longhand

The Joy Of Being Lost In A World I Created

~ ChanAtkins ~ 8 Comments

Oh, it is such bliss to be back here again…

It’s been too long…

I had almost forgotten what this feels like…

Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

I’m talking about the unique and blissful joy of being utterly immersed and lost within a world you created. I often blog about how magical writing is – partly because I feel it so strongly and partly to counteract the often negative view towards writing I come across online. You know the memes; writing is torture; writing is terrible; writing is so, so hard…

Nah, I don’t see it that way.

I could go on all day about how wonderful, brilliant, life-affirming and beautiful writing is but today I just want to focus on one aspect; getting lost in a world you created.

At the moment, I have the next three books in The Day The Earth Turned series ready and waiting for their release dates. This will be October 2023, January 2024 and April 2024, roughly. By June, 2024, I hope to have At Night We Played In The Road published, which is a spin-off from The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series. After that, I plan to release The Mess of Us (long-awaited sequel to my debut, The Mess Of Me) around September 2024 time and finally, the last book in that connected universe, The Dark Finds You will come out around either at the end of 2024 or the start of 2025. These books are all finished! Some are awaiting beta reader feedback and one is about to come back from the editor. They all have front covers ready. There’s not a lot more I can do to any of them other than responding to feedback and edits when I get them and preparing them for release…

As you know, my self-imposed writing ban ended a few weeks ago when I gave in and started typing Black Hare Valley up on my laptop. This is, of course, the book I’d vaguely planned with a map, character bios and plot ideas and then ended up writing entirely in long-hand in five notebooks during a prolonged power cut in February 2022.

After that frenzied writing session, I put it away to concentrate on everything else.

And now here I am, happily typing up my own work, work I barely remember writing, transferring longhand from notebooks into a Word document on my laptop.

Every night I sit at the laptop for at least an hour and type up what I can. Every night, the story reveals itself to me like a dream I can barely remember. It feels so fresh and new, like I only wrote it yesterday, but at the same time, I have little memory of being the person behind the pen.

I am loving this.

Black Hare Valley is a strange little town with a lot of strange goings-on. I got the initial idea after reading Stephen King’s epic ‘It’ for the third time. I love that book. I would read it again tomorrow. I feel like Black Hare Valley is my personal homage to the great, master of horror, Stephen King. Funnily enough, after coming up with the idea, I watched Stranger Things on Netflix and realised there are a few comparisons. Only in the sense that it’s another strange little town where strange things happen and it’s mostly up to the kids to solve it!

When I came up with the idea, it wasn’t much of an idea; it was really just the town, which I had great fun creating with my son on a large piece of roll out paper. I still love that map. We put such detail into it, the whole place just came alive. I was also inspired by recent visits to iron age hill forts and places like Hell Lane, in Dorset. I was inspired by dark, magical, local folklore, and slowly the story began to write itself.

At the start I just had a missing child, and a group of kids thrown together trying to solve the mystery. They soon realise there is far more to their close-knit and seemingly ‘perfect’ town than they ever realised…

It was such fun to write and it’s even better now, sat here night after night, writing it up. I look forward to it all day. In my head, I am going to Black Hare Valley. I am there every evening, lost inside a world I created, wandering the streets after dark, wondering who is keeping secrets and whose those glinting eyes in the shadows belong to… I am there with my heroes, my band of misfit teenagers who are slowly unravelling the darkness that forms the foundations of their town, in order to find out what happened to missing Paddy Finnis…

I am there, in the warm and cosy Hound and Hare pub, and I am there at the old ruins, hiding from shadows. I am there in Black Woods, searching for strange footprints, and I am there at the school, where the headmaster has something quite evil behind that thin smile of his… I am there in The Magic Of Books bookshop, sneaking between old dusty books for answers, I am there at Hill Fort Farm, the highest point of the valley where Mayor Sumner keeps a watchful eye over the town her ancestors founded…

I am there! Every night I go missing. I’m not here, I’m not anywhere you can find me. I am in Black Hare Valley and I don’t want to come back…

This is without a doubt one of the best and most magical things about being a writer.

3 Weird And Wonderful Things About Writing

~ ChanAtkins ~ 6 Comments

I noticed something weird about writing lately and this prompted me to think about how weird and wonderful writing it is. Am I just very weird or does anyone else relate to these?

