It’s a glorious feeling when you can see the finish line of the book you’re writing.
I’d imagine it’s the same feeling you get if you’re running the London Marathon when you pass underneath Blackfriar’s Bridge onto the Victoria Embankment—you know you’re only about a mile from the finish. After twenty-three gruelling miles, your legs hurt, and you’re low on energy. But now you’re running along the north bank of the Thames. You know all you need to do is turn right at Westminister Bridge, run up Birdcage Walk alongside St. James Park, turn right again at Buckingham Palace, and you’re done. You get your last wind—that extra boost of energy you need to complete the course.
Okay, so knowing how your book is going to end and what events you need to write on the way there probably isn’t the same as running the Marathon.
But it’s close.
Okay, it’s not even close.
But it’s where I am now.
I have a calendar on which I track the events within the Westmouthshire universe. It’s an Excel spreadsheet rather than an online calendar or something, but it works for me. I’ve got a tab for the overall timeline, which shows the months & years, and then colour-coded blocks which show when each novel, novella and short story takes place.
After that, I have a tab for each year from 2007 to 2014, a typical “grid” layout for a yearly planner – months across the page, days down the page. Within each tab, I have colour-coded blocks that detail the specific events in each novel, novella, and short story. It makes it quite colourful when events from different books happen on the same day, which happened a couple of times in 2013 & 2014.
I started doing this when I was writing The Truths We Live because I really needed to plan out the exact timeline of that story, including when Bobby filmed scenes and when those scenes got released. And me being me, I then had to fill in all the other details for every other event in the universe.
I actually find it really helps planning out stories, including things like working out when a school/university term starts and ends or when bank holidays are that I need to write around.
In one case, it even helped me to determine if there was a full moon one night for a scene in a story.And so it’s proved again. I’ve now pencilled in on the calendar the major events that will bring A Healing Love to a close. So I now have a rough framework for the rest of the book. In a sense, I’ve just passed beneath Blackfriar’s Bridge onto Victoria Embankment. Only, I’m strolling casually rather than pushing myself for a personal best time. Nevertheless, I know I’m only about a mile from the end.
