An Author Update: One Book Finished, Another Beginning

It feels like a good time for a small update.

There isn't a strange dream to dissect this time, no unexplained moment of déjà vu and no attempt to work out whether reality is quite as reliable as it appears to be. Instead, there are a few things happening in the real world.

Or at least what passes for it.

The first is that the paperback edition of Dreams Don’t Always End is now available on Amazon.

Seeing the book as a physical object feels surprisingly different from seeing it listed as a Kindle edition. The words are exactly the same, of course, but there is something much more tangible about being able to pick it up, flick through the pages and see something that spent so long existing as notes, ideas and files on a computer finally looking like an actual book.

I'm proud of it.

Perhaps more importantly, though, I haven't stopped writing.

The Second Book Has Started

I am currently working on my second book.

At the moment, I don't want to say very much about what it is about. Partly because I don't want to give too much away, but mostly because I am still discovering it myself.

That's probably the biggest difference between talking about a finished book and talking about one that is still being written. With Dreams Don’t Always End, I can tell you what it is. I know where it begins, where it ends and everything that happens between those two points.

The new book isn't like that yet.

It is still taking shape.

There are fragments, scenes, places and ideas. Some will probably survive until the finished book. Others almost certainly won't. I'm deliberately allowing it some room to develop rather than deciding too early exactly what it has to become.

What I can say is that some interesting characters have started appearing, and I am particularly proud of them.

They already feel like they belong in this world.

The World Is Beginning to Form

Perhaps the most interesting development for me isn't actually the story.

It's the world around it.

I can increasingly see what this place looks and feels like. Not necessarily as a map with clearly defined boundaries, but as an atmosphere. Places are beginning to have their own character. Certain images keep returning. Small details that initially seemed unimportant are starting to connect with other ideas.

The world is gradually becoming somewhere I can imagine walking through.

That is exciting because I don't want the setting simply to be somewhere for the story to happen. I want it to feel as though it existed before the reader arrived and will continue existing after they leave.

Exactly what that world is, however, I'm keeping to myself for now.

Some things are better discovered on the page.

Back Into the Woods

Something else happened recently which may — or may not — eventually find its way into the new book.

After several months of barely going out with a camera, I finally loaded some infrared film into my medium-format camera and headed into some local woodland.

It felt good simply to be out making photographs again.

While walking along one of the paths, I came across a gentleman sitting in a deckchair in the middle of the woods.

As you do.

We started talking.

It turned out that he was an author and a member of Devon Wildlife Trust. He spoke with enormous enthusiasm about the different species of fern growing around us, gave me a book and spent some time talking me through a map of the woods.

There was also something wonderfully distinctive about the way he spoke.

Every so often, after I said something, he would respond:

“Well met, Paul.”

I loved that.

It was one of those encounters that would probably seem slightly contrived if you invented it for a novel. A photographer walks into a wood with an old medium-format camera loaded with infrared film and discovers an author sitting in a deckchair waiting to talk about ferns.

Yet it happened.

And perhaps that's why it has stayed with me.

Where Characters Come From

I don't know whether any version of that gentleman will ever appear in the book I'm writing.

Probably not exactly as I met him.

But increasingly I'm finding that characters don't necessarily begin with a carefully constructed biography. Sometimes they begin with a voice. A mannerism. An unexpected encounter. A particular way somebody dresses. Something they carry. Or simply somebody sitting in a deckchair where you weren't expecting anybody to be.

Those fragments get stored away somewhere.

Eventually they might attach themselves to something else entirely.

The characters already appearing in the second book have developed in much the same way. They have gradually accumulated details until they have started to feel like people rather than ideas.

Some of them have surprised me.

I'm particularly proud of a few of them, although I'm resisting the temptation to introduce them properly just yet.

They can wait.

Writing Without Knowing Everything

One thing I've learned is that I quite like not knowing everything.

There is a temptation when starting a book to immediately work out the plot, explain the characters and decide exactly how everything fits together.

I'm resisting that.

At this stage, I would rather follow the interesting things and see where they lead.

A character might begin as little more than an image or a fragment of conversation. A place might start with nothing more than a particular quality of light. Something that seems insignificant might eventually become important.

Or it might disappear completely.

That's part of the process.

Perhaps that's also why that unexpected meeting in the woods appealed to me so much.

You can plan to go somewhere with a camera. You can choose the film, the lens and roughly where you're going to walk.

You can't plan for the man in the deckchair.

For Now

So that is where things stand.

Dreams Don’t Always End is now available as both a paperback and Kindle edition on Amazon, which feels like the proper end of one part of this journey.

At the same time, another book is slowly emerging.

I don't know exactly what the finished version will look like yet, and I'm quite happy about that.

The characters are arriving.

The world is beginning to form.

And somewhere in a Devon woodland, a gentleman is sitting in a deckchair discussing ferns.

Well met.