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Thursday 28 March 2013

Rituals and Word count.




So here I am with Thursday, today, off. I have granted myself a rare one day off with nothing planned. No appointments, decorating or chores to do. I take my partner to work early and return for a hearty breakfast and then sit in my office and begin work on writing the third assignment....

I granted myself the usual pre-work activities I afford myself in the evening - read the newspaper (online), check my emails and log in on Face Book as I have a nephew in Spain on holiday and I wanted to see how he was getting on. But it's not the evening - this is nine thirty am.

That done and on my second coffee, I open my A4 notebook and read the first couple of plot points I had written this plotting a few days (seems like a lifetime) ago. I know the characters' name is Amy and I know she is eight and she dislikes the water at the seashore. I begin. The first two hundred words come quickly. She is moving in the landscape, her attention on the sea lapping on the shore and the children, further down the beach playing in a way she doesn't feel comfortable doing herself - at least not in the water or even close to it. Then her Mother, reclining reading a book after their picnic, calls to her. It evaporates. I stumble, well not stumble exactly, just stop. I look at the notes. I am where I should be - or where I think I should be. There's something missing. I am missing something.

I get up and walk into our bedroom; I tidy up making the bed or rather folding back the duvet so it can air with the window open to the cold morning breeze. I am trying not to think too much. I finish my coffee. Put away some clothes, put some others in the laundry basket and then decide to go downstairs and put some washing on. I know this is displacement and knowing that I should stop. The washing machine whirrs into life and I come back to the computer and the two hundred words or so already written.

This is my day off. It almost feels like I shouldn't be working but that is a wrong thought, surely. I try and write some more - one hundred words further in and I am bumbling. I am not used to plotting first. Plotting to me is a dream of vague connections that present themselves like whispering callers each in line as I write, not a gathering of ghosts haunting around me already fully formed....that's part of what's wrong.

I get another coffee. Then water my plants....it's almost midday. Maybe food will settle me a little. I cook some scrambled eggs and find I am ravenous. I sit down and read my kindle. An hour whooshes by and I am tidying again but this time it's the kitchen and now the washing needs putting out and it's such a nice bright day, be a shame to miss this kind of drying weather.

And then it comes to me. Not the most dignified of revelation moments hanging up your smalls and your partners in the March sunlight when you realize why you can't settle to work properly. I have always been a creature of habit. Ritualistic is another word for it and once I adopt a ritual I tend to stick to it because if it works I am loathed to abandon it.

My ritual is to write at night - in the dark where there are few distractions. Not during the day. This day writing feels alien. My usual ritual is my partner goes to bed early and reads. I secrete myself in my office - check the papers etc and then after thirty minutes I begin work. I work for two to four hours depending on how well it's going and whether my energy levels are strong enough (or if I consumed so much coffee that I have no chance of getting to sleep any time soon).

This is what is wrong - this is the beginning of a new ritual; of having the time (should that be luxury) to be able to sit down and write during the day instead of doing my office day job. It feels wrong and we all know that a ritual, first time, feels odd.

Before I start to beat myself up about this, this waste of a perfectly good day of writing missed, I remember Nina's advice. When you feel off or cannot push forward - read and cut yourself some slack.

So I am - I have come here to write something and this feels good. I have broken one ritual in creating a plotted scenario. The second is to get into the habit of writing when I can - rather that at the set time I am used to. I have the Easter Holiday with my partner working every morning - so this is my chance. I look at the two hundred plus words and feel a little better.

If I am going to challenge myself on plotting in detail then why not try other things as well - if it works it will bed in and stay - if not I shall discard it - try something else or return to what works for me. Tonight, at eight thirty I shall return to my evening ritual and tomorrow morning I shall try another two hundred words maybe a lot more....rituals are just practice and perseverance after all.


Monday 25 March 2013

Something weird this way comes..




Chapter Three - Assignment Three of Writing for Children Course - Nina Milton (Tutor)

I moved onto the next Chapter in the course and worked through the exercises. The chapter is about plotting and I thought I understood what plotting was; or at least I had an idea of what I thought it would be as far as my writing.

I think about the assignment and then work with what occurs to me. It's organic, unforced or a flash of interconnected inspirations -  if I get stuck I wait and the idea will present itself or inspiration will arrive. What's wrong with that? Gives me an excuse to waste time and think - which is working right?

Mmmm. Every time I think I have a handle on my process, on how I work, something comes along and pushes me this way or that or hits hard and leaves me changed in my outlook.

"Journey by Night" is the title for the 2500-3000 word story. Pretty simple - sit down - see what jumps to mind and write the points down and create a story...

We NO, not really - this assignment gets you to write the plot down, play with it and have an ending before you start writing. This sounds so simple and I am sure that many will see this as ordinary; but not for me. I have never done this. I never know the ending. Never! I have a visual image occur to me that fits the title or ideas expressed in the chapter and I work with the characters moving in that image. I write and find the story runs/gallops or crawls it's way to the end that seems to fit or is logical. Or at least the one that feels right to me before a lightning bolt of a suggestion from the tutor changes everything and makes it better/tighter or more realistic. Which is always good and always annoying - but in a good way, because you are learning from a person of such great experience and openness.

