Mike Murphy's writing diary: December 2021

Wednesday, 22 December 2021

Parallel stories

There are two themes in my new novel with the idea being that, while they are miles apart in the events that develop them, there are many parallels in the emotions and choices that underlie them. At times it makes for tricky writing. As I am writing one scene I realise that it relates to a scene in an earlier chapter. Do I stop and go back to rewrite and improve the previous scene or stay on course with the one I am writing, either taking a note to myself or trusting in my memory to bring me back to that other scene later? The trouble with going back is that it breaks the momentum of the chapter I am writing. Even stopping to take a note to myself can do that. On the while I prefer to stay in the moment and continue writing from the ideas that are already fomenting in my brain. Hopefully I can come back and add the frills and improvements later.

Friday, 10 December 2021

Writing and thinking

I began the day writing and spent most of the rest of it thinking about writing while doing other things. It's amazing how just putting a few words down on paper (or on the screen) starts the imagination whirring and new ideas thrusting forward. I am working on a chapter in which my protagonist meets an extremely intelligent woman. At one level she could be the soul mate he has been looking for but on another he begins to doubt that he could sustain a relationship with her - that she might be too intelligent and he could not match her. The chapter needs a balance. If it is all her spouting thoughts on obscure subjects it could be boring. She has to be human as well as intelligent, and the setting in which they are meeting has to be a part of the balance between their intellectual and human selves. It's a challenging exercise and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

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.