Monday, January 05, 2009

Stuffing Jamie in a Sack with Buddha

Plotting.

I'm still plotting Jimmy Coates: 8.

That doesn't mean I don't know what's going to happen in the story. I've known since I started the series how I wanted things to end up for all of the characters. I've also known for ages how several of the key sequences would shape up. So now I'm at the trickiest stage of trying to work out how all of that fits together and how I'm going to make it make sense. Not just make sense, but be exciting, amazing, exhilerating, surprising and satisfying.

It's like I've got load of differently shape ornaments and toys and I have to fit them all into a single, sleek, silk sack which isn't quite big enough. And it has to look like I haven't just stuffed everything in, but it's meant to be exactly how it is.

At the moment I'm still sack-stuffing.

It sounds like it should be frustrating, but actually it's quite rewarding, because every hour of deep thought brings me a little closer to the ultimate solution. (I nearly called it the 'final solution' just then, which would have brought this blog up very high in the wrong kind of google searches. If you don't know why then you haven't done GCSE History yet. Or the equivalent in your home nation.)

So the only problem is devoting myself to many many hours of deep thought. Turns out that's quite hard. It always is. But as Buddha used to say, if it isn't hard it probably isn't worth doing.

Was it Buddha, or was it Jamie Oliver? It's hard to tell sometimes.

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