Oh gosh. My eyes are bleeding. I have just spent about six hours relentlessly writing an assessed essay for next term. The essay is about two of my favourite books, Rebecca and Jane Eyre, but in a way that makes it even harder - I have so much to say about them, and I can't fit it all into the 5,000 word limit.
New year's day I sat down and pounded out 9,000 words, thinking it was the best thing I'd ever written. But I won't lie, I was hungover from the night before, and when I read it all back yesterday it didn't even make sense. Literally, I hadn't even spelt half the words right. So today I've been editing, editing, editing, basically inhaling cups of tea to get me through it, and now it's starting to come together. But I'm exhausted, and I still have another 2,500 essay to write after this one!
Between bouts of furious essay writing I have also started my new story, which follows Anja, one of the characters from Storm Awakened. Like SA, this is basically another opportunity for me to practise my writing. SA is full of horribly flowery descriptions, so my project for this new story is to make my writing much tighter and more lucid. I'm trying to say more by saying less, through the actions and dialogue of my characters. I need to stop spoon-feeding my readers with top-to-toe physical descriptions, obvious and overblown pathetic fallacy, and unbearable blocks of stilted three-page-long expostulatory dialogue. You guys aren't stupid, I know that.
Another massive problem with SA was that most of the supporting characters had no lives outside of Kate and Jouran - they were just 2D cardboard cut-outs standing in the background. This time I'm trying to get inside the head of every character, even the minor ones, to build up genuine relationships between the characters. And I'm not trying to make my characters the ideal people I would like to be anymore. I tried to make Kate this sweet, virtuous, angelic person - I was fed up of reading about feisty kick-ass rebellious she-warriors who just played into the hands of the stereotypes they were meant to defy - but she ended up a boring, pathetic wet blanket. Anja is much different. At the beginning of the novel she has almost no redeeming features, but I plan to change that as I go along!
But I'm still starting from the same old position of having no plot beyond the first ten chapters or so. I know roughly what is going to happen, but not how it's going to happen, or how the story is going to end. I've decided it's more fun that way. I can imagine if I rigidly planned every plot point, and then stuck to it from beginning to end, I'd get horrifically bored halfway through. It just wouldn't be an adventure. The way I write at the moment, I never know what's coming next. It's great. I can decide on the spur of the moment to kill off a character, or dramatically change the plot so that the whole story veers off in another direction. Yes, I end up with plot holes, but the story always somehow manages to limp to a vaguely plausible ending. If I'm serious about the novel, I can always revise it afterwards, right?
But I wasn't serious about SA, and I'm not about this novel either, really. Like I said, I'm just practising my writing.
Exciting news though: regarding The Novel (as in, the big one, the one I'd like to try and publish, which will hopefully have some kind of literary merit rather than being fluffy-fantasy-romance-sellout-trash), inspiration has finally come. I have an Idea. Of course I'm not going to tell you what it is. I'm not going to tell anyone what it is, at least not until I've written a few chapters and discovered it actually works. But it's going to involve extensive research, and I've decided that every Monday (I finish quite early on a Monday) I'm going to go and spend hours in the library with my laptop, researching and writing. I want to get a portfolio of good, serious writing built up so that when it comes to applying for a Masters I have something to show for myself. Therefore Mondays = Writing Mondays. That's my new year resolution (as well as eating less cake).
On a completely unrelated note, I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year. I did. I'm now enjoying hitting the sales...this morning (pre-essay marathon) I bought a gorgeous jacket from Whistles - that's another £100 out of my magical ever-replenishing fountain of money that I don't have. I will justify this shopping habit one day, when I publish a book, or work in a bookshop/library for the rest of my life, whichever fate happens to befall me.
I'm now going to watch Family Guy, as I need some comic relief after spending half the day writing about flipping patriarchal ideology and the angel in the house and binary oppositions. Screw you, Gilbert and Gubar, you can't get the better of me!
