My baby has just split into parts. An exercise in synopsis writing has just confirmed that a project I thought had been merely for play and an assignment has kind of created itself almost completely unnoticed by me.
I now have one experimental thriller and two ladlit projects on the go: The Beach meets Trainspotting, and a Book of Job rewrite based in the music industry. My head's all over the place. It is becoming all too clear, to quote another writer, that writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia...
Question: do i split my time evenly, or be indulgent and spoil whichever one happens to share company with me?
Plans for a short story on defamiliarisation are also starting to take shape. A dark foreboding and the eerie suggestion of something wicked sits just around the corner, crouching in the shadows and waiting for the right moment to show its face.
This isn't one I want to push - the gruesome always reveals itself in due course.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Thursday, 18 November 2010
Authorial Gestation
Progress with my storyline has come rushing through the open sash window of my protagonist's bedroom and sent her old essays flying like a cloud of words. Her ailing bird in its delicate cage has had its decrepit feathers ruffled by the speed of the inspiration rattling its bars.
Characterisation was giving me some headaches, mostly on the problematic nature of my head being full of a million and one other things. How to love a murderer? I want her fall from grace to be shocking, but believable. Viewpoint, and how to approach her depiction has consumed me since the last blog.
I just didn't want to kick of by misreading her too soon. Reading up on serial killers was getting me down, and then I read The Collector, by J Fowles, remembered In God's Own Country by Ross Raisin, and that's really helped a lot, to see how it can work without being sensational and in this way, more dark for its innocence.
And here I am staring across a sea of possibilities, finally understanding that sometimes, you have to let the crap out in order to get at the nuts and bolts - the carcass of the thing. People tell you this all the time and then, wham! it hits you like a bloody great brick in the face. You know it, because you can physically feel it.
I have let some mini-metaphors in too because I needed some kind of allowance to play. Lots of little ones embroidered together are fast becoming the dream catcher in which the bigger narrative is growing.
After a week in which my laptop was invaded by spyware, then rescued by wonderful tech assistants at Southampton Solent University, the idea that I had almost lost EVERYTHING I have been working on for six months was, in one moment, terrifying.
Nothing like a shake up, and a reminder that other people have bigger problems than a laptop going on the blink, to put things in perspective.
Characterisation was giving me some headaches, mostly on the problematic nature of my head being full of a million and one other things. How to love a murderer? I want her fall from grace to be shocking, but believable. Viewpoint, and how to approach her depiction has consumed me since the last blog.
I just didn't want to kick of by misreading her too soon. Reading up on serial killers was getting me down, and then I read The Collector, by J Fowles, remembered In God's Own Country by Ross Raisin, and that's really helped a lot, to see how it can work without being sensational and in this way, more dark for its innocence.
And here I am staring across a sea of possibilities, finally understanding that sometimes, you have to let the crap out in order to get at the nuts and bolts - the carcass of the thing. People tell you this all the time and then, wham! it hits you like a bloody great brick in the face. You know it, because you can physically feel it.
I have let some mini-metaphors in too because I needed some kind of allowance to play. Lots of little ones embroidered together are fast becoming the dream catcher in which the bigger narrative is growing.
After a week in which my laptop was invaded by spyware, then rescued by wonderful tech assistants at Southampton Solent University, the idea that I had almost lost EVERYTHING I have been working on for six months was, in one moment, terrifying.
Nothing like a shake up, and a reminder that other people have bigger problems than a laptop going on the blink, to put things in perspective.
Friday, 5 November 2010
Dog Days and clouds
Does anyone love Florence and the Machine as much as I do right now. Optimism floats around you in a lovely, spatial upbeat kind of way. Just perfect for my protagonist in her aspirational phase. This will be the soundtrack I use for lifting her soul out of darkness.
An inspirational conversation with a loved one pulled me out of a mire of depression involving several critiques, two synopsis' and a packet of Cadbury's crunchie biscuits. Draw it all, apply all experience - good and bad. Something has to come out of the crap. When the mental, interior CD is spinning on overtime and won't stop to play the content it's time to press eject and put a fresh one in.
An inspirational conversation with a loved one pulled me out of a mire of depression involving several critiques, two synopsis' and a packet of Cadbury's crunchie biscuits. Draw it all, apply all experience - good and bad. Something has to come out of the crap. When the mental, interior CD is spinning on overtime and won't stop to play the content it's time to press eject and put a fresh one in.
