Finished "Jaguar's Realm"...

Jibacoa Beach at Night
Originally uploaded by heyjohngreen

Well, the first draft at least...typed the final sentence.

The polishing comes next but compared to the original act of writing, that's easy.

The final scene is set on Jibacoa beach, east of Havana, at sundown as our hero struggles for his last chance to escape...

And that's all I'm going to say about 'Jaguar's Realm' for quite a while. It's taken over a year to write, what with one thing and another. I feel quite drained now, actually. Need a good break to get the creative juices going again.

Now to read the ms aloud to my teenage daughter and see if it's hitting all the right buttons. (I can't recommend this enough for polishing a ms. You get an immediate audience reaction, and when something doesn't work you get that puzzled look...Huhhhh?)

Day in the Life of a Writer Close To Finishing A First Draft

1. Woken up wayyyy too early by BlackBerry flashing with the message "Write 1000 words of Jaguar - NOW!" Lie awake for ages, unable to stir from bed.

2. Oldest daughter invades to fleece me of what little shrapnel I have. "I haven't got my PIN yet!" is the usual excuse for the ongoing cash drain. Youngest daughter is sleepy and wants cuddles. How can I resist? Husband prepares packed lunch and breakfast for little 'un, then takes her to school, all to leave me free to write. But I just stare in fascination at FaceBook. There's a MyFlickr app! Cool; install it. Apparently apps could be the death of Facebook - people are getting cross with all the zombies and jedi vs sith silliness. I say: if you don't want the app, Dile que no.

3. Check out all my friends blogs and post comments. Email a dear friend who's back in touch via LinkedIn. Check my favourite writer's websites. Read short stories on fiction website. Finally shower, dress and look at the chunk of writing I have to do today. It's a foot chase through Old Havana. Rooftops will feature, because hey, it's Havana! So will the Malecon, because, well, IT'S HAVANA.

4. Read some of Alejo Carpentier's 'The Chase' to get in the mood. Browse my photos from Cuba, to get in the mood. (There aren't enough of rooftops. I looked down over rootops every day in Havana - what was wrong with me - why didn't I take more of rooftops?) Watch the rooftop party scene from Habana Blues, to get in the mood.

5. Finally in the mood, write the Old Havana chase scene; 800 words. That'll do - half a chapter and I left at a good place - the rooftop chase begins.

6. Pick up littlest daughter from school, acquire 3-year old neighbour boy on the way. Pick apples from our tree. Bake a pie together. Make pesto for tea. Experiment with a new daiquiri that uses fresh pink grapefruit juice and just a hint of coriander. (gently, gently bruise about five coriander leaves in the glass part of a shaker, add 1/2 shot freshly squeezed lime juice, 1/2 shot of gomme, 1 shot freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice, 2 shots light rum, shake in Boston shaker with plenty ice, fine strain into a chilled martini glass.)

7. Discuss my teenager's complex love life with her and reluctantly help her to plan a strategy with latest love interest. (It was that or talk all night long.)

8. Laundry. Who doesn't love laundry? NOT! I read in some newspaper article that Mrs Thatcher admitted that getting the fluff out of the dryer was one of the small pleasures of her life. I try it. It's surprisingly satisfying - comes off in three nice clean layers.

7. Eat pie whilst reading today's 800 words. Polish. Write this blog entry.

5000 words to go, by my estimate, until I finish the first draft of 'Jaguar's Realm'. I planned this ending ONE YEAR ago, but last week I thought of a major tweak that has allowed me to keep the pace and drama going strong all the way through Act 3. At least that's the plan, and that's why I plan. Things can only get better from a strong plan.

Writing the first draft, truly, is so much fun. I even enjoyed first drafts when I had no agent and no publisher. The story is all yours then and you're the first one to read it.

And look...only 8pm. Still time to go salsa dancing at Freuds...

But I'm too tired.

Project Jaguar - Winding Up A First Draft

A few items I keep on my desk to inspire me: a little statue of La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, patron saint of Cuba, some Cuban moneda nacional (local money; I'm not supposed to have it) and on the right, thirty crisp Cuban Convertible Pesos (tourist money; I'm not supposed to take it out of the country) - my cab fare from Jose Marti airport to Old Havana, for next time I go, to save queuing at the money exchange.

I'm about 8,000 words away from finishing the first draft of Project Jaguar. And I don't revise much until The Editor has a say, so for me a first draft - with a polish - is what I submit.

Which means that I am close to handing over to my agent a project that I've been working on, on-and-off, for a little over a year. It's the longest I've taken so far to complete a first draft. And all those feelings I get at this stage are kicking in.

