Back In The Studio

3 clear days in the studio, with no visits to do and only slightly less urgent admin hovering in the background (those accounts! My receipts folder is officially bursting...).

It's easy to drift, so I have put some pressure on myself, to force me to get back down to my story (see Lila and Sausage). I've booked an appointment with my Editor at Hodder: I have to present my ideas to her on November 19th at 12.30, so the clock is ticking!

There's still a bit of an issue to solve with the story. A second child, Jack (with his dog, Killer) needs to appear towards the end: he bursts unannounced into Lila's fantasy. But this will be confusing to the reader, if they don't know who Jack is.

I showed the bare bones of the story to some writers at a SCBWI meeting recently in Manchester, and got a few suggestions. The most interesting was to run Jack and Lila's stories in parallel, from the very beginning, to actually divide the book's pages horizontally.

I have been experimenting in my sketch book during odd moments, generating Jacks' story, but unfortunately can't make this idea work. It gets far too complicated after a while, and I don't like having only a narrow strip to draw each half of the story in.

So I am going to try another idea, from my friend Cass, of introducing Jack incidentally at the beginning, in the background of Lila's story. Watch this space...