Monthly Archives: December 2011

London

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The play (3 Days In May) was excellent. It’s by a guy called Ben Brown and only debuted in August of this year. I learnt a lot, especially about history lol. There are only 8 characters in the whole play, 6 of those being the main ones. I bought a copy of the script so that I can have a read. See how the writer set things out on the page. Some quality acting, especially from Warren Clarke (as Churchill), a simplistic stage set and a small theatre made it almost feel like you were a fly on the wall for meetings of the War Cabinet in 1940 🙂

I love this idea, a play based on 3 days in History, the author inventing the conversations and altercations that would have taken place around those events. Embellishing the facts to produce a work of fiction that educates and entertains at the same time.

It’s made me realise that it’s something I would really like to try my hand at.

Today will be my last day of rest, before I start on part 4 of the course. This next section is entitled Style & Language. Apparently, I’m developing a style, but I’m not sure exactly what that style is yet *snigger* I guess I’ll see when I do the first exercise 😉

Comparing Is Never Good

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You should never compare your writing to someone else’s, that’s a given…..but when you see the work of others who are doing the same course as you, you can’t help it can you 😦 So yesterday I found myself totally disillusioned and self critical, to the point where I just about managed to finish my character work, but that was it lol

I will pick myself back up…..you have to don’t you 🙂

Today I’m going to see a play…… 3 Days In May It’s probably not my normal sort of thing, but, as hubby gets dragged along I thought it might interest him from the story point of view. For me, having recently done some work on my course regarding play writing, I’ll be there to analyse 😉 So I’ll enjoy it no matter what!

I joined Mslexia a couple of days ago and noticed they are running a short story competition. I really must pull my finger out in the New Year. I said, just after returning from Swanwick last year, that I was determined to go back in 2012 with something published. So I think I will try my hand at the Mslexia competition 🙂

My problem is, I have so many ideas, so many stories written in rough 1st draft form, but I never get any further with them lol…… They just seem to stay in rough form and then I’m moving onto the next lol.

I treated myself to a Mslexia diary…..love it! 🙂

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So won’t be getting any writing done today, but I will be taking my notebook 😉

Book Shopping

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Oh dear…..how did I manage to end up with 9 new books during the last 2 days? Lol

Yes, unfortunately I am a book addict…..and is that a bad thing?lol

The ones I’m most looking forward to reading are 26 by Jonathan Kemp and 253 by Geoff Ryman Both are very character driven and that’s what fascinates me about these 2 particular books.

Plan for today (if I can resist starting on one of the above) is to finish the work I’ve been doing in my notebook about the complexity of characters and use another picture prompt.

Thanks to Geoff Ryman for the following concept…….

Could you imagine if you had the ability to look at another person and know all about their life? Imagine your day. Standing on the station platform you look at a man he seems agitated, it’s his wife’s birthday today and he hasn’t got her a present, if he goes home tonight without one she’ll hit him……or the woman reading the newspaper. She doesn’t want to go in today because her boss is a bully, always shouting at her, it’s making her depressed.

On the train a couple sit holding hands, they look sweet together. Both wearing wedding rings they’re not actually married to each other. When you get to work the woman in accounts scowls at you as you walk past, she hates you, thinks you’re a fascist. Someone in your department told her that, someone you thought was a friend.

At lunch time you go to a pub…..a group of men come in, off duty police officers, they’re very loud and aggressive, they intimidate the barmaid. One of them sexually assaults her in the toilets.

On the way home the woman sitting opposite to you is smiling. Shes pregnant. She agreed with her husband that they wouldn’t have kids but for the past few weeks she’s been taking a pin to the condoms.

Can you imagine living like that? Scary lol

But as writers, isn’t that what we do on a regular basis?

There’s a story behind every single person we see, every single day…..and I love it!!!!!

Picture Prompts

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The assignment has been submitted YAY lol. So I’ll give myself a couple of days break and then I’ll start on the next section 🙂

Yesterday I wrote a few short stories. I love using pictures to inspire ideas and I have a separate notebook for writing stories and doing characterisations that are inspired by pictures. I try to stick to just 2 pages for each picture, to make it short and just an outline. I use photos that I have taken myself along with any interesting shots I’ve come across in magazines and newspapers.

