Thursday, October 18, 2007

My Brain Hurts

I spent an hour on the phone with my agent this evening, discussing the whys and the wherefores and the way forward with The Book.

The good thing is that she still loves the story. She just wants to make it bigger and better. She wants my little book to be all that it can be. This is great.

But it involves a lot of work, and a lot of thinking.

When we first met and started making adjustments to the book, the main things that changed were the location and the magic level. And somewhere along the way, implementing these changes has buried the why of the story underneath a stack of tarot cards and empty coffee cups.

So, while she's away in Wales next week, I'm going back to basics and thinking about what the story is about, and what the individual character tales are.

  1. It's about language. It's about the stories we tell, and how they change into what we want to hear. It's about how what we're told is what we believe, even when it's a lie. And it's about what happens when people start telling the truth.
  2. It's about the town, now. It's about how this little market town in Hertfordshire isn't like anywhere else. It's about how that affects the people who live there. It's about the history of the place, and its people, and how that's not what they've always been told, either.
  3. It's about family. It's about sisters and about brothers, and about how there's no limit to what you'll do for family, or, in some cases, what you'll do to them.
  4. It's about magic, and the magical in the everyday. It's about the feel of the seasons, the world, and the inexplicable things that happen. It's about fate and fortune and destiny, and how they're not always world changing futures; sometimes they're about cookie cutters.
  5. It's about fairytales, and how to live them. It's about knowing that you can live a charmed life, and have your happy ever after, but that they're not always what you'd expect. And it's about how, if you work at them, sometimes they can be better than the stories.
  6. And most of all, it's about love, and how real love doesn't need magic, or fate, or fables; it needs understanding, passion, trust and patience.
  7. It's also about tea, calligraphy, getting what's coming to you, and hot chocolate. And a cat.

So, yeah. I guess that can be summed up as: Truth, and making your world the way you need it to be. Or something.

To summarise - my brain hurts.