Chapter 1

Now that we have settled into our temporary, snowy home I have begun my second novel, again.  I was about 25K in to the last draft when I went back to rewrite the first one again, then came back, looked at what I had and that – nope, that’s not it.  Scrapped.  Now, with an updated Scrivener programme and a new outlook, mainly onto a snow-covered Edinburgh street, I am ready to write.  Today I finished the first chapter and have hit 5K.  Whoopee or big deal?  It’s not a novel yet, but I know, roughly, where I’m going.  And for me only knowing where I’m going gets me going, even if I change my route as I write.  My next target is 10K and if I hit it I will take myself to see a Czech animated “Alice” that has been on my to-see list for a long, long time.  Maybe that will get me through Chapter 2?  My first novel has really short chapters because I’m bouncing around in different heads and time periods.  Maybe this one will be different.

This picture is a location for my first chapter.  Maybe the best part about writing is the researching, and certainly when you’re telling a story that is “true.”  Today I got my main character from a police cell to the locked compartment of the toy steam train in the Isle of Man, via police-lined streets and the Liverpool Stadium, where thousands of women were kept awaiting ferries in May 1940.  The Stadium was opened in 1932, became a famous rock venue in the 1970s and was demolished in the 1980s.  I wonder what it will have been like, entirely filled with frightened, exhausted women and no men there to thump one another or cheer?  But then, that wondering is the other best part of writing.