Finding A Persona

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The last 2 exercises on my course have brought up a very interesting point…….

If I’m brutally honest with myself, when I write from a 1st person POV the persona of the narrator, doesn’t change much lol….. That’s ok if you take each individual short story separately……but, if you look at a couple together, compare them, it could quite possibly be the same person telling both stories 😦 Hmmmmm….. I really need to sort that out don’t I *slump* lol

So I managed to get 2 exercises done (YAY) and get them up on my other blog which I’m going to use as my Learning Log for the OCA.

Also managed to finish my short story (1800words) called ‘What Lies Beneath’ although hubby seems to think there was a film called that so I might need to change the title. It’s going to be submitted in a competition, after some extensive editing. Pleased with it though 🙂

Talking of my course, I’ve discovered, that, to achieve the degree, my next module will be a whole 9 months of poetry study/writing *huge groan*…..I can’t do it, I really can’t 😦 So at the moment, I’m looking round for alternative Creative Writing Courses…… Not found another degree one which is a bummer, but I quite like the sound of the one run by The London School of Journalism but there’s no actual qualification…..and then of course there’s Faber & Faber’s The Faber Academy which is outrageously expensive. No qualification with that one either, but looks good on the old CV don’t you think? Lol.

Then again, I could just go back to the good old OU….but I wouldn’t be able to start their diploma course until September 2012 *pouts*…..if they’ll have me back that is…..looooong story lol

Anyway, I’m not going to worry about it too much over Christmas….think about it again seriously in the New Year 🙂

No Longer A Competition Virgin ;)

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I’ve entered my very first writing competition….go me! I’m quite proud of myself but I’m under no illusions….so I don’t expect to hear anything back from it.

It’s a 500 word short story entitled “Keep You” which is about a woman who’s baby son was abducted by her ex husband. The 500 words describe the scene where she actually sees her son for the first time in 4.5 years (who said I don’t do happy stories?). At a later date I’d like to elaborate it and extend it so that we see her get her son back. The whole thing was inspired by a photo I saw of a woman who had her head in her hands crying.

Plan for today will be to get at least 1 of the exercises done for my course, 2 if I can manage it 🙂 I also want to do some work on another short story I’m working on for another competition. It’s about a woman who’s husband is a famous author. I have just over 1000 words, but can submit up to 2000. Most of the competitions offer a critique service. I didn’t bother asking for one with “Miss You” but I think I will with this one 😉

I have this idea……at some stage in the future I’m sure I will have piles and piles of rejection letters….so I’ve promised myself that when I do, I will decorate a wall in my dressing room with them. I know I have to develop a thick skin, I know that I’ll have to get use to “thank you, but no thank you” on a regular basis….and that’s ok, I know that often, being a successful writer doesnt necessarily go hand in hand with talent. I’ve read books by famous authors that, to be quite honest, are complete shite! Likewise, the writing of amateurs that I’ve thought is amazing but they never get that break.

At the moment, I’m happy to just keep plodding along, learning all that I can, and tentatively dipping my toe 😉

Assignment 3 – Feedback

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I didn’t get much writing done today, well, saying that, I did type up a short story from one of my notebooks for use, hopefully, as a competition entry……if I can double the word count. Will see how I go with that over the weekend 🙂

I received my tutors feedback today on my 3rd OCA Assignment. Very pleased with her comments although, re-reading the piece I submitted, I did manage to miss some really silly mistakes. The odd piece of tense (one of my major weaknesses) and some punctuation 😦 Hopefully, things I will get better at with more practice.

I also need to stop stating the obvious, ie, let the reader fill in the blanks and concentrate more on my show…..stop telling lol 😉

As I’ve decided to enter a few competitions and perhaps send out some submissions, I did a bit of research. It seems that most of them want work that hasn’t been available anywhere else, inc being published on Blogs, unless they’re private. So, I decided to start a notebook, specifically for subs and competition entries, so I can keep track on what I’ve submitted where.

