I spent all day yesterday working on Juliet and then Pirates. Juliet, in order to get it finished; Pirates, because I had been pulling at the leash for a while now. Although I’d love to start writing I think that I need some more preparation, so I was writing out lists of info about all my characters: the four who are central to the story, the secondary line of folk, even the ghosts and bit parts. I want to get to know these people…

Around 1 in the morning, I thought I’d reread Juliet. I was surprised to find that the first chapter is not as bad as I thought it was! In fact it was quite good, and I even chuckled in a few places. What’s more, this was in places where I should have which I found encouraging. I will re-read the second chapter tonight and see if I have the same reaction.

Well, as I just revised the synopsis for Juliet I thought that I’d try and write one for Pirates.

This was a pretty amazing experience. I’ll explain why: I have been living with the idea of this story for a couple of months now, even if elements—the character of Stone, for example,—go back twenty years. I have been thinking it through and making notes, some detailed, some just ideas, but today was the first time that I attempted to sit down, pull those together and see if they made a story. They do. A spiffing one with twists, turns and surprises right up to the end, even if I do say so myself. It is a sort of cross between Treasure Island and Peter Pan, so that means that the Jonathan Swift elements have gone. And it’s all a much more a boy’s tale than Juliet which is much more a girl’s tale. (Oh, I’m sure that Kim would like them both, but that’s the way that I see things.)

The other thing that this has is that the plot is a lot simpler without the Y structure like Juliet. It’s also strange because I thought McHarry was the central character and it has turned out to be Colin. This is very nice, but a bit surprising.

Oh frabjous day!

. . . . .

Curious, both Bill and parts of Pirates date from more than 20 years ago. There are also some of Lenny’s adventures from just a bit later. I was thinking that I should get to thinking about Died as that hasn’t had 20 years to distill down to a story, but I had forgotten about Juliet which just came from the image of the horse waiting below the window in the rain. The first provisional title was The Storm Pony. Anyway, currently I have the first 2 chapters of Died very clear in my head (and Esterhaze is a very nasty person) but perhaps I should work on that like Pirates.

And then my great worry… what do I do after that? Oh there is that Dreamcatchers story idea. Perhaps I should also take notes for that…

Or perhaps just bask in the idea of the wonderful synopsis for Pirates for just 10 minutes more…

Yesterday I had two strange experiences. The first was the formal interview required under French law before one can be fired. Surreal wasn’t the word. No, sick was more like it. You are being praised to the heavens to such a degree that it starts becoming suspicious, but you’re still being fired. I think that I would have prefered the treatment of a boss that I heard about from a friend: you were called into an office; he would have his checkbook in front of him—“How much?” was the question. And you collected your papers on the way out.

Then I tried to write a synopsis of Juliet. I consulted about 15 sites through Google. All explained in length how to write a winning synopsis that is guaranteed to sell your book. I imagine that the quality of writing and the actual book should also have some merits, so I took the titles with a small truckload of salt. What I did manage to pull together was a rather sketchy—and at times contradictory—structure and modus operandi. The part that I found the hardest was the idea that the final document should just be one page long. I tried that, it became a blurb, not a synopsis. Yet, all the sample synopses that I found online were about 3-4 pages, so I don’t feel bad about mine being in the same case.

Initially, Juliet has a complicated structure—a ‘Y’ shape. With two stories paralleling each other until they join. During the forks of the Y, events happen on one side and are paralleled on the other. To make things worse from my point of view, initially everything was chronological, but this made practically all the first scenes, rabbit ones and Juliet didn’t get introduced until chapter 2 (when reading this to Kim, she just assumed that Juliet was a rabbit too. Oops! I changed everything to start with Juliet and establish her first). In the synopsis this comes over as choppy. Now, of course, because of all that, I have severe doubts about everything. And it took about 4 draughts to get the beginnings of the current synopsis.

The fact that I’m trying to write the synopsis is actually good news. Thomas, a friend of Ludivine’s, knows the editor in the Children’s division of a reputable British publisher. I must send her over the first three chapters and the synopsis. Now, my reasonable self knows that nothing will come of this except a polite refusal letter in a few months. However, it is nice to know that I will get even that. It also means a slight foot in the door when Pirates (which will be better than Juliet by a magnitude of 10) is finished. And that could be fun. And if that is not the one… well there is always Died.

I have finally hit the halfway point in revising Juliet. I have 27000 words under my belt for a total of 53000 (I just checked). It is, has been, and probably still will be, laborious.

I read a paragraph out loud once, then again. Then I check that what I actually said was what I wrote—quite often there’s a first difference here. Then I check that what I read was what I wanted to say—quite often I find that I may have made a slight mistake. Then I check for flow, repetition, rythmn, sound… Then when I’m happy with it, I also check that paragraphs and punctuation are as I think that they should be.

Then I change the typeface from the pleasant serif face that I used earlier, to a typewriter-like face, and change the colour to black. Passages that I had signaled as ‘in need of a re-write’, were coloured in blue.

Then I move on to the next paragraph.
. . . . .
The printer cartridge that I ordered has still not arrived. Of course the site said that it would arrive last Thursday. It is being delivered by the post and now they have a tracking system in place. It is supposed to be delivered to work which is in Paris, 20th district. The packet went to Gennevillers which is pretty normal. Now it seems to be in some warehouse in Creteil which is less normal.
Meanwhile printer output has gone from a dark silvery grey to faint pencil lead colour. Last night when I printed out the names of the new European nations for Kim to revise, we had to draw over the text to render it visible.