Literary (hair) style

I had a haircut today, and then I took the dog to the groomers for his trim straight after. I had tried to negotiate a two-for-one deal with the dog groomers but they weren’t having any of it. They don’t know my breed very well. It all worked out for the best, since Pooch’s pruning session cost twice as much as my own anyway. I don’t tend to get many compliments after I’ve had a haircut, the best to date being, ‘Oh dear, you’ve had a haircut.’ It would have been slightly less insulting had it not been said with a tone of sympathy. Pooch looks a bit daft after his cut, but he’ll get used to it in a few days. So will I.

I hope to get a better response to the trims I’m making to my novel. Parts of it are a little dishevelled. They need a bit of a wash, a quick massage, and a short back and sides. But other parts need extensions (unlike this cringe worthy metaphor, which has already been extended more than I’m comfortable with). This evening I edited a sequence where the character Ruby is on the run in France. Step by step she needs to do various things to get money, food, shelter, and to stay hidden. I sometimes get a sense that writing this kind of chapter is like a school essay: ‘then she did this, then she did that, and then she did…’ Keeping a mature literary style when describing a sequence of events requires attention to the details of the scene. I have to remember to include the turmoil in the character’s mind and use all of the senses to create rich, evocative settings. But this kind of writing has to be balanced against the need to maintain the pace of the narrative. Phew… it’s not easy being a novelist.

What else is happening in the book? Matt, in Belize, gets a message from Ruby telling him that she’s been taken to France and that she fears for her life. Matt has to find a way to get to France without his money or his passport, and he has to try to get to Ruby before she tries something stupid like escaping on her own. Which is, of course, exactly what she has done.

I felt a little queasy this morning, so I didn’t break any new world records on the treadmill, just kept to a slow and dignified pace. The language lesson went well – I can now count up to 20, more or less. Took some furniture to a charity store, which has helped create space in my house. Now it’s time to go and rinse the loose hair clippings off my ears…

The action moves to France

I’m almost half way through the current draft of The Sphinx Scrolls novel. So far the majority of the book has taken place in Central America, in particular Guatemala and Belize (although I still have to write a few scenes in England for that part of the book where Ratty follows a trail of historical clues). But now the action has moved to France. The reason for this is that the French government is helping Guatemala in its research into the ancient artefacts that they have found, with the plan being for them to share the benefits of any knowledge gained. So Ruby has just arrived in France, forced to work on the research project, only she’s now afraid for her safety after a dissenting co-worker disappeared.

This presents Matt with a challenge: he’s a wanted man, currently hiding in remotest Belize, and he has no passport or cash, and yet he needs to get to France to save Ruby (again). Only this time she’ll let him, if he can work out how to get there. This will be dealt with in the next writing session tomorrow.

The edits progressed well today, but it’s not purely been a writing day. I knocked 32 seconds off my PB for 5km on the treadmill this morning. The shed was shaking so much while I ran that the music centre, perched on a toolbox and blaring out an muffled and very ancient Cliff Richard and the Shadows tape, wiggled itself to the edge and then fell onto the floor with a bang, bringing my very uncool music to an abrupt end. And coincidentally, this was the same tape that I had played 25 years ago on a hand-held mono tape machine when hitch-hiking to a campsite in Provence (and which I wrote about in my travel book, Don’t Lean Out of the Window!). That hitch-hiking journey took me past a French lakeside location where Ruby has just arrived. Small world.

I also found time to watch An Education, starring that English baddie from Spiderman and that new actress who didn’t quite win an Oscar. The cad character in the film drives a Bristol, which is the same brand of rare and aristocratic car that Ratty drives in The Sphinx Scrolls.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get to the half way point in the novel and will start sensing a great deal of forward momentum with this draft. I want to get it done because the next draft will fill in a lot of interesting blanks that I’m very much looking forward to writing.