I sometimes make the mistake of supposing other people think about and understand the world in the same way as me…
But, of course, most people don’t; most people don’t write novels, they read them, or increasingly these days listen to them as audiobooks. I recently tried to listen to an Arthur C. Clarke audiobook online, 2001: A Space Odyssey, as it happens. I lasted one chapter because the process is so slow! I can read the story so much more quickly than the voice droning on through the speaker is able to tell it, plus you have the freedom and time to insert your own thoughts and mental impressions (i.e. create the world of the novel in your head) rather than having to conform to the narrator’s pace. Needless to say I will not be investing in any audiobooks in the near future.
Another thing most people don’t do is write songs, or play musical instruments with a reasonable degree of proficiency. Since I didn’t learn myself until I was in my early twenties I can still remember (as an adult) being an outsider as far as music is concerned; not understanding how it’s put together, not being able to perform it, or create original music. But that now seems like a far off place…
Of course, most people have other concerns: raising children, placating spouses or partners, working for other people, while I have none of these things. I sometimes feel like a monk in some draughty monastery on the Northumbrian coast, sometime in the Dark Ages, working away at my equivalent of an illuminated manuscript. Except that the world is right outside my front window, not many leagues away, and (hopefully) Viking raiders aren’t making their way stealthily up a nearby river.
Since I succumbed and started writing volume seven of Lights in the sky, I’ve been making good progress and I’m now working on chapter four. I’m in that delicious phase, when the whole thing is in front of you and you can start to grasp the full extent of the territory that the novel will occupy (albeit, dimly at times), but you still have to go out and explore and traverse that territory.
The number of characters appears to be increasingly exponentially; some will be familiar, having featured in other novels in the series (usually at different points in their lives), others are invented specifically for this particular volume. I have a feeling that this book will be the longest yet, and once more I’m wondering how I’m going to be able to keep to my convention of twenty two chapters.
But it feels cosy and safe in my fictional world; whereas the world outside seems to be getting more and more hostile. My little suburban monastery is pleasant place to live at the moment, but the Barbarians are massing in the distance, and may be just over the next hill…
The Author October 2019