Seven weeks of writing activity, and an important Save the Date
I’ve been away for 7 weeks, working with Kirk in London at St. Martin in the Fields’ charity, The Connection, helping him consult on a big knitted homeless blanket installation; writing and researching Lost in France 2 in France; working more on LIF 2 at a writing retreat; and in Italy to research two concepts for the Lost in France book series: albergi diffusi (diffused hotels) and the one-euro house phenomenon.
There is so much to share from these important 7 weeks away, I’m not even sure where to begin, but all the sights and sounds and tastes and experiences I downloaded will make it into the Lost in France book series somehow, either in Book 2, or the books I am planning beyond.
I’ll share a few photos of our time away here, but to find out more specifics about how these 7 weeks have gone, feel free to follow me on Instagram, or Facebook where I have an Author page. I also post less frequent updates on Blue Sky and Linked In.
I have a writing system while on a research trip. I find I don’t have the bandwidth to actually write the book or project I’m in the middle of, but I can follow this four-step research trip process to make the most of my time:
1) experience stuff: activities, museums, galleries, restaurants, accommodations, travel from destination A to B. As much as possible, I try to make choices that mirror a story beat in my project—something I plan for a character to do in the book. That requires a lot of planning.
2) record what happened: this means carrying a little notebook in my purse, and jotting down even the tiniest thing I see, or dictating an email to myself on my phone, or Whatsapping myself a note, then inputting all those bits and bobs into a document on my computer when I get back to our accommodation.
3) take lots of photos to help my bad memory, including photos of signage, menus, restaurant names, etc., then downloading the photos, dragging them into folders, and labelling them properly. That also takes time, but is so worthwhile when I come back to my files months from the event.
4) prepare for the next day, researching where we need to be when.
That system is what makes our research trips so busy, but it leaves me with a solid trail of breadcrumbs when I get home and get down to the real writing (which then goes much faster as a result of having been to the place I’m writing about).
If I’m lucky, I can work on beats for a sequence of scenes in the book while we wander around abroad. My brain is using the prompts I’m getting from the travel and refining the outline of the book as I go (I’m very much a plotter as opposed to a pantser or discovery writer, but leave room for new ideas and refinement as I write).
That process, of refining beats as we walk, wander through a church or museum, happened twice on this trip, and made the book I’m writing at the moment—Book 2 of the Lost in France series—much more specific, not only in terms of what the characters are doing, but where they are and what they’re experiencing. I squeezed every last delectable drop out of our wonderful research trip.
Events
Info about four upcoming events! Here they are, in order of appearance:
Sun Mar 22, at 1pm, I will be giving an Author Chat at the Severn Township Public Library in Coldwater, Ontario, about At Last Count, my first novel. Please join us!
Note: the library SAYS it’s closed, but it’s actually open for the author chat. Don’t you feel special, now? I do.
Sunday, April 19 at 3pm: Kirk will be performing our show, The Knitting Pilgrim, at Aurora Town Square’s Davide De Simone Performance Hall. It’s our 122nd performance, which seems incredible. Here is the link for tickets. If you haven’t seen the show, please come. I think the show is already half-sold, so now’s the time to book. it’s a great way to spend your Sunday afternoon. And don’t forget your knitting (if you’re the kind of person who has some knitting). If you’re not, you’ll enjoy the show, too, I promise.
Tuesday, June 2, Transac Club, 6pm: A screening of Neville Madill’s short documentary “Abroad, Patchwork Pride” about Kirk’s journey to bring the Patchwork Pride Project to the UK to exhibit it on the façade of Canada House in London’s Trafalgar Square.
And last but for sure not least, on Tuesday, June 23 at 7 pm, I’ll be launching Lost in France in Toronto. Come raise a glass with me at a soon-to-be-confirmed location in Toronto on publication day. I’ll be finalising the details in the coming weeks, but I’d love for you to be there.
If you can’t come, please consider pre-ordering the novel—an act which is a double gift to any author, because not only are you buying their book, you’re signaling to the bookstore and publisher that the book has interest.
Anne Lamott, whose writing I will happily gush about if you have an hour or two to spare, is also promoting a book at the moment. It’s called Good Writing, a book she wrote with her husband, Neal Allen.
This is what she wrote on her Facebook account this month about book promotion: “I hate the part about writing where you have to try and get people to buy your book. You feel like the guys outside of Jiffy-Lube or Pizza Hut holding signs. But it goes with the territory. Sigh. What if I give you an oil change with each purchase?”
This makes me laugh, because I loathe having to promote my books and myself, but as Anne said, there you go, no way out of it. So here I am, offering you what I hope is a great, fun, romantic escapist read, but also, potentially, an oil change. I actually know how to add oil to your car, if that’s what you need, because our rental car needed 2 full litres of oil in Italy on our trip, when it died on an Abruzzo mountain road, 2 hours after taking possession of it, and we had to call for roadside assistance with people who really would have preferred talking about such things in Italian (or not at all).
(Btw, I highly recommend following Anne Lamott on FB. She talks about writing—her book Bird by Bird is one of my favourite writer craft books of all time—but also current events, and she gives me hope and a bit of peace when I read her entries. I sometimes even laugh, which as you can imagine, given the tenor of the news, is a feat unto itself.)
Random wonderful thing
Our good friends on Amherst Island (where Kirk was born), Topsy Farms , have their annual family-friendly and free (although donations are gratefully accepted) shearing coming up April 18-19. You can register for your time slot if you want to participate. While you’re there, you can check out in-store specials at The Wool Shed (where Kirk has bought a truck-load of excellent yarn in his time).
Happy writing. Happy reading.
Claire