Firstly there's the desire to finish and have done. That can get overshadowed with a premonition of loss. It's fun to inhabit an imaginary world. The author gets to experience that more intensely than any reader and for longer. When the first draft is finished, the world ceases to be your own. Other people get a say. That's exciting too, sharing it. It's different though.

But then again, the desire to finish, already!

Oh and then there's the post-ms finishing elation ("It's the best thing I've ever written"), shortly followed by the depression; "Hang on...actually it's not, is it? Or is it? I can't tell. Help!"

From here until the end I resent every interruption. I'd happily shut myself up now in my bedroom until it's done. That can't happen, of course. Life continues to make its demands. I have to take my daughter swimming in about a hour. And I should probably have something for lunch other than M&S Extremely Chocolatey Caramels.

This manuscript is unsold, btw. Very exciting. Will there be any takers? It's like last year all over again.

God help me I've got writer's block again...

Actually yes, I DO think that three days running of not being able to write clocks in as an Officially Recognised Bout Of WB.

Things I have done in the past three days rather than write the next, challenging chapter of Jaguar's Realm.

(I mean, things I'm prepared to admit to in a blog)

1. Read emails about and from staff at the school where I'm a governor. Read them again, and again and again.

2. Phone people about the school where I'm a governor.
(yes I HAD to do those things but believe me, I lingered)

3. Browse for, choose and buy salsa dancing clothes and shoes from ebay.

4. Try on said salsa dancing clothes and shoes, gloat and marvel at how finally I've found an outfit that works for me and how light-as-a-feather the shoes are and wonder why I haven't invested in specialist kit for my main hobby before.

5. Jump on any email from my editor about the ms for Joshua book 1.

6. Join Facebook and spend an entire day mooching around on it, looking people up, customising my content.

7. Shop at Primark to make myself feel frugal.

8. Drag my husband out for breakfast, lunch, coffee, long walks.

9. Pester my neighbour Gabby to gossip with me; he was only trying to watch the tennis but would I let him, no.

10. Practice my reggaeton moves until my insides hurt from excess abdominal wiggling.

Don't even think that I'm running out of stuff to do. There's still Litopia, browsing salsa music on iTunes, reading Caitlin Moran's column in The Times (today I found out that there's a Facebook group called 'I Want To Be/Have Sex With Caitlin Moran When I Grow Up', which I won't join because she's actually on it herself and as you'll know if you read this blog regular-like, Caitlin is trying to exert pressure, by remote, on Big Brother quitters like me who've gone cold turkey and are trying to pretend BB isn't on this year), baking chocolate cake.

I wish I could put movies, books or TV on that list but in truth they take just too much concentration. Don't you think that if I could concentrate that hard I'd actually tackle this chapter head-on???

That said, here's a list of movies I'm looking forward to failing to get in to see:

Tell No One (still haven't managed to catch it)
Harry Potter 5
Transformers
Buy It Now
The Simpsons Movie
The Bourne Ultimatum (LOVE the Bourne!)

Following the railroad in Cuban Granma province

Following the railroad in Cuban Granma province
Originally uploaded by mgharris

I was delighted to see today on Flickr that someone favourited this photo. My husband David snapped this from a Viazul tourist bus as we crossed Cuba. He kindly took lots of photos of what you see of Cuba as you cross from West to East; Havana to Santiago de Cuba. This was so that when I came to write the relevant sections of Project Jaguar, I would be able to recall the images and atmosphere of this country.

Maybe I was asleep or watching the movie because I didn't actually witness this scene myself so I'm even more grateful that he caught it. This captures the essence of how tough it is for Cubans to travel around in Cuba. Most people in Havana that we spoke to had never been to the other side of the island. And people in Santiago would tell us, "I went to Havana once, about twenty years ago." (It's not like in the UK where people are too busy going to Mallorca to go to London - they can't go anywhere - it costs too much!)

Few people own a car, those who do tend to own cars that are too clapped out to get far without breaking down and of course there's nothing like the RAC if you do. On the major roads you find small crowds of hitchhikers gathered under bridges, despondently waving money bills at passing private cars but mainly goods lorries. There's no such thing as a free ride.

These hitchhikers aren't game young students; ther are people of all ages, often with small children in tow.

I wonder where this woman in the photo is going with her two little ones. Waiting for a freight train to give her a lift? I wonder how long it took to get there.

This could be Leo...

