I’ve spoken many times of how Songs started, but never where Gair came from or why he has grey eyes. The answer is in a poem. A classic some might say; others might think it’s a bit cheesy. Certainly it’s one of the most accessible poems I was exposed to as a child, and studying English Literature to A Level means I’ve read a lot of poetry. Some of it I’ve even enjoyed.

Anyway, this poem’s been stuck in my head since I was about nine years old. You’re probably familiar with it. It tells a story and poses endless questions about who and why and where and when which I’ve spent the last thirty years trying to answer. It has an awful lot to do with why I’m a writer, so if you’re looking for someone to blame, here he is.

The Listeners by Walter De La Mare

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

‘Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:-

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Naturally I don’t want to tempt fate by pronouncing a deadline in public.  That would be, to quote Pterry, like standing on top of a hill during a thunderstorm, in copper armour, shouting “All gods are bastards!”

But let’s just say that a certain work-in-progress is reaching a conclusion.  The orchestra is tuning up, and in her dressing room the Fat Lady is performing her vocal exercises.

Stay tuned.

It’s been a fairly grim couple of months. Progress on Trinity Moon was agonisingly slow, and every few hundred words I managed was hard work. Let me rephrase that. It was sweating-bullets, squeezing-blood-from-a-stone Hard Work. I was even beginning to doubt my abilities as a writer and stressing that I would miss my deadline to deliver the book.

Every day was an effort to drag myself into the office and stare at the computer screen.  Some days it was an effort just to drag myself out of bed. It was frustrating, demoralising, depressing.

In September, I had the first of two emergency admissions to hospital. Acute pancreatitis and jaundice. I couldn’t even drink water without vomiting. I spent my third wedding anniversary holding my husband’s hand in casualty for 6 hours, and the next two days on IV fluids. This also meant having to be catheterised to measure my hydration levels. After four days, they let me go home. I could eat again, but had no interest in food. All I wanted to do was sleep.

A month later, I was back in A&E, this time with acute biliary colic, and spent another 48 hours in hospital.  At least my liver function was normal this time; I was just in pain. In the hospital, they ask you to grade your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the worst pain you’ve ever experienced. I’ve had a fractured spine, and a post-lumbar puncture headache, so I like to think my tolerance for pain is quite high, but even with 10mg of morphine in me, acute biliary colic hit a 7.

Two weeks ago, I had my gallbladder removed. The surgeon said it was “ready to come out” which I think is consultant-speak for “it was a bag of gravel ripe to cause lots more problems, so you’re better off without it”, and discharged me the following morning.

Keyhole surgery is something of a misnomer. They should call it keyholeS surgery. Four incisions, and a couple of random holes – whose precise purpose was unclear. I was a bit sore for the next few days, but as the discomfort faded I started to feel better. So much better that I could look back and see just how shitty I’d been feeling since the summer. No the wonder I wasn’t writing much, or well.

I’m still not massively interested in food, but at least now I know I can eat without worrying whether it will trigger another trip to casualty.  I’ve had enough morphine to last me a good while, thanks.

It’s a widely-held view that fantasy as a genre is one in which the writer can pretty much dispense with research. It’s all made up, so as long as you make sure there are certain natural laws by which your world functions and you stick to them, you can do what you like. It’s your sandpit. You make the rules.

Except it’s not that simple. Even in fantasy, there are some elements where a little research will prevent your reader frowning and thinking “That’s not right.” I mean, they might write to you and complain.

For example, there’s likely to be horses in the book somewhere, so it pays to know the hairy end from the end with the teeth. How to get on and off. How far you can ride one in a day.

If the blokes on the horses are knights, you’d better know your hauberk from your pauldron, and where to find the vamplate (it’s the bit which guards your hand as you grip your lance, in case you didn’t know).

So I was sitting at my desk, putting the finishing touches to the second book of The Wild Hunt series, and I had a sudden thought. An epiphany, even. One of those moments of realisation which is often—nay, almost inevitably—followed by “Oh, shit.”

What I realised was that I have spent mumblety-mumble years thinking, dreaming and writing about folk for whom a sword is a part of everyday life, and I’ve never laid hands on one. Seen a few in museums and so on, but never actually wrapped my hand round a hilt.

My imagination’s done the work up to this point. I knew not to pick it up by the pointy end, for instance, and was fairly confident I could score at least 6/10 on a naming-of-the-parts pop quiz. I also knew that they don’t weigh nearly as much as people imagine, but even three pounds is going to feel like it’s ripping your arm out of its socket after half an hour’s earnest use.

What I didn’t know, and had to rely on my imagination for, was the specifics. Which muscles does it pull on as you start to tire? Where do you get the calluses, and what does it feel like in your hand when the sweat—and worse—begins to run? What does it feel like in your hand, full stop?

So I bought one. A replica of a 15th century longsword (also called a hand-and-a-half, or a bastard sword, depending on your era of origin and local preference). Not a lightweight copy of Andúril that comes with a fancy plaque to hang on the wall, but a traditionally-made, full tang, edge-ready, functional sword. And it’s sharp.

Well, I’m not going to know what a real sword feels like in my hand unless I’m holding a real sword, am I?

Apologies for the crummy pics–it’s pouring with rain and even with the lights on I can barely see what I’m doing. Click to make them bigger.

I work myself into a right old state.  I can’t seem to focus on the solution and go round and round the problem in ever decreasing circles until my ability to write anything from a shopping list upwards  just freezes.  Copious amounts of tea sometimes helps.  Copious amounts of chocolate, too–except I’m not allowed to eat that at the minute.

So there I was this lunchtime, teetering on the precipice of a full-on hissy-fit of frustration, when my Darling Beloved texts me a cheery message to see how I’m getting on.  Thirty seconds later I’m bawling my eyes out on the phone to him, snots bubbling, voice gone all high-pitched and wobbly, the works.  The last four chapters were utter crap <sniffle> they’d have to be rewritten again <sob> I’d never get this book finished in time <honk, blurt, wipe, wipe>… You get the picture.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m a different person.  I looked again at the offending four chapters and discovered that 75% of the problems were all in my head, and fixed them in less than 500 words, total.  Suddenly I’m on a roll, and everything’s clear.  Motivations are credible, bad guys are suitably chilling, and the dialogue I’d sweated over for days is clean and crisp and rapier-sharp.  All for the price of a few Kleenex.  Hurrah!

So you see, you should never underestimate the therapeutic value of a really good blub.  Sometimes it really does make you feel better.

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!

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.

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.

Then I had to knuckle down to the serious business of getting together a synopsis for Trinity.  First draft down, just a little tweaking to do; it’s a tad longer than I’d like.

The omens are that I’ve left myself a bit of a mountain to climb in order to wrap everything up in Book 3.  Forcing myself to focus on the plotting of Trinity and what I could and could not do with the characters and timescales has thrown into sharp relief just how ambitious I’ve been here, without me even realising it.  The curse of the pantser.

Pruning will have to occur, no doubt about it, but how much?  And where?  Do I go all bonsai on its donkey and force it to fit, or do I follow my organic instincts and let the tree be free, man?  I’m not sure yet.  My brain is still full of Bollinger.  Ask me again in the morning, when my brain will no doubt be full of Nurofen.

It needs an edit, since it hasn’t had the same amount of attention that Songs has, which is what I’m doing now, and the excitement has started to build.  I’m getting that little wobbly buzz under my breastbone again, and I’m absolutely dying to get through the edit and start turning the plan into some real new chapters.

Oh, didn’t I mention?  I’ve actually got a plan for “Trinity”.  Me, the walking definition of a pantser, has A Plan.  I’ll have a synopsis next, just you wait.