My feet are firmly on the ladder of writing now.  The decision to change to the first person was inspired - I can't even remember now why I didn't want to.  Perhaps I wanted to see if I could get inside the head of a character without using the first person, but this novel has too many other challenges to add to them.  Rewriting the prologue and first three chapters into the first person was wonderfully easy.  My writing even began to feel like "writing" by which I mean poetry began to shimmer on the page rather than just dull recordings.  A lot of this is because I find it SO much easier to edit than write onto a blank page.  It's getting the stuff onto the blank page that is hardest - taking it from there and turning into something beautiful seems to be easiest (for me, anyway)(I have no idea how other writers write)(probably a good thing...)
I finished Chapter Four today and the story is beginning to grow.  One of the - many - challenges of this novel is that the plot could be written on the back of the proverbial postage stamp.  This is quite unlike me.  All my previous novels (and novelettes), while very strong on character, are also very much plot-driven.  There's always a big story to tell and a lot going on.  There are a lot of other characters too and even the minor characters get their quirks.  This novel is primarily about mood and almost all the peripheral characters have very little character - which is an integral part of the story.  I always knew this was going to be hard to write - probably why I took three or four years before feeling brave enough to tackle it.  I felt that I needed to be a more mature writer.  I needed to leave parts of my self behind.  I needed to step out of my rage and disappointment.  

There's a reason why writing is cathartic.  At the end of this novel, I don't expect to be the same person I am now.

My main character is looking forward to the daffodils that grow beside the lake in spring and I've imagined great swathes of daffodils, huge fields growing wild with every kind of daffodil bobbing in the breeze:  those big trumpety ones, the ones with little frilly orange skirts, the creamy ones that look as if they're going to a wedding, teeny tiny ones, the ones with petals that explode backwards in a star shape ... I really love daffodils.  I have to make do with tiny patches of them on the squares of Bloomsbury - flattened by dogs on Russell Square, coming up before Christmas on Tavistock Square, thicker and wilder each year on Gordon Square........fabulous.  I just wish there were more of them.

There's nothing like giving yourself rules when you are writing, only to throw them away the next day.  I decided yesterday that I needed to plough on until the end of Act I before considering a Big Edit.  But I've been gripped with misery - and not just about my novel.  My slide into despair yesterday (almost all my problems have to do with money and the ones that don't could actually be cured with money) was worsened by the fact that I wasn't looking forward to writing anymore.  If I can't hide away in the worlds I create, then there's no point to living because (almost) everything else is too difficult.  A thought edged its way in which I tried to ignore but by this morning, while cursing students under my breath in the uni-library where I work, I knew I was going to have to go ahead with it.
I need to change my novel into the first person.  This seems an obvious solution but one I was trying to avoid.  I wanted to get inside my heroine's head without her being me.  I've managed this before:  in my novel V.GOMENZI, I got to understand my hero very well indeed  and lived easily inside his head.  Or so it would appear.  Looking back, I actually couldn't find his "voice" for a year and it took two years to write the novel (it's quite hefty.)  Also, the novel switches between characters and I had to get inside the head of several people, all of which was actually quite easy.  But this first-person thing must be a stylistic thing.  I've just sat down to rewrite the Prologue in the first person and there is my heroine - not only have I found her voice, I can HEAR her.  Suddenly my style doesn't seem faux fantasy (something I loathe) but gentle and dreamy, yet filled with very precise clarity.  This is quite a stunning transformation.

If only I could solve my financial difficulties so positively.....

My writing week is over and it was back to work today, another gloriously sunny and breezy spring morning.  It's the only time of year that sunshine pours into my damp-ridden flat, which is both lovely and terrifying - the amount of dust you don't see in winter despite constant hoovering is amazing.  How did it get there?  Where did it come from?  I can't say my week of writing went spectacularly well but the fault is primarily my own:  it's so early in the novel that I feel as if I'm groping about in the near-dark.  Not entirely dark - I know what I want the novel to look like and feel like but don't seem to be able to drag those images from my mind onto the page.  I gave up art for this exact reason - the inability to express myself as clearly.  In order not to give up hope, I've commanded myself to get to the end of what is essentially Act I and THEN I'll be allowed to go back and do a Big Edit.  The novel changes quite dramatically at that point so it be a good spot to do a bit of proverbial ironing.  This doesn't look as if it's going to be a novel that just drips from my fingers.  Perhaps if I keep those fingers crossed, this will change....