Breakthrough!

Do you ever have one of those moments when suddenly everything falls into place? Well, I’ve just been fortunate enough to enjoy one of those days. Today saw a momentous breakthrough in my new story, as I worked out one of those problems that for days has towered in front of me like an unscaleable wall. The solution - I cheat! It’s the best way, after all is said and done. The answer was so simple that it had been staring me in the face all along - I make time run differently in my fantasy world to that of our world. The result - I can have my cake and eat it … something I always like to do whenever possible.

Having decided to use this discrepency system, I can now cherry pick the most interesting moments and characters across a much wider period of World War I, and yet the story arc for the primary characters will last no more than a couple of months. This device has been used many times by different authors in a variety of ways, but it should work particularly well in my story. The more I think about it, the more I cannot believe I hadn’t considered it until now.

All in all it’s been a good week. Despite the disruption of having my daughter at home for two days (on account of her school being shut due to the heavy snow) I have managed to achieve a creditable amount of writing. I’ve also enjoyed two successful school visits. The first was to Warneford School in Highworth on Wednesday morning, where I had the pleasure of talking to two groups of year 8 boys, whilst Mary Hooper chatted with the year 8 girls in a neighbouring room. In the afternoon I dashed across to St Joseph’s Catholic College in Swindon, which was a most impressive, brand new school with a very scary elevator! Despite the college having been built on two floors, the elevator had buttons that boasted nine floors. It was all I could do to resist seeing what would happen if I were to push the button for the ninth floor. I had visions of Roald Dahl’s glass elevator smashing through the roof and heading off up into the sky … but that’s what you get for being a fantasy author, I suppose.

My audience at St Joseph’s were a mixture of young people, one class of which had been told to attend, but with the majority having asked to be able to hear me speak (thereby missing lessons - I can understand the attraction). The result was a healthy crowd of around 90-100 packed into the library. The Questions and Answers session at the end of this talk was certainly lively, with some most interesting questions. The one that took me most by surprise (I’d not been asked it before) was: If you had a chance to meet any author, who would you most like to talk to? I must admit that it threw me for a moment. My answer was Philip Reeve, as of all the YA books on the market at present, I think his Hungry Cities series is the most captivating. I’d love to find out what his inspiration for it was. I didn’t really give the answer enough thought, though, because if I could choose any author, living or deceased, then the answer would probably change.

I am now looking forward to a most productive week next week, as my only event is an evening talk at the Ashby Writers’ Circle next Tuesday. With a clear five days to write in I hope to make major inroads into the word count of my novel. Let’s hope that with my first major hurdle smashed, I can progress quickly though to the next phase of the story.