Sounds vaguely perverse, doesn’t it?

Well, if that’s how you got here, hello and make yourself at home.  New friends are always welcome.  Feel free to poke around.  The main website www.elspethcooper.com has more about me and my writing.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband dearly.  In fact, if I loved him any more, it would be downright unhealthy.  But I can’t write whilst he’s in the house.

He’s had a week off work, and it’s a miracle I’ve got any writing done at all.  He’s trying not to interrupt me, bless him, but just having someone else in the house creeping about trying not to be a nuisance is driving me up the wall.

Part of it is my fault.  I’m very conscious that he works hard and he’s having some time off and deserves to be able to relax, but I’m sitting here at my desk worrying that he’s feeling bored/under-appreciated/neglected in some way, instead of what I should be doing.

When he goes out to the gym, it’s fine.  I can’t hear him, and don’t need to worry about him.  But when he’s here…

If he’s watching TV, I can hear it up here in the office.  Even if he turns it down, it’s audible above the volume of my music, which lately I’ve taken to listening to at incredibly low levels so it drowns out the silence without distracting me too much.

If he goes for a soak in the bath, I can hear *his* music over mine.  If he’s using his computer in the study along the hall, I can hear him watching music videos, typing, or God help me, farting.

Of course, I could shut my office door, but then the cats can’t get in and will sit outside crying and pulling at the carpet, making me feel a heel for ignoring them.  I’ll feel twice the heel for only communicating with my husband when he brings me a fresh cup of tea.

The other alternative is to take a break from writing, and go curl up on the sofa with him.  But if I do that, I start worrying about deadlines, and whether I’m neglecting my book, and I’m unable to relax.  I can’t win.

Noise-cancelling headphones.  It’s the only solution.  That, or divorce.

It’s one of those cringe-worthy pieces of corporate management-speak that should have passed its best before date long before now, but which you still hear trotted out by the same people who think it’s cool to say “That’s blue-sky thinking!  Let’s run it up the flagpole and see who salutes.”  Urgh.

But as it happens, I have one.  An idea shower, not a flagpole, in case you were wondering.  It’s also the place where I go every day to get clean, but the washing part seems to be a side-effect of its true purpose, which is to shower me with inspiration.

Inspiration is a funny thing.  It can’t be bottled, pinned down, put under a microscope.  It’s powerful enough to kick-start 20-year, 12-volume fantasy series, yet as transient and ephemeral as a waft of perfume from someone in the crowd around you on the Tube.  Writers can spend days–years–searching for it in vain, surviving on sheer perspiration instead, then when they least expect it, they wake up in the middle of the night with their brains fizzing.

Lately all my best ideas have come to me whilst I’m in the shower.  It might be the warm water and suds putting me into a Zen-like state where my mind is wide open to the random inspiration particles sleeting through the universe, or it might be that I’m only half awake and therefore unable to dodge the hefty kick my subconscious has just delivered like an eight-inch-thick printout from the batch job that was running on the server overnight.  I really don’t know where they come from, or how they get into my brain, but answers to persistent problems always seem to arrive whilst I’m showering.

Like this morning.  There I am, soaping myself and hoping I’ll be done before the milkman arrives for his money (like ideas, telephones and doorbells always ring whilst the water’s running), when I suddenly realise *why* Character A has to be where he is and what he has to do whilst he’s there, after he’s been trailing across the landscape for two-thirds of the book without a clear purpose that I could identify other than that I just *knew* he had to be there.  Now I know why, and it all makes sense.  Pieces of the story are dropping into place so seamlessly that I can no longer see the joins.

By ‘eck, I don’t know what they’re putting in that Palmolive sea minerals shower gel, but it’s good stuff.

Regular readers will know (don’t try to hide behind the sofa; I know there’s at least four of you) that I am busy finishing Book 2 of The Wild Hunt, Trinity Moon.

What you may not know is that as if MS wasn’t enough fun by itself, I’ve also been diagnosed with gallstones. Honking great gallstones, measuring 1.5cm across. The surgeon I saw at the hospital last Tuesday was quite impressed. I assured him that I do not do things by halves. Neither, it seems, does he.

He wants me to have an MRI scan to check that there’s no small stones (the technical term is gravel, seriously) in my bile duct, before he whips my gall bladder out. Ultrasound, like the one I had a couple of months ago that revealed the pesky stones in the first place, isn’t very good for looking at this because the bile duct lurks behind the bowel, and there’s air in the gut which doesn’t transmit the ultrasound very well. MRI, of course, is like one of Her Majesty’s VAT inspectors: it goes everywhere and sees everything.

