Are you a crossword fan? There’s only one I regularly attempt and that’s the Sunday Telegraph Enigmatic Variations.  If I get to solve the ‘problem’ (it’s not a straightforward crossword) I feel made up for the week. (And by the time I have solved it, the next one has usually dropped through the door.)

What I’ve noticed is that when I’m stuck on a cryptic clue, if I sleep on it I often find the solution springs straight to mind the next day. Is my unconscious mind mulling it over while I snore? I wouldn’t be at all surprised. It’s the same thing when I’m trying to remember the name of an actor I’ve seen in a film, or the answer to a quiz question—leave the query alone and it’ll come home, dragging the answer behind it. My poor tired brain cells must have been working overtime on the problem.  

In the same way, I’ve taken to letting my subconscious solve my plot problems. Rather than pondering over some tricky point and getting into a lather, I find it easier to sleep on it/go and do some gardening/leave the document for a few days/employ other ‘getting my mind off it’ activities. Then I often find that either the solution springs to mind while I’m watering my petunias or I open the mss file and the words flow from my fingers like water off the proverbial duck’s back.

I also find it useful to let my characters solve something for me. There have been times when I’ve been doing a Cambridge fellows story when I’ve included a piece of information because it seems vital. I have no idea why it’s vital, I just know it is. It’s only later, as Jonty and Orlando are discussing whatever mystery it is they’re trying to solve, that I understand the significance of a picture on a desk or a piece of fake jewellery. Sounds mad, doesn’t it? I just can’t write a story if I have the entire plot worked out in advance (Jonty would never let me, anyway—he does have a habit of haring off hither and yon.) There needs to be some sense of mystery and discovery for me if I’m to convey that same feeling to the reader.

Sometimes I’ve sat down to write a tale with nothing more than a pair of characters and a conversation in mind. No story arc, no plan, just an absolute trust that the back of my noddle and two ‘hot’ gentlemen can, between them, spin a yarn. It usually works—the examples where it hasn’t are still stuck in my ‘work in progress’ file, waiting to be cannibalised (or quietly put out of their misery!).