The Colouring Book

I allow thoughts to find their own spaces before I gather them up and begin to outline my story.  I ponder, scribble small paragraphs with details of where my characters are, how they feel and react and what they need, to make them come alive for the reader. The reader must recognise immediately who my characters are. I flesh them out and I fill in as if my pen is a crayon in a colouring book. I write a few pages, try to take it easy, leave them overnight and notice how excited I am to return next morning to see what I have written. I edit and cross out, I begin again adding and subtracting, maybe reshaping the plot and the characters. If one of my characters is on a bus, I will fill in with descriptions of what they see outside as the bus goes by. I will describe what they are wearing, this will reveal how they feel about themselves and what they wish to project to the world. All of this is “colouring in.” It is giving life, animating your character. I make the movie with my pen. The tone of the mood is next—upbeat, melancholy, ecstatic or depressed. Instead of always spelling these feelings out, I try to have actions reveal moods. I love a tight sentence, spare and hitting the nail. Sometimes I work on a paragraph for days. So much fun I lose sense of time. I will continue like this until I have the outline—and eventually I will follow this same pattern, and expand until I have written the whole novel.