After 10 days of cycling and camping in Europe (lord I’m so British these days - I mean on the Continent), I’ve managed to come back to daily life with more spark than usual. ‘Just pedalling’ cleared all the mush out of my brain. Our longest day was 126km (although the 90km of hills was more exhausting), achieving a comfortable rhythm and my first new ideas for months.
Rather unexpectedly, I’ve returned to my first love - the book of many titles aka the story of my now five-year-old heroine Lizzy (with a Y). Somehow I just can’t let this book die, despite some of my newer work being of higher quality. The hero is so devastating I just can’t give him up. I’m still so very conscious that the setting will put a lot of publishers off, but I know the potential for readers is there. And so I’m editing again, but my ideas are comfortably slotting into place and I’m taking a few risks (not my forte).
My most recent experimentation has involved the very difficult to tap resource Twitter. It’s an amazing source of information and inspiration. I now follow a very odd list of people and organisations. @EnglishHeritage and @NationalTheatre of course make perfect sense, but they now share space with @rioferdy5 (a prolific tweeter) and a few other names from *that* world. I couldn’t bring myself to follow @Cristiano, though. The pic was too cringe-worthy.
A bigger step up on the risk scale is that I am experimenting with incorporating tweets into the novel itself. I hear the creak of rolling eyes. A gimmick it may yet turn out to be, but it’s also surprisingly funny and easy to incorporate. Facebook is such a visual medium it requires more creativity to incorporate it into traditional fiction, but Twitter fits naturally, an externalisation of a character’s inner monologue. Twitter grammar also lends itself to being recorded on paper (specifically the @ and the #). Twitter is also a widespread social outlet. It seems odd that it’s not included in more fiction.
Taking a bit of a plunge, I’m going to spoil a scene here. It was previously not only dull, but revealed how very sappy Lizzy was. Add Twitter, and it’s worth reading.
“Hi! Sorry I'm late!” she called as she pushed open the door. There was no immediate response. She stowed her shoes in the coat cupboard and plopped her handbag down. She noticed Mike's keys weren't on the bench. “Mike?” she called again. Again, there was no response. She listened for the shower, but didn't hear it. She wandered into their room and didn't find him. He wasn't in the study, either. She glanced at her watch. It was almost eight. This was definitely past dinner time. She debated calling him, but decided she should get the dinner on, instead. He could be home any minute. She congratulated herself on her good timing to arrive home before he did. It gave her the opportunity she’d been looking for to keep house well to distract them both from the blaring fact that she didn’t have the money to pay the rent on a flat like his.
@LizzywithaY: Thanks @deliaonline ! Beef enchiladas in under 30 mins #eatyourheartoutmarthastewart
She cut up strips of beef, trying to stop herself from gagging. To distract herself from thoughts of the sweet, long-lashed cow that had given this muscle for her nourishment, she focussed on the problem of how to manage her commute and her housekeeping ambitions.
She frowned. How long had they lived here together? Was it really only three weeks? It wasn’t that she didn’t like living with him. It was such a huge flat that surely she could just take over another room to be her space if she needed it – her hobby room. For what hobbies? she asked herself. The Undercover Wag's first blog entry was still the only one. Her own blog was sadly neglected by her exhausted fingers and tired eyes. But if Mike was going to dive headlong into his new life, she’d look at it as an opportunity to broaden her own.
She glanced at the LED clock display on the oven. It seemed Mike was staying out later than planned. She shook her head and energetically whacked the bottom of a bottle of barbecue sauce (so it wasn’t in the recipe!) to dislodge some of its contents. It was his right to come home when he wanted to. Or was it? Now that they were living together, how were they supposed to arrange these things? What would he have thought if he’d been the one to arrive home to find her absent? Should he have told her, just to stop her imagining worst-case scenarios? She paused and retrieved her phone again.
@LizzywithaY: Am I paranoid? Someone tell me.
She was disturbed a moment later to see several responses blip immediately into her Twitter feed. The overwhelming answer was No, you should be scared. Everyone should be scared. She frowned and unfollowed a few people.
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