Through the looking glass.

This week I have made a fair bit of progress with Project Pearl and have been in my writing zone. I have adjust my working pattern to a 9 day fortnight to give myself a day to write and do bookish things. I had the first of those this week and it was lovely. My husband was in the office and the kids were at school so I had 6 blissful hours for just myself and my cats. I had planned a trip to my favourite local bookshop to spend an hour editing in the cafe but the weather was awful and I didn’t leave the house.

This blog I thought I would share a little bit about Project Pearl and the progress so far. I am aiming to write around 75000 words in the first draft and am now around 10% of the way there. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot of words for 2 months of work. Let me explain. I invested a lot of time in developing my characters and then in world-building. I am already very glad that I did. My central characters feel more substantial than they have in my short stories and I am finding it easier to write their reactions and responses because I feel as though I know them. The outline is also proving helpful because I know where I am aiming to be at each point in the narratives.

I am still finding it difficult to give a succinct overview of what my novel is about when people ask me. I think that is because the ideas are still settling and I find that speaking it out loud to somebody else helps me process. I speak to think. This is probably the opportune time to apologise to my lovely friends and family who are subjected to this on a regular basis and are going to be bored to tears by the time I’m done. At least I am able to confidently say that the genre is historical fiction.

Writing in two timelines is really interesting and I am enjoying writing the 1700s narrative. That was such an interesting time in the history of Scotland and one of really rapid change. I suppose that is, in essence, what my novel is exploring. How people responded to these shifts when they had no control at all over the events. I have been reflecting on the parallels between the 1700s and what is happening around the world right now. It seems humanity has not moved on as much as we thing we have in the last 300 years.

I was talking to a fellow writer about characters this week too. Wondering if I see myself or other people I know in any of my main characters. That is an interesting question. My main characters are all women and there are aspects of each of them that do resonate with me. As the story goes on I suppose that might change. Or perhaps it won’t. Perhaps it won’t be the most flattering aspects of myself I see reflected through the looking glass. I knew writing would be a way to express myself, to let something inside out but I hadn’t considered that it would also be such a steep learning curve about myself.

Image Credit @Chriscgm