A Return to the Blog (and a return to the novel)

So here’s the thing: I haven’t posted much in a long while, but I have a good excuse: I’ve been working on the first draft of a new book. Well, not so much a first draft as a zeroth draft: 90,000 words of unconnected vignettes that don’t hang together.  No change there, you might think (it’s what I’m thinking even if you aren’t.)

But this time… this time, dear patient reader, I think I have half a chance of producing magic in the edit. I have learned much from my musings on narrative in the last eighteen months, and from my sporadic attempts at short stories that tried out stylistic ideas and character points-of-view.

I have resolved to share some of the editing process here, if only because I’d like some record to look back on when I’m done.  I do not expect to write another book after this one.  I think that’s the attitude that’s needed;  I want no excuses to hold stuff back for ‘things I plan to write later’.

First let me tell you the title.  The title is, “The m,isTyped Message”.   Yes, that started as a typo, but I’ve adopted it as a brilliant piece of serendipity.  The book features, as one of its four point-of-view characters, a professor of genetics.  While out running one day, the title came to me as a brilliant metaphor for genetic defects.  Of course, in my head it wasn’t a typo.  I ran home, rushed upstairs, typed furiously into the first window I opened on my PC so I wouldn’t forget. When I looked up at the screen, I was faced with: “The m,isTyped Message”. I swear it’s true. Like penicillin on bread. So from now on, that’s how it’s spelt.

I was working on the planning of the rewrite last night.  I went to bed around ten, woke up at midnight, as awake as I’ve ever been, with a great idea of how I thought the first chapter should be changed from my zeroth attempt.  My normal policy on nocturnal idea formation is to write it down on my bedside notepad and then go back to sleep.  In the morning, the ideas rarely look as good.  But this one wouldn’t even let me sleep.  I got up, made a cup of tea and spent from midnight to 3:30 a.m. on the first few paragraphs.

Just as a taster, here’s what they say:

Yesterday he stooped while the King of Sweden hung Alfred Nobel’s medal around his neck. He spoke, the renowned professor of genetics, to his biggest audience, dispensing pearls of his wisdom, the soft layers of a lifetime’s study hardened into nuggets. The world applauded. He ate at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm’s Blue Hall, wearing a bow tie and tails, a ruby silk lining to his jacket.
Afterwards, he slipped out holding his wife’s hand, escorted past a small group of protesters.
“We don’t get this here,” the doorman told him. “In Oslo, yes, but that’s for the ‘Peace’ winners. People don’t protest the Scientists much.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem,” he said.

Today everything changes. It seems odd that you can receive the crowning accolade of a great career without it defining your week, but that’s how it is for Frank Ryder.