I Dare You

One thing that makes life worthwhile, so they tell us, is 'facing a challenge'.  From earliest childhood, if we are lucky, we learn from the right kind of challenge. I started early with a game of the same name, on my first day at school. My primary school, Meadow Lane, was a rough one, frankly, in which the pupils were drawn from the families of dockers or soldiers stationed at the local depot.

Meadow Lane Primary School

We were not, most emphatically not, allowed to stay inside at break no matter the weather.  The three-sided shelter in the yard was the only concession to our comfort.  The shelter had a narrow wooden bench around the inside. To play The Challenge game needed most of the school, and we sat on the bench, side-by-side, each shoving the person to the left, whilst making a sound like an air-raid siren.  Kids knew the sound of the air-raid siren when I was little because they were still tested regularly every week, some 14 years after the bombs stopped falling on London. Children of the '50s grew up in a world where all adult man and women  were locked together in the grown-up world of grief and enforced brightness, a perpetual determination to 'keep calm and carry on'.

Keep Calm & Carry On

So, the end of The Challenge came when you were ejected, straight off the seat and onto the tarmac playground. It was a painful conclusion to a child's break, not because of scraped knees and filthy gymslips, but because rarely, if ever, did anyone manage to force their way back. The object of The Challenge game was to remain safe, somewhere near the middle of the semi-circle, shouting with mouth wide open and unable to distinguish any sound individually. No doubt the counsellors could make something of it, but we didn't have any of those.

At present I'm in that middle part of my book, just over two thirds there in fact. I really need to drop my hero Thomas Tarling right in it, off the end of the bench or into the icy drink of the Thames, so to speak.

The Ice-Cold Drink of the Thames

I've got to get him to feel the lash of the whip (not literally, though it was a common enough punishment for working class men in his day, in 1820s London. Makes community service look a little tame, guys...)  I struggle through various books, and try to find something that will assist me.

The Lash of the Whip

I meet my friend Ruth for coffee. She, too, is having problems with her novel and we read bits to each other. I start with a bit of Thomas's fight on the dockside.

'There was utter silence, and he knew he had to act. With a stifled groan, he sprang forward and knocked the key from Robshaw's hand. It fell to the quay with a clatter.  

     Robshaw bent swiftly, retrieved it and glanced about. 

     'After him,' Thomas yelled, boiling with rage.  'After him. Robshaw, I'm gonna get that friggin key if I have to strip you for it.'

Ruth works through my manuscript, until it's awash with red ink. After that, I expect Ruth to bring out her manuscript but she doesn't. She's got something else. Ruth always burns the midnight oil and is a big fan of weird radio - she loves niche Indie shows with a hundred listeners, and she's a big fan of shortwave. 

My manuscript's awash with red

Last week I caught her tuning into Lucinda Bassett's radio show in the USA.  She was, she says, so hooked that she's brought a couple of pages of Lucinda's memoire and we read it together, our hands shaking with the cold. It's still winter here in London.

.You can buy a 'Keep Calm & Carry On' Poster here

The Bitter End

So, day 3 of my impromptu writing workshop.  Still Diamond Jubilee weekend, so I gravitate to Buckingham Palace, and follow a detachment of gorgeous police horses. Once more, there are punters who camped out all night, desperate to reserve a place for the concert this evening.

For me, I'm stalking the final third of my Thomas Tarling novel, and I lap up the atmosphere, which is a bit akin to that of the fairground. The rain has been torrential in the night, the St John Ambulance work through the crowd dispensing first aid and hot drinks. Me, I'm surviving on porridge - I've discovered what the Scots have known for centuries;

• it's nourishing
• it's cheap 
• it's great for those on a diet.

My first task is to list the final scenes by bullet point, and then to mirror the first day's work by jotting twenty 'last lines'.
I can't believe I never thought of this 'twenty first lines, twenty last lines' idea before. In fact, I didn't think it up, I got it from Sarah Domet's book The 90 Day Novel. It's a seriously searching exercise. I'm finding this business of ending the novel so hard. But I suppose everyone does.

Every writer I know has trouble writing - Joseph Heller

You can find Buckingham Palace here

Souvenir sellers flock to Buckingham Palace

Spirit of Summer Set Free

So, four days' creativity, no interruptions! Must get the plot for my 19th century novel down in scene-by-scene form. Britain is in the grip of a once-in-a-lifetime public holiday to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of HM the Queen; ideal opportunity for writers like me to shake off the cobwebs and get out on the streets.

Began with bed & breakfast in the seaside town of Margate. Ye Gods, Margate Old Town serves the largest breakfasts in the world. Hugely full but content, I sit down at my window overlooking the bay, to focus on my story's timeline. It's become a monster, like one of those dogs that has to have counselling because it's become pack leader in charge of the human family.

I tell it to sit, nicely, and divide it into the classic three parts: beginning, middle and end. Traditional model? Boring? Hope not. We expect to know where a novel begins.

 I come up with 20 first lines, each supposed to set the scene for my hero's knife-edge journey through the book. 'Thomas scraped the horse-shit from his coat', maybe not. 'His lawyer was drunk again, and in the gutter,' perhaps. 'He heard the elephant's ankle bells, and dragged his brief from the gutter,' now I'm getting there.

Not aiming for perfection yet - that can come later. Just brainstorming the different ways I can get an over-view. It's a waiting game, sitting it out on the cliff-tops of the imagination. Since the seagulls are screaming overhead, and I've had absolutely no exercise since I got here, decide to follow take the stiff climb to the old castle, for 'Jack in the Green'.

I join the crowds, albeit nervously, for this most traditional of ceremonies - the day the Spirit of Summer is set free. Morris Dancers everywhere.

Challenge myself to jot down at least five different scenes, with summaries. They might be included in the first act. They might not. The point at this stage is get a body of material down, being patient, stalking the tale. I look up, and see that Jack, the old green man of winter, is about to reach a bloody end.

Finally, the summoning. New life is on its way.

Like the Morris Dancers in Margate, I saved the summoning until everything was ready. On the train journey back to London I have two hours, one ham sandwich and three cappuccinos' worth of energy in which to explore my main man, Thomas Tarling, and his desperate bid to escape the law.

You can find Margate here:

 

http://www.margateoldtown.co.uk/