This week in my creative writing clubs for children, we were looking at characters. The children I work with are well-rehearsed on the art of character building. They know how to create a basic character bio and how to develop it into a more complex character profile. This week I offered up a different way of building characters using clues and it got me thinking…
For the activity, we started with me offering some clues about a character. I picked a character I already had, and the clues were a camera, a cloak, some black boots, rolling green hills and a gift shop. They then had to create a character based on the clues. They had to name the character, give them an age, a physical description, a personality description and more. It was fascinating to see how close some of them got to my actual character!
We then turned the activity upside down and they had to give clues about a character they had created. Once they had a list of clues (they could use pictures or words) they had to swap with a friend and each try to create a character based on the clues.
Again, it was fascinating how close some of us got to a character by using the clues we had been given. One student, for example, posted pictures including some badges with aliens on, a purple scarf, and purple material. I instantly came up with a character called Deirdre Drake, who was obsessed with alien life due to an experience she had as a teenager. She loved watching The X-Files and wrote FanFiction. I got the gender right and personality mostly right, but I got the age wrong. I did get it right that she wrote FanFiction!
We had a lot of fun with clues and character building in our online clubs this week, and in the school clubs we turned the activity into a game of Who Am I? Or Guess Who? They could either draw or write clues about a character real or made-up then swap with a friend to fill in the answers and guess who it was, or they could create their own guess-who style board by creating characters and giving them different features. This was a lot of fun and it went down very well. It also prompted discussions about what makes a character, and indeed, what makes us who we are.
If you were to choose ‘clues’ to help someone get to know you, what would you pick? If someone was to turn out your coat pockets, rifle through your bag, or look through your CD collection, what would they be able to tell about who you are? If you were gone and only your possessions survived, what could people determine about your personality and life by looking through them?
It’s interesting to me as a writer how our physical looks, clothes, the objects we hold dear, and the places we visit shape who we are. These are all things writers should consider when building a character.
If someone was to walk into my house without me here, they would soon know that I love animals, books and music. The pinboard next to my writing desk and the books with my name on them would tell them I am a writer. The bag I take to school clubs full of glue sticks, scissors, paper and pens would suggest my day job. My CD and DVD collections would tell the story of someone clinging to the old analogue world. My coat, welly boots and Converse trainers might suggest something about my personality… How close could a stranger get to knowing me by looking at the clothes and objects I own?
As people we are a combination of the time we grew up in, the part of the world we were born in and the way we were treated as children. We are also a result of genetics, of chance, and of the experiences we have lived through. We inherit looks and personality traits from our ancestors, while the environment we exist in shapes us further. And then there is the part of us that is just us, not influenced or controlled by anything else.
I am always encouraging my students to be people watchers. The best way to build and flesh out complex characters is to observe other humans. Take note of their clothes and and accessories and determine what they suggest about them. Pay attention to facial expressions, gestures and ways of speaking. Think about the things they care about, their hobbies and interests, the objects they hold dear.
The little bits and pieces that make up who we are.
As an indie author with zero marketing budget it’s vital that every now and then I take stock of what is working and what is not in terms of reaching readers.
The trouble is, a lot of time it is hard to know! I am still getting steady sales – enough to make all this worthwhile anyway – but I have no idea where they are coming from or how those readers are finding my books. If I knew, it would make marketing decisions that much easier.
Originally, I started here. My humble WordPress blog. It was the very first place I shared my writing. Way before The Boy With The Thorn In His Side was published, I wrote and shared chapters of it here. I shared those chapters to my personal Facebook page and to my newly created Facebook author page. At the time it felt like a very brave thing to do and I was genuinely surprised when I got interest. A handful of people started reading along and asking for more. This response undoubtedly gave me the confidence to get on with writing and then publishing my books.
All these years later, I am still here, and still trying to figure out where best to focus my energies on the internet. I left Twitter, or X, when it went dark and crazy, but I’ve stuck with Instagram and Facebook. I don’t feel good about being on those platforms either and for multiple reasons. Meta stealing author’s work to train it’s AI models is just one example. Just recently, Meta have changed the rules on sharing links to your author page. Where once you could share as many links to other sources (such as Substack, Medium, WordPress, Amazon…) as you liked, you are now only allowed to share three a month. And guess what? Mark Zuckerberg is not rich enough yet so you have to PAY him if you want to share any more than that. Thanks Zuckerberg. That’s extremely helpful to struggling indie authors who want to share links to their work! It’s not enough that you stole our work, then?
