Writing, Dreams & Drops of Ink

And it's back to editing....

2009-11-09T18:02:00.002+08:00

Still working away on When Worlds Collide.

I have a feeling my posts are going to be quite boring from now on -

Editing...
More editing...
Yet more editing...
And even more editing...

Today I worked on a scene that I hadn't actually planned but which popped out nevertheless, featuring the MMC and his sister, discussing the strange happenings with his mirror.

It's a useful scene in that it introduces them both and shows their relationship. It also pinpoints their motivations for the scene that follows.

And as my MFC isn't in this scene, it'll also add a bit of spice to the next scene she appears in. At least, that's the intention.

The great thing about writing is that no matter what you've planned, sometimes you surprise yourself by writing something else. One of the many things I love about writing!

From Morguefile: http://mrg.bz/orImdT

No GothNo for me this October...

2009-10-16T00:47:00.001+08:00

... but I'm not giving up on the writing project - I'll just complete it during November instead!

Thought the following video was appropriate, then. Enjoy.

Wordle Image

2009-09-28T12:15:00.008+08:00

I found this on a fellow-writer's blog and thought I'd like to see what my blog produced. This is it:

(You can click on the image to make it bigger.)

And I just have to laugh. The word ironing figures prominently in this Wordle. :D Thank goodness there's a scene and a dialogue to balance that out and show this is a writing blog as opposed to a laundry services blog! (And it might be no harm to look for synonyms for something for future posts...)

Just as an aside, did you know that Extreme Ironing is a sport? You didn't? Then you might enjoy this video.

(I can't see Nan partaking in any of this, however!)

Creative Stepping Stones

2009-09-22T20:29:00.003+08:00

I came across a post on Julia McCutcheon's blog about ideas and how they might actually be the stepping stones to something else.

Here's the link.

It's an interesting concept and not one that I've ever considered before in terms of writing. Although, thinking about it now, it may, perhaps, be something similar to Muse Bombs?

Anyway, that's my rather vague thought for today (vague, because my feet are killing me after spending all morning and most of the afternoon in a pair of high heeled ankle boots that were totally unsuitable for walking around in!).

Tomorrow it's back to editing my handwritten scene featuring Kathleen and her mother.

Photo courtesy PDPhoto.org

Revision, revision, revision

2009-09-19T22:21:00.001+08:00

I have finished at least twelve revisions of the ironing-beset scene. I've got the content of Nan's advice onto the page (and there are 14 pages in the scene as it stands now). I've amended the ending to include a change in mindset for Kathleen (I'd ended the scene too soon in earlier revisions) because without change of some sort, a scene is not a scene.

But it can still be better. So there may be a thirteenth version.

My printer is running out of ink, wheezing, and there are coloured lights blinking madly due to the output I've demanded of it. Pages are falling off the desk... flying under chairs and behind shelves... rustling in the draft under the door...

Ah yes, the joys of revision.

Talking Heads - an update

2009-09-09T19:09:00.003+08:00

(Posting three times in one week! Phew!!)

I came across a really good article on how to avoid talking heads by Ron Rhamey at Floggingthequill.com entitled Cooking up Some Tasty Beats

Beats are "action interwoven with dialogue (including thought as action)" which "accomplish a number of vital storytelling tasks, including

advancing the story
illuminating character
identifying speakers without having to use dialogue tags
adding meaning to speeches that wouldn't otherwise be there
breaking up long strings of quotations to avoid a staccato effect and to create a pleasing rhythm
creating pictures in the reader's mind of what's going on"

Ron provides some great examples of this in a sample dialogue.

As for my ironing-beset dialogue scene, I'm away in to tear it asunder and refashion it into something that sparkles. :)

Image courtesy of MorgueFile. http://mrg.bz/m4ADGR (Direct link)

Talking Heads and how to avoid them

2009-09-07T12:37:00.006+08:00

I'm editing last year's NaNo novel and it's slow going. Not slow enough to deter me completely from seeing this through to the bitter end, but enough to leave me feeling like it's an uphill battle. And I'm still only on scene 2.