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay
  1. When I read something I wrote, I can’t remember writing it – I’ve always been somewhat aware of this but just recently I really noticed it and it struck me as very weird. If I pick up any of my published books and read an extract, I am always more impressed than I was at the time of writing it. It feels like someone else, someone better than me, wrote it. I can’t really remember writing those exact words, even though the plot and the characters are utterly mine and will live on in my head forever. Just last week I started typing up my Black Hare Valley story. This was the one I’d had in my head and in planning for a few years but ended up writing in longhand about a year and a half ago when a prolonged power cut meant I couldn’t carry on with stories I had on my laptop. I remember writing Black Hare Valley mainly because all the plot ideas came to me while walking. At the time petrol prices had gone through the roof and I was trying to walk more than drive. It was during this long walks to work that this book wrote itself chapter by chapter in my head. Then once it was done, I put the notebooks aside and had to forget about it. Now I’m typing it up and reading what I wrote it genuinely feels very strange; like someone else wrote it. I know the words are mine (when I can decipher the handwriting!) but I have no memory of writing them, or the thought process behind putting each sentence together. Typing it up feels like I am discovering this story for the first time even though it has been in my head for so long.
  2. When a world becomes so real, I can’t wait to get there – I’ve not had this experience for a while because I’ve been editing various books for so long, so it was a lovely but weird surprise when this started to happen with Black Hare Valley. It took a long time to build this world; starting with the drawing of a large map of the fictional town. It’s a valley town, surrounded by iron age hill forts and it has everything from a school, post office, vets, cafes and pubs, library, theatre, police station, church and so on. It was a lot of fun to create and after the map came the character bios. As I created each character I could then add where they lived to the map and this in turn sparked of plot ideas and scenes. This made writing it so much fun as every time a character moved from one place to another I could check on the map which way they would go. It really made the whole place come alive and now that I’m typing it up, I am right back there again. Every night when I go up to write, I feel excited to be returning to Black Hare Valley, this strange, beautiful and terrifying place I created. For me right now, it is entirely real.
  3. When a book writes itself – I love it when this happens but it’s not always the way it works for me when I write books. Sometimes characters will arrive, presenting drama and plot and I’ll have to figure out how to start it, where to start it and how to divide the story up into chapters. I’ll normally do a certain amount of planning before I start, but then once writing commences, the writing and planning run alongside each other, usually with me knowing at least the next few scenes and then working it out again as I go along. But sometimes, something really weird and wonderful happens. It happened recently with a book that will be ready for publication next year and it happened when I was writing Black Hare Valley for the first time. It’s like once I pick up the pen, something else takes over. The pen moves faster than my mind; I feel a bit like I’m in a trance, being controlled by something else. The next words are spilling out before I’ve even had a moment to consider them or hesitate. It’s like the story wants to be written so much it just writes itself. I feel almost disconnected at times, like I’m the reader waiting on the sidelines to enjoy the result.

There are a lot more things about writing I’d consider both weird and wonderful but these three really struck me lately. How about you? Have you experienced any of these things? Or are there other things you find weird and wonderful about writing? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

Come Back To What You Know

~ ChanAtkins ~ 3 Comments

I’m feeling nostalgic.

I don’t look back on the past with rose-tinted spectacles. I think every decade in human history has been seeped in tragedy, usually man-made, of some kind. But there is something in me at the moment constantly yearning for simpler times.

I wouldn’t do away with the internet or mobile phones, but only for one reason. I’d never sell a single book without either of them!

But I find myself tiring of it all. I suppose everything becomes tiring after a while. Everything loses its shine. Sometimes though, we go back around again, we go full circle and return to things we once turned our backs on.

For me lately, this has been bringing some unexpected comfort in an increasingly fraught, depressing and uncertain world. I’ll just talk about a couple today; things I have returned to and how they are helping me navigate these seemingly endless difficult times.

Walking

I’ve always liked walking. I feel I have some sort of affinity with it, like it is something I am supposed to do. I like how it is so solitary and gives me time to think. So many stories and ideas came from walking when I was a teenager. I thought nothing of walking an hour or more to get to a friend’s house and I hated buses. I would always rather keep walking. I used to run too, mostly in my late teens and my twenties when I got rather caught up in trying to control my figure. But these days, 44 year old me is a bit kinder to myself (most of the time anyway,) and I worry about falling over or hurting my back or my knees. So I think my running days might be over but my walking days have begun again in earnest. I now walk to save money on petrol and I feel good about this. It’s good for my wallet, my body and the planet. I also sort out all my plot holes and writing struggles when I am walking.

