Works in Progress

“The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.” ― Philip Roth

Often I have too many ideas about what to write and don’t know what to do with them. Scribbled thoughts abound in multiple notebooks, of which I have at least one per jacket or coat plus some spares to make sure there’s always one within reach. Perhaps there is a word for anxiety caused by inadequate provision of notebooks…?

Often, these leakages from my brain come to nothing; at other times they evolve into lengthy novels, like the tiny seed of the giant sequoia growing into a full-grown tree.

Before I embarked on a full-time Creative Writing Degree with the University of the Highlands and Islands in September 2019, I began writing a novel for older teenagers. Now, over three and a half years later, I have only just finished the first draft. This is partly due to the academic workload and partly because of the ongoing commitments to my wooden jewellery business, smallholding and family.

With only a few weeks left before my course finishes, I have every intention of finishing this novel as soon as I am able (along with multiple other postponed projects!). I am keeping the title a closely guarded secret. It is the alter-identity of the main character and I don’t want anyone to steal it – I think Marvel would like it as a new superhero’s name! Also, if it gets made into a film (ever hopeful – but I see it as a movie when I write), then I want to buy the domain names before anyone else.

Over the course of my degree, I have written the beginning of two other novels, generated by prompts as part of exercises set in modules I’ve enrolled on. One is a historical novel, working title The Last Stone, set in the north of Scotland during the period when the Picts were becoming Christianised. It’s an adventure story told from the point of view of a female stone carver and her teenage granddaughter who leave their community in Portmahomack to seek out a new home.

The other is a work of science fiction, working title Terra Firma, a mystery set two hundred years in the future. The protagonist, a former soldier suffering from unresolved grief and PTSD, is sent on a mission to help negotiate the evacuation of a planet, but she discovers a conspiracy of government corruption and corporate greed that causes her to question her loyalties and face her inner demons before she can decide on a course of action.

In the archive, I also have half the first draft of a mystery-cum-romance called The Jacket, the Juggler and All That Jazz, which I’d quite like to finish one day.

Using all of my willpower and determination, I shall resist the urge to work on them all at once or jump from one to the other. First, I will get the teenage novel completed to the final draft, then I will just see how I feel about which one to tackle next.

I would say “Watch this space”, but if you did so you would turn to stone or starve to death before that cliché brought any satisfaction, so instead I will ask you to look out and tune in for future instalments of my writerly communiqués: all will be revealed! Eventually…