Looking for a title for my current short story idea I ended up surrounded by all my notebooks….. It’s a good job I do my writing on a 6 foot dining table! Lol

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The top 4 are the ones I’m currently working with. I love flicking through them and playing with the ideas I’ve jotted down over the last 14 months 🙂

Sooooo, I now have a date for my next Assignment……30th January…..but I have to work through the next set of exercises first 😉

Research

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Spent most of yesterday researching style. Now, I’m not completely stupid, I know there are different styles of writing, it’s just my own I can’t identify lol

Unfortunately I got distracted quite a bit with the arrival of my first Copy of the Mslexia magazine….and all I can say is wow what a great resource!!!! I’ve read it cover to cover!!!!! There’s a huge section at the back that lists competitions…..gunna try my hand at a couple, you never know……and i never will unless i submit something 😉

Very interesting article entitled “The Case for 4×4 Fiction” all about publishers not being interested in publishing stories that are about the middle classes…..oh dear, that’s definitely my stuff out the window then lol. Both of my Nano novels are about middle class families, set in suburbia. Apparently, if I change my stories, so that they’re about poverty stricken people I’ve got a much better chance of publication lol

My Amazon wish list took a pounding….. After reading said article I managed to add another half a dozen books lol

Today’s task, (in between the washing machine repair man, a friend popping in for coffee and baking lol) is the next exercise on the course, regarding my “audience”….. Who is the invisible reader at my shoulder when I write? I’m pretty sure I write what I like to read (which I’ve now discovered I have no chance in hell of getting published lol).

Sooooo, my audience? 40 something housewife who likes to read about other peoples lives, so she can believe that others are having a shittier time than she is LMAO 😉

OCA Part 4 Project 1

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I’m still struggling with the whole “what is my style?” question and yesterday’s exercise was to write a piece that takes you approx 20 minutes. I’m a bit confused as to whether I was suppose to actually imitate a style or what, but hey ho…..I did manage to write a piece, as to what style it is, I’m open to suggestions lol.

You can find the story, or rather part story here

I decided to use a picture prompt (something I love to do).

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I haven’t got a clue where I got it from, but it’s been sat in my notebook for a while. I initially decided that he would be a man who would witness a murder…..but, then I applied the what if question, and that completely turned it around 🙂

Style & Genre

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I’ve never thought of myself as a thriller writer. It’s not really a genre I like to read…… Having said that, there seems to be a distinction between Crime and Thriller according to The Guardian. So why don’t the bookshop’s follow that rule? If you go into Waterstone’s all crime and thriller titles are in the same section, on their website, it’s even worse, there’s only a crime section…..pout 😦

I tend to write about people’s lives, how a persons life can change in the blink of an eyelid. I never really thought about what genre my writing would fit into, and nowadays it seems that you have to fit into a category. Soooo, ok, there is an element of suspense/mystery in what I like to write, but crime? Really? I don’t think so lol. I always thought that crime was about case solving, a detective (or at least Police) chasing a baddy…..Serial killers and murderers.

Linda Gillard brought my attention to this Guardian Article which is quite scary, and means that from my point of view, if I ever hope to get published I have to make sure that I somehow fit neatly inside a publishers box if I have any hope of getting published….. How sad is that? 😦 Do i write Popular Fiction? Literary Fiction? Contemporary Fiction?….*brain throbs*

As to style? What is my style? I like Fay Weldon, but I don’t write like her. I love Anita Shreve, but my writing is no way anything like hers either lol. The last 2 books I have read (inc my current read) have been by gay male authors (lots of sex scenes) and I definitely don’t find myself being influenced by that lol. So what am I influenced by? Strong female characters overcoming adversity? (is that chick lit? Lol) Character driven plots? The good and the bad in all of us?

Perhaps I need to decide whether I’m writing for myself (where style & genre is irrelevant) or a wider audience (where genre is everything) before I make a decision as to what direction I want to go in…..or I could always just throw in the towel and start writing Sci Fi 😉

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 😉