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| Clare Revell |
Hello, Seriously Write friends! It's Marianne here, passing the Monday Encouragement torch this month to the wonderful and gifted Clare Revell. Clare is an author I love to read, and an author I love even more as a person. Although she lives clear 'across the pond' I've gotten to meet her face-to-face, and she's simply awesome. Enjoy her encouragement, won't you??
Clare...take it away!! .........
Write a book they said. It’ll be easy they said.
Well, maybe
for them, but it can be jolly hard work. Especially when the muse kicks in at
3am on a Sunday morning and that’s the one day I refuse to do anything writing
related at all. I know some authors do, but I don’t. I used to, but never sold
a single book. Then I stopped and all of sudden things started happening. I
can’t not write. The characters voices in my head simply get louder and
complain if I don’t. It’s bad enough on a Monday morning, having not written
over the weekend.
So writing isn’t easy, but it can be fun. Especially when the
story really gets into its stride. To start with things are slow going, setting
the plot up, trying to find the best opening line, trying not to info dump even
though it could be important stuff the reader needs to know. Then the first
plot twist happens and things pick up speed, until you’re over the mid part of
the book and speeding towards the end.
That’s where I currently am with plotting the final book in my
new series. Five chapters written but I’m up to chapter sixteen with the
planning. It’s got to tie up all four books, catch the killer, and give the two
main characters separate happy endings (as this one isn’t romance.)
The trick I’ve discovered is to write so much a day. Some days
I reach my target of 1666 words – yes, I stick to the nanowrimo target — and
some days I barely manage 500. Doesn’t matter. Just get those words down. They
may be rubbish. Again it doesn’t matter. That’s what editing and critique partners
are for. The aim is just to get those
words down.
And I don’t write straight onto the computer. I hand-write everything first. The advantage of this is I can write anywhere — hospital waiting rooms, my house, my parents’ house, bedroom, kitchen whilst cooking dinner, curled up on the sofa, and so on. The disadvantage is I then have to type it all up — the plus side is that typing up is actually the second draft, so no one ever sees the first draft.
So, just do it. Don’t say you can’t, because if I can, anyone
can.
~~~~~
Archaeologist Dr. Lou Fitzgerald is used to unexpected
happenings, and they don't usually faze her. After surviving a childhood
disability, and dealing with an unfair boss, Lou has learned the art of rolling
with the punches. But when she arrives at Dark Lake, what was supposed to be a
simple archaeological dig is beyond even her wildest imaginations.
Land owner Evan Close has his own reasons for keeping the
secrets of Dark Lake, and this attractive interloper is a menace. Her precious
dig threatens to bring his house of cards tumbling down around him, and he
feels helpless to stop it.
It soon becomes apparent there are dark forces at work, and
Lou's simple assignment turns into a mystery. Solving that mystery comes with a
steep price.
~~~~~
Clare is a British author. She lives in a small town just
outside Reading, England with her husband, whom she married in 1992, their
three children, and unfriendly mini-panther, aka Tilly the black cat. They have
recently been joined by Hedwig and Sirius the guinea pigs. Clare is half
English and half Welsh, which makes watching rugby interesting at times as it
doesn’t matter who wins. Her books are based in the UK, with a couple of
exceptions, thus, although the spelling may be American in some of them, the
books contain British language and terminology and the more recent ones are
written in UK English.
