Why are we waiting?

I am being asked this quite a lot of late. Why is my current work in progress taking so long? This is a novel called Humphrey Abroad, and it’s a prequel to Humphrey & Jack, which some readers think is my best. (My favourites are probably Martin and Northern Flames, just for the record.)

Humphrey reappeared in a short story called Humphrey and the Squirrel which I wrote during the pandemic and issued for free. This was well-received too and so I thought I would visit Humphrey and his friends again, and take him out of his comfort zone, that is out of his parochial world, and to a post-retirement excursion abroad.

So why is it taking so long, say importunate voices, the most impatient of which is my sister’s. After all, last year I published three books, a novel, a satire, and a biography. Am I suffering from ‘writer’s block’ perchance? Not per se, I don’t think.

I know that this is a serious question for some writers, but I don’t honestly suffer from it. If I feel I might be getting stuck, there are three ways I get out of it.

– Give it a break – a couple of days perhaps – to let things gestate. It’s remarkable how the answer to a vexing problem is just there when you wake up one morning, or as you lie in the bath. The brain carries on trying to make sense of the world, even when you’re not aware of it.

– Do something else: read; review; catch upon correspondence; research; write a short story.

J– ust write. You might just have to junk the first few paragraphs, but eventually the cogs will mesh and the screen is filling up again.

‘A couple of days perhaps’? Who am I kidding? Over the summer ‘a couple of weeks’ of fallow time would be more like it, where precious little time was spent on the book.

Part of the reason for this has to do with writing a prequel. First, in plotting the structure, I have needed to be aware that some of my readers will have read Humphrey & Jack – and some of them won’t. In the first case, I don’t want to repeat what they already know, though there will be some reminders. In the second case, They will not know information about some of the characters that is essential to the plot and texture of the novels. I want each book to stand alone, but I want them to complement each other for the reader who wants to read both – in either order.

Next, since Humphrey is in French-speaking Belgium and in France itself in the central section of the book, and since he has conversations with the natives, there is a problem with dialogue. Obviously, these interactions can’t be recorded in French: I can’t assume my readers will be able to follow. Moreover, my French, though not bad, is probably not accurate, colloquial and idiomatically nuanced enough for the task. As Humphrey himself observes, the principal difficulties for non-native speakers are using the telephone, and jokes.

However, it would be clumsy to keep saying: ‘He said in French’ or ‘She said in French’ or ‘The conversation continued in French’ or ‘Humphrey reverted to English’. I think I’ve got round this on a case by case basis, and it’s surprising how much weight context will bear. You will have to choose whether or not I’ve got it right.

Then there is the genre and its tone and register. Humphrey travels to a number of cities in Western Europe, but I am writing a novel, not a travelogue, and I need to be mindful of that.

But in a way, these are excuses. It’s true that I have done a lot of reading this summer, and I’ve been to France twice. I suppose I could put that down to research, although I don’t think Humphrey is going to visit any of the places I did.

It is true that I have been suffering for three months now with folliculitis barbae, a maddening affliction where the beard area itches so badly that takes a great deal of will power not to take a Brillo pad to one’s face. It was certainly not an incentive to writing.

However, I am back at work, and making excellent headway. I resolved the problem with a cunning plan: I wrote a number of chapters out of synch, each in a different city, in Tournai, in Brussels, at the Gare du Nord, on a train to Rouen, and reading a notice in a hotel in Rheims. The process is like stations on a journey, points on a graph, stars in a constellation. Now, I am joining up the dots, and creating the narrative arc. The drive to turn the random stars into a scorpion or a swan is compulsive.

The third section of the novel (Home/Abroad/Home Again) contains a scene in a supermarket, which came to me in a dream complete. No joke. I forced myself to get up at three in the morning to write it down before it evaporated. It involves Humphrey absent-mindedly going home with the contents of someone else’s trolley.

When will it be finished? I don’t know. I can only assure you that the gang’s all here: Humphrey, the Evangelists, Secondhand Sue, Flake, Mrs Bellingham and Aristotle the cat – and introducing Aurélie, Dubious Donald, and Belgian Frank.

Shall we say some time in 2025?

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2 Comments

Nagging Sister here. H & J is my fave book ever (and I read a lot). It is a BIG book, so totally understand how long it must take to write. May I just add (out of fairness) that it also took me a long time to read H & J three times…but so worth it. You so need to look after yourself first and foremost…but me second and secondmost. So glad my fave characters will be in the new book, with new ones equally as funny I should imagine. I don’t know how you even have time to sleep and dream….I would have sleepless nights thinking of the next plots…so as you’re a better sleeper than me I’ll leave YOU to write the books. Methinks you are a better writer than me too, but who knows ! ?

Your support is always appreciated! I’m afraid I write quite slowly and critically. Actually, I often do have trouble getting to sleep, especially in the later stages. I will feel that I’ve painted myself into a corner. Often the answer will come to me out of the blue: in the bath, the pub, yhe supermarket, the chemist’s, etc.

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