Today I bought myself a new notebook.
There’s something intimidating and sublime about bound, blank pages. The world of possibilities. Scribing permanency out of fleeting thought.
My old notebooks are some of my most treasured possessions, even if they are mostly full of crap and I’ve thrown more away than I’ve retained. Some have even featured phrases or passages that have gone on to fluke publication. Mostly, though, I end up scribbling lesson plans or to-do lists in them, despite my best intentions.
This one, however, I’m determined to use properly. I just need to make one more pass over my current work-in-progress before I fire it off to my agent, and then I’m going to start on a new book. Really, I should allow myself a period of decompression, but I don’t see the words The End as The End on this occasion. For the first time, I feel like I might actually be writing something approaching a series and, after 115,000 words, can’t bear to see these characters’ stories drawing to a close just yet. It’s uncharted territory for me, working within the same universe - potentially - for years on end.
The following quote by David Bowie has but a tangential link to what I’m dribbling about, but I glitter this blog in glory by even quoting him.
“If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
Or, to put it another way: OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGodwhatthebuggeringfelchamIdoingwithmygoddamnlife?
So this bold, new, uncracked-spined notebook will be where my characters’ lives (those who made it out the other side of the recent draft/writer's bloodbath) continue, expand, worsen, climax. I don’t even know in which direction they’ll all journey, and that’s tremendously exciting. It took me just over eighteen months to birth this latest book and it’s by some way my best (I always think that when the end’s in sight: it’s comparable to the relief you feel when the parachute flumps open and you laugh full-throatedly in the face of death. Skydiving into no-man’s-land. Writing on that first snow-white page).
Most of the about-to-be-completed-book (which I should be prioritising over this blog, let’s be honest, but there have been several journalistic interruptions throughout this latest period of lockdown so I figured one more foray into non-novel prolixity wouldn’t hurt too much) was hammered straight into the laptop, but I still managed to clog a whole notebook when untangling various plot elements during the torturous second draft. Seriously, I don’t know why I put myself through this.
And the purchase of a new notebook represents the insane promise that I’m prepared to do it all over again. Like I said: it’s intimidating and sublime. But mostly, right now, intimidating.
You know what? I don’t mean to be rude, but I shouldn’t be here. I’ve got a book to proofread and a notebook to fill.
Update: 27/02/24
Broken thumbnail necessitated a new photo, hence recent update - thanks Wix
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