The weather is unusually warm for this time of year and I'm loving it. I'm here in my brother's apartment in Souborg-Vlissingen working on my third novel. One of the flies in the ointment, I didn't bring any summer clothes with me.The weather is exceptionally warm and sunny for this time of year and I'm having to borrow t-shirts from my brother that are far too big, but
at least they're cooler than the jumpers and sweatshirts I brought. The other fly is that with all this sunshine I've been struggling to remain in front of the computer. However, I've allowed myself a couple of hours off each day with a walk, or just a trip to the canal, to sit and read a book in the sunshine. It's going well and the weather hasn't disappointed me. How often can you say that?
I'm trying out a new genre, the detective novel, which I freely admit to knowing very little about, except being a fan of the form. My other two novels do have a very loose connection with the genre in that there's a bit of a mystery to solve, but now I've taken the bull by the horns, so to speak (cliche, I hear you say ) and am attempting the real thing. I've got my main characters, a plot, sub-plot, detectives, bodies galore and a twist. Now all I have to do is write the damn thing and be convincing. I've probably set myself up for a fall deciding to use a cultural aspect I know nothing about but hey, we've got the internet, right?
So far I've written scenes and not continuous prose. I have flashes of something and get them down, then move on to the next. I was hoping to use Scrivener to assemble all the bits but (as usual) forgot to subscribe and have left the Idiot's Guide at home because it was too big to carry in my tiny suitcase. All is not lost and I'm finding writing in fragments a lot more liberating than I thought it would be. As long as I can assemble all the fragments at the end.
You might want to check out my daily blog that is charting my progress as I navigate this new way of working.
