Stone Dead: Cooling Off

Castlerigg Stone Circle, Lakeland, Cumbria. (c) Philip McDonnell, 2018

A couple of weeks ago (On Writing: New Ideas, New Story. 12th October), I said I was writing again.  Not "that book".  Not my magnum albatross of historic fiction.  No, I was writing a new story.  A short(ish) story with the working title of Stone Dead.  Well, the first draft is complete!  Yes, you don't need to go to Specsavers: the first draft is complete!

If you recall, Stone Dead was kickstarted whilst on holiday in Cumbria.  I had just finished Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and this story popped into my head.  A disarticulated skeleton found at a megalith in Westmorland that turns into a murder enquiry.  It was fresh in my mind and I wrote over 6,000 words of it in the last three days we were in Lanercost.  That impetus continued and the word-count had reached 13,000 by 12th October.  Since then, it's taken me until today (25th October) to complete it whilst only adding 9,000 more words.  Such is writing when you work and commute...and have dental issues.  Still, I am pleased that I've finished the first draft and pleased that it is a total departure from anything I have written before.

This is a pure and simple crime story.  That's a first just knowing what genre I've written in!  It's also set in this year which made writing from what I know a whole lot easier.  To make Mr. King proud, I let the story evolve as I wrote.  I didn't plot:  that's for dullards, remember?  Initially, I wrote as fast and as furiously as I could so as not to lose that energy.  It got slowed by having to work and the (ongoing) dental issues when I came home but I still wanted to write more than watch TV dramas or YouTube videos on programming MS Excel.

I also let the characters evolve as I wrote.  I have two female detectives which wasn't planned.  Their back-stories came out of nowhere, too.  I did a bit of research into the organisation of Cumbria Constabulary, various relevant Acts of Parliament and medical approaches and roved the streets of Westmorland like some stalker using Google Streetview.  I also did cursory checks of LIDAR results, RAF reconnaissance photos from the inter-war years and the OS historical maps.  But I didn't get bogged down in detail like I have in the past.  I looked, I found what I wanted and I worked my way around that information if what I found didn't quite fit what was happening in my head.  In some instances, the information forced a change that was even more exciting.  It wasn't difficult.

If I found anything difficult, it was detaching myself from the real countryside to create a fictional one.  I also found it a bit difficult to write prose.  Dialogue came easily.  It conveyed the minds of the characters.  But if I remember the first draft of "that book", that too was heavy on dialogue.  I only created greater prose on the second draft.  What will happen when I start editing for the second draft of Stone Dead is anyone's guess.  It's a novella; the rules are a little different.  Which brings me to the 'cooling off period'.

Mr King advocates that I should put my 1st draft away for at least 6 weeks before looking to review it.  At that point, I should read it through myself, make all the grammatical, spelling and other no-brainer corrections I can find as well as look to remove 10% of what I've written.  (Remember:  he was once advised that 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%.)  Once that's done, then I can let my Ideal Reader loose on my work.

Well, 6 weeks takes me up to 6th December.  I will set a reminder on my calendar and see what I think then.

In the meantime, Mr King advocates having a celebration of some kind.  Not being a drinker, it won't involve alcohol.  I would order pizza but it's off my agenda after the stomach upset I had last night and my continuing dental issues.  Maybe I'll just have a Jaffa Cake...or twelve.

As a parting thought, maybe I'll get to start my 2nd draft whilst having my tooth extracted.  Won't that be fun?