Grayson Perry was the guest. At one point he was talking about how success often 'constipates' him, because he can feel everyone looking over his shoulder. The host asked him what he did for 'prune juice', and Perry said he needs to relax, basically; so he drinks a few beers, watches The X Factor and doodles. On the same programme, they had a carpenter talking about his love of using a hand plane. He said that when all your tools are sharp, the work is easy, the plane seems to fly through the wood. So, I don't know, maybe a couple of clues there . . . relax more, whatever that means for you, and, um, keep your keyboard well oiled.

I adore Grayson Perry. I went to a completely fascinating event about creativity, with Richard Sennet, Grayson Perry, Mark Bostridge (who of course is a writer as well as a tenor) and Marina Warner, and blogged about it here:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2008/07/just-for-the-sake-of-it.html

and then here:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2009/04/ugly-ducklings-and-wonky-ducks.html

about this sort of thing

when all your tools are sharp, the work is easy, the plane seems to fly through the wood. So, I don't know, maybe a couple of clues there . . . relax more,

Good read, Emma. Have you seen Grayson P's tapestries? I only managed to catch one of the programmes on TV and was overwhelmed.

Looks like we ALL love Grayson Perry.

Those tapestries were fab.

I'm a big fan of Grayson Perry, too. However, one scene I found interesting in the Chanel 4 films was when he accepted the Turner Prize in his transvestite outfit. He made the point to the audience that this was probably the first time this had happened. But while he was talking to the crowd, he kept scratching both arms with the opposite hand. Okay, that could have been nerves. But to me he looked a lot more relaxed when dressed just in T-shirt and jacket. On the other hand, maybe he needs the tension/nerves of not being relaxed, at times, to get creative.

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He's got a great laugh, too. On Saturday Live at one point, they were reading out listeners' emails. And the one that got Perry rattling off a huge, throaty laugh was: "My parents called me Zrod. I thought I was special; now I'm a postman."

Yes he has, hasn't he!

My friend's parents called him Dante. He became a removals man.

Toast,
You actually finished a first draft? I am in awe - no I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just the queen of not finishing anything, ever.

At least you have a basic idea of what is going to happen. I would so love to be at that stage with my WIP, but at present all I have is a pile of spaghetti.

Thanks, Ada - I actually finished about 95% of my first draft and was about to write the big climactic scene and a couple of winding-up scenes when I realised that I'd stuffed it up six ways from Xmas from the get-go. Oh well!

Since then, I've managed to get my two protags properly up and running in my head and I'm now working on getting the plot completely sorted before I start writing again.

Good luck with the spaghetti - at least it's something to work on! You might be able to sort it out with an edit. I only took such a drastic step because I had learned such a lot in doing the first draft that by the end of it, I'd learned enough to know that I'd have an infinitely better book if I just started again.

I do think this sounds as if you are making terrific progress. My problem is that if I don't know exactly what is going to happen, when, in my story, I am paralysed from writing another word.

I think it stems from my degree subject (politics) where if you don't know exactly what you are going to say, before you say it, your essay will fail spectacularly. It just won't logically hold together. Or maybe I'm just an obsessive control freak?

Not that I'm an expert, but it seems to me that as you read your bits of nonsensical plot, it might be useful to write down the questions they pose, like "Why is he doing that, there? What is she talking about? How did that get there?" etc.

Anyway, the trick is to find the questions and then find answers to those questions that work. That's the bit I frequently get stuck on. It's also kind of fun, in a masochistic sort of way.

Anyway, the trick is to find the questions and then find answers to those questions that work. That's the bit I frequently get stuck on. It's also kind of fun, in a masochistic sort of way.

That's largely the approach I've taken - I made a big list of things that were causing problems in the first draft and I'm making sure they're all dealt with in the plot for the second.

I think questions can be immensely helpful - it's Richard Sennett's thing about the key to craftsmanship being problem solving: once you've worked out what it is that you don't yet know, you're a long way towards being able to make it all work. The two questions I most often ask myself are: "Where do I need to be by the end of this scene?" and "What does she want/need? (and are they the same or not?)".

AdaB, thinking about your question of plotting from the other thread, I think it can clarify things to separate out the writing from the imagining. A lot of creative-writing practice assumes that the writing is part of the process of finding out what the story is - what we're trying to say - what these places and these people are like.

And it's true, of course. Like everyone else on WW, I've got things in my work which just, literally, came into my head as I was writing the scene, and turned out to be hugely important in terms of theme or plot or character. If you ever use freewriting do develop such things - or just as a keeping-the-engine-oiled daily (yearly?) practice, you'll know what I mean.

But it's horribly easy, if you don't know where you're trying to get to by the end of this scene, as part of where you're trying to get to by the end of the story, to write reams of well-imagined, well-written stuff which reads perfectly well, and does sod all to advance the story with the sort of energy which is needed to keep the reader reading.

On the other hand, it's asking an awful lot of your creative imagination to simultaneously do so many different, multiple, high-resolution kinds of imagining: the big moves of the plot (where you're trying to get to), the finer details of who's doing what and who knows what at this stage of the story, and the close-up details of choreography, character-in-action, sensory evocation, dialogue, voice, etc. etc...

(I blogged about this here, which might be interesting, not because you're trying to write with ruthless efficiency, but because it casts an interesting light on this separating-out of the imaginative process, and the writing-the-actual-words-to-tell-the-story process: http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2011/12/dreaming-the-map-the-efficiency-of-magic.html )

A propos finding yourself needing to wedge Scene D in between B and C, I think that's a function of trying to write your first novel, frankly: it's a huge, huge learning curve, and in the long term even every writer who reckons they've more-or-less worked out how it suits them to work, has a different way of coping.

Don't forget that realising that you need Scene D doesn't mean you have to drop everything and write it. You might just need to make a note with whatever's occurred to you so far: "Scene needed here: she sees a sweetshop and gets her idea for her new business, and sees his reflection in the window talking to a glamorous woman who she assumes (wrongly) is his wife"

You might find this other post of mine, about one way of doing the imagining-on-paper which is planning a novel, useful:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2010/05/help-yourself.html

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Meant to say, thanks for raising the question of planning, Ada, as I've been meaning to tweak that post on planning, and hadn't got round to it, and now I have.