Saturday, 23 October 2010
editorial
Wow, I am totally drained. Have had very little time for conception of the novel because of my part in our editorial team. I really loved the reviewing and searching out Christmas suggestions for reading gifts. It was also great to revisit Thai'd Up (a novel in progress)and be able to be distanced enough to see where it needed reworking - and also where I can take it. Very cool.
My PC has decided it doesn't want to play the editorial game. My brain is also saying, 'Art and technology are incompatible in your mental database'. My brain is absolutely right.
Having waited all week for someone to submit a proposal of artwork for the front cover of edition one of Solent's Friction magazine of fiction, I have ended up having to hurl something out. Fun for five minutes until I realised how long it has been since I considered Art for graphic design purposes... I remember why I hated typography so much.
Having spent time researching academic psychology papers I discovered some amazing treats about the super ego. My antagonist has another dimension now too.
My PC has decided it doesn't want to play the editorial game. My brain is also saying, 'Art and technology are incompatible in your mental database'. My brain is absolutely right.
Having waited all week for someone to submit a proposal of artwork for the front cover of edition one of Solent's Friction magazine of fiction, I have ended up having to hurl something out. Fun for five minutes until I realised how long it has been since I considered Art for graphic design purposes... I remember why I hated typography so much.
Having spent time researching academic psychology papers I discovered some amazing treats about the super ego. My antagonist has another dimension now too.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Profiling
Spent a good few hours researching academic literature on psychoanalysis and case studies. I'm saying no more than that here, apart from this; thank god for undergrad access to peer reviewed information. But some of the reading is chilling.
My main characters are starting to give themselves another dimension. My protagonist's psyche could be very ambiguous - if I can get my head around how to work the narrative style.
Think I have a few books to visit just go give myself some perspective in differing tastes: American Psycho and Perfume... and maybe have a look at Monster.
My main characters are starting to give themselves another dimension. My protagonist's psyche could be very ambiguous - if I can get my head around how to work the narrative style.
Think I have a few books to visit just go give myself some perspective in differing tastes: American Psycho and Perfume... and maybe have a look at Monster.
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
self doubt
I have officially started to form the embryo of a novel. It's seemingly viable! YES! Now that I've used up my allowance of exclamation marks I shall calm down.
University lecturers are very inspiring characters - full of enthusiasm. I guess that's when you know you have landed in the right place - even if it may be at the wrong time. University cutbacks are slaying us all.
However it's panning out nationwide, something is happening for me through a small and wonderful bubble of possibilities. The flash of scenes which catch me at stupid, inopportune moments is a killer. Show don't tell: if you could have seen me desperately pulling my hair out during lectures, you would know.
I'm smitten with my protagonist, thank god. I'm kinda smitten with the antagonist too - but you have to love to hate them. Have formulated their monologues (their statements of being for my own reference) and one of these has somehow found it's way into the narrative... thank you, Sara Bailey. The character development excercise really helped.
It's a crazy world I'm in, when one minute I'm working on my novel, but then the next I have to look at fiction for young people, ghostwriting, screenwriting... gaads, my heads a mess. At some point the crazy creature within will start to rear her head and everyone will see the bonkers girlie who peers at me from the mirror.
Yikes.
University lecturers are very inspiring characters - full of enthusiasm. I guess that's when you know you have landed in the right place - even if it may be at the wrong time. University cutbacks are slaying us all.
However it's panning out nationwide, something is happening for me through a small and wonderful bubble of possibilities. The flash of scenes which catch me at stupid, inopportune moments is a killer. Show don't tell: if you could have seen me desperately pulling my hair out during lectures, you would know.
I'm smitten with my protagonist, thank god. I'm kinda smitten with the antagonist too - but you have to love to hate them. Have formulated their monologues (their statements of being for my own reference) and one of these has somehow found it's way into the narrative... thank you, Sara Bailey. The character development excercise really helped.
It's a crazy world I'm in, when one minute I'm working on my novel, but then the next I have to look at fiction for young people, ghostwriting, screenwriting... gaads, my heads a mess. At some point the crazy creature within will start to rear her head and everyone will see the bonkers girlie who peers at me from the mirror.
Yikes.
