Sunday 2 June 2013

And So It Begins

I started a new story today, with the new Laura Marling album on the stereo and the cat sleepily watching me from his chair.

It's actually based an idea I've tried to write before and failed - Other People's Ghosts is my take on the poltergeist theme, and especially the idea that these 'noisy spirits' are in fact manifestations of peoples' inner turmoil and stress. But the first version wasn't good enough to make the cut for The Other Room and nor have I ever shown it to anyone. It plot was just too obvious, the theme too unfocussed, and the whole thing too, well, crap.

It's always been a sore point that I've never done the idea justice, and now I've got some emotional detachment from the first version and the hours I poured into it, I'm ready to go back and fillet out what's useful from it, and discard the rest. I'm not rewriting the old version, but starting something fresh with the same basic idea. And I think one of the faults of the original version was it was too short - that this story needs to be at least novella length for it to work.

Now's a good time for me to be stretching myself and writing someone of longer length - I've probably got a book's worth of short stories doing the rounds with various magazines, so by the time Falling Over is out and everyone is sick of me banging on about it* a third collection should be shaping up nicely. So that gives me some time to work on Other People's Ghosts and see if I can make it work this time, and to see if it really does want to grow up to be a novella.

Oh, and the new Laura Marling album? Excellent.



* okay, maybe not quite that quick

2 comments:

Srimoni said...

Ohhhh.... I like the sound of that plot line.. :-) I could imagine the many layers that you could have and the many ways to interpret it.. :D (is it obvious that that's the sorta thing I enjoy reading.. :D) Gluck with its production.. Ull have to give us a nudge when it's ready to be read! :-)

James Everington said...

Will do!