First drafts

"Once the first days of creation are over (once life has been assigned to various hunches and inklings), writing is decision-making." - Martin Amis

I am currently in the 'assigning life to various hunches and inklings' phase. There's a lot of trust involved in this bit - trusting my subconscious, I mean. When I'm writing a first draft I write everything that occurs to me, even if it seems crazy, because stories come to me like a box of puzzle pieces (with the inevitable one or two missing). I fill in all the corners and edges first, because they're easier, and then go into the amorphous Middle. For a long time it will look like a mess (rather like my actual jigsaw puzzles did, when they sat half-completed on the coffee table for months and I went crazy when anyone tried to USE the coffee table), and then it will (slowly; painstakingly) come together to form a picture.

For the moment, though, it is a muddle of colours and odd images - bits of sky; a face; a hand; a leaf; something that could be an eye.