Dear Reader,
Despite having lectured in English Literature, today's guest author, Suzette Hill had never hankered to write a novel. However, after retiring and on a whim, she embarked on a short story--to see what the creative process felt like. She found out. For the story grew, and to date Suzette has produced twelve novels comprising two series. The first concerned a bumbling vicar (plus cat and dog), who thoughtlessly committed murder; the second features a bright young woman who, with eccentric companions, becomes embroiled in murky skulduggery. Satirically humorous, both series span the 1950s. Deadly Primrose (starring the vicar's sister) is the latest sequel to the first series. The second's current
tale is The Cambridge Plot--absurdities in English academia. Suzette lives a merry, but blameless life in rural Herefordshire in the UK.
Please do say "Hello." Email: [email protected]
Not planning, but spinning!
As a novelist I often think how pleasant it would be to have an ordered mind, a mind instinctively geared to plan and arrange, to devise ends whose means are meticulous and whose route assured and logical. Yes, how comforting to have supreme mastery over one's material and to know exactly where it is going! There are such authors, and I envy them their logic and control.
Alas, I am not so endowed, am not of that ilk; and my plans, such as they are, soon come adrift and I am left in a 'cloud of unknowing'. But surely, I hear you ask, a so-called skeleton draft would be immeasurably useful. It would give direction and 'structure,' would be a firm scaffolding on which to harness your flitting thoughts! With the bones already in place you would then merely have to flesh the skeleton with detail and niceties of style, i.e. create the 'texture'.
Hmm. This is precisely what I used to tell my students: organise first and write afterwards. But the moment I took up my pen to write 'fiction' such sane advice vanished in leaps and bounds, and I wrote as the spirit moved: intuitively, nudged by instinct not logic. Why? Because it seems I am less concerned with puzzles per se than with people; and it is the latter--the invented characters with all their quirks, oddities, lusts and conflicts--that really absorb me and dominate the whole imaginative process. It is 'their' lives and antics, rather than the steps of a prescriptive narrative, that directs the drama. So yes, as with some of my colleagues' novels (reassuringly!) mine are what can be called evolutionary and 'character driven', relying less on the ramifications of a premeditated plot for their momentum than on the wayward cavorting of individuals--including cats and dogs!
Naturally, not sticking to a cogent plan has its downside--writer's block, irritation, bemusement etc. But it has its benefits too. For with only a hazy sense of how things will proceed, I write to find out. Thus in a way I am telling 'myself' a story, and never quite know what or who is round the corner. It is a process of exploration and discovery. And it is partly that element of lurking surprise that keeps me writing!
-- Suzette A. Hill
Email Suzette and say "hello," [email protected]
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
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