The one I especially enjoyed writing yesterday (which was inspired by a woman in dark glasses shaking hands with a guy in a straw hat in a shop) is about a woman who’s husband is a well known, charismatic and successful author. The guy she’s meeting, or rather, bumping into, is her husbands ex agent. She lets slip to the ex agent about the book launch next week. The ex agent is put out that he hasn’t been invited so she pretends his invite must have go lost, and says she’ll post another one. She knows her husband will be furious for inviting him and on the verge of a panic attack she makes her way to the toilets. She removes her glasses and splashes her face with cold water. In the mirror she gently prods her black eye, hoping that it will have gone down in time for the book launch, and praying, that she won’t get another one.

I enjoy writing stories like that 🙂 A friend said to me recently “don’t you ever write anything happy?” lol…..I can do happy, but happy is boring, happy is chick lit or Mills & Boon….and anyway, the story above could be happy…… She could leave him and then we could discover that it’s been her all along writing the books 😉

Finally There?

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Assignment 3

Spell check…..Done
Tense…..Altered where needed
Internal Monologue…..Added
Reflective Commentary…..Written
All typed up and ready to submit…..Nearly lol 😉

I just need to check it over one more time and then I can e mail it to my tutor 🙂

Yesterday, along with faffing about with my assignment I was also thinking about the complexity of Characters. What makes a good character? Well, if you think about people you know they’re all multi faceted, layered, and you only get to see what they want you to see…..do you ever really know someone?…….and why is that?

It’s all about the stuff we hide and why we hide it. Does such a thing as ‘an open book’ really exist? Or are they actually a dark horse? We hide sides of our personality that we are embarrassed about or uncomfortable with. We hide to control the way we’re perceived. We want to appear stronger, wiser, sexier, more successful, younger or more mature than we really are. So what do people hide? What would a person spend a lifetime concealing? What would a person take to their grave without ever revealing? What secrets do people keep?

No person is all good…..

No person is all bad…..

…..our fictional characters should be just like real people. Not only do they have to get up and go to work, put the rubbish out or feed the cat, they, like us, have layered personalities, issues and secrets.

Wouldn’t fiction, and life, be dull, if we didn’t? 😉

Editing, Editing, and Rediting

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I spent most of yesterday editing a 2700 word section of my Nano Novella to use as my 3rd OCA Assignment which is due in on the 20th of December.

I chose a section that contains narrative and dialogue but the other requirement is for the piece to contain internal monologue, which currently, it doesn’t 😦

Internal Monologue is a narrative technique that shows the thoughts passing through the protagonists mind. Sounds simple yeah? Lol…..well not really. You can’t say he/she thought, that wouldn’t be Internal Monologue. It has to be more direct. It’s like a stream of consciousness in which the author shows the thoughts of a single individual in the same order these thoughts occur inside the characters head. The author shouldnt attempt to provide (or only minimally) any commentary or description to help the reader untangle the thoughts, nor should the author sort them into grammatically correct sentences. It’s like the reader overhearing the characters thoughts and the narrator disappears and the POV overlaps…… Now, does that make sense? Lol

Virginia Woolf uses the technique in Mrs Dalloway:

“It seemed to her as she drank the sweet stuff that she was opening long windows,
stepping out into some garden. But where? The clock was striking – one, two, three:
how sensible the sound was; compared with all this thumping; like Septimus himself.
She was falling asleep.”

I’ve been trying to get my head round this whole concept, and I think I’ve finally cracked it. It helps the reader connect more with the character and yes, when you add some to your 3rd person narrative it kinda makes the whole thing feel less detached…..the famous show don’t tell rule.

So today will be spent adding Internal Monologue……and sorting out my “tense” lol. I am officially a nightmare when it comes to chopping and changing tense. The weird thing is, when my husband had a look he said most of the tense errors were to do with one character in particular. Haven’t got a clue how I managed that! 😉

The Writers Notebook

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When I attended the first lesson of a local Creative Writing Class (run by Philip Kane) he told us to create a Writers Notebook. Looking back, it was the best piece of advice I’ve had over the course of the last 15 months. Since then I have managed to fill 8 notepads…..the medium Moleskin size.