Lovely chap, the surgeon. Warm hands, which is always a good sign, and a dry sense of humour. I am not in the least freaked-out by the prospect of any of the upcoming procedures–even if they can’t do a keyhole cholecystectomy and have to do a traditional large-incision, in-up-to-the-elbows job. My heart is plodding along at its regular resting rate of 59bpm and if I was any more laid back I’d be horizontal. So why am I finding it so hard to empty my head of all this health-related stuff and get back to the business of writing?

I’m staring down the barrel of a deadline. I’ve had the first instalment of my advance, so I’m on the company dime, as it were. I want to finish this book so I can make a start on the next one, because I want to find out what happens next. Powerful motivators all. So why can’t I write the last five chapters?

After a bit of a sticky patch I’d been going great guns again, and then WHAM! Straight into a brick wall. I was washing my hair in the shower, like you do, brain idling, and suddenly realised that the last chapter and a half had gone in completely the wrong direction and I didn’t know how to fix it.

Four days later, I still don’t. It’s not writer’s block, because I don’t believe in it, and we all know that stuff we don’t believe in doesn’t exist, like the monster under the bed. It’s an inability to focus.

I’ve turned off my music. I’ve taken myself out into the garden with the laptop, where the wireless doesn’t work reliably enough to allow me to get distracted by email or Facebook or reading other people’s blogs. I’ve even tried going back to pencil and paper to slow my thoughts down, let ideas take root. Nothing doing. Every time I sit down to sort this out my mind is flittering around like a butterfly in a meadow, never settling for more than a few seconds before it’s off to the next flower.

Argh.

The fact that I’m even blogging about it, instead of solving the problem, is just another example of my distraction. Why find answers when you can futz around talking about the question instead?

Double argh.

This is not a familiar place in which to find myself. I don’t like it. It smells strange and the people talk funny. Get me out of here!

There’s a clematis at the bottom of my garden.  A vigorous, large-leaved, free-flowering variety called Madame Le Coultre, which produces glorious paper-white flowers the size of tea-plates, in great abundance, every year, in spite of–or possibly because of–my sporadic attentions.  Like this one:

This morning, I discovered that Mme had fallen under her own weight, and was drooping forlornly into the hellebores.  I say “fallen under her own weight” because I wouldn’t dream of implying that my neighbours had pitched her back over when she scrambled clean up the 6ft dividing fence and made determined advances on their trellis, rather like a dark green, many-armed Napoleon across Europe.

Besides, I planted Mme nine years ago; she’s been here longer than they have lived in that house, so I reckon that gives her dibs on the fence.

So now I have to untangle the 8-10ft long stems and somehow tie them in to the acres of clematis netting I provided for Mme, which she has studiously ignored thus far.  As anyone who has ever grown a clematis will know, they are largely self-supporting.  This means they will grab onto and coil round whatever they touch; in Mme’s case, this is usually herself.

Picture the scene, if you will.  Yours truly, unsteady of foot at the best of times, waist-deep in hellebores and flag iris behind the pond (yes, that pond), attempting to untangle this monstrosity without snapping too many bud-bearing shoots.  It’s like trying to knit a Fair Isle sweater without a pattern.  In the dark.  In reverse.

However, I’ve managed to achieve some sort of order.  Mme’s many armies have been separated and espalier-trained across the aforementioned acres of netting.  Casualties were limited to one finger (a Swiss Army knife related injury) and one leading shoot, that is now hospitalised in a jam-jar of water on the kitchen windowsill in the hope it may root as a cutting for next year.

Even though I know full well what I am nurturing, I can’t bear not to give it a chance.  Where the hell I’m going to plant it, though, I do not know–give Mme free reign and she’ll annexe Poland before she’s three years old.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had some very exciting news.  I’ve been told that I might have some roughs for the cover of Songs of the Earth to look at soon.  With my editor, we’ve finalised the cover copy a.k.a the bit on the inside flap that makes you, the reader, start salivating as you fumble for your credit card.  And I’ve got a tentative publication date.

Naturally, as Gollancz are still working the kinks out of their schedule for the first half of next year, there’s still an “ish” factor here, so I won’t be revealing the date until I know it’s firm, but it does mean that the countdown to launch has begun.

This is becoming alarmingly real.

Songs is moving from an electronic file wrapped up in a dream to something solid.  Tangible.  A physical object that I can hold in my hands and inhale that “new book” smell.  I cannot tell you how much that excites me.

It also terrifies me.  In a couple of months my editor will crack her knuckles and set to, and I imagine the process of delivering a final typescript that she’s happy with will be rather like childbirth.  There will be sweat and swearing and probably tears, and if things get really rough there might even be a little blood, before the finished book is smacked on the bum, weighed, measured, and packed off to production.

