What is your novel about?

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David's first novel is an exploration of the relationship between a hospitalised soldier and a Red Cross volunteer during World War 1. The setting is the army hospital in Cambridge. The soldier in an Australian training cadet, the Red Cross volunteer a young English woman who has experienced her own losses due to the war. The novel is based on actual letters a Red Cross volunteer wrote to David's great grandmother during WWI about her son (David's great uncle). The characters are greatly fictionalised, as is the background of the story, but some of the letters used in the novel are real, giving a powerful energy to the idea of the people within the story.

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How do you write?

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Generally I start writing when an idea comes into my head, and I see where that takes me. Short stories allow me to work in this way as they are easily contained in my head. I am often surprised at what is happening in a story as I write it, as though I am merely a conduit for the story, not the creator.

Since beginning work on my novel I have discovered there is method does not work for me in the longer format. The novel is too large to keep in my head all at once. So I have a chapter plan and a general outline of the entire a story, and work on it one chapter at a time. Even then I find it hard going, as I am used to the more free-flowing writing of my short stories. At a recent writers group a writing colleague suggested I approach the novel like a serial, like Charles Dickens did in his day. She suggested this would help me break each chapter into a short story of its own, and might make it easier for me to get through more writing. I found this an excellent suggestion and have begun trying to change my thinking to fit this new model for now.

I guess this goes to show there are various methods of writing and no one method is right. We all have to try things out and find what works best for us, but advice from others can never be undervalued!

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