“Writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shovelling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.” (author – Shannon Hale)

Never has this quote meant more to me than in these days when I start out on the hesitant and often lurching journey that will one day culminate in the fourth Crater Lake novel.

My sand consists of character sketches and grids, location descriptions, lists of major and minor climaxes, scene ideas, title options, timelines, research notes and random snippets of dialogue – all in no particular order. As the file on my desktop for this novel grows – the box into which I shovel this sand – I know I am making progress.

It is hard to trust this process as I shovel a few more loads of sand onto my story board. Definitely a messy business but this board is something I cling to. It exists in real time and space in a way that all my digital notes cannot rival. It is wonderfully solid though constantly evolving.

My mind rushes ahead, backtracks and gets stuck with regularity. I repeat myself, lose sight of important insights between one document and next and cart around a book that burgeons with quick handwritten notes. It occurs to me that there must be a neater, more linear way to proceed.

No doubt, but that way wouldn’t be my sand or my sandbox. I wouldn’t be working to build my own castle. Finding one’s way into the telling of a story is as utterly unique as there are writing practitioners. There are no blueprints for creativity. Just a messy sandbox waiting for a world to be wrought from