In the meantime, I’m not exactly sitting on my hands here.  I still have Trinity Moon to finish.  Although progress has been slow of late due to a variety of health-related issues (which also explain the infrequent updates to this blog), the strands are coming together into what I think will be a satisfying whole.  A bit darker than Songs in several ways.  A bit more menacing.

Watch this space.

Someone asked me the other day why I write.  Easy.  I write because I don’t know how not to.

I’ve been a storyteller all my life.  Since I could hold a pen, and make marks on paper that weren’t just copying something off the blackboard.  It’s as natural to me as breathing.

As time went on, the stories got longer, more complex.  I’d get an idea and just run with it, to see where it took me.  When I was 14, one of those ideas took me on a wild, 260-page adventure cranked out on an old Adler portable typewriter (forever remembered as the Tripewriter) in one-and-a-half linespacing.  I can still smell the carbon paper.

That was my first attempt at writing a book.  Of course, I didn’t tell anyone I was writing a book; that kind of admission, in high school, can have Consequences, and I was already in enough trouble with the cool kids because I wore glasses, didn’t smoke, and handed my homework in on time.  Talk about making it hard for yourself! How I got out alive is anyone’s guess.

Of course, like most first attempts at novels, it was a load of rubbish.  Derivative, cliche-ridden and agonisingly bad prose, but I enjoyed the process.  More than enjoyed it.  I was hooked.  I wrote more.  When my Dad brought home a BBC Model B computer (he was involved in the schools IT advisory service for the local education authority at the time) I taught myself to use the basic word-processing package that came with it and the words continued to flow.  Now I could write into the night without the Tripewriter keeping the rest of the household awake.  Bliss.

But I never thought I was writing for an audience.  I was writing for me, because I wanted to find out what happened next in each story.  Years passed, as they are wont to do, and “Songs” limped, in fits and starts, into something approaching novel length, though I still refused to call it a book anywhere but inside my head.  I had a subscription to Writer’s News & Writing Magazine, and I called myself a writer, but that was it.  I still only had an intended audience of one.  Me.

I can’t remember what prompted me to put an excerpt up on a writers’ website for some feedback.  Probably chivvied into it by my husband.  Even he hadn’t read anything I’d written up to this point, but I guess he saw some potential underneath all the self-doubt.  That was the first time I’d ever given house-room to the idea that actually, there might be people out there who would want to find out what happens next as much as I did.

Revelation.  It was a whole new world.  People said nice things about my writing; some of them even said they’d enjoyed it.  Whoa.  Headrush, even bigger than the one I got the first time I said, out loud, to another person, “I’m writing a book.”

This was just the confidence-boost I’d needed.  I joined another site, got more feedback, finished “Songs” and with some trepidation, submitted it to literary agents.  I was fully prepared for rejection, but I knew it wouldn’t stop me writing the rest of the books in the series.  Nothing could, short of ceasing to breathe, because I had to find out what happened next.

All the stories are in my head, you see.  Layers and layers of them, too big and too dense to see the whole thing at once.  Each time I write a scene, it’s like it makes a space through which I can see the next one.  So I write that, and there’s the next one, on and on like a conjurer’s gaudy handkerchiefs.  I have a pretty good idea where it will end, but it’s the getting there, the discovery, that’s the exciting part.

That’s why I don’t plan.  Scratch that, won’t plan.  Can’t.  I’ve tried, and it hammers almost all the creative magic out of the process for me.  If I try to nail the story down beyond a vague outline what I write feels, to me, flat.  Forced.  In some unquantifiable but deeply important way, wrong.

You see, it’s not about  knowing what happens next.  I already do, subconsciously, somewhere under all those layers.  No, what’s important is the Finding Out.

… or “Whose book is it anyway?” Part Two.

I was inspired to compose this post by a friend of mine, MM Bennetts, who feels not at all confident about writing female characters and was therefore somewhat stunned to find one had leapt, fully formed, like Athene from the brow of Zeus, onto the pages of her latest book.

This got me thinking.  I’ve never actually considered that I had any difficulty writing female characters.  I mean, I’m a girl.  It should be easy, n’est-ce pas?  I’ve got the inside track on how a woman thinks and feels, her motivations, her desires.  Surely it should be the Sons of Adam, rather than the Daughters of Eve, that I struggle with?

Apparently not.

Someone commented that “Songs” was lacking in strong female characters.  I did point out to the (female) reviewer that she’d only read the opening chapters which are set in a monastic military order, wherein women are, ipso facto, somewhat thin on the ground, but I did another read-through of the script and noted that the dramatis personae had a definite XY bias.

Hmm.

Now I’m not going to start stuffing strong, empowered women into the narrative left, right and centre to satisfy some artificial notion of gender equality.  If the story doesn’t call for these characters, I’m not going to write them.   It depends on the book.  “Trinity Moon” is chock-full of strong women, for instance, whereas in “Songs” they’re few but memorable.  But it did make me wonder whether I subconsciously find it easer to write about blokes.

