cup of tea.
The conversation with Tom had unsettled her. In retrospectit had been a mistake. There had been no need for them to talk at all, and she certainly wouldn't be calling him again. A second hot cup of tea joined the first, which was still gently steaming.
She wiggled her fingers, trying to transform irritation with Tom into creative calm. She was a virtuoso preparing to perform. An Olympian in the blocks. She could do this. She had done this—for thirty-six chapters straight, without a hitch. She didn't buy into all that crap about waiting for the Muse to strike. You showed up at your desk every day and trusted that she'd be there. For Jane writing was as simple as that old nugget of advice: apply posterior to chair.
The cursor winked on the blank page.
There was a force-field over the keyboard, that was it. What else could be preventing her from touching it? It wasn't as if she didn't know what to write. Right? So what happens next?
The cursor was a large, dark oblong. Like a freshly dug grave.
OK, this was ridiculous. Write your way into the chapter. Just write anything. First thing that comes into your head. Doesn't even have to make sense. As soon as you put something down you'll break this hoodoo. Don't talk about a hoodoo, you'll jinx yourself. Oh great, now she'd invoked a hoodoo
and
a jinx.
The cursor convulsed like a twitching eye.
Jane slammed down the laptop lid. The leaves on herumbrella plant trembled. She drummed her fingers on the desk. A walk. That's what she needed. What happens next? After a walk it would all be perfectly clear. Now who was it said ‘we think at walking-pace’? Someone very wise, she suspected, then remembered with a pang who had given her the sage advice. Dammit.
An hour later Jane found herself flicking idly through a rack of vintage clothes.
Mini, midi, maxi
. She was pretty sure that was the Latin phrase for ‘I came, I saw, I bought an inappropriate skirt.’ Despite what it looked like, she absolutely, definitely wasn't in her favourite store, avoiding work on her novel by embarking on a wholly unnecessary pursuit of a frivolous item of clothing. Ooh, nice jacket. Kind of a Nehru thing going on round the collar and the colour was amazing; it reminded her of a livid sunset over a wasteland of discarded shopping trolleys.
The jacket was the kind of thing Darsie Baird, the main character in her new novel, would wear, and she made a mental note to go back and find a place to insert it. But not now. She'd go back later. Right now there was some serious browsing to accomplish.
And it
was
an accomplishment. Hell, some people did this for a living: stylists, fashion writers, personal shoppers. This was work, dammit. OK, not for her, but someone in the store must be working and she was standing quite close to them.
Research! That's what this was. Writing was a lot like playing dolls’ houses. You got to design the rooms, populate them and dress everyone down to the last detail. Clothes could say a lot about your character and her world. There was the obvious stuff: a seamed stocking for a vamp or tweed for a country lady. But there was more to it than that. An undone button in anything written before 1920 spoke of seething passion. Awoman putting something in her pocket in an Austen novel was a big deal—it being her only truly private place outside of her head.
There was a rustle of clothing from the back of the store. Jane looked round to see a young woman emerge from the changing room. For a moment she wondered if the velvet curtains concealed a time machine, since the woman appeared to have walked straight out of 1950. She wore a full-skirted berry-red dress nipped in at the waist, a scarf tied movie-star style around her head and a pair of classic big-frame Dior sunglasses. She sashayed past, high heels clicking on the wooden floor.
‘Hi, Jane.’
‘Hi,’ replied Jane automatically. Very occasionally—OK, twice—readers would recognise her in the street
The conversation with Tom had unsettled her. In retrospectit had been a mistake. There had been no need for them to talk at all, and she certainly wouldn't be calling him again. A second hot cup of tea joined the first, which was still gently steaming.
She wiggled her fingers, trying to transform irritation with Tom into creative calm. She was a virtuoso preparing to perform. An Olympian in the blocks. She could do this. She had done this—for thirty-six chapters straight, without a hitch. She didn't buy into all that crap about waiting for the Muse to strike. You showed up at your desk every day and trusted that she'd be there. For Jane writing was as simple as that old nugget of advice: apply posterior to chair.
The cursor winked on the blank page.
There was a force-field over the keyboard, that was it. What else could be preventing her from touching it? It wasn't as if she didn't know what to write. Right? So what happens next?
The cursor was a large, dark oblong. Like a freshly dug grave.
OK, this was ridiculous. Write your way into the chapter. Just write anything. First thing that comes into your head. Doesn't even have to make sense. As soon as you put something down you'll break this hoodoo. Don't talk about a hoodoo, you'll jinx yourself. Oh great, now she'd invoked a hoodoo
and
a jinx.
The cursor convulsed like a twitching eye.
Jane slammed down the laptop lid. The leaves on herumbrella plant trembled. She drummed her fingers on the desk. A walk. That's what she needed. What happens next? After a walk it would all be perfectly clear. Now who was it said ‘we think at walking-pace’? Someone very wise, she suspected, then remembered with a pang who had given her the sage advice. Dammit.
An hour later Jane found herself flicking idly through a rack of vintage clothes.
Mini, midi, maxi
. She was pretty sure that was the Latin phrase for ‘I came, I saw, I bought an inappropriate skirt.’ Despite what it looked like, she absolutely, definitely wasn't in her favourite store, avoiding work on her novel by embarking on a wholly unnecessary pursuit of a frivolous item of clothing. Ooh, nice jacket. Kind of a Nehru thing going on round the collar and the colour was amazing; it reminded her of a livid sunset over a wasteland of discarded shopping trolleys.
The jacket was the kind of thing Darsie Baird, the main character in her new novel, would wear, and she made a mental note to go back and find a place to insert it. But not now. She'd go back later. Right now there was some serious browsing to accomplish.
And it
was
an accomplishment. Hell, some people did this for a living: stylists, fashion writers, personal shoppers. This was work, dammit. OK, not for her, but someone in the store must be working and she was standing quite close to them.
Research! That's what this was. Writing was a lot like playing dolls’ houses. You got to design the rooms, populate them and dress everyone down to the last detail. Clothes could say a lot about your character and her world. There was the obvious stuff: a seamed stocking for a vamp or tweed for a country lady. But there was more to it than that. An undone button in anything written before 1920 spoke of seething passion. Awoman putting something in her pocket in an Austen novel was a big deal—it being her only truly private place outside of her head.
There was a rustle of clothing from the back of the store. Jane looked round to see a young woman emerge from the changing room. For a moment she wondered if the velvet curtains concealed a time machine, since the woman appeared to have walked straight out of 1950. She wore a full-skirted berry-red dress nipped in at the waist, a scarf tied movie-star style around her head and a pair of classic big-frame Dior sunglasses. She sashayed past, high heels clicking on the wooden floor.
‘Hi, Jane.’
‘Hi,’ replied Jane automatically. Very occasionally—OK, twice—readers would recognise her in the street
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