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
day one of year two
It's gone eleven and pouring with rain - just to make me feel all warm and fuzzy about standing at a dreary, gum-covered shelter waiting for the crotchety number seven bus to Southampton at the crack of dawn tomorrow. I figure it must be an old bus (I'm sure suspension has been around for several decades). There's a huge spider regarding me and my latest attempt to start my lit-contractions [anyone got gas and air? Will this novel ever happen?] with an air of desperate hunger...
Read an article today on how the industry has literally dumped and pulped approximately 77 million books (only about a quarter from the US)purely from the lack of being sold. A product of the market's desire for a speedy turnover and new products to push? Ebooks, the progression of the digital experience, makes for an interesting debate, but surely the contrast between ereading with special effects and reading a beautifully bound book, filled with words and meaning to play with the reader in a quiet persistence, is as stark as that between champagne and a cocktail - both have their merits, both offering something possibly delicious and heady or weak and without fire, but they're so far apart that they can't be seen as the same thing. But just think this - you can't have a champagne cocktail without the champagne.
Not sure what that analogy says beyond I prefer champagne to cocktails (though sometimes a cheap cocktail is easier to come by than a glass of something vintage.
Either way, an interactive experience full of button clicking and recharging your reader is not the same as contemplating the world being suggested in a novel as being exotic in a way which works for the individual. All hail the book; paper perfect.
Moving on, there's this cute little kid who climbs onto the bus, undersized in his uniform, with a post rod stewart hairdo that kicks back to my late seventies/early eighties childhood - I see a protagonist in him; tired and puffy-eyed, unsure of himself in an endearing way that makes me wonder why he doesn't wait at the stop opposite and go to the local school. Is he new? Has he just moved and is close enough to stay at his old school? I wonder what he has for breakfast to wake up his shy hamster eyes.
I caught him staring at me and I felt suddenly embarrassed: had I been staring at him? Eeps - I hope not. But I wonder, while I regard the habits of regulars on my route (the hair-twisting rasta, the neo-fascist with the neck tattooes, the sport therapist student with her thermaflask of tea) what spins through his head. What does a kid in an oversized Parka, bus-ing to an out of catchment school, think sitting amongst a horde of weirdos including me in my wonderwoman t-shirt? Probably something like, 'Can't wait to get home and play my Wii.' or 'How do I explain the dog crapped all over my homework and Mum left for work before I got up to help me print it off again.'
Read an article today on how the industry has literally dumped and pulped approximately 77 million books (only about a quarter from the US)purely from the lack of being sold. A product of the market's desire for a speedy turnover and new products to push? Ebooks, the progression of the digital experience, makes for an interesting debate, but surely the contrast between ereading with special effects and reading a beautifully bound book, filled with words and meaning to play with the reader in a quiet persistence, is as stark as that between champagne and a cocktail - both have their merits, both offering something possibly delicious and heady or weak and without fire, but they're so far apart that they can't be seen as the same thing. But just think this - you can't have a champagne cocktail without the champagne.
Not sure what that analogy says beyond I prefer champagne to cocktails (though sometimes a cheap cocktail is easier to come by than a glass of something vintage.
Either way, an interactive experience full of button clicking and recharging your reader is not the same as contemplating the world being suggested in a novel as being exotic in a way which works for the individual. All hail the book; paper perfect.
Moving on, there's this cute little kid who climbs onto the bus, undersized in his uniform, with a post rod stewart hairdo that kicks back to my late seventies/early eighties childhood - I see a protagonist in him; tired and puffy-eyed, unsure of himself in an endearing way that makes me wonder why he doesn't wait at the stop opposite and go to the local school. Is he new? Has he just moved and is close enough to stay at his old school? I wonder what he has for breakfast to wake up his shy hamster eyes.
I caught him staring at me and I felt suddenly embarrassed: had I been staring at him? Eeps - I hope not. But I wonder, while I regard the habits of regulars on my route (the hair-twisting rasta, the neo-fascist with the neck tattooes, the sport therapist student with her thermaflask of tea) what spins through his head. What does a kid in an oversized Parka, bus-ing to an out of catchment school, think sitting amongst a horde of weirdos including me in my wonderwoman t-shirt? Probably something like, 'Can't wait to get home and play my Wii.' or 'How do I explain the dog crapped all over my homework and Mum left for work before I got up to help me print it off again.'
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