This could be Leo...
Originally uploaded by mgharris

This morning, sorting through some photos I took in Cuba I came across this. I'm just writing a section of 'Jaguar' in which the hero, 'Leo', dressed in a borrowed school uniform (they are standardized across Cuba) is escaping across Cuba. 'Leo' is a blond boy, 12 years old, of Russian and Siberian descent who's lived most of his life in a secret school in Cuba.

And lookee, here he is...

My New Editing Regime...and Memories of Subcloning

The publisher and I have agreed a deadline for Joshua bk 1 v3.0. I'm deep in the process of writing Jaguar though, and can't let the momentum go. So I try to work on Jaguar in the morning at my desk, take a two-hour break to refresh and then it's on with the editing, which seems to require a different skillset as far as I can tell.

Thank goodness for editors. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Mine is probably going to save me from being a laughing stock, if nothing else - hopefully a lot else but you can't predict these things.

I like to take my manuscript out for little walks. I can't be bothered going all the way to the Bod this time around - I'm only spending 2 hours a day on it, what with the Jaguar writing taking up all my morning brain activity. So I've been going to Summertown.

The above photo is taken of my set-up at the Summertown Wine Cafe, a bijoux little joint on South Parade which makes the best coffee in Summertown (there are many Italian coffee machines in Summertown, but few baristas who have a clue how to use them). Sadly however, they charge a small fortune for savoury food - best to stick to cake, I'm trying to avoid blimpdom so that's out.

Blah, blah, blah. Nothin of consequence in this entry sadly. I'm just writing something to have to test in a new way to do an RSS feed. If you read this, you've just participated in an experiment.

Do you feel used?

I kind of miss doing experiments. Somewhere in the back of my mind is the niggling feeling that a PROPER day's work is what I used to pull off at the height of my keenness as a graduate student...a long day in the lab which ends with a successfully identified new DNA subclone to use in a lovely biological experiment.

'Subcloning' is a way of starting with a widgey little bit of DNA that is no use to anyone and two days later having bucketloads (as much as a milligram!) of the stuff that you can use to do biological experiments in tissue culture cells or even in unsuspecting fluffy creatures. (Some journals are so fussy that you can't get published unless your results are in a live organism.)

You insert a piece of experimental DNA into a 'vector' of usually bacterial or yeast DNA which has the ability massively to replicate it. Then you can grow the 'bugs' in a 500ml culture overnight and in the morning extract enough DNA to 'transfect' cells which allow you to test the properties of your experimental DNA. The tricky bit is that when you try to stick your experimental DNA to the vector DNA, only a small fraction will combine to give you the subclone. The rest will just be vector DNA that sticks back to itself.

When I were a lass we used to pick at least 24 bacterial colonies in the hope that 2 or 3 would have the subclone. It could take up to a whole day, a day spent 'doing minipreps', as we used to call it. Sometimes you had to use radioactivity and horrible, ooky, gloopy, neurotoxic polyacrylamide gel to help identify the subclone.

(Any molecular biologists reading this, bright young things with your PCR, your DNA synthesisers and sequencing machines...it's all very easy now, I'll bet.)

But! Throughout most of career as a molecular biologist I noticed that although I was a good little scientist and picked my 24-48 colonies everytime I wanted to find a correctly subclone, more often than not, colony 1 (the first I picked with a sterile toothpick) actually had the subclone. i.e. I didn't need colonies 2-24 and all the effort in 'working them up' was not actually essential.

Other people in my lab noticed this too. It turns out that in maths the number 1 is disproportionately represented (there's some rule and it's used as a way to detect fraud), well, in molecular biology this seems true too.

Don't think we let that observation go to waste, either. Towards the end of my time in the lab, I would often just pick a colony right off, inoculate my 500ml flask and grow up the bugs without testing whether they had the subcloned DNA in them. It saved a whole day! Of course I tested a sample before I used it to transfect my tissue culture cells. Well, duh.

If you didn't understand a thing I wrote in the last few paras, tell me. R1X did, so I have tried to rewrite it so that it makes sense.

A Brush with Cuba in Summertown

Miladis Diaz shows paintings by Cuban artist Fuster at The North Wall of South Parade, Summertown, Oxford

A stroll into Summertown today resulted in a surprise Indian lunch at the Spice Lounge (a bargain at £4.95!), a coffee in Costa's watching Oxford Uni students spilling out of their Prelims in sub-fusc (and pink carnations...we always wore red or white...since when is it pink?) and then a drop-in to an art exhibition on South Parade where one of Cuba's premier artists, Fuster, is showing his work.

