Strong-hearted stories, dark & funny

54. WRITING THE CHILD CEPHALINA

7th April 2017:- I got in quite a muddle this morning about character motivation and who had said what to who, [or whom], and whether it was said strongly or plainly enough. I had to go back and trace a thread through the novel in which the main character tells his friend what his intentions areContinue Reading

53. WRITING THE CHILD CEPHALINA

April 6th 2017:- Difficult and halting work today. I filled in a few holes here and there, always a useful thing to do, but I’m being slow and hesitant in progressing the story, but I did all the research I needed about how fake séances were managed. Actually, I can’t wait to get away fromContinue Reading

52. WRITING THE CHILD CEPHALINA

April 5th 2017:- I did hardly any writing today, maybe 100 words or so because I realised that I had to go back and change a couple of details in the sections dealing with the séances the main character attends because I had over-elaborated the set up, and I only needed a spirit cabinet withContinue Reading

51. WRITING THE CHILD CEPHALINA

April 4th 2017:- I have reached chapter 21, maybe another 3 or 4 chapters will get us to the end of this story. To finish this chapter, I have to stop and research how séances were faked in the Victorian days. The first half of the chapter went pretty well, but I had to thinkContinue Reading

50. WRITING THE CHILD CEPHALINA

April 3rd 2017:- I now have 60 thousand words, so even if I only wrote another 10 thousand, it would be a novel-size manuscript. I really do feel as if I am on the home run now. I remember when I first decided that I had thought about the idea long enough, and that IContinue Reading

49. WRITING THE CHILD CEPHALINA.

April 2nd 2017:- Another good writing day, although I started off plunging into a scene which didn’t belong where I had put it, but I finished it, and then went back to the beginning of the chapter and put in the more important scene in which the main character works out a way to findContinue Reading

48. WRITING THE CHILD CEPHALINA

March 31st 2017:- Today was a good day, I wrote fluently throughout most of the day until 4pm. The writing flowed, it hadn’t been doing that for a while. I don’t know what changed, but I woke up in an odd emotional mood. Perhaps I’d dreamt something weird that I couldn’t remember, but I was fragileContinue Reading

47. WRITING THE CHILD CEPHALINA

March 30th 2017:- Today I spent a few hours working out how to make a reaction by one of the characters credible. It seemed as I wrote it that there was nothing in the background of the story which would indicate that she would be willing to consider a particular idea that comes up inContinue Reading

46. WRITING THE CHILD CEPHALINA

March 29th 2017: I have slipped behind my 1,000 words per day. It is now day 54 and I’m averaging out at 990 words. I should be able to make it up in the next chapter, which will be nineteen. Today’s work was pretty hard, as I feel totally lacking in energy. I struggled, butContinue Reading

45 WRITING THE CHILD CEPHALINA

March 23rd 2017: What a battle today’s writing was. Something wasn’t quite working with the logic and I had to go back a couple of chapters and read out aloud, and I realised that I had missed out how my main character would have felt when he saw the ghostly child at the séance, andContinue Reading

Writer Rebecca Lloyd