When I started the OCA course, they advised the same, but also suggested I have a “commonplace” book. A book to contain all the visual material that catches your eye. Hmmmm, now call me a rebel, but I decided to ignore that and just use the one book for everything, which is what I do 🙂

My notebook and I are inseparable 😉 It’s the equivalent of an artists sketchbook, a place to store ideas, observations, practice skills, jot down information, review books and films, and keep cuttings that interest me. I also have a folder for larger cuttings that won’t fit in the book. I use it to make notes on my course, words and ideas that I need to research, examples of writing that I love (inc poetry and inspirational quotes) and writing prompts should writers block ever strike, which, I have to say, it never has lol…..sorry, but it hasn’t, and I put that down to my notebooks. Not a day goes by that I don’t write something in it 🙂

As I said before, I’m a visual person as well as a word person, so I was thrilled when I read Lesley Thomson’s A Kind Of Vanishing, to see that in the back of the book was a whole section where Lesley explained her inspiration and the connection between her writing and her photography. I take a lot of pictures and it suddenly dawned on me that I could use my own pictures to inspire stories and characters. So now, I do that too 🙂

I use art to inspire title ideas and have at least 2 lists of character names in each notepad. Even when I’m watching TV I’m taking notes….. The Jeremy Kyle Show has suddenly become very interesting 😉

Writing Books

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I’m a huge fan of writing books, in fact, I’m an addict lol. It all started with The Five Minute Writer last year, which I worked my way through over the course of a few months. Great book (IMO) and I thoroughly enjoyed the exercises.

At the moment I’m using The Writers Workbook by Caroline Sharp. It’s pretty good, but some of the exercises are a bit long winded lol.

I’m currently practicing research…..the task is to pick a place and a year, then ask yourself 20 questions regarding life in that time at that place. I’ve always been fascinated with the Victorian period, since I was a teenager…..I tend to be drawn to Victorian antiques and jewellery and love Victorian architecture (my house was built in 1891). When I was growing up people use to joke that it had something to do with my name ;o) So, it was inevitable that I chose London (my home town) and 1850 for my research project.

Initially I thought that would be pretty easy……ha ha ha, oh I’m so naive lol…..it’s proving to be a little more difficult than I thought lol. the Internet is a wealth of information, but it’s so easy to end up 20 web sites later a million miles away from what you originally started reading.

Here’s my 20 questions>>>>>>

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The first 7 were given in the book, the rest are my own. It’s been an interesting task and I’ve learnt a lot……but the main lesson has been that I won’t be setting my next novel in a small town in Kansas in 1934 lol

Pen Name

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After our TGIO party in Maidstone yesterday I have decided that I really do need to have a pen name lol…..pompous I know, but hold on, hear me out ;o)

At the moment there is an American author who seems to be very successful (cosy crime I think) who shares my full name…..hmmmm, not good, she even has the domain names I’d need *pout*

If I call myself by the name I usually go by, ie shortened first name, I share it with a very famous murder victim who was killed at the side of a motorway about 12 years ago……even worse! 😦

Sooooo, what name? It needs to still feel like me (IMO), I need to feel comfortable with it and be available for domain names lol. I’ve come up with 2 options that I like, that I could live with, that incorporate my husbands name as a surname (that way I can get him to help me…sneaky huh?).

Problem? Stella Whitelaw’s words of advice are still ringing in my ears. She told me that if I was going to have a pen name, to choose something that is at the beginning of the alphabet, so that my books would always be at the front, and she should know, being a “W” lol. She said looking back now, she wishes she’d chose an “A” surname.

So that leaves me with a dilemma doesnt it….my husband being an “R” lol

Why oh why couldn’t I have married an Alan 😉

Analysis

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I spent yesterday doing the exercise with the list…..very scary but an eye opener, as it made me realise what elements were missing (internal dialogue for example) and how, by adding those, I can make my writing sound and appear so much better 🙂

I went to Tunbridge Wells yesterday as my daughter had to do a training session, so I sat in Starbucks for an hour, with my notepad and did a few character sketches. Thoroughly enjoyable, especially the lady I christened “Maggie” a retired air stewardess, who, on the outside is vivacious, always smiling and up for a laugh…..trouble is, she never married, and now, the loneliness has crept in and the house is too quiet, so she avoids going home.

Then I went in Waterstones (has to be done!) and bought yet another writing book…..whoops!

Today I’m going to a TGIO Nano Party in Maidstone (that’s Thank God It’s Over for non Wrimos) so we can celebrate our success/failure lol. I spent over an hour last night doing a spell check on my Novella and still only got up to page 54 of 67 lol…..will have to finish that at the weekend *slump* as I’m using part of it for my assignment……which is:

A short story or extract from a longer story that makes extensive use of direct speech, as well as some internal monologue

2500 to 3000 words……. So I need to do a bit of editing, add some internal monologue and submit by the 20th. Piece of cake? Ha ha ha……we’ll see 😉