My Writing: From Cinderella to NaNoWriMo to Murder Mystery

 

The first book I ever wrote was about twenty-five A4 pages long. It was originally a short story about a girl called Helena, who was seven (my age at the time), who lived on an island called Grandsville in Cornwall, whose family owned a farm, and who had two brothers and five sisters. Her father was never in any of it, and her mother's role was to make tasty snacks for her daughter to eat as she roamed around the island with her best friends, Emily, Anne and Edith.

Helena D'Grandsville (didn't I mention...her family owned the island) had various adventures over the next few years. Her horrible snooty cousin Janet came to stay, flounced all over the farm in her white lace dresses and silk stockings, had a tantrum because her white silk slippers got muddy, fell off a cliff, was rescued by Helena, and left the island a changed girl. Helena and Emily had an adventure that was a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings (complete with Black Riders, a wizard and a magic object, only it was a pendant); they never reached the end of it, but are still wandering around lost on a misty moor. When I was about ten, I felt that I had rather outgrown it, and finished the saga by the island being hit by fire, hail, and a tsunami, and Helena and her diminished family lived in the charred remains of the once-beautiful pine forest behind the blackened ruins of the farmhouse.

The next few years were spent in writing various Cinderella rewrites, set in a wartime Britain that was not affected by the war at all. None of these were ever completed. 

Then I tried my hand at short stories, and I was much more successful with these (the length was well adapted to my minimal sticking-power). I had read a lot of murder mystery stories by that time, and I wrote one of my own called Never a Bride, which had an...original plot. The main character and her friend the police inspector (who might have been going to marry her at the end...I was never sure) investigated a series of murders of the grooms of her three best friends; each died just before his wedding. It was far too long, was pretty cliche, and had a highly improbable ending (with that thing I hate in a mystery story - withheld information). However, it did mark the transition in my writing from little family stories to (slightly!) more original plots.

I wrote various things over the next few years. A short pastiche of the Little House on the Prairie television show. Another short story, a murder mystery. A couple of family stories. I never finished anything until the next long(ish) book I wrote.

This time, it was a Cinderella rewrite, set in the Georgian era. The main character, Elizabeth Marlsdon, was the Cinderella figure. The man she married was not a prince, but a rather awkward but rather sweet doctor. This ending suited none of my readers, but I was happy with it. I finished it, typed it out, completely rewrote it again, and set it aside for the summer. Over the next year or so, I tried to write sequels, but failed to finish any of them.

I dug out the completed first draft eighteen months later. I could see all of its faults (well, most of them. I couldn't see that the hero was cringy and inept). I rewrote it once over the next six months. I rewrote it again. I laid it aside for a long time.

Life happened, and I got caught up in my other hobbies and interests and everything else. I then heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and was given their official book. I decided to give it a go.

It's unlikely I'll repeat the experience. Forcing myself to write several thousand words a day meant that two-thirds of the novel is pretty boring and badly written. Though the plot is fairly original, the main character is, in the words of my sister, "inept and a bit weird"...and the man she marries is a Complete Creep by accident. I had tried something completely new, though, and worked out what I basically wanted the story to look like, even though it needed a lot of editing.

When I came back to it much later I saw that it was true...everyone had been telling me that Raymond (the Complete Creep) was ghastly. I did not believe them at first and stuck up for him, only to discover that they were right. He is completely awful. My descriptions are weird, too, and every page is liberally sprinkled with extensive paragraphs describing the heroine's wardrobe, hair, shoes, the sound her shoes make on the floor, accessories, books, pens, ornaments, room and garden. Everyone she meets is treated to the same level of description. Some of the stuff I wrote makes me physically cringe...if I was brave enough, I would share some on here, but it is truly (and entirely accidentally) terrible.

   

The Cinderella retelling kept calling me back. Finally I began to overhaul it. I knew the story so well that I did not need to use any former draft, which was actually beneficial. I also knew the characters like the back of my hand, and had their character arcs and psychology worked out as well - maybe five complete drafts is the way to produce a good draft! 

And that's where I am today, nearly three-quarters of the way through it. My working title (of many years' standing) is The Rose and Lily. I may well share some snippets on this blog - perhaps when I've rewritten it yet again! 

How about you? Do you like writing? If so, what sort of thing do you like to write and how much do you do it?