whether I’m writing engineering reports or creative stories, the mechanical process of handwriting encourages the ordering of thoughts and ideas into a meaningful structure. It often exposes flaws in reasoning, identifying the need for additional research or reflection. Words applied to a page are permanent, forcing you to carefully consider the next few words before they are committed to the page. It is almost too easy to make changes when using a word processor, and that can promote an indifference to the words you type. My handwritten scenes and stories do get transcribed to a word processor and I often apply edits as I proceed, but the seed of the thought remains unchanged on those handwritten pages.