Letter writing

During the lockdowns of the pandemic my eldest sister who lives in a very rural location a few hours away from us, started writing letters and cards to my youngest son. He loved this and wrote back every time and they have kept this up ever since. A few months back I decided to join in, so now me and my sister converse through letters. Of course, we text, phone and Whatsapp each other too! But there is something so calm and patient about writing a letter, posting it and waiting for one to fly back to you. Whenever I receive one, I wait for a special moment to read it. I need peace, quiet, a comfy spot and a cup of tea. I have also started writing letters to two friends. It’s not something you do instantly. It’s something you wait until you have time for. And then you go back over everything that has happened since you last wrote and make sure you also address and respond to all their news. This all takes time and that’s what is so nice about it. Knowing that someone took time over doing something for you, knowing the extra effort that went into it – it really is lovely and I feel like people talk differently in letters too. It’s interesting.

Wearing a watch

I got my first mobile phone when I was 19. I think that must have been the last time I wore a watch. I can remember that last watch too because I had it all through my teens and I really loved it. It was a chunky silver Timex and rather than a strap and a buckle to fasten, it was attached to a stretchy silver bracelet. Weird, I know, but it made taking it on and off easier! Gradually it started falling apart and I really missed it. I think I kept the clock head for a while somewhere. After that, phones took over and recently I realised that whenever I need to check the time, I check my phone. I think we all do. But carrying a phone everywhere is getting annoying. They’re not just phones anymore, are they? They’re mini computers we lug around with us, which means we have the entire world in our pocket weighing us down. It’s annoying, especially in the summer when you are less likely to have good pockets! I also thought about all the post-apocalyptic TV I watch and books I read. In that eventuality, phones become useless but watches return. My husband bought me a lovely watch for my birthday and I’m in love with it. I absolutely adore it. I don’t have to take my phone everywhere anymore and I am prepared for the end of the world. Win, win!

Childlike curiosity

There are so many things I don’t know about. I am 44 years old and I still can’t identify that many birds, trees, or plants for example and I know barely anything about the Universe or space… As adults I think we stop being curious. We stop asking questions. I am sure you have all experienced the incessant questioning from a young child who wants to know why, why, why…. I am trying to get back to that. If I don’t know what something is, I am trying to find out. Mostly nature based things! For example, I have a plant identifying app that has helped me learn the names of a lot more plants and trees lately. And I just got this cool app that records and identifies birdsong for you! It’s really addictive.

Collecting stones

Walk around my house and I can guarantee you will find a pile of stones in every room thanks to my youngest son. Like most young children he still has the habit of picking up natural objects that look or feel nice. Sticks and stones mostly. There are sticks everywhere too, though of course really they are guns of various sorts. But stones… I looked the other day and found a pile on the kitchen window sill mixed in with fossils. Another pile on the table. A few more on the side. Some on the stairs. A few in the lounge on the coffee table. A whole gang of them in his room which seem to have been decorated with various spots which apparently mean different things. This stone obsession reminded me that when I was his age I had a whole shoe box of them under my bed. I wasn’t as good as he is at finding cool ones though! He really does have an eye for it. The other day I emptied his school bag and found a whole pile of smooth brown pebbles at the bottom. They were all almost identical in size and colour. Today he brought home a big stone which had been sheared in half at some point, so we could see inside it. My son is right about stones. They are fascinating – apparently pebbles on a beach can be as old as 4 billion years! It’s not like we often get the chance to hold something so ancient in our hands… They can be beautiful, colourful, smooth, jagged, tiny, large. I recently found one with a sad face but then I lost it again, which was sad. Anyway, thanks to my son, my love of collecting random stones just to hold them for a bit has been well and truly rekindled.

Longhand writing

If you follow my social media writing updates, you will know that I often write in longhand. This is also something I have returned to. As a kid I wrote in notebooks of all sizes and shapes. I wrote on anything I could. I was very excited when I got my first electric typewriter! Years later, and it’s all laptops and Word and Google Docs and so on. I still use these things, but I love starting a story off in a notebook. It means I can carry it about with me, write in it at weird times, like when cooking dinner or waiting in the car. Sometimes I end up writing the whole thing in a notebook, just like Black Hare Valley I blogged about last week. Sometimes I’ll get so far then start typing it up. Short stories and poems nearly always start their lives in notebooks these days. There is something about holding a pen in my hand, scratching words out on paper that returns me to me, that makes me feel more connected to it.

What about you? Are there any ‘old-school’ things you have returned to? Or any you never gave up in the first place? I’d love to know so feel free to leave a comment!