Instructions for the Working Day: first edition

The hardback first edition of Instructions for the Working Day has arrived and looks beautiful, thanks to superlative publisher, Fairlight Books, and brilliant cover designer @jack_flag

I miss writing it very much. I would gladly go back in time to the morning I first imagined the main characters and set out the initial plan, but it is simply wonderful to hold the book in my hands.

Instructions for the Working Day is about property developer, Neil Fischer, who travels from England to restore a dilapidated village in the former East Germany. An unsettling atmosphere of hostility overshadows the project, while a series of surreal encounters disturb the dark memories of his troubled upbringing.

When people are lost in the debris of their past, the only way to negotiate a safe route through the wreckage is to heed the warning signs, the only way to move on is to cast off the burden of guilt, and the only way to be free is to never look back.

Instructions for the Working Day is now available to pre-order.

Beneath the trees

If you are walking through a beautiful forest, the chances are you won’t be counting the trees. You will feel their cool shade, hear birds disturb the leaves and squirrels rush through the undergrowth, smell the earthy scent, touch the rough bark, watch the sunlight change the patterns on the ground. But you won’t know how many trees you pass beneath.

In a similar way, I'm not sure you can apply a quantitative measure to creative output. Which is why, when I sit down to write, I never set a word target. I know how helpful it is for many writers, but for me it adds pressure and subtracts pleasure.

I believe that writing is a continuous process. And an enormous part of that process is not spent at your desk. After you walk away, progress is still being made in a subliminal way. Your intuitive mind is stimulated by the quality of the words you have written so far and is paying no heed to whether the total achieved was fifty, a hundred or a thousand. Nor does it care how many minutes or hours you sat there typing. It feeds on your creativity, not your numbers.

Likewise, when your watercolour painting is drying before the next wash is applied, or when your dough is proving, the work is still being done.

Similarly, I don’t use the phrase ‘writer’s block’. If sometimes the words are not flowing, it is because the subconscious mind is busy sorting and sifting. The creative output may not be apparent, but it is still happening. You might have to call upon all your reserves of patience until it pours out again, but it will be worth it. You’re anything but blocked. You’re full of ideas. They are being filtered for you.

While you wait, you can always revisit your plan, or set out the bones of an unconnected scene, or if you keep a rolling synopsis alongside your novel, you can check to make sure it's complete and up-to-date.

In the end, what matters most is the quality of the words. I would rather create a decent paragraph which develops the characters even a little, leaving them ready to advance in the next writing session, than write a pre-determined amount to fulfil a target. If I were keeping half an eye on a goal, I wouldn’t be fully immersed in the creative work. Number targets, whether words or hours, are not an incentive for me and fail to help me focus on whether I’m managing to tell the story.

Where to find your characters

How to begin to write a story? A good starting point is to find a setting which captures your imagination. Once this location has completely occupied your mind, your characters will appear. They might already be there. This sounds fanciful, but look at your favourite books and see how many memorable characters are rooted deeply in—and influenced by—their environment.

I’m thinking about the rain-soaked caravan site in Summerwater by Sarah Moss, the bleak late-winter moor in Andrew Michael Hurley’s Starve Acre, the imposing mountains and changing seasons of Idaho by Emily Ruskovich. In all these novels, the actions, mood changes, conflicts and emotions of the characters are linked to the landscape.

Sometimes the setting can reveal the theme and atmosphere of the story too. Here is an example from the opening of One Horse Town, one of the first short stories I wrote years ago:

‘One horse don't mean that nothing ever happens here. The crops are parched and the dust blows in your eyes enough to make you cry just walking. But things do happen. People disappear.

There ain't many places to hide. It's just a flat space with a few tired homes and a splintered school building in the mountain's shadow. The sun can't shine there. It has a cactus garden we tend ourselves and the granmas come and help us with trying to grow corn in a triangle at the end of the yard. That's where a thin stripe of light appears for a short time each day.

If you visited this massive region, if you walked right into the heart of this little inhabited bit of it nestled in the mountain's feet like a dead mouse lying at the paws of a tiger, you would put your head on one side and look at it fond-like. It's not sweet here, though.’

I can’t explain how this setting came to mind. Maybe I had stumbled across a picture of an isolated town in a mountainous area. But once the image was there, the characters followed. You can see from these early paragraphs that the narrator—along with the story she is about to tell—is tethered to her world. And this world is going to play a vital part in the story. The tiger/mouse image suggests violence will be a feature, but the main theme this setting begins to reveal is the sense of being trapped and dominated.

In my novel, Instructions for the Working Day, the setting is a forgotten, crumbling village in isolated marshland. It is still guarded by a watchtower, a Cold War relic. This location provides a menacing atmosphere and constant tension. In stark contrast, the main characters also visit Berlin. Since this brings them into a brighter environment, I had to ensure the unsettling undercurrent of danger followed them there. Fortunately, it wasn't as difficult as I had feared. I discovered that when characters are intrinsically part of their normal surroundings, any new setting adapts to suit them and their story.

So when you want to start writing a short story or a novel, find a setting which speaks to you. Somewhere in there, your characters are waiting.