I started writing Catch a Falling Star in June, and set it then - though I don't specify the date anywhere, I'm using a 2008 calendar. The events of the book cover five or six weeks in the lives of the characters.The scene I'm currently on has my heroine, Caz, at 3am on July 19th, searching for Ric who is breaking into a lavish country house. And the point I'm making is this: I'd find it a lot easier to get the atmosphere if London wasn't so wintry, cold, and dark by teatime. Or if Caz was circling the house on an icy night. I could get right into her numb fingers, her visible breath, how the cold claims her as she crouches in the herbaceous border to watch the people in the house.
Instead of which, the hood she wears for concealment makes her hot, and the balmy night air is fragrant with summer flowers.
The old imagination is creaking under the strain.
I remember Susanna Clarke saying she had the same problem in a conversation with Neil Gaiman - so you're in Good Company!
ReplyDeleteI have had the same problem many times over, and I think it may have something to do with setting our stories where we live. In my case it was tough to write about the murderous heat of our endless summers and then the sudden and sometimes furious monsoon season storms during the blissful days of November or even better days of late February and through early May (this is southern Arizona, remember).
ReplyDeleteAlan
I'm hoping to finish this book by early spring...though I suppose, glum thought, I may still be working on it when summer comes round again.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing quite like writing from one's immediate experience.
You might take a trip to south of the equator. New Zealand perhaps.
ReplyDeleteAh well, we can dream.
Norm
Yes, dreaming it will have to be.
ReplyDeleteHey ho.