Writer's Blog - 20.

It's a poor excuse: I've been busy.   Lately I've spent lots of time travelling.   Plus, I'm moving out of my London flat, trying to pack loads of stuff into one car whose load-carrying capacity seems to have shrunk when I wasn't looking. But any excuse for not getting on with your writing is a poor one.  After all, you only need a little time, plus a pen (or pencil) and some paper.   So what's stopping you?   Well, if you're part way through a book - as I am - you might find it inconvenient if you're parted for days at a time from the PC which holds everything you've written so far, as well as some of your research.  But that isn't really a good enough reason for giving up entirely.   You can still add something to your  major work, even if all you've got is a pencil and notebook.  For example, you can rough out a scene that's going to come up later in your book - and for which you don't need to refer to the detail of what you've written already.  Or you can spend some time checking and reviewing how the plot and sub-plots are developing. I've tried to use both of these ploys to overcome my present hassles.   In looking at plot and structure, I've been helped a lot by comments from the tutor at my class.  I've also come back to a book that I've referred to countless times in the past.  On the face of it, it's an unlikely source of inspiration, because its called How to Make a Good Script Great (by Linda Seger).  As the title suggests, it's about screen-writing, rather than writing novels. But there are structural similarities, even though a film is generally a lot simpler than a novel, having fewer layers and sub-plots.  There is a real clarity about good commercial screen-writing.  It's a very helpful model. So, prompted by Seger's book,  I've been thinking a lot about Turning Points - incidents that propel the action forward, giving it a fresh slant or impetus, the sort of thing that boosts the reader from Act One to Act Two, or from Two to Three. I managed a first draft of one Turning Point scene while travelling on a train between Birmingham and London.  That was a solid hour and a half's graft.  Even though it was the only writing I did that day, it was nice to squeeze in a little work among all the other hassles.   Soon, I'll have finished this move and there'll be lots of time for writing - I hope!