Barn Dance: 10/22/15

If Cleo thought she had done a good morning's work, at least in theory, she was about to think otherwise. The idea of Shirley Temple actually being on both sides of the fence was Gary's.

Memo

This is the third Upper Grumpsfield novel to undergo (in the order of writing the novels) a rewrite! A complete list in chronological order can be found here.

Talking about confusion (see this note), the plot of this book is incredibly complicated and needs a lot of clarification. I am thinking about including a précis of each chapter, but I have not made a final decision on that, so it does not appear in this edition! I may add it later - maybe just as a list of crimes and investigation progress thereon!

I gave myself the task of rewriting where necessary partly because it's necessary to review and stay critical about what one's writing, even if it is mainly self-entertainment, and partly because I need to read all the novels before getting on with the next one, which I have started, but is still mainly at the planning stage!

The actual plots in the older books are not undergoing change because I thought they were good ideas at the time and the books were written on that basis, but I have cleared up some confusion and am developing the budding romance of two of my characters. I notice that even in the first book I did go in that direction originally but dropped the idea until about book 6. I made entries during the last editing of the books, but I find some of that forced, so I am improving on that, I hope!

These novels are not meant to be autobiographical. That may be the reason I kill off Mrs Finch in this book, though 25 years after inventing the character of Miss Price I have long passed the age at which she was in those days. Interestingly, my character is probably more like hers than it was then, maybe because I know what it feels like to be over seventy and not want to be on the scrapheap! The dilemma of book 10 is that Miss Price should be pensioned off, but that might pension me off as well!!!!!

If at first...

I've been writing ever since I learnt how to - and making up stories. My best childhood one was keeping up a pretence of being an accomplished ice-skater for years. It fooled my classmates. I think that's when I first realized that people (including me) believe what they want to believe.

I write for pleasure, amusement, to pass the time, and to keep in touch with my native language (English) in a country (Germany) where I speak German nearly all the time.

Of course, it would be nice to sell books, make a mint, and buy a castle on the Cornish coast. But my castles are in the air and will probably stay there.

My 'castle' of novels is awash with characters who have accompanied me for many years. The first book was a short story reader that actually found a publisher (but is now out of print). The first novel got to 145 000 words before I finally found a way of ending it. The second was written for the 'nanowrimo' organization. I later rewrote it and it isn't too bad.

This book is another tussle with self-indulgence!

To be truthful, I could not decide how to finish it until very recently. I made copious notes before starting and then found I was killing off one of the suspects I had painstakingly primed for the job. How do you get round that without a bit of deus ex macchina?

The difference between deus ex macchina on the opera stage (a splendid mechanism that lets operas have a happy ending) and getting it into a book is that you can't. You have to build up your surprise gradually! In a book 200 pages long you can't just introduce your killer on page 199. Or can you?

Well, you'll have to wait till the end of the month to find out.

Barn Dance

Thursday 22 October 2015

Episode 17 - Shirley Temple