::mslexia author method::

The Cathy Kelly Method
From Interview no. 8

• Drink coffee. Take the dog for a walk. While walking, meditate on your next book as a game of Consequences: ‘A meets B in the context of C and the consequence is D.’

• When you have three sets of Consequences that please you, e-mail them to your agent and editor for approval. Agent and editor e-mail back immediately. They love everything.

• Plunge into Chapter One, without developing a detailed plan. Instead, note down the nitty-gritty of the plot structure and character as they emerge from the writing itself. The idea is to write the book back to front.

• Your early-morning dog-walking meditations should now consist of scenes you intend to write that day (after you have drunk coffee, made phonecalls, answered e-mails and faxes, drunk more coffee, put a load into the washing machine.)

• Now open the computer file containing your novel. It’s a very big file. Eventually it will contain 200,000 words. This is because you haven’t time to work out how to divide the manuscript into separate chapters.

• Having it all in one file suits your working method, however. Starting from the beginning, scroll down through the novel until your eye is caught and by something that needs ‘tweaking’ (You are looking for clichés, clumsiness, wooden dialogue, scenes that need expanding.).

• Ignoring your earlier resolve to work on a specific new scene, start revising ‘wherever the cursor lands’, adding new scenes only when you reach the end. In this way the work grows longer, wider and tighter all at the same time. And you keep it all in your head.

• At some point you will be overcome by a sense of panic because you are not working systematically through the plot. When this happens, tell yourself there are no rules about how to write a book.

• When you have written 50,000 words, despatch copies of the manuscript to your agent and editor for comment.

• While waiting for their replies, plough on at the rate of around 1,500 words a day, taking frequent breaks to feed your caffeine addiction.

• If you get stuck on a tricky scene, allow the cursor to scroll off to another part of the manuscript and return to it the next time it catches your eye. By this means you can nibble away at it gradually until it’s solved.

• Meanwhile comments from agent and editor arrive, which you cheerfully incorporate.It is taking longer and longer to scroll down through the whole manuscript.

• Towards the end of the book, increase your work rate to 4,000 words a day.

• When there is nothing new to add, and only tightening and polishing to do, start thinking up a new set of Consequences...

If you get stuck on a tricky scene, allow the cursor to scroll off to another part of the manuscript and return to it the next time it catches your eye.