(see The Colours of Life, in Oxford until 24th June)

Miladis and I had a nice chat about Havana and Cuban art. I told her I was writing a book set in Cuba and this morning had written a scene set in a 'country school', where high-school students are used as unpaid labour to harvest coffee for the state-owned industry. I admired her name, as exotic as are many Cuban names.

"The truth is, lots of them are made-up," she said, blushing.
"And they're the better for it," I said.
"I'm not so sure. You get all these silly ones, starting with Y... it's a generational thing," she said. "People in their twenties and younger. Ynieski, Yulieski, Yolexis, Yoanni, Yumiel, Yadel, Yonelki, Yunior..."
It was my turn to blush. "I used the name Yoannis for one of my characters," I admitted, "And I know a Yunior..."

Miladis gave me the phone number of her friend in Havana for next time we're there. Her friend is a biologist who writes children's books, as coincidence would have it!

Jaguar - the Midpoint...

Reaching the Midpoint of a story is always deeply satisfying (for me). You're beyond the part where you feel you've broken the back of the manuscript, in terms of wordcount you're halfway there if not more, the end starts to loom into view.

More than this though, if you've constructed the plot properly, this is where things should seeeriously take off. If you have, the Midpoint should include a spine-tingling reveal, (simply delicious to write)and then the pace should ratchet up a notch, stakes increase, excitement factor nudged up a level...all of which makes the story easier to write.

In past manuscripts, when I've reached the Midpoint, typically I find that I can painlessly add another 500 words to my daily target.

Well, today I need to write the Midpoint of Project Jaguar. I'm not sure I'm worthy of it. Looking at what the plot calls for, I'm feeling way too fuzzy to write it well. Battling some virus or other...right eye infected, bloodshot and sore...committee meeting to chair later this afternoon.

A Midpoint is to be relished. I think the writer has to enjoy it, before anyone else. If you don't have fun telling it the story, how can anyone have fun hearing it?

So...gosh. I'll have to take a break. Get some inspiration. Maybe go to a juice bar in town and buy Haruki Murakami's new book?

Non-Stop Solemn Salsa

I have worked out...that from now to September, I'll be attending a salsa event OR going on holiday every single week.

Including:

• My best friend's wedding this weekend in Brighton (with salsa party)
• My best friend's wedding knees up in Andalucia (salsa on the beach of Conil de la Frontera)
• Buena Vista Club in Oxford with live band Soneando
• The acclaimed Havana Rakatan dance show in London (tickets still available) followed by a night on the daiquiris at Floridita
• Carnival de Cuba in London, including Sur Caribe and Pedrito Calvo
• Salsa Republic
• Afro-Cuban Salsa Weekender

That should keep me very cheerful, all summer long! I'm a firm believer in the milestones-of-happiness approach.

I've dropped my writing target to a manageable 500 words per day. The plan is all done, in mega detail, so barring illness or other setbacks, I am aiming to finish a draft of 'Jaguar's Realm' in time for my birthday at the end of August. That way I can have a joint celebration at...where else but Floridita. Yay!

Ah, the best laid plans...

Orishas Dancing at Buena Vista Club in Oxford

Not the Buena Vista Social Club of massive Cuban-band-fame, but a monthly Oxford Cuban salsa event organised by local Cuban dance fans who arranged for us to have our very own locally-based professional Cuban dance teacher, Ariel.

I've been chatting to Ariel quite a bit since we happened to coincide in Havana when we were over there. I'd mentioned to him about seeing Yoannis and partner doing an improvised Afro-cuban dance in Santiago de Cuba. Maybe he remembered that, because at the end of the afternoon workshop in which he taught us the dance of Eleggua, one of the orishas, or Santeria deities, Ariel offered to dance to the song "Y Que Tu Quiere Que Te Den?" (And What Do You Want Them To Give You?) and show us the dances of all the orishas who are sung to in that song.

Which was a major bonus for me, because of something I'm planning for an important scene in my latest project codenamed 'Jaguar'. No more info for fear of spoilers... Perry, one of the organisers of Buena Vista in Oxford, is going to put up a video on Youtube.

Another one of those weird coincidences - I saw a British woman dancing reggaeton and recognised her from the world-famous dance hall, Casa de La Musica, Havana, a few weeks ago. She was pretty unmistakeable - I've rarely seen a white woman, let alone British, move like that! When my daughter and I went to Casa de La Musica, the Cuban guys we were with were amazed and said about this woman - "She moves like a Cuban." I went over to talk to her and her friend, and they were indeed the two women we'd watched dancing with two quite well-known dance teachers from Havana.