So - back to the assignment brief. I hated the idea immediately of writing about a child traveling on a train, boat, bus etc. I wanted the child to travel on foot....at ground level, in the dark which would make any landscape scary.

Didn't think this plotting thing would work for me. So I thought about moving through a landscape - it would have to be familiar during the day and then contrast it with the night. This is my way of working with the plotting thing by approaching it sideways. This would mean the child would walk through with a parent the first time and without the second - or else why would she be scared? She - okay so it's a girl...(unexpected)...then something strange happened. I opened my work book, wrote the title and began writing a point by point breakdown of each step. The scene, settings as they appear through the story, the transgression which will lead to the night time journey and the ending - resolution. One sitting, an hour and a half of jotting, notes scribbles and post-its added with more detail or ideas...I closed the book and felt unsettled!

I am not saying it's ready. I am not saying I can start writing now. What I am saying it that I thought it would be hard, it would break with my formula and leave me struggling. But it challenged me and instead the story, in a note form, seemed to flow. I have put it aside now to allow it to mellow and I have added one post-it which came about because of the word "causality" used by Nina Milton in my last assessment.

I suddenly saw the final scene - the finding of the girl, in a place she shouldn't be, by a distraught parent who has followed her to that point because of a note left by the child.

I think I now have a little bit more understanding how Derek Landy can produce a plot layout of 80k plus words before he starts writing. Mine is 3000 words and I put together four pages of notes - a novel would create much much more -  the thought almost makes my head spin.

Now all I have to do is work through the notes as I go, stay true to the causality of the story and stick to the plot idea. I feel like I have been stretched - in a good way - and this could become the template for my future work.

Who would have guessed that this organic, dreamy, "wait for it to come along" wannabe writer would find plotting quite such a comfortable revelation!

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Websites and insights...





A few days ago I was stuck. Not stuck exactly in the writer-block-thing but more the exercise that the Writing for Children Course had suggested was consuming me and causing me stress. I have experienced this kind of thing before....so I bit the bullet and sent an email to Nina Milton (Tutor and lifesaver). 

As always she told me that I should move on, my email, while rambling (my opinion), demonstrated that I had learned the intended lesson and I needed to forge ahead.The dam burst and I was back reading through the course looking at structure and recognizing plot, plot types and story models easily. The enthusiasm flooded back.

One exercise calls for you to look at interviews with Jacqueline Wilson and Sophie McKenzie talking about how they write - trouble was that the websites listed either had changed or been dropped - no joy. It annoyed me I must confess BUT after a few minutes of frustration I moved to my personal book list read so far and began to surf. I looked up the sites for David Almond, Patrick Ness, Derek Landy and Michelle Paver. 

It is clear that the process of writing and plotting is as varied as the writers themselves - no news there I guess - each one fits the writer and I concluded that finding what fits me might be the hardest part of this chapter. 

Derek Landy – (website/blog entry address – http://dereklandy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/up-for-air.html) writes in his blog how he hammered out the plot to his book in  84,726 words BEFORE he pushes forward with the writing itself. I saw this as his way of building the scaffolding or bones of the story before the flesh is applied (ironic because the book includes a magical skeleton detective!).

David Almond advocates an organic approach - writing, playing with words and day dreaming - he doesn't mention plotting in the way that Landy does. 

And then on the OCA website ( http://oca-student.com/node/66680) I listened to Jacqueline Wilson talking about how she writes; rising in the morning and writing five hundred words (about half to three quarters of an hour) and then she has "written something". In my opinion this is someone who feels the pressure to produce (which we all do) and if you have written a certain amount then you have DONE something.

This I can relate to because when I have written something even if it is meandering and obscure I have little problem with my insomnia - my head hits the pillow and I am gone (if only for a few precious hours of deep sleep).  Then it occurred to me that I already do this in a way that suits me and especially works when ploughing on with the course. My partner rises very early and so goes to bed around half eight in the evening (spending 30 minutes with head in book) - I sit down at my computer at that time and allow myself 30 minutes for emails and catching up with news headlines etc. After 30 minutes has passed I start work - whether it is exercises, re-reading or writing something for the course assignment.

The OCA website videos and the reading of the advice of established authors shows how the process has to fit you as a writer – right from whether you prefer pen and paper first draft, computer second and then edit quickly before sending off to the agent/publisher (like Jacqueline Wilson stated in her video) or you spend over eighty thousand words plotting out your novel before you get the write the story itself. 

Hearing and reading that these authors write in so many different ways is comforting because it makes you feel, as it did with me, that it is a process and all you have to do is keep at it, find your path, because it is there and it fits you.

And if I get nothing done for the rest of this evening at least I have written this blog entry.