The second assignment is in - first person narrative from the point of view of a working class boy. The theme was "Hiding" and I decided that I would create a narrative that would a child not only physically hiding but also emotionally. I was always told by my Granddad that I daydreamed too much. With his stern manner and constant chore-based energy I was discouraged from making up stories in my head - he made me feel guilty because of my flights of imagination. In his mind there was no place for it - it had no usefulness unless it solved a problem which I couldn't, at that age articulate or demonstrate.
Staring into space appears very wasteful to a practical man like he was. Even as a child and young adolescent I hid my thoughts and ideas. I have my character justify his escaping to the woods away from his father after finding his friend is not at home by him painting his Dad as a ogre. Everything in his world is a disjointed amalgam of action and fantasy; at first this was a very odd idea and the more I thought about it the harder it seemed to get. Then I remembered a child walking along a road. He was carrying a stick which in the space a few yards was a hobby-horse to ride away from pursuing marauders and then a cutlass to fight off attacking pirates...there may have been a flowing narrative in the child’s mind but that's where it was - in his mind. To any adult sat waiting in his car he appeared to be "messing about wasting time".
In the story the child escapes a local Policeman (he pictures as a Vampire - the worst kind, one that cannot be burned by the sun), escapes into the fields and woods, away from his Dad working in their garden (he pictures him as an Ogre slurping up worms from the mud and scattering the pulverized bones of children as fertiliser); then avoids a farmer (who becomes the servant of a Dragon on which he sits which is an old tractor dragging cutting equipment behind to clear a path). The final character is a belligerent farmer who becomes a grasping giant...actually he was based on a real person!
As always I made the mistake of putting in too much description - or as my partner pointed out "noticing too much, would he see that?" So I edited ruthlessly and worked and re-worked. I now have a sense of relief when putting a story aside - mainly because for the hours that I become editor rather than writer (or should that be nit-picking critic?) I inhabit another part of my brain. To put it aside and come back to it with the writers’ brain firmly back in the saddle is then a joy.
So in it went...two days early! I know - not something I am used to and I hope I put as much effort in as I think I have.
I moved on and immediately hit a brick wall that has taken nearly two weeks to figure out. The course gives a breakdown of the plot to Cinderella. It's a classic! It then asks you to re-write this classic from the point on view of four characters - easy I thought. The plot is there, the characters are all known and the setting is generic. First person narrative for the Fairy Godmother - took me a couple of days and I worked hard to try and get a flow while working. I tried to get it to be the character telling the story and filling in the plot which would not be seen in the timeline (i.e. something that happened before the Fairy Godmother comes into the story) - this was hard.
I moved on - these are exercises and as such you should work on them and move on not spend days and days re-drafting (even though I wanted to!). I began to write the story from the point of view of the handsome prince and I stalled. Third person narrative should have been easy and more flexible than the first (in my opinion) but I ground to a halt - deleted everything I had written and started again. Paused - hated what I had done and discarded it again. On the third attempt I told myself I would NOT discard; so instead I put it aside and spent a week reading instead.
It then dawned on me that the problem was that I saw the story as a classic - and that was the problem. Every time I sat down to write it felt like I was going against every telling and retelling of the story. I was cutting a Turner out of its frame, break dancing to Mozart or blowing raspberries at an opera performance. And what’s more I had no idea how to “get over it!”
The only thing I have done is read – a piece of advice that Nina Milton gave me the last time I got stuck on our previous course together. So I ploughed my way through a few articles in Children’s Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2013 and skipped through a few stories (short stories for teens) of Roald Dahl.
This has worked because the message from the Yearbook, from all those writers who were just like me at one time or another, is to keep going, to learn, to make mistakes and move forward. So – as I wait for the return of the second assignment I am bracing myself to get back into the classic and however carefully, walk on eggshells…..
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