Ramblings about cheese and other things

I am having an uphill day of work. It's my own fault for taking a week off after the viva, really, and leaving the book to wander off on its own and fall in with a bad crowd.

After my epiphany the other week, I am a lot happier with the direction in which the book is going. When I get tired, I start to battle insidious cliches that - well, I would say weasel, but I am a fan of weasels - that snake their way into my narrative. Cliches are easier. They are shortcuts. Everyone can recognise the wise teacher-mentor, the sulky teenager, the smug married couple. Cliches are easy, flat, convenient things, like sliced and processed cheese. And equally tasteless. I realised a couple of weeks ago that I was venturing into cliched territory, and ended up cutting about 10,000 words. Now there's an enormous gap in the middle. A cliched plot device would be a marvellous way to slap a band-aid on this hole, but I'm resisting! I promise. No more quick fixes. It's hard slog all the way.

When I started work on Current Book afresh after finishing the Ngozi revisions, the words "be more ambitious" kept running through my mind. I think that it is our job, as writers, to always bite off more than we can chew. Or, at least, more than we think we can chew. (See how those cliches like to sidle in when you least expect them? Bastards!). Every new project you tackle should be harder than the last - otherwise, what will you learn? The book I'm working on now is difficult in new and inventive ways, and requires a lot more skill than the last. But that's how it should be, I think.