I don’t want to be on Meta platforms and originally my plan was to build a big enough audience on Medium and Substack to replace what I’ve built on Meta.
With Medium at first, this seemed to be working. In fact, at the start of my Medium journey, I posted here many times about how amazing it was for writers. I joined in 2023 and instantly found an audience there. With Medium, if you are part of the partner programme, you can earn money on what you write. If your piece got boosted you earned more money. At the start, I kept getting boosted and I was earning a couple of hundred pounds a month from Medium.
I was thrilled and it made a huge difference to our finances.
But sadly it wasn’t to last. One moment I was doing everything right there and making money, and the next AI had crept in, the boost programme was changed, and nothing I did worked anymore.
I also started losing interest and inspiration. This last year I’ve tried again and again to get back into enjoying Medium and it’s time to admit it’s just not happening. This week I cancelled my membership and can no longer make money from what I write there, not that I was anyway! My plan is to download or copy across everything I wrote there and republish pieces here and in a short story/poetry collection I am putting together. Then I will close my account and turn my back on Medium for good.
In terms of losing interest, the reasons are as stated above but it’s also about inspiration and energy, or lack of…
I stopped reading the Medium emails and stopped writing in response to prompts. I found myself starting pieces of writing again and again only to never get around to finishing them or submitting them. It was time to call it quits and focus my energies elsewhere. The thing is, I don’t know about you, but with the crazy shit happening in the world right now, I’m kind of exhausted just keeping up and planning for an uncertain future takes up a lot of head space for me.
I realised my creativity was taking a hit, but only when it came to Medium. My desire and ability to write and edit my own books has not decreased at all. I didn’t want to run the risk of losing interest in writing altogether, so that was another good reason to quit Medium. There is just no point being there if I am not writing or reading anything.
I only realised lately how much of my headspace is taken up now with gardening, prepping and preserving. I woke up in a cold sweat one night in October as I realised I had totally forgotten to plan for Christmas! Normally I start in January and spread it out over the year. I have finally achieved a year round vegetable plot, I’ve added to my ducks and chickens, and I am busy clearing the side and back of my garden to grow more food and trees on. If I’m not physically working in the garden then I’m inside preserving, or I’m thinking about food shortages and climate emergencies!
There’s just not a lot of headspace left, which is a shame. Whatever creativity I have managed to cling onto needs to be diverted to my books, stories and poems, along with my blog and Substack.
As always, with writing my biggest motivation is getting all the untold books and stories out of my head before I die!
Black Hare Valley Book One: 1996 is out, and Book Two: 1966 is ready to go once the front cover is finalised. Book Three: 2026 has only just come back from my editor, and Book Four: I Remain is waiting patiently for its turn… But whenever I can’t work on that series, there is The Dark Finds You trilogy to edit. Part Two is ready for my editor but that will obviously have to wait until after the Black Hare Valley series is done, and I just recently finished a third draft of Part Three. As an aside, Part Three is the one I am less sure about and I’m curious to know what my editor thinks of it in time!
I will be getting to the Book 3: 2026 edits really soon but in the meantime I’ve been having a much needed break from endless editing. Which means the tantalising prospect of new writing!
God, I miss new writing….
Nothing beats that feeling of writing ‘chapter one’ on a fresh new page and letting the words flow! Of course, there will be a plan, a loose plot, planned scenes, research on location and character bios all ready to go and chances are they’ve been sat waiting for years! I absolutely adore that feeling of starting a new book and it feels like forever since I’ve experienced it.
So, while the two series mentioned above are waiting, I can place my attentions on two writing projects that have been hovering in the background. Neither project really means brand new writing, however…
First up and the one I have prioritised, is the rewrite of The 7th Child, a family mystery I wrote a messy first draft of over a year ago. I loved the plot, the location and the characters, but something felt off about the narration. I had chosen to recount the present day events through first person point of view of one character, while the past scenes were from multiple character points of view and in third person…. I just didn’t like it at the end, in fact I hated it! It took me a while to figure out a better way to tell the story and I decided doing the whole thing in first person with an unreliable narrator would be better.
I then had second thoughts about that….
I started with a simple read through as I needed to remind myself of what I wrote. I made notes as I went along on possible different ways to structure the book. I decided that it really does need an entire rewrite and change of structure, which is weirdly exciting!