New year's day I sat down and pounded out 9,000 words, thinking it was the best thing I'd ever written. But I won't lie, I was hungover from the night before, and when I read it all back yesterday it didn't even make sense. Literally, I hadn't even spelt half the words right. So today I've been editing, editing, editing, basically inhaling cups of tea to get me through it, and now it's starting to come together. But I'm exhausted, and I still have another 2,500 essay to write after this one!
Between bouts of furious essay writing I have also started my new story, which follows Anja, one of the characters from Storm Awakened. Like SA, this is basically another opportunity for me to practise my writing. SA is full of horribly flowery descriptions, so my project for this new story is to make my writing much tighter and more lucid. I'm trying to say more by saying less, through the actions and dialogue of my characters. I need to stop spoon-feeding my readers with top-to-toe physical descriptions, obvious and overblown pathetic fallacy, and unbearable blocks of stilted three-page-long expostulatory dialogue. You guys aren't stupid, I know that.
Another massive problem with SA was that most of the supporting characters had no lives outside of Kate and Jouran - they were just 2D cardboard cut-outs standing in the background. This time I'm trying to get inside the head of every character, even the minor ones, to build up genuine relationships between the characters. And I'm not trying to make my characters the ideal people I would like to be anymore. I tried to make Kate this sweet, virtuous, angelic person - I was fed up of reading about feisty kick-ass rebellious she-warriors who just played into the hands of the stereotypes they were meant to defy - but she ended up a boring, pathetic wet blanket. Anja is much different. At the beginning of the novel she has almost no redeeming features, but I plan to change that as I go along!
But I'm still starting from the same old position of having no plot beyond the first ten chapters or so. I know roughly what is going to happen, but not how it's going to happen, or how the story is going to end. I've decided it's more fun that way. I can imagine if I rigidly planned every plot point, and then stuck to it from beginning to end, I'd get horrifically bored halfway through. It just wouldn't be an adventure. The way I write at the moment, I never know what's coming next. It's great. I can decide on the spur of the moment to kill off a character, or dramatically change the plot so that the whole story veers off in another direction. Yes, I end up with plot holes, but the story always somehow manages to limp to a vaguely plausible ending. If I'm serious about the novel, I can always revise it afterwards, right?
But I wasn't serious about SA, and I'm not about this novel either, really. Like I said, I'm just practising my writing.
Exciting news though: regarding The Novel (as in, the big one, the one I'd like to try and publish, which will hopefully have some kind of literary merit rather than being fluffy-fantasy-romance-sellout-trash), inspiration has finally come. I have an Idea. Of course I'm not going to tell you what it is. I'm not going to tell anyone what it is, at least not until I've written a few chapters and discovered it actually works. But it's going to involve extensive research, and I've decided that every Monday (I finish quite early on a Monday) I'm going to go and spend hours in the library with my laptop, researching and writing. I want to get a portfolio of good, serious writing built up so that when it comes to applying for a Masters I have something to show for myself. Therefore Mondays = Writing Mondays. That's my new year resolution (as well as eating less cake).
On a completely unrelated note, I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year. I did. I'm now enjoying hitting the sales...this morning (pre-essay marathon) I bought a gorgeous jacket from Whistles - that's another £100 out of my magical ever-replenishing fountain of money that I don't have. I will justify this shopping habit one day, when I publish a book, or work in a bookshop/library for the rest of my life, whichever fate happens to befall me.
I'm now going to watch Family Guy, as I need some comic relief after spending half the day writing about flipping patriarchal ideology and the angel in the house and binary oppositions. Screw you, Gilbert and Gubar, you can't get the better of me!
4 comments:
Bet! It's been forever since I've talked to you. You amaze me, that's a lot of writing! I like writing, but I am really glad my teacher doesn't put a requirment on our papers. Yes, I have a writing class now. I'll have to fill you in sometime with an email.
I'm glad to hear that you are practicing your writing, and that you have an idea for The Novel.
Family Guy is a great way to relax. I love that show.
Hey! It has been ages. I guess I quite enjoy writing vast amounts... But of course I much prefer writing stories to essays. Ooh, yes, please tell me about your writing class. Send me an email!
hey writing ninja~ you've inspired me!
Oh, I'm glad! Inspiration is hard to find these days.
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