I certainly couldn’t write chick-lit, not if my life depended on it.  I don’t understand the heroines, and can’t relate to them, their lives or problems.  I have zero interest in shoes except as devices to keep my feet warm and dry.  Handbags are what I use to carry my purse, a biro and some lip balm around in–I’d be just as happy with a carrier bag.  Boyfriends?  I’ve been with the hero of my own particular romance for almost 13 years; I’m happy with the one I’ve got.  Freya, Lisa, you can relax.  I have no intention of poaching on your turf.

But I couldn’t write bloke-lit either.  Will Self, Nick Hornby and their ilk have the field to themselves; I don’t have the mental toolkit.  I don’t have (to borrow from Terry Pratchett’s “Monstrous Regiment”) the socks.

The truth is, I don’t actually think about whether a character is male or female.  They’re just people.  Whether they pee standing up or sitting down is irrelevant to me, to the reader (except those with a feminist agenda–why can’t they just enjoy the story for the story’s sake, without looking for politically-correct points to check off?), even irrelevant to the story, unless a particular plot-point hinges on what Character A keeps in his trousers, or the contents of Character B’s shirt.  Or the desires of A to get into said B’s shirt.

It just so happens that when the characters start speaking to me, they tend to be at the bass end of the vocal register.  I don’t know why this is.  Could some of them be rewritten as women?  Sure.  They’d still be just as brave, resourceful, stubborn or foolish, but you can’t just swap gender roles like that for the sake of “equality”.

Take a bunch of male characters and introduce a couple of women into the mix.  Now, if you’ve written them even half-way credibly, they’ll behave just like real blokes would in that situation, and there’ll be awkward attempts at gallantry, stolen kisses or a sexual harassment lawsuit by the end of the week.  I haven’t got room in the narrative for all that.  It gets in the way of the story–at least, my story, which is epic fantasy; if you’re writing contemporary women’s fiction it could very well *be* the story, in which case you’re on the wrong shelf and want the next aisle over.

So *am* I secretly a bloke?  I was once asked that question, by a man, because he was surprised at how well I got into Gair’s head.  I will freely admit that I am not the girliest of girls.  I don’t wear makeup or nail polish.  I like motorbikes and rugby and tequila.  But I can assure you, having just checked down the front of my t-shirt, I am not a bloke.

Or if I am, I need to complain to the manufacturer because there seem to be some bits missing.  Specifically, the socks.

…for I have sinned.

I’ve never read George RR Martin.

Don’t ask me why, because I really couldn’t say.  I adore the title of the series “A Song of Ice and Fire”.  I’ve just never found myself motivated to pick up one of his books.  Actually, tell a lie, I did pick up a copy of  “A Game of Thrones” in Waterstone’s once but put it down again before I got to the till.

Before the fantasy establishment mob besieges Cooper Towers with pitchforks and blazing torches, ready to burn the heretic,  let me just say that I am remedying this right this instant.  Since HBO has green-lighted a mini-series based on A Game of Thrones, starring the scrummy Sean Bean, no less, my interest has been piqued.

Piqued enough to go and buy the book.  Gawd knows when I’ll find time to read it, since I’m supposed to be writing one of my own here, but I’ll try.  Really I will.  Now put those pitchforks down before someone gets hurt.

Terry Pratchett once said in an interview that you’ve got to keep an eye on your secondary characters, or they’ll take over the show.  Turn your back for five minutes and there they are, merrily rearranging the plot to suit themselves, the blighters, and generally making more work for the poor put-upon writer.

I thought I might avoid that with Trinity Moon, since I was working from a synopsis (a heretofore unheard-of event, I might add, which has proved helpful and frustrating in equal measure).  Everything’s chugging along nicely, and I come to an action scene where Gair throws a lock on Ne’er-do-well No. 1 and laying his sword across the fellow’s neck, threatens to cut his throat.

Whereupon the strangest thing happens.  Ne’er-do-well No. 1 takes a firm grip on My Hero’s family jewels and purrs, in a very feminine voice: “Not if I geld you first, Empire.”

Eh?  Where did she come from?

<scrolls through preceding paragraphs>

Nope.  No girls there.  WTF?

So I continue typing, to see where I will be taken, and suddenly she’s sitting cross-legged on the table, twirling her dagger through her fingers and eating my dates.  Gair’s dates.  Whatever.  The saucy minx.  She’s got backstory, she’s got attitude, she’s sensual and snarky and inordinately fond of knives, and she’s made herself right at home in the story without so much as a by-your-leave.

I’ve just been mugged by my own imagination.  And I didn’t feel a thing.