A few days ago I started the big rewrite and I’ve done two chapters so far. It feels like a mix of writing and editing, which I am okay with.
The other project is a book with the working title ‘The Ugly One’. Now this is a book I wrote but never finished when I was just nineteen. In recent years the characters started to talk to me again and I had new ideas about how to rewrite it, as sadly I lost the original hand-written manuscript. For some strange reason I have only been letting myself write this book on a Saturday evening after a glass of wine… Don’t ask me why. A lot of it is set in the 90s so perhaps a glass of wine or two and listening to nostalgic tracks helps put me back there! It’s a bit of an experiment in many ways, this one. I will keep writing chapters once a week unless I get stuck.
But The 7th Child rewrite will take priority and I’ll keep you updated on how it goes!
Firstly, I must apologise for not writing on here for a while. There are a few reasons for that which I’ll briefly explain and if you’re still following me here, thank you for sticking around! This blog was the first thing I ever set up to share my writing on, and it’s still hugely important to me, so rest assured, it’s not going anywhere!
In all honestly, my head has been in such a spin lately that it’s been hard to write. At all.
I haven’t written anything on Medium for a while either, despite having so much whirling in my head. I just about manage to write and post my weekly round-ups on Substack – probably because they are quite short and quick to write and follow a sort of template.
I cannot allow myself to write too much fiction at the moment because I am still in the middle of the endless editing…. More on that next week, but I am getting there and Black Hare Valley Book 2: 1966 is edging closer to publication, I promise!
Last year was a tricky one for me creatively. I started to struggle a bit with my day job as a creative writing tutor for children. I’ve had to make a lot of changes there to make it work, and I’m pleased to say that they do seem to be paying off. Again, that’s probably another topic for another day! But the burn-out stretched itself to writing on Medium and my blog. I kept thinking of things to write and then not writing them, which is very unlike me. I definitely lost a bit of confidence and I’m not entirely sure why.
One thing that has been on my mind a lot though is preparedness.
And that mindset and accompanying concerns has led me to writing this post. I am really hoping writing it kickstarts my creativity again when it comes to regular blogging and essay writing!
Firstly, what is preparedness and what does it mean to me?
Preparedness for me simply means planning ahead to make life easier for future me. It really is as simple as that and I think I’ve been doing that for a while now. For example, making two batches of cookies and freezing one batch so future me has some back-up snacks! Baking two loaves, instead of one, and chucking one in the freezer in case we run out of bread and forget to pick some up. Stuff like that.
But in recent months the desire to be more prepared for an uncertain future has really spiralled in me and taken over my life. I wouldn’t call myself a doomsday prepper – far from it – but I do think we are living in unprecedented times which call for us to change our thinking and our habits.
El Nino, climate change related disasters, wildfires and floods, extreme heat, war and conflict, cyber attacks and rogue AI are all here, right now.
Food prices are never going to go down again unless we change the entire system.
I can’t change the world but I can do everything possible for me and my family, and hopefully in time, my community. Preparing for the worst is not fear-mongering, it is simply thinking of future you and making sure everything is okay for them.
Here’s what I’ve been up to:
Vegetable plot/fruit trees/fruit bushes: I planted two apples, a pear, two plums and various fruit bushes when we moved here nearly 17 years ago and I am so glad I did! Though the apple harvest this year has been disappointing, I have managed to grow and preserve fruit from the garden and that feels very reassuring! I am now pretty good at keeping the plot producing year round and currently have just as much growing out there as I did in the summer. I have just added a brand new extension to the plot which will be potatoes and I have plans to extend the plot up the side of the garden to grow even more. I have grown and harvested oats for the first time and I’m planting wheat again soon.
Keeping ducks and chickens: I’m lucky that I have the space to do this and I have recently added to the brood. Two ducklings were born last month and are being raised by their lovely mum, and the chicks we raised in the spring are now adult and laying eggs. Currently I have six ducks and eight chickens. I keep males too so that I can always have more! I have plans for a few more chickens and then I’d like to start selling eggs locally.
Making my own compost: I have one main compost heap and another smaller one that is central in a ‘key-hole’ raised bed. I did still have to buy in compost this year but a lot less than usual, and with all the duck and chicken poo fertilising the land, I am very lucky!
No waste: Or at least, as little as possible! Food scraps go to the hens and ducks or into the compost, or to make things like apple cider vinegar and stock! Egg shells are washed and stored and eventually baked and whizzed into grit that gets added back into their food. It all goes around in a very satisfying circle.
