Today, in Caithness, the sun is shining and the air is clear. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to anyone reading this blog that, certain weathers and certain times of the year ignite certain music in me. And, on late winter days which are filled with sunshine, I am usually to be found singing the songs of The Spinners . Inevitably, I start humming different ones of their songs (and of course adapting them to be about Orlando and Jess) as I go around doing different things. But I remember almost all the words to them. I haven't heard a lot of them in years, but they are all there, rooted in my memory. It is truly fascinating to think about how these songs have passed through history. They are part of my own nostalgia, which is why crisp sunny mornings make me incapable of ignoring the temptation to sing them, but they are part of something much bigger. There are songs amongst them which are a newer step in the folk music movement. Songs like Silver in the Stubble are amongs...
I started writing my first book when I was still at school. It wasn't historical fiction, it was high fantasy, and it was the first of ten books, under the collective title The Watcher's Heir. I knew from the word go that it was going to have this number of books, although I didn't really work out exactly what would happen in each one. Twenty-five years on and the books are still not finished, although I now only have a couple more to go! Every Christmas I settle down and manage to write a chapter or two more, and every New Year it is my resolution to finish them. I suspect this will go on for a few years more.
In the passage of time since then, I've written more than a dozen books. I can't quite pinpoint what it is which keeps obstructing the conclusion of these books. It could be that I am not the same person I was 25 years ago (who is?!), and so the voice which began the books is almost unrecognisable. It could be that I have now passed the age almost all of my characters are at. Or it could be something as simple as the planning - was there too little or too much?
I love planning stories. An incorporation of a twist or unexpected surprise is something I try to give to all my readers. Whether it is the reliable mistaken identity, or that absolute cracker at the end of The Year We Lived, I try to find something which I hope will set a lasting impression in the minds and hearts of everyone who shares in my adventures. But this makes writing a series quite tricky. Do I need to include a twist in each book separately? Or is one big twist in the series sufficient?
So here are a few thoughts about writing a series, what I've found works compared to things I've struggled with...
As with many writers, I find it difficult to let go of my characters. When I wrote Day's Dying Glory, I was already planning ahead to giving these characters another outing. In fact, I've now written five books with the Tenterchilt family, and am on with a sixth. Every time, I tell myself that it will be the last one, and now there are no members left who will have been in every book, it has become harder to write. Each of these books are entirely stand alone, although there is a significant "extra level" for readers who are familiar which the growing family as they go on.
Then there are those books which were born to be in a series, like Caledon. I knew when I began writing this that there would be six books, each leading up to one very big and very significant event in Scottish history. You'd think that, since I had this in mind, writing the books would be a doddle - far from it! Sharing Book One with the world (at which point I'd already written Book Two) slowed down the writing of the rest. Now, I'm in the process of writing Book Five, but it's taken me more than a decade to get here.
It's only now I've realised that writing a series is effectively an entirely different skill to writing a standalone book. Now, I would not be inclined to begin sharing a series unless I had written at least a first draft of each of the books. Planning, I've proved to myself, is not enough. I have a high fantasy trilogy ready to go through edits and - since it is now a complete set of books - I'm going to be looking for a home for it in the not-too-distant future.
In the meantime, I've dropped my idea for an historical series I began writing in favour of one absolutely packed book. Will it still spill into a series as my Tenterchilt books did? Most likely. But it will be a lot less stressful to have the choice!
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