On the last day of the old year I wrote about my New Year’s motto, which on reflection sounds a little weird. Follow the fishes – in actual fact it’s nothing to do with real fish, I’m not imagining being a fisherperson or working on a trawler. I guess I have a strange affinity to fish, from being young I was a great swimmer – great meaning I loved it and lived for it, and I was quite a good swimmer. Water felt my natural environment. I don’t swim now, I haven’t swum for many years, it’s as if it was just part of my childhood.
I’m thinking about writing when I think about ‘follow the fishes’, fishes observed as well as being a fish. I guess it’s the way when you’re writing, your ideas and words move in unexpected ways, sometimes smoothly and swiftly, sometimes hesitantly, or weaving around things, or going back on themselves. Sentences sometimes coming to a stop before they are finished, and just hang there, like a fish among water weed, just hanging, waiting, seemingly immobile apart from the tremble for the tail and fins. Sometimes ideas leap like salmon, maybe falling back before trying again and maybe again until the fish and the idea reach where they want and need to be. Looking at water and seeing reflections is like reading what you’ve written and seeing unexpected reflection of memories, mental images, ideas once thought lost.
I don’t think I’ve explained this very well, I’ll have to swim around for a while, dive into the depths or hover in the shallows, and come back to these thoughts another time.
Lois Elsden 
Dear Lois
interesting how you see your writing. On one hand I can very well relate to it but on the other my way of writing is much more planned. All my books I wrote following a plan. I write quite quickly without a stop and then I correct and work on it with my editor.
There are basically two ways to write, one way is like Hemingway used to write, quickly and work it over up to 50 times or like Thoma Mann wrote working every day for 4 to 5 hours and just writing one or two perfect pages.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend
Klausbernd 🙂
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It’s so interesting to find out how others write, thank you for sharing your method! I think I am more of a Hemingway, except that I always over write and have to go through and cut our all the extraneous words (and plot twists) afterwards, trying to pare it back. I have tried writing more simply, but then my imagination starts working and it’s almost like automatic writing – without the ghostly presence of course!
it is so cold and very foggy over this side of the country, I guess it’s being so close to the sea!
I hope it’s not too cold with you, and wish you a lovely Sunday!
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Dear Lois,
we have gorgeous weather the last days, – 8C and bright sunshine. A weather we really like. We just came home from a long walk. It was magic, everything frozen and glittering.
Nowadays I immediately work together with my editor. We know each other quite well. I did a lot of books with her. I need most of the time for writing a book planning it. The actual process of writing takes not much time. Next to planning the PR is time consuming, coordinating my agents for the foreign rights, ands my PR people to get me in the important talk shows and women’s magazines. The actual writing was about 25% of my time living as an author. But now I am retired and I only write if a publisher really begs me to.
Wishing you all the best
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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At last the fog has departed, and the weather is becoming milder, there was just a light frost last night!
Thank you for explaining about how you write, it’s so interesting to read about your processes and the way you work. I’m really only an amateur with just husband and writing friends to look at my stories – and I do the same for them! One day, when I’m famous, maybe I’ll have an editor too 😀 !!
Best wishes to you and I hope your beautiful weather continues!
Best wishes from a slightly warmer Somerset (slightly warmer until the next frost!)
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We keep our fingers crossed that you get famous soon.
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Thank you!! As long as I keep writing I am happy!
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