Sometimes the Book Knows Better Than the Writer
I had a plan and this is usually where things start to go wrong.
BURN was going to be finished before I went away in the motorhome.
I've known the story forever...I've just avoided writing it. But more about that in another post.
I knew where Sam and Dusty were heading. I had my chapters mapped out, my release date organised and a perfectly sensible schedule that would get me there.
Apparently, nobody told the book.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the fact that nobody inside my head respects office hours.
Sam needed editing.
Dusty needed managing.
BURN needed writing.
And Ziggy Stardust MacAvoy — a cat who wasn't even supposed to be particularly important — had somehow commandeered the story and needed to learn to walk on a bloody harness.
Since then, things have become worse. Or possibly better. Being a writer, sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference.
When the characters stop following the plan
There's a strange point in writing a novel when the people you've invented begin behaving as though they have some say in what's actually going to go on.
Believe me, I understand how ridiculous that sounds.
I made them up, so (technically) I'm in charge.
Every writer I know who might be reading this now is probably laughing.
Because they know...we're never actually or entirely in charge.
I can plan a character's journey, decide what they need to learn and carefully arrange all the obstacles I'm going to put in their way, but then I start writing.
And somehow (it's magic, I know!) they become real, flesh-and-blood, skin-and-bone people.
Well...not real people, obviously. I haven't entirely lost the plot.
Yet...
But somewhere between the planning and the writing, they acquire all those little contradictions that make human beings interesting.
There's their history and they have wounds that they've been hiding from me. There's the things that they categorically refuse to talk about. And remember, I'm an auditory writer, so when characters go silent...I get worried.
They're particulary good at making bad decisions (usually) for perfectly understandable reasons. And more times than I care to mention, they look at the lovely neat plan I've made for them and metaphorically fold their arms.
No, Toni...so sorry, not doing that!
BURN has been falling into this difficult camp more times than I'm happy with.
Sam was supposed to be the complicated one
I've known Sam MacAvoy a long time. He's been hanging around in my head for years.
He has history.
Lots of complicated history.
I mean, he's Julian MacAvoy's kid brother. I love them both, probably in the same way a parent loves their children. Don't ask me which one I love more...especially while I'm still in constant, daily communication with Sam.
Some of Sam's history isn't particularly pretty.
So when I came back to his story, I thought I understood where the emotional weight of BURN would sit.
Then Dusty started chipping in.
The more I wrote her, the more I realised that loving Sam isn't simply about whether she can trust him.
It's also about everything she carries into that relationship herself.
I often tell people that old wounds and lessons not yet learned, have a nasty habit of turning up in new relationships. Unresolved trauma doesn't just stay where you left it.
And suddenly the story I thought I was writing became more interesting, more complicated and far more human.
This is usually the red flag waving at me, the reminder that I should stop arguing and let the characters have their way.
And then there's the bloody cat
Ziggy was not part of some carefully constructed literary plan. Ziggy simply wandered onto the page.
Which, considering the real cat who inspired him once wandered uninvited into our motorhome and behaved as though he'd always lived there, seems entirely appropriate.
At first, Ziggy was a bit of lighthearted fun. A tiny ginger speck of light relief on what was becoming a difficult array of words.
Then I started listening to Sam talk to him and taking notes on Dusty's reaction to Sam and Ziggy's little interactions.
And suddenly this ridiculous cat was doing something rather important.
He was showing me another part of Sam that I hadn't noticed before.
Because sometimes the smallest things reveal more about a character than the enormous dramatic scenes ever could.
How does someone behave with an animal that trusts them?
What happens when nobody is watching?
What does tenderness look like in someone who isn't particularly great at showing it?
And what happens when the woman who loves him is watching?
Ah...
There you have it. The real story reveals itself.
The deadline moved
This part I didn't plan on and I didn't like at all.
BURN was supposed to be released earlier than it now will be.
I had a schedule.
I had plans.
I had Things Written In My Diary.
And I do like Things Written In My Diary... That's another post for another day. How I ditched electronic planning for old fashioned brush & pen markers and a whole lot of washi tape and stickers... but I digress...
But we're heading away with friends soon for a week in the motorhome. I recently came home from another Grey Nomads gathering in Hamilton.
I could have spent that last week away thinking:
I should be writing.
I should be editing.
I should be at home finishing BURN.
Or I could give the book another week.
So BURN will now arrive on 29 October.
Sam needed another seven days. Honestly, I needed a few days to get over the trauma of Chapter 20!
And after everything I've put the poor man through, it seems the least I can do.
More importantly, I've realised that moving a date isn't the same thing as abandoning a plan, sometimes it's how you protect the story.
Maybe the story was waiting for me
There's also another part of this that I've been thinking about. Some of these characters have been with me for a very long time. The world around them was created years ago.
Then life happened and other books happened and I changed and the world changed...
And eventually I came back.
I sometimes wonder what BURN would have looked like if I'd written it when I originally imagined it.
I suspect it would have been a different book.
Because I'm a different writer.
Actually, I'm a different woman.
I've lived more life and I've loved people through difficult things.
I've lost important people.
I've watched relationships survive things I once thought would break them and I've learned that human beings are infinitely more complicated than the tidy little boxes we sometimes try to put them into.
Perhaps Sam and Dusty needed me to know some of that before I could tell their story properly.
That struck me as an odd thought because I tend to imagine my stories waiting for me to find time to write them.
Maybe sometimes, like with BURN, Sam and Dusty were waiting for me to catch up.
The book usually tells me
After all these years, you'd think I'd have learned this.
Whenever a story starts pushing against the plan, my first instinct is still to try to put it back where it belongs.
Then things just get too difficult. I'm not a fast learner, but eventually, I stop.
I listen.
And usually I discover that the book isn't trying to make my life difficult.
It's trying to become a better book.
So I'm giving BURN its extra week.
I'm going away in the motorhome.
And Sam, Dusty and Ziggy can come along inside my head if they insist, which they probably will...
Nobody in there respects holidays either.
But maybe that's okay.
Because somewhere between chapter 15 and chapter 21, I've realised something.
Sometimes the book knows what it needs long before the writer does.
My job isn't always to force it back onto the path I planned.
Sometimes my job is simply to follow it and see where it goes.
Love from the word mines,
💕 Toni x
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