No one died of a dusty house, right?
On Wednesday, I completed the first draft of my latest novel – working title Redemption Song. It’s a story of guilt, love and forgiveness – or Buildings, Bats and Love – set in a remote seaside town in Wales. It’s fair to say that for months my house has been absolutely rammy and I should be awarded an A star in slovenliness. But as I said in the sub-title: no one ever died of a grubby house. And in mitigation I was immersed in my characters’ worlds.
Now that I have to stay away from the manuscript for at least a couple of weeks (oh how my fingers itch for the keyboard) my house is spotless, mounds of paperwork have been filed, the lawns have been mowed and I even baked a cake with Ginger2 on Saturday – with disastrous results. Nigella Lawson, I’m not.
All this cleaning is fine preparation because soon enough, though not soon enough for me, I’ll be tidying up messy areas of the novel. I might rearrange the furniture in some scenes, repaint others, polish certain characters, bin others, or even go out shopping for a new look for one, to give the character a little more va-va-voom. I do love this process because, when I’m lucky, a kind of alchemy occurs: the base metal of a story is transformed into narrative gold, though I’ll settle for a second draft of silver because after draft two comes draft three …
Laura Wilkinson 