The joy of being back at work

There is something joyful about creating new words which is what leads me to write. I'm getting paid to edit, rewrite, smooth edges, fit awkward shaped characters to familiar corners. But the raw material is a joy to play with, and it's all mine. In A Baby's Bones, I didn't use my sixteenth century narrator, Edward Kelley, but now I'm putting him into the story. With his curiosity about the world, and interest in what he thinks of as 'science' (you and I would call a lot of it magical belief) he is open minded, keen to experiment and fascinated rather than scared by the 'other'.

The antagonist, Agness, is different, brought up a woman but having none of the benefits like being allowed to have a partner or children. An intelligent, passionate woman, frustrated by her role as perpetual housekeeper for her brother and not understanding why, her infatuation for an attractive young man spills into obsession. Writing  more of that, and with Kelley observing and understanding her agony, is helping me tell the rest of the story. Fun stuff. It also allows me to pull together threads of book 1 and 2 even though Baby's Bones is a prequel.

Meanwhile book 3, which I haven't sold, is growing in my head and started to complain that I'm not writing it. I'm making notes. This is the joy, the making something new, the playing with imagination and new ideas. Great stuff, fun stuff. I need to remember that, while editing is hard work (it is) it's also fast, and necessary. A few weeks here and there...small price to pay for all the fun of writing.