Shirt cardboard

On Monday, I got a piece of shirt cardboard, glossy white on both sides, and divided it into twenty squares using the spine of a hardback book as a straight edge. Each square represents a chapter in my novel.
I learned this particular technique from a book called How to write and sell a synopsis by Stella Whitelaw. You write in each square what you want in each chapter. So it could read something like this :
Chapter Seven : Letter arrives-shock-Tina rings her sisters-Arguments-Car journey to Knightsbridge (describe streets)-Tina finds hotel(describe)-Brian is sitting in the lobby.
Ever since I read Stella Whitelaw's book, I've been itching to try. In fact, I had three sheets of shirt cardboard ready and waiting. You can create your own codes (I'm using A/D for Another Day), and you can even use different coloured felt-tips for different things, i.e.; yellow = describe, blue = establish mood, etc. In fact, it was probably the idea of using different colours which appealed to me in the first place.
This chapter breakdown wasn't for my Twelfth Night project. I haven't given up on that idea ; but day after day, I kept thinking that the Twelfth Night project simply wasn't what I wanted to write. Not yet, anyway. It didn't feel ready. This depressed me at the time. The Twelfth Night project was at least an idea. Without an idea, I'd be starting from scratch. But in the end, I put it aside.
Instead, I began writing practice again, filling up an A5 spiral notebook with any old junk I could think of. I'd write a subject at the top of the page, but wouldn't necessarily stick to it. I've been doing writing practice on and off ever since I read about it in Natalie Goldberg's Writing down the bones. It becomes almost meditation. You get to the point where your unconscious mind takes over. That's where all the goodies are.
And I filled a whole notebook. From beginning to end. Normally, I'd leave at least a few pages blank, but this time I made it to the end. What I wrote may or may not become seeds for future projects. The main thing for me, this time, was to let my mind go blank.
I felt like I was in the wilderness (although one of the benefits of writing practice was that I did feel like I was storytelling). But then I began daydreaming about some previous ideas I'd already had. One of them was the Twelfth Night project. Another one was about an unemployed school-leaver. So I looked again at the latter.
I often get cold feet when I begin a project. With this one, I'd had an idea, jotted down a few notes about it, got fed up with planning, started writing the actual draft, got scared that I hadn't planned it enough and then abandoned it. But clearly the passion hadn't gone. I must have still cared about it. (This will probably happen with my Twelfth Night project, too). So I began jotting down more notes. And so far, I've been sailing.
I wasn't really ready for the shirt cardboard. I began filling in the squares. The prologue and chapter one were easy enough, because I'd actually written those. But chapter two was sketchier, and I definitely wasn't ready for chapter three. Still, the cardboard is ready to fill in as soon as I feel I know the story.
I made two attempts at the chapter breakdown, with two pieces of shirt cardboard. The first one I divided into thirty squares, for thirty chapters. But after a while, I began wondering whether I had enough story for that. I'm making it a rule of thumb that the unemployed hero should argue with, or lie to somebody in each chapter. This isn't going to be a thriller, the hero's life isn't in jeopardy, so I cannot fill the chapters with physical hazards. So there has to be human drama instead - characters trying to change other characters' minds.
I didn't have thirty arguments/lies. And then it occurred to me that perhaps this isn't going to be a full-length novel anyway, but a thinner teenage novel. Hence the second piece of shirt cardboard, divided into twenty squares.
If you're still reading this, if I haven't lost you with all this talk of shirt cardboard and abandoned projects, all I can say is : I feel happy. I feel like I'm getting somewhere. I get up in the mornings knowing what I have to do to move the project along, and I can't wait. I just hope the feeling lasts, at least until I'm writing the actual text again. Perhaps if I bought some coloured felt-tips...

Word detox

Last week was meant to be my week of non-reading, something Julia Cameron recommends in her book The Artists' Way. She recommends you take them about once a month, although of late I've been taking them for a couple of weeks in the year.
For a whole week, you're meant to do without the written word, plus television, radio, the cinema and the theatre. You don't even read a newspaper. You can write, you can have long chats, you can listen to instrumental music, you can do anything providing it doesn't involve literature or rehearsed speech.
It sounds severe, but I've found it helpful over the years for thinking, daydreaming, plotting through a project or even coming up with a brand new idea. Unfortunately, I can't seem to do it as completely as Julia Cameron. For a start, my day job involves reading. Secondly, my wife is addicted to three soap operas and the news. One of the drawbacks of Julia Cameron's books, and Natalie Goldberg's too, excellent though they are, is that they seem to be written for people who live on their own. If you want to keep any relationship going then having a notebook and flashlight at the side of your bed, so that you can jot down ideas in the middle of the night, is problematic. I would need to get out of bed and go into the living room, to avoid a kick in the shins.
Then there's the Artist's Date. Once a week, Julia Cameron tells you, you take off by yourself to do something you want to do. I only seem to be able to manage these after rows, by which time the attraction for them has severely waned.
It's hard for me to resist putting on a DVD when I've got the television to myself, which usually means the 15 minutes or so at bedtimes whilst I wait for the bathroom. I've had to watch whole films in 10 or 15 minute chunks because I so seldom get the set to myself.
Last week, though, I was good, and resisted another chunk of Van Helsing. I've been itching to watch certain programmes, and it's been driving me mad. I discovered that my favourite cop show, The Sweeney, is can be viewed via computer. Ten episodes from 1974 which I can barely remember, all waiting. But because I'd committed myself to this wordless week, I had to stick with it.
And so I played instrumentals as I made and ate my breakfasts. Autobahn by Kraftwerk (I suppose, strictly speaking, there are words in that, but sinced they are in German, which I can't speak, they don't count) . On the trains home, via an ancient CD Player, some new agey thing ith lots of whale cries in the background.
I always feel self conscious listening to the CD player. For one thing, everybody around me is listening to IPods or whatever they are, and I feel like I'm carrying around a wind-up gramophone. But also because you are, in effect, making yourself voluntarily deaf. Or at least you feel caught between two worlds - one a mundane, crowded, hot, sweaty train compartment and the other a celestial paradise where harps plink away. I've nodded off a few times when I've been able to get a seat.
But it's beginning to pay off dividends. Ideas are coming to me. I'm getting to work on time, because I'm not waiting to the very end of that sitcom episode before I get up and get ready (I even watch the end credits). And strangely enough, I'm beginning to feel better, more energetic. I should do this more often.