Driving in the dark by Annie Try

It’s 10.15 pm and I’ve just driven back from a meeting in church. My church is 15 miles from home, I have stayed on the main roads but bumped over some potholes that need filling, been blinded by oncoming full-beam headlights, overtaken by faster cars, held up by roadworks and had some stretches where driving has been along straight roads at a reasonably fast pace with my lights on full-beam and I have felt totally in control. I never get that feeling when I am going somewhere new because I am desperately trying to avoid losing my way.

My journey is much like my first drafts of a novel. I am not a person who carefully plans the plot line so I feel my way. Sometimes when I start to write I have a rough idea of where I’m going, but more often I begin with only the vaguest of thoughts and a great deal of prayer. I have no knowledge of where the story is going and do not know the route I will take. I trust in God. It’s hazardous, but exciting.

I write sporadically when I have time and/or energy. Because it is so irregular I have tried to carve out some dedicated writing slots. During term time I write on the train when I make my 90 minute once-weekly trip into London and often squeeze in some writing time in the British Library. But I do not necessarily spend that time on my WiP. I might be writing an article, preparing a talk, writing a document for church or perhaps a blog. Therefore, my writing journey with the novel is full of interruptions and holes in the narrative. 

All would be lost without some good strong characters, which I do expect to have before I start. The joy of having realistic all-round characters is that they begin to dictate the story themselves. They carve out their own path (road?) and those vague ideas begin to become grounded. The way forward appears as if in the beam of the headlights and while the distractions, diversions and interruptions happen, they do not stop the triumphant reaching of the destination - the end of the first draft.

And then we come to major roadworks. Writing without a plan, fitting it into an already busy life, leaving it, then rushing it, even surging ahead all lead to a very bumpy narrative which needs a great deal of fixing. 

I praise God that I love editing - finding those pot holes and filling them, shaping the story, cutting out the messy bits, rewriting and making the novel smooth and easy to read.

Only when I have completed that, do I reach the final destination - a completed manuscript.

Let me experience

Your faithful love in the morning,

for I trust in You.

Reveal to me the way I should go

because I long for You.

Psalm 143:8 (HBSC)