A Day In The Writing Life Of Carol Drinkwater

I think every writer and would-be writer knows that many of the literary giants had or have their own method of getting into the day’s work.

Ernest Hemingway sharpening pencils, we all know that story. He wrote by hand. Today, we are more computer-bound.

There are no rules. It is what works for you. I need candles, peace and quiet, a window with a view, unlike many others who prefer to work facing a blank wall.

Also unlike others, I like to be connected to the internet so that if I need to check a spelling or remember a historical date I don’t have to get up from my desk and go trawling through shelves of books even if they are directly behind me because I wrote in my library.

I need a VERY big table. It is MESSY, a jumble full of notes, thoughts, quotes, characters’ ages, colour of eyes, a to-do list which may or may not be directly related to the book. The dustbin of my mind gets unloaded as I work so that the niggle doesn’t sit there in my brain scratching at my concentration.

My morning begins with the coffee percolating and then directly to my desk. I do internet housework first: check emails, ignoring most, setting them aside for later unless really urgent, check my bank accounts, pay bills. Phew, that stuff has gone from my head.

My brain’s wastepaper basket has been emptied.

Then I potter to the kitchen to pour my first large cup of black coffee and one teaspoonful of honey. Energy injection. Cup to my library, place on my table, sipped at regular intervals. At this stage, I have not dressed or even cleaned my teeth.

A literary agent, Andrew Wylie – I think it was him though please don’t sue me if I have called out his name mistakenly – once observed that writers are not very clean. I remember the shock and shame when I read this in an interview with him (if it was him). To be honest, if he saw me at my desk first thing in the morning, it would validate his comment.

Private moments. SO important.

I light anything between two and six candles. It is a kind of spirit energy for me, inexplicable as to why I need them but without them I feel less focused.

Now I am set.

Alone, quiet house, buried in my library if I am at home, blossoming orchids bought by my husband as encouragement gifts before me on the desk, which is a wooden table, candle flames gently dancing, I am ready to open the book.

I am always nervous when I first click on it and it unfolds to the title page.

I go to yesterday’s work. Read it over. Edit it lightly again. Scroll back to the work of the last week, read it over and from there I begin. My first hour or two will be spent re-reading, editing, changing the most recent work. I am like a sports person readying myself for the jump until I arrive at the blank page that is today. By that time, I am usually prepared for the off. If not, I take my shower then and have another coffee and go back over in my mind and jottings on paper where I am intending to go from here.

I am not always sequential. My training was film and theatre and so I think in terms of scenes and action drives. I might reel backwards to before the novel’s story begins and write a scene that I have never intended to put in the book, and it might be cut (I cut out a great deal along the way) or it might spin me forwards into a realm I had not dreamed of visiting.

Exciting. I take the gamble and head there.

As an actress, trained at Drama Centre London, I was taught to write the back story of my characters. Rule: never walk onto the stage or set without knowing where that woman, the character, has come from. I don’t necessarily mean whether she had just been at the post office though perhaps that is relevant too, but what her journey has been. Happy marriage? No marriage? Sad, unsatisfied love affairs? Hurt in childhood, easy to pain, easy to rise to anger? In need of affection? A seductress?

As a writer, unless you are Samuel Beckett writing his amazing monologues, your characters will be interacting, exchanging with one another. This means, for me, knowing that back story for ALL the characters. There are no small parts, no small players – each a full life to tell. It is simply where you put your spotlight.

So, two characters, let’s say, two conflicting pasts, recent experiences bring the characters to a scene with different moods, different drives. This impacts absolutely on what is about to happen.

I don’t plot, or very minimally.  

I allow characters to play out their objectives – go for them, jump the obstacles, or try to, and tell me what they want and then I begin to see where they are going.

Marguerite Duras, one of my heroines, described the process as grappling in the dark, reaching out to the stars and finding jewels. Some days, the darkness is pretty dense. On most days I plod along and then come the days, the period of time, when the story begins to live and unfold and characters are jumping up and down, eager to speak, to express themselves, to pour out their hearts. This is very exciting. I LOVE this period of working.

But you cannot count on that and you need to keep plodding until the light peeps through. It will. How many times have I doubted it? The subconscious, the creative seam within, does eventually give up the goods, pour forth the lava, the juice of the material. Then I want to whoop with joy.

I suspect my approach is marginally different because I trained as an actress and I can write very easily in a mosaic way rather than linear. Those writers who trained as journalists will probably have a different approach as will those who studied literature and come from a rich understanding of the classics.

Each to their own. The important point is to be true to oneself. Write from YOU, not as someone else. YOUR experiences, emotions, sorrows, disappointments and joys are gold. They are the meat. Stay still, sink deep like a deep-sea diver and you will eventually unearth the treasures within you.

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Carol is the author of twenty-four books, both fiction and non-fiction, and has achieved bestselling status – over a million copies sold worldwide – with her quartet of memoirs set on her Olive Farm in the south of France. Carol’s fascination with the olive tree extended to a solo Mediterranean journey in search of the tree’s mythical secrets. The resulting, bestselling travel books, The Olive Route and The Olive Tree, have also inspired a five-part documentary film series.

Carol’s four Kindle Singles, novella-length stories commissioned by Amazon, are The Girl in Room Fourteen, Hotel Paradise, A Simple Act of Kindness, The Love of a Stranger have reached the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

Her latest two novels are:
THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER, set on a vineyard in the south of France against the backdrop of the French-Algerian war. Published in hardback 2016 and THE LOST GIRL

Carol writes for both adults and the adolescent market.
She has just delivered a new novel and is now about to spend a few weeks pottering in the garden before setting to work on the next one.

Twitter:
@Carol4OliveFarm‬‬‬
www.caroldrinkwater.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/olive.farm

About THE LOST GIRL

‘A story to savour, complete with wonderful settings stretching from Paris to the glorious countryside of southern France’ Dinah Jefferies

A LOVEREADING BOOK OF THE YEAR

Since her teenage daughter went missing four years ago, Kurtiz Ross has blamed and isolated herself. Until, out of the blue, Lizzie is sighted in Paris.

But within hours of her arrival, Kurtiz sees the City of Light plunged into terror. Amid the fear and chaos, a hand reaches out. A sympathetic stranger offers to help a terrified mother find her daughter.

The other woman’s kindness – and her stories of her own love and loss in post-war Provence – shine unexpected light into the shadows.

The night may hold the answers to a mystery – but dare Kurtiz believe it could also bring a miracle?

‘A gripping tale’ Sunday Post

‘Mesmerising, haunting and extraordinarily relevant’ Lovereading

‘An unforgettable journey of family, romance, regret and renewal’ The Gloss

‘The perfect holiday read that manages to keep you guessing the whole way through’ Living France

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing