Unexpected Musings

Tuesday 10th March was a day I had not been writing on, and yet it was the day that something finally clicked. Which is a relief because this was going to be a very short series about my writing process if I got totally stuck before I even got started.

I’d been doing admin most of the morning. I’d been attempting to organise my impossibly large pile of work into a coherent and useful list. But that is a post for another time. Be organised people, do as I say not as I do… erm, did. 

I had a (very successful) doctor’s appointment in the morning (HRT FTW!). I intended on going straight home but it was such a lovely, sunny day I went on a short walk instead. That turned into a longer walk… That turned into a seven mile wander.  

I walked through two pieces of woodland and began mulling over the theme I have for my current short story work in progress “Gold.”. I was thinking through anything to do with gold.. Song lyrics, quotes, films. sayings. Scribbling notes as I walked. I still felt stuck. I sing or hum to myself when I am feeling anxious, or happy, or irritable or… well, most things actually. So, I found myself humming Spandau Ballet’s Gold to myself, hoping that no passers by could hear. 

I did have a couple of ideas pop into my head. One merely a line about a character. Something about the way she looked. Something else which was a little on the philosophical side. I did not really rate either as a potential idea for the story, but no idea is a bad idea. I typed it onto my notes app anyway.

 I wandered further still, meandering along the river, past the cathedral where I overheard some people talking in Cathedral close and noted it down… adding some embellishments to their dialogue, of course..

I decided I had walked quite far enough, thank you very much and went to a coffee shop to just sit for a bit. 

Then on into Norwich proper. I bibbled about in the city to get some food shopping for some veggies, and then, having decided that the day had been a complete writing failure, I went for a sit down in a coffee shop for a drink before heading home.

I popped to The Yard in Norwich for the first time. For those who might now know it, it is tucked away in a… Well, a yard, not unsurprisingly, on Red Lion Street. It was lovely. It was quiet at that particular time and had a wonderful writerly atmosphere. With real comfy sofas. Little nooks and turns. I was slightly miffed that I couldn’t get any WIFI. Not even from my data because the mobile signal in Norwich dates back to the Cretaceous era. So I just sat, sipping coffee with no internet. So, all I could do was nibble my cookie and think. 

Boredom is Writely Mana

With not much else to do and cut off from the world of war, email, news and other social media distractions, I started to look over the snippets of what I had absorbed along my walk. I thought about how much I did not like what I had for the story so far… except there was that one thing. No, that would not work but I had nothing else.

Then a guy brought over my drink, placing the coffee down gently, taking care not to spill it, joking about the little trays they served on and not wanting to drop it. After he walked away and in the relative quiet of the cafe I shared only with a bunch of teens telling jokes to each other, an idea dropped. 

Not sure if it was the chill vibe of the coffee shop, the caffeine hit, hydration, sugar high, having to sit and think, or all of the above… but suddenly a piece of dialogue popped into my head and I frantically typed it before I had a chance to forget it.

It was a stream of dialogue from the character I had dismissed earlier. She was arguing with another character over something I was not quite sure of yet… but there was something rumbling beneath their relationship. There was a slight shift. I had moved beyond research, and now had a glimpse of a character and a snippet of dialogue.

I won’t go into detail yet. Because I think that might actually be the nugget that moves this from idea to the story. The start of something I can use. Now, I know I said I was Showing my Workings and in this post I have omitted the actual lines I have written However, now we have passed the event horizon and into character development, I am not sharing those details until the story is done and out in the world. Then I will come back to this post (after June 2026) and add the details in.

Getting to Know Your Character – Interrogation or Conversation?

The character I had dismissed earlier on my walk, was saying to me, whether I liked it or not, I have a voice now. You can’t just erase me from the world without finding out what my story is. That is how I meet my characters. Like bumping into them and starting a conversation. Not interrogating them with a Character profile. Like “Oi! Where did you go to school? And, what was your favourite song when you were 13? To be blunt…. and this is my blog so I will say what I feel…  I don’t care about all these fastidious details. Not unless it serves the story. Otherwise, what is the point? It just adds anxiety and takes up my time. And time is something I do not have a lot of

Okay. I confess. I do not do those long character profiles at all. Not before I know my character. I begin to write and then I might do one later if, and only if, the story becomes something much larger and unwieldy, like a novel where I am trying to keep track of so many characters and I don’t remember who was who and what their personality was. But, never have I written one for a short story. The moment I sit to write a character profile, I feel a little bit of the soul of my story die a little. Also, I hate that some people might be put off from writing if they think that they have to get over the Character profile hurdle everytime they start something. You don’t. You do you.

Sorry, to every workshop I have sat through where I have been told how important they are.  Hell, I have even run a workshop where I have inflicted them on other writers (sorry, again). If you need to write out a 25 sheet character profile for your characters before you put pen to paper then, by all means, do what works for you. I am not saying they are not helpful. I just find them counterproductive in discovering who my character is. Being put on the spot and made to overthink with just a few seconds to decide my characters’ deepest soul makes my mind go blank. What I need is peace, time, freedom, maybe a little boredom and no internet,  to channel my character onto the page (At risk of sounding mystical when I am the least woowoo person I know).

So now I have a main character, someone she is talking to in the snippet of dialogue and even rumblings of conflict and some subtext going on but there is still no story there. Not yet. It is March and the deadline for the short story is June so I still have plenty of time to mull it over and figure out the story. This is how it happens for me, sometimes. I don’t just write the story out in one day… although, annoyingly sometimes I do. But my best work has often happened like this… layers building gradually. Like painting a colour and letting it dry. Then coming back and adding another… and later a bit more.