Trials of Writing

There is a companion piece to this entitled Trials of Life on one of my other blogs – go and have a look if you dare! Trials of Life | McCallum Ogilvy

I shouldn’t really complain about the trials of writing at all, since they are far outweighed by the enjoyment I get from it. However, I’ve embarked on a sequel to my alternate history novel ‘The Great Calamity’, having somehow blocked my memories of what a nightmare it was to write. Though at about a third of the way through the new one, it is starting to look horribly familiar.

I don’t usually edit while still writing – I generally prefer to finish the story before re-reading any of it, as I am always afraid of losing the thread of the plot. If there is a thread, that is. In the case of ‘The Great Calamity’, I had to re-arrange whole chapters, in some cases swapping the point of view between characters as I did so, and to add more chapters here and there, some with long diary entries and letters telling parts of the story. I had to pause to do more research as I went along, particularly on the National Library of Scotland’s maps site, which is great for looking at Scottish street layouts at different dates and spotting old railway lines, always a distraction.

Now, of course, I find myself writing a new chapter 1 for the new novel because I don’t like the way it starts, and highlighting huge sections of what I’ve written because I already know I want to re-write them at some stage. And wondering if I should bring the development of the electric car forward in time a bit so that one of the characters can admire the prototype. I can’t decide whether the changes I’ve already made to the history of nineteenth century would make electric cars more or less feasible.

These are all self-inflicted problems, of course, so I have nothing really to complain about, and I am already excited about a different development, which is that I’ve now formally agreed a contract with my chosen audiobook narrator and Crime in the Community is all set up ready to be recorded, which will probably happen next month. So watch this space for more news on that!