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I was asked the question in the title when interviewed by Romantic Times when Daughter of Blood was published last year. Here’s what I told them:

“Someone famous (I don’t know who) is supposed to have said that there are two main ways of writing. The first is to “sit on the porch and rock” until you get the story complete in your head and then just write it. The second is to “write and throw away”, repeating as required until you get the story done.

With the Wall of Night series, I have always had a really clear idea of the major “stations” along the story line, as well as the final destination. But the further I have gotten from the period when I (metaphorically) sat on the porch and rocked, the less clearcut the sections of track between the stations have become, so I have to do more writing and throwing away to reach the heart of the story.

A quote attributed to the Prussian general, Graf Von Moltke, is that “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” I find it’s very similar with my books, in that no plan survives the process of writing completely unscathed. As soon as the stories take on a life of their own—and they always do—the plot and the characters start evolving and changing shape. Inevitably, I then have to do both more “sitting and rocking” (reflection and plot wrangling) and more writing and throwing away (often literally) to keep the overall story on track.

So the challenge of writing a quartet like The Wall of Night, which is one story being told in four parts (as opposed to four individual adventures), is that the length of the work increases the scope for the story to evolve in new directions. The challenge, though, lies in the endurance and discipline required to work with that, rather than the fact that evolution occurs.

Writing is a dynamic process and that is part of what makes it exciting; most often, too, the evolution enriches the story. I like to say that this is because the story is wise and as the author, I need to learn to listen to what it is telling me. In Steering The Craft, Ursula Le Guin says something very similar, in slightly different words:

 “…the story boat is a magic one. It knows its course. The job of the person at the helm is to help it to find its own way to wherever it’s going.”

To which I can only say: hear, hear.“

To read the interview in full, click on:

Romantic Times: Helen Lowe on Earthquakes, Prussian Generals, and Rocking on the Porch

*I’m “pretty sure” the Graf von Moltke (the Elder) I’ve quoted was originally Danish although he served almost his entire military career in the Prussian army.