First Person Singular

If I were a less honest person, I could claim to be half way to the 50,000 word target set by National Novel Writing Month (that's NaNoWriMo for fans of acronyms) for their novel-in-a-month challenge.  However, having publically declared 8464 words already written, I'm not quite at that point.  It's still not bad going for a week (including 3 working days) and as the word count seems to be keeping pace quite nicely with the actual journey at the heart of the story, I'm pleased with progress.

This little novel is a challenge in other ways too.  My previous stories have followed a large cast of characters and regularly swapped perspectives between them, so the reader (and author) often knows much more than any particular character, setting up situations akin to the 'look behind you!' scenario at a pantomime.  'Grand Union' is narrated solely by women's rights worker and narrowboater Daphne Randall, so the reader knows no more than she does - often less, actually, as she isn't always narrating a entirely coherent, chronological account.  From an author's perspective, this makes filling in the plot details tricky as you can't cut away to another scene to hear first hand from another character.

Daphne's actual voice is a challenge in itself.  Having cast her as a Geordie, it would be all too easy to lay the accent on with a trowel and make her a caricature.  But this unlikely lass has lived and worked well south of the Tyne for most of her life and, though often outspoken and sometimes a bit earthy, she's well-read and well-educated - she was at university in the company of plummy Hilary Carrington, no less - so the rough edges were knocked off some while ago.  So I'm adopting the 'Appleby approach' - as applied to the Severe Discomfort Presenting Officer of the same name - and aiming more for a pattern of speech, a rhythm and cadence suggestive of her native accent, with the occasional dialect word where she might lapse back to using it.
 
It feels right - as I've discovered myself, you don't tend to hear your own accent when you move away from home.  You 'speak proper' - it's everyone else that talks funny.  That's why her co-star's Potteries dialect is slightly more pronounced; Daphne hears the 'conners' and 'donners' and a double 'o' in the middle when he resorts to 'strong language', but is deaf to her own non-standard pronunciation.  We know she has an accent, however - not least because boat-restorer Peter Brassington thinks she's a Scot!

Still, that's enough blogging for today - I want to make the most of another very wet day to get to the 30,000 word milestone if I can - my real half-way mark.  Or Milton Keynes.

They should be in about the same place.