Hello everyone, how’s the new normal
working out for you?
If it’s anything like us here, it bears only a passing resemblance to the old normal, but we’re getting on with it.
So this is where I spent the afternoon, it’s only fifteen minutes drive from my house, and I’d never been there before, can you believe it? We took a picnic and despite the semi-Baltic temperatures, my kids went swimming at the base of the waterfall. If there is anything good to come out of this ‘racket’ as my friend calls the Corona Virus, it’s that we are discovering the lovely places in our own localities. I’m sure you’re doing the same, finding places, or revisiting places you might not have been for years, enjoying something simple like a picnic, or a walk. I’m trying to do that anyway. If you haven’t can I suggest you start? It’s stopping us going crazy.
This is going to be the way of things for quite some time, we have suppressed the virus here, but it only takes one wrong move and we’re back at worrying numbers again.
So this week, let me tell you the troubles of your writer friend.
A while back, I had an idea for a book, and so off I went, writing like Kermit the Frog. – you’ve seen that gif right? Anyway, there I am, arms flying, thoughts racing, story pouring out of me. Happy days. A totally new story, new characters, new location.
And then something happened.
The gang from Ballycreggan started on at me. Pecking at my brain. Erich in particular, and he wasn’t happy. How come Liesl got her own story? Why wasn’t he important enough? Do readers not care about him? He had quite a lot to say it seems, and boy, was he going to have his moment. Every time I sat down to write my shiny new book, nothing to do with the Bannons, he’d arrive in my head, driving me daft. Elizabeth, Daniel, Ariella, Liesl and Jamie all egging him on. Even Bridie in the sweetshop had something to say about it.
That’s kind of how it works. Sometimes I can silence them long enough to finish the book I’m working on, but other times, like a pre-schooler who is relentless in the pursuit of whatever it is they want, and who knows instinctively that their tenacity will win out over your nerves every day of the week, it is pointless to resist.
So leaving a bewildered cast of my new book, without even a word of explanation, I was pulled back to Ballycreggan.
‘Right,’ I said to the voices in my head ( there’s a psychiatric term for that I know 
) ‘I’m here, you have my attention, let’s be having you.’
So, I’ve a third of the story written in a week. To be fair to them, once they get an idea in their heads they’re good to run with it, but it’s exhausting! I wake early, (they wake me) and off I go. I’m loving it though and I hope you will too.
People ask me how do I come up with plots and characters and the simple answer is I don’t. They exist, somehow, don’t ask me, and they wont give up until I tell their story.
I realise how extraordinarily fortunate I am to be in such a position, and I appreciate their presence in my life as much as I appreciate yours for buying and reading my ramblings.
If you want to see my full list of ramblings, check out my Amazon page here: author.to/Jeangraingerbooks
Also, Conor is back and his new adventure, Kayla’s Trick can be preordered here.