The Story so Far

Good Morning.

It's 8:07am. Alex is playing a little before heading out to school, just down the road where his British, Thai, Japanese, French and Swedish friends will be joining him on this 24C/76F Thai winter morning. Nancy has already left for hot yoga at one of the many workout centers here in The Big Chilli and will then continue on to her office at the Red Cross, 2km/1,5mi away from our home. She walks or cycles to and back. With Enya playing on my iTunes and looking out over the rooftops of our neighbours from our town house, tropical birds singing in the background, I am preparing to write the 16th chapter of Book 1 of our young adult book series. It's a fresh start as I have just passed the 'half a book' milestone, but also because the air is cool, I had my breakfast and everything radiates that 'brand new day' feeling.

Of course I haven't just started driving down this literary road today or a few days ago when I started this blog. It's been a long process to even get this far. It started in Ireland, traveled alongside with us through Sri Lanka all the way up till our 2nd year here in Thailand. I spent a good portion of that time tinkering on a plot for the first book as well as a rougher outline for the whole series. I wrote several documents on the workings of the world in which the characters move, the characters themselves and the obstacles/resources they have to deal with. It has slowly become a world upon itself.

And then of course Nancy and I had to start writing the thing, dividing responsibilites (eventually resting with an agreement that I would write Book 1 and 3 and she would write 2 and 4. Book 5 we would write together - I'll explain in a later blog why). I set out a deadline of drafting, editting and releasing Book 1 (see countdown to the right) and even put up a Wall of Scofield. Named after the character Scofield from Prison Break who in the first season of the show had a massive wall on which he had laid out all the elements of his plan to break his brother out of jail. Luckily my brother is not in jail (nor am I going to get 'ink done' in order to free him) and so my wall rather represents the whole of our work on what moves when and how within our fictional world.

The trick now of course is to actually write the story keeping in mind the most important aspects that are relevant to scene I am writing, without having to cross-reference it too much with what I wrote down on the wall and/or the 12 documents of 'world-lore'. The only way to do this and stay sane (and on time with trying to type 2000 words a day) is to forge ahead with what I think is right and leave a little digital post-it note in the text to verify the content later. That way momentum is kept and I can get lost in the writing (which is really fun - I get really caught up in it at times).

So even though the road was long to get here, the road ahead needs to be carefully navigated -Back off Muse! I'm driving already! Pedal to the metal, I know!- all the way into the sunset of every day.