Seat of the Pants + Writing Fiction

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https://bookswelove.net/waldron-juliet/

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That's what it is these days, pretty much, seat of the pants. Fortunately, I'm no longer an office worker, where this tendency is job-ender! Retired, however, I've become increasingly this way--culminating in tonight, wherein I crown myself Princess of Procrastination. 

My husband seems to believe that I have a record with put-off-till-tomorrow syndrome. He says he remembers college, and me sitting up half the night, bent over a textbook, performing a last minute stuffing on facts. But---shhhhh--I remember him breaking open his Statistics book the night before the final...

What happens when you yourself, a writer of books and proud, self-declared "Seat of Your Pants Plotter" find that inspiration has failed you? The seat of those pants has worn through, or something. 

I'm accustomed to being led (grabbed by the throat) by my characters, who are usually chatty and full of stories about themselves and their friends and relations, but what if they wander off and fall down a rabbit hole?

Far too many have been doing this to me lately. They start off with a conversation which really seems to be going somewhere, but suddenly, as if someone filled their 18th Century teacups with many, many drops of Laudanum, they fall back senseless upon the appliqued cushions of the settee, or, more likely, just vanish down a dark hallway of the rambling manor which belongs to their uncle, the sixteenth Earl of Whatever, and never return.

Afterward, no matter how often I attempt to recontact them--offering them dinner parties, glorious, thundering steeplechases, or handsome sweethearts, late night trysts in the Earl's topiary gardens or witty dialogue in Regency Ballrooms, they refuse to come out and share their stories with me.

This has been happening for the last year or so. It's annoying, really, when all the chatter just stops, because up till now I've been able to rely on my characters supplying entire story lines. Or to put it another way, the thread I've been following in the labyrinth breaks and there I am, left alone in the dark. 

I can't lay this at the paws of the two cats who vie for which one can jump the most frequently on my forearms while I am attempting to create. 

(Lizzie, who really knew how to cuddle on my forearms in such a way that I could still type.) 

Tony & Willeford show no interest in mastering Lizzie's talent. Willeford assumes the meatloaf position directly in front of the keyboard. Tony faces the monitor and refuses to be turned, so his legs keep straying onto the keyboard resulting in stuff like ,,,,hkkkjhkhgkkkkkkkkgkhhh;;;;;;;;;;

Schuyler in full meatloaf

But this cat-blaming is a deflection, a writer's cop-out. 

Facts are: I've gotta get this heroine I've been imagining back to work.  Perhaps a long absent relative from the East India Company--or maybe from the equally exotic, violent world of plantation Jamaica--needs to show up, in order stir the pot, and pique my young character's interest. I'll even go back to the drawing board of a re-write if that's what it takes to get the seat sewn on my plotting pants again.

Fellow fiction writers: Please be so good as to let me know if you have any tricks up your sleeves. (Pretty please?)

~Juliet Waldron


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Help from the little people...by Sheila Claydon

Books We Love Author Page

So here I am in Australia again, visiting family. We've spent so much time in Sydney over the past few years, and have so many Australian friends, that it's beginning to feel a bit like home. Visiting, socialising and taking care of our little granddaughter does interfere with the writing of course, but not as much as you might think. 

Take 'Remembering Rose,' Book 1 of Mapleby Memories. I started that while I was helping to care for my then 6 month old granddaughter, and finished it when I returned home. It's a time travel romance but guess who one of the main characters is? Yes, a small baby! It wasn't intentional, nor is the fact that  Book 2 (so far only half written) features that same baby starting school, something very integral to the plot. And what did I do today that might influence how I write about that? Well I took my now 3 year old granddaughter to breakfast at her daycare nursery to celebrate Mother's Day (Grannies and other women special to the children always included) and sat with what seemed like a hundred tinies on mini chairs at a mini table - so watch out for something similar down the line in one of my books, maybe Book 2!

Why do we write what we write. Well for me the idea for a book is usually prompted by a chance remark or a newspaper article, or even by noticing someone or something when I'm out and about. How I weave that into a story is an entirely different matter however, and my eldest granddaughter (now old enough to read all my books and be my number one fan) tells me that she can recognise herself and her sister in some of the earlier ones.  Well not them exactly, but their behaviours and comforters. She's absolutely right and yet none of it was intentional. 

It is true that whatever and wherever the setting for a story, we still include what we know and experience, although to allay any suspicions my husband might have if he reads this (unlikely) I hasten to add that the romance is all imaginary:) No experience there at all!!!!

Several of my other books feature children, including 'Empty Hearts' which will be published later this year. The only difference is that this one is a vintage, written and first published in the eighties, so the little boy in it must have been based on my own children!!! Sorry about that guys, but a writer does what she has to do:)

While I am editing that and finishing Book 2 of Mapleby Memories, there is always 'Double Fault' if you like family stories. That also has children at its centre, and how!!!

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Check out my books on the Books We Love website or visit me at https://www.facebook.com/SheilaClaydon.author/