She told me that just over a year ago she went to Cuba to learn to dance for the first time - as a beginner! I was staggered!

That does it. I must practice reggaeton at least half an hour a day from now on.

Once Again Unto the Breach...

Even as I write, my publishers may be talking about The Joshua Files at the Bologna Children's Book Fair. The Editor told me all sorts of exciting things about their plans...

Fingers crossed that the reaction isn't the big So What...

Who knows, within a few weeks I may be able to refer to the Publishers by name!

Anyway, there's not much for me to do but to get on with another book. That's why I went to Cuba, to prepare the next project, which I'm codenaming 'Jaguar'.

I went back to the plot I'd reworked after an early discussion with Agent Cox. Added a few new elements that I've gleaned from my trip to Cuba. Checked against a list of...now that would be telling. Added Ingredient X...muhahahahahaha.

Now to see what Agent Cox thinks of it...

Hero Pursued in Santiago

One of the charming (not!) billboards that plague the countryside of Cuba, reminding everyone how what a wonder the revolution is, what great things it's going to achieve. Cubans must wonder what happens when the revolution goes wrong, if a successful revolution leaves a Latin-American country, once a jewel of the Spanish Empire looking something like an impoverished African country.
This one says: Santiago - in the past - rebellious. Now - hospitable. Always - heroic.

It's no secret that I'm planning to set my next book in Cuba. (Well, it isn't now...) Not one of the Joshua books, something new. Well this is the story of how one Cuban received the proposed plot of the book I'm calling 'Jaguar's Realm'. (whoever publishes it - if anyone - may well change the title).

After the son lesson, we'd invited Yulieski and his girlfriend to join us for dancing at the Santiago Melia's fancy nightclub, the Santiago Cafe. Well, it's another shiny, cheesy latino nightclub where they play salsa for about half an hour and then solid latin disco music, just like most latin dance clubs in Mexico and apparently Cuba too. The setting is quite nice - an ersatz square in old Santiago, with reproductions of famous city spots, like the Casa de la Trova and a well-known bar. Yulieski turned up 30 mins late - sans jeune fille! I wasn't entirely convinced by his having apparently misunderstood that our invitation had extended to the girlfriend too. I figured she didn't like son but might like a fancy nightclub. "I thought you were just inviting me and the dance teacher", Yulieski said, all innocence.

The dance teacher had quite rightly turned up his nose at the invite. "That sort of place," he muttered, "is not really my scene."

Yulieski seemed keener. We agreed to keep quiet about the fact that he'd been out with us. I guessed that he had his reasons - didn't buy the mix-up. There was a live band playing son. They were good but not as good as the guys we'd heard in La Trova. Yulieski was keen to try out what he'd seen the dance teacher show us. He picked it up quickly, but was too shy to dance on the main dance floor.

Between dances he smoked and asked me what stuff I write. I told him a bit about Joshua and then told him I was planning another book, possibly a series, the first book of which would be set in Cuba. I told him the plot. Years and adult sophistication fell away as he listened. "And then this could happen...he said, jumping in with a series of suggestions. Pretty good ones too, but using a plot device which I use in Joshua 2, so that, I explained couldn't be used.

"Your story," he observed, "is the story of all boys in Santiago. We dream of crossing the island to Havana and finding a way to get to Florida. And like all Cubans, your hero is pursued in his own country."

"So it's a metaphor for the Cuban experience?" I said. Yulieski nodded. "I hope they let me back into the country if it gets published," I said. Yulieski's eyes widened in sudden realization. "...True!"

Yulieski kept making trips to and from the bar. "Maybe I'll stay on for a bit," he said as we got up to leave. "There are other girls to dance with," I said, looking around. Iran blushed and covered his face. "There are. But it's a secret, okay?"

Not anymore, pal.

Mr. Agent Back In Touch

Mr. Agent has been very busy doing deals for his clients, yay him!

Finally, he emailed me to suggest we arrange a catch-up session. I was planning to be in London anyway for a thing at the Oratory so we decided to meet yesterday.

First good news - he loved the sample of the new novel I'm writing. Not the plot-less character story - I've shelved that until I think up a cure. This is another story; essentially an escape-and-chase story. Gosh I love those, so I thought I'd try to write one. Working title is 'Jaguar's Realm'. After a week of so drafting a trial plot, I started to write. It was fun - I didn't have to wring out every page, as with the coming-of-age character story!

We discussed Mr. Agent's criticisms. There were many! It's back to the plotting for me.

Second good news. "We're starting to see some interest from publishers in 'The Joshua Files'. No offers, but interest."

Now you're talking, pal.