Water collection and storage: We recently bought a second water butt and I would like to get a third in time. I also have another small container that collects rainwater. I also bought two of those water filtration straws to keep as an emergency. I’ve got a small amount of stored bottle water too and I’ve water bath canned some water in jars which can last for decades.
Preserving food: This is a new area for me and I’m really enjoying it! Obviously I have always frozen excess food, but this year I also started drying, canning and pickling! The only thing I haven’t tried yet is fermenting. (Unless you count the cider vinegar) What constantly goes through my head is it’s all very well growing food, but we also have to build up a store cupboard and preserve things for Winter. Just like the old days, I guess.
Keeping a store cupboard: I only started this fairly recently and it has already been a life-saver a few times. We don’t have a huge budget and cannot afford to rush to the shops to stockpile food, water and medicines if the worst happened, so I started small and slow. If I didn’t need a bag of pasta, I would buy one anyway. Old me would look at the cupboards and make a shopping list based on what we didn’t have. Now I do that, but I also add things to the list that we do have. That’s how I’ve slowly built up my supply. I pay particular attention to dried food such as oats, pasta, rice, noodles, tinned fruit, vegetables and meat, and preserving ingredients such as salt, sugar and vinegar. Recently one of our daughter’s left home to start her adult life and had no money for food due to paying out deposits and so on, but I was able to give her plenty of things from the cupboards to get her started and it didn’t leave us short at all. Last week we didn’t have much money, but we didn’t need it because the cupboards are all so full. This week, payments came in, so I went shopping and replaced everything we had used to get it back to the same level. Incidentally, I do the same with the car now. I keep it at half a tank full of petrol at all times.
Being prepared for emergencies: The local wildfires this summer were far too close for comfort and finally prompted me to put together a get-up-and-go-bag. This is a work in progress but so far consists of: a first aid kit, hand sanitiser, wet wipes, bottled water, crackers and chocolate spread, biscuits, cereal bars, dog food and fork, torch, wet weather gear, lighter, waterproof matches, small amount of cash, toothpaste and toothbrushes and important documents in a waterproof wallet (including written down phone numbers.) I have a separate ‘breakdown’ bag for the car, which makes me feel much better as we do tend to a lot of long road trips in our old car… Waterproofs, small first aid kit, wet wipes, hand sanitiser, dog food, torch, cash, cereal bars, waterproof matches, lighter, blanket and warm hats. And for the lounge in case of power outages (which we get a lot of around here anyway) the ‘blackout box’ which is also a work in progress and so far has: candles, tealights and small glass jars to place in, phone numbers, a lighter, waterproof matches and a radio.
There are more things I want to add to both bags and the box but I feel all three will make life easier and less stressful in the event of an emergency of prolonged power cut. I felt better as soon as they were done.
Thinking and planning ahead: It is sometimes hard to think about the future when the world is in so much turmoil but we can’t give up, can we? I think gardening is all about hope for the future which is one of the reasons it is so good for us mentally and physically. Growing a garden proves you have faith in a tomorrow and are actively planning for it. Planting grains such as wheat and oats is a bit experimental for me at the moment but I would love to eventually grow my own chicken food! And of course, my own porridge oats and flour. I am also growing lots and lots of beans, and in particular drying beans, such as kidney, butter and cannelinni. My plan is to have jars and jars of dried beans, as they last up to 30 years! I am also drying and saving beans and seeds to plant again next year. We will get more water storage at some point and as I said, the food we grow will only continue to increase as we gradually let it take over the whole garden!
I totally appreciate that not everyone can prepare to this extent. Not everyone can have ducks, chickens and fruit trees, and not everyone has enough space to grow grains, or vegetables. But everyone has a windowsill and you can very easily grow herbs that you could maybe swap locally for other food. You can grow lots of things on a balcony or in a small garden. People also need to unite together and target their local councils to open up spaces for community growing. This is something I would love to get involved in…
As for stocking up, again, I know not everyone has the budget to do this, but what I would implore lower budget households to do, is just buy one extra thing each week, one bag of pasta, rice or beans that you don’t actually need. That’s how you slowly build up supplies.
What do you think? Am I nuts? Or are you feeling and thinking the same? Have you made any changes to your household to become more resilient? Do you think the governments need to be doing more? Or would that just make people panic?
