Mike Murphy's writing diary: October 2016

Thursday, 27 October 2016

Back in the groove

After a period of lacking in direction in my writing I am back on track, writing between two and four hours every morning and pushing along with my latest novel 'The Man Who Didn't Like People' at a fair pace. Each day I am writing a little more and spending more time on thinking about the way it is progressing, going back to edit where I see I have left gaps or inconsistencies and adding more detail to what I am going to do next.
The biggest change for me was the decision to plot the novel in a lot more detail before starting on the first draft. In the past I would do a rough outline and then launch into it with some idea of where I was going but not of how I was going to get there.
This time I have laid it out scene by scene with details of how the backstory is brought in, how characters develop and where the story changes pace and builds up to each crisis. I find there is still a lot of room for new ideas to be built in as I go along but every time I sit down to write I have a very clear idea where I want to go that day and how I am going to get there.
It has had a big effect on other aspects of my life. I feel calmer, know what my priorities have to be and feel as if I have a direction and purpose.
I remember this feeling from times in the past when I was on a writing roll but I had not felt it for some time. It's good to be back in the groove.

Authors I like

Anna Jacobs

A mentor in my early writing days and still one of my favourite authors. Her sagas about family life in Lancashire are among my favourites but she is a prolific writer and it's all good.

Michael Robotham

Michael urged me to keep writing when I was in a depressed period after another publisher's knock-back. He is basically why I kept writing and turned to self-publishing. I've read all his books and I'm always waiting eagerly for the next one.

Dave Warner

I only recently discovered Dave as a writer after having had his Dave Warner and The Suburbs album since it was on vinyl. It's interesting having another writer who sets his stories in Western Australia.

Dick Francis

I've read all his books at least twice and sometime more often. He's the writer I always return to when I need to feel totally in my comfort zone. Good stories, tight plots, easy writing style. I'd love to know if it really was his wife Mary who wrote them. His son Felix is doing a great job of keeping the family business going.

Leslie Thomas

Ever since Virgin Soldiers I've been hooked on Leslie Thomas and his Dangerous Davies series are among my all-time favourites.

I am because I write

I come across a lot of people who would like to be writers and I often wonder why. For me there has been no question. Since a very young age I have been a writer. Certainly not a famous or even successful one but while other people were doctors or teachers or sportspeople, the thing I did best and was most comfortable doing was writing. For some reason I had a natural flair for it and that raw talent was honed when I became a journalist and learned that what bubbled out of my head was not what was needed. I had to to be able to write to order. One of my earliest lessons came from Bob Duffield, a reporter who took the story of the closure of Perth's Roe Street brothels and wrote different versions of it for convervative, sensationalist, religious and sociological publications. I learned that writing was a craft to be learned, and I have spent many years learning not only the craft of writing, but of story-telling, which is an art in itself. Whether it's a poem, a short story, a novel, my family history, one of my blogs or web sites, I will always be writing something. It's simply who I am and what I do.