The joy of writing a novel in lockdown

It's day 1,489 of lockdown and 7 days since I sprained my ankle. I have been confined to the sofa with my foot up with a bag of iced peas. It's recovering, I'll be fine, but I'm a very impatient patient. I'm not the sort of person who can sit still. But I have to, for now. I went over twice on my ankle in the garden last Tuesday and a call to NHS 111 confirmed it wasn't a fracture. I have to sit and wait this out.

And while I do, I write.

And what a joy it is.

I was already scheduled to begin writing novel 6 (as yet untitled) before lockdown began.  It's another gritty saga set in a northeast mining village in 1919. I'd planned to do three weeks of research in museums and archives ... and then lockdown began. My research plans were scrapped, changed. I bought a pile of books from ebay and I did three weeks of research by reading instead. A friend of mine gave me his access to an historical research site, which has helped a great deal.

Historians I'd usually meet and chat with have been more than happy to respond to my questions by email, they say it gives them something to do.  One historian friend works as a GP and I've been loathe to contact him during this crisis. He'd offered his advice on mental health and the Sunderland asylum in Ryhope, an integral part of the book that was inspired by my GP friend after my first novel was published. The asylum has been hovering in the back of my mind since then. However, he's been more than willing to help and says it's a welcome, even a necessary distraction from what is going on right now.

And so after three weeks of reading and as much research as I could do, I plotted and planned and then began to write.

Normally I write three, sometimes four times a week in chunks of 2,000 words. That's my routine and it's worked well for the last five novels I've written.  But this time I'm writing every day. Each morning from 8am I get stuck into my fictional world and bring it alive. And because I'm writing each day, I'm more fully immersed in that world than ever before. I have no emails to answer, no author talks to give, there are no demands on my time other than to rest my ankle. And with that freedom in my head, I can give myself over to writing each day.

And it's an absolute joy.

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Glenda Young
Author of historical novels with Headline
Twitter: @Flaming_Nora
Facebook: GlendaYoungAuthor