I have a feeling there is a quotation about Fate (or maybe the gods) laughing at planners, but I’ve been unable to find it amongst all the ‘inspirational’ and mostly somewhat stern quotes about how essential it is to make plans if you want to achieve anything. However I have located one of my favourite quotations that seems apt for New Year, so I will paste it in at the end of this and you can see what you think. It’s not exactly relevant, considering that I am working on something from last year, but maybe it applies more to world events. Or to writing in general.
When I looked back at last year’s plan I found it had already gone astray even before my hospital stay in April, though I didn’t expect to catch up by working on three novels at the same time. I hope not to do anything so extreme this year, though of course you never know. I’ve already scheduled in two at the same time for the spring, when I usually feel a bit more active.
First on my list is to complete and publish the novel I started in November for National Novel Writing Month. I wrote the first 50,000 words of it in time to achieve my goal that month, but things have fallen apart a bit since then. The main cause of this was the fact that for various reasons the local organisation of which I am the secretary had to hold its AGM in mid-December, which meant there were secretarial tasks to do during the time I would usually be writing Christmas cards and letters at a leisurely pace. These seasonal tasks had to be put back a couple of weeks, and then there was a flurry of shopping, mostly on Amazon, followed by the completion of my tax return, which I suddenly realised I couldn’t fit in between Christmas and New Year as I almost always do, because I’d invited a friend to stay then, both to keep me company and to go to the theatre with, as we had both missed out on several of our usual theatre outings during the year. Somewhere in between times I wrote a Christmas short story for the UK Crime Book Club on Facebook.
Anyway, the novel currently known as The Watcher in the Shrubbery (Pamela Prendergast 2) is definitely in its final stages. I’ve been working on the chapter where everybody gathers together and the whole thing is explained, and although I will need to revisit some earlier chapters to make sure they fit in with the final explanation and probably to add a few more words, I am confident that the story is a bit more coherent than they sometimes are at this point!
Once I get to the stage of publishing that one, I hope some time in February, I will start work on Pitkirtly XXVII, though I’ve already got a very basic idea for it and a few notes, and I’m looking forward to meeting my characters again. I’ve also been accumulating notes for an alternative history story I’ve been considering for a while, but it will take longer to know where to start with that so it’s sort of pencilled in for later. I hope to write another Max Falconer book later on too, as well as maybe Pitkirtly XXVIII much later in the year. That makes at least one book too many! Watch this space…
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
(Little Gidding)
T.S. Eliot
Cecilia Peartree - woman of mystery 