Tools of the trade

 Attending conferences held by your professional organisations - in my case the Romantic Novelists and the Crime Writers - is a chance to acquire or hone skills. At the recent RNA event many writers were thrilled to be exploring the delights of Canva  and Scrivener. Me? No way. The description of how Scrivener works has me hiding my head in a hole and my one attempt of Canva ditto. I'll settle for pen and ink and Bookbrush, thanks. I seem to be able to find my way around the latter fairly well and the pen and paper stuff I've been doing since I was six. 

The differences in style made me think about how one uses the tools of the trade. Over my many many years in the RNA New Writers' Scheme I attended many workshops and seminars on 'How-to'. Some of the tutors in the dim and distant days in the beginning could be quite prescriptive  - not quite 'My way or the Highway' but very much - 'this is what you must do'. One of the things I learned in my long apprenticeship was - 'My brain doesn't do it like that'. 

I do have some quirks but mostly I'm an organic sort of writer - start at the beginning with a biro and a pile of scrap paper and then keep going.  I've used mind maps  ever since writing essays in the sixth form, but then I didn't know what they were or that they were even a 'thing',  I'm big on time lines - which is weird as for an historian I'm dreadful at dates. I have to know when people were born and if necessary die, and must get the generational things right if, as at the moment, I'm playing with a multi generational script. I live in horror of suddenly discovering that someone had a baby at twelve years old - not impossible, I know, but not in the current context. 

Something I also do is a bit of interrogation - not the kind where you have a list of questions like first pet or best friend in school and yes, that is one of the techniques I have been recommended and failed dismally at  - I go back to a question my Mum used to ask - probably when I was being annoying. 'What's your problem?' They always do have a problem, and if they don't you know that needs fixing. 

I'm currently doing it for a whole new series of characters.

Works for me.