By Bitter Sterkarm...

          This will be a short post, as I have taken an oath.  By Oak and Ash, and Bitter Thorn, I will finish Sterkarm 3 and have it ready to send to my agent - or will have sent it - by September 1st.
          I know I said it was almost finished, but...
          I had to round up those loose hounds... Well, it turned out, they weren't as hard to round up as I'd feared.  But while I was looking for them, I found a lengthy passage that needed rewriting.  I'd brought in two minor characters to do something that - I suddenly saw - would be much better done by one of the more important characters.  But that means rewriting that scene and surrounding scenes...
          And the ending.  Endings, of course, are a beach.  I am feeling my way through this scene by my fingertips.  There are several characters.  The revelations of the scene must be made bit by bit - but every character must behave in character, and speak like themselves - and it all means going back and forth, rewriting, scrapping, moving lines about...  It's slow and head-nipping.
          And so much of my time is being taken up by other things - e-publishing my back-list, blogging, tweeting...  I could see it all going on for months.
          But I'm a member of an on-line writers' group called Flatcap. We 'meet up' on line most days, to report to each other on what we've managed to get done, and encourage each other.

The Ghost Wife

          I was grumbling on Flatcap about how it was all taking such an age, when another Flatcapper, the witty Joan Lennon, told me to take, myself, the same advice I would give to a novice writer in the same situation.

          Why don't you, Joan sagely asked, set yourself a deadline?
          Well, this is just what Flatcap is for.  So I am taking Joan's advice and setting myself a deadline.  September 1st - no later!

The Wolf Sisters by Susan Price

    I am also coming round to the idea of A Sterkarm Embrace as the title - though I may have to write in an explanation of what a Sterkarm embrace is.
          I have two more e-books out - Wolf Sisters and The Ghost Wife.  Another is pending, but it will just have to pend until the Sterkarms are done.

            Nor have I forgotten the Green Man.  I have got as far as buying a mask for a former, and cutting the side off a large cardboard box to make a working surface.  I've covered the cardboard in clingfilm, so the papier-mache (when I get to that stage) won't stick to it.  When I have finished the Sterkarms - by September 1st! - I will allow myself, as a reward, to have a go at the Green Man.  My brother suggests using cardboard tubes, like toilet roll and kitchen roll innards, to help with the curl of leaves.
          But, on with the Sterkarms...
And Blott, of course... 

Taming the Sterkarms

My small household gods watch over the plot

          Monday 6^th Feb
 I continue to work on two books at once, trying to plot one, and rewrite the other.

          My kitchen table is still covered with index cards, scribbled in blue ink.  Almost every time I go into the kitchen, I stop and read over the cards.  Sometimes I change the postion of one, or scribble another.

'Odin's Voice' by Susan Price

          I’ve decided that I don’t like the ending I had roughly plotted out.  It’s too close to the original idea I had, too predictable, too ‘left-side-of-the-brain editorial’.  It’s also too close to the ending of my ‘Odin’s Voice’ trilogy.  That left-brain editor obviously thought: well it worked once!  It’ll do again.  No! Not good enough.  So I’ve moved that final row of cards aside, to make space for something new.  Don’t know what yet, though I’ve jotted some notes.

          I’ve got that feeling I’ve had before – I daresay many will recognise it – that feeling that there’s something, some new idea, struggling just behind my forehead.  Haven’t got any clear idea of what it is, just that it’s there, and if I pretend I haven’t noticed, it will eventually come right to the front of my head, and I can catch it.

          I’ve also been reading Sterkarm 3 on the kindle and making rough notes in different colours.  At the suggestion of some commentators on this blog, I’ve added a dog and been very pleased with the result – except that I’ll have to rewrite the end of Sterkarm Kiss – but hey, I’ve got the rights back now, I can do what I like with it.

          I’ve also found a sub-plot that I might or might not keep or develop.  Shall have to see how the rest goes on.

          Tuesday 7^th Feb.  I’m deep into the rougher reaches of the Sterkarm first draft now, scribbling away with my coloured pens – often several colours in one sentence as the different characters meet.  It’s useful to have Per May in green and Per Changeling in red – wish I could do that in the finished novel.  It would be less head-nipping.

          I’ve found a romantic sub-plot which stops short, and which I’m going to have to fix, but I don’t know how.  I’m only mapping as yet.

          I have 22 sheets of scribbled paper, and don’t know how I’m going to see the whole thing at once.  Maybe I’ll sellotape them all together into a long strip.  I suspect that I included too much detail and it’s got a bit out of hand – literally.  Maybe I’ll make a big paper curtain and hang it on my wall – and stand on my kitchen steps to study it.

          Wednesday 8^th  I was doing my University stint and too busy to get any writing done.  And Thursday 9^th vanished in domestic and admin chores.  Friday 10^th is another University day, despite the fact that I didn’t go in because of the ice and snow.  I got students to send me their stuff by email.  So, no writing of my own.

           But next week I’m only at University for one day, Monday – so obviously, I’ll have both books sorted by the end of the week!

          And meanwhile, work on e-books continues.  This is the cover for my eighth, Christopher Uptake.  It isn't available yet - I'm still adding notes and hyperlinks - but I hope it will be soon



And here, as ever, is Blott -