Life has cranked up the merry-go-round; I'm off home in October to visit family and friends and there's a wedding to attend almost as soon as we land. It's a bit stressful thinking about all that. Added to this stress is the work one. At the moment I'm involved in some research which has me tied to a computer by invisible chains (these being interest, determination and wanting to see a good job done), staring at Excel spreadsheets and graphs all day long. I come home in the evening and I'm exhausted. The ability to stir any more activity out of my poor brain is beyond me, and so my editing remains untouched on those days.

However, sticking power is not something I lack. I will see this through to the end and I will learn and improve as I go on.

Anyway, on to the topic I want to write about: talking heads. (Incidentally, the first time I ever came across this concept was in Elizabeth George's Write Away.)

Scene 2 sees my heroine, Zoe, in her grandmother's kitchen. It is a wild night outside and my heroine is in a spot of bother: her fiance has done a runner with his mates. Zoe drove down to see her grandmother for a couple of reasons:

Nan's house is cosy and the woman herself has a very strong maternal instinct;
Nan has been a great help in the past whenever Zoe has been in difficulty. She thinks Nan will help her this time round, too.

So, Zoe is eating a bowl of stew and Nan is ironing. The scene starts just after Zoe has explained why she's driven down to see her.

I decided that Zoe was eating and originally I'd planned to have Nan sitting at the table stroking a cat. But that seemed really boring so I settled on the ironing instead. There's something very soothing about ironing, I think. And that was the feeling I was trying to convey about Nan. She's a soothing character, cosy and firm (she'll leave no wrinkle un-ironed!).

I posted a snippet of the beginning of the scene for a couple of fellow-writers to read (they've also done Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways course) and give feedback.

One of the comments was that there was too much ironing going on in the scene. My intention wasn't to overwhelm the reader with Nan's ironing techniques! I wanted to set the scene so that the reader could see that there was something happening in the scene and not imagine it was a vacuum with disembodied heads chattering away!!

At the end of her article on avoiding talking heads, Teresa Bodwell summarises as follows:

I’m not suggesting that every line of dialogue needs several lines of narration. There will be places in the story where conversation will ping-pong back and forth without interruption. And there will be times when characters say what is on their mind and in their heart. But every bit of dialogue must have enough narration to:

1. Identify the speaker
2. Portray the speaker’s emotion
3. Set the scene

My next task is to go back over the scene and fix the places where Nan's ironing got in the way of the dialogue. It could be a simple matter of shortening the sentences so that they're not as intrusive, or possibly referring to the ironing only when Nan is saying something important - i.e. using the ironing as a form of subtext.

Once I've discovered something that improves the reading, I'll post it here.

Image courtesty of MorgueFile. http://mrg.bz/FAxWYi (Direct Link)

Elizabeth George - how she researches

2009-09-06T21:19:00.002+08:00

I have Write Away by Elizabeth George on my bookshelf and it was one of the first how-to books that I devoured from cover to cover because it contained such a wealth of information and techniques.

So I was delighted when I came across this video on YouTube which follows her as she researches a novel set in Bude in Cornwall. We get to see her check out settings for her novel, speak to the locals about topics that will feature in her novel, ensure that she's using the right words (she's American, but her novels are set in England), and how she keeps on top of changes in policing and forensics. Phew!

Left Brain/Right Brain Dominance

2009-08-24T11:02:00.004+08:00

I've just completed this online questionnaire and here are the results:

Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz
The higher of these two numbers below indicates which side of your brain has dominance in your life. Realising your right brain/left brain tendancy will help you interact with and to understand others.
Left Brain Dominance:	(13)
Right Brain Dominance:	(13)
Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz

Very, very interesting!

Then I did a second online questionnaire here and got the following:

You responded as a right brained person to 12 questions, and you responded as a left brained person to 7 questions. According to the Hemispheric Dominance test, you use your right brain the most.

It would be interesting to know what the score would have been had there also been 26 questions in this quiz.

If you'd like to know a bit more about brain dominance, here are some resources:

http://frank.mtsu.edu/~studskl/hd/LRBrain.html
http://homeworktips.about.com/od/learningstyles/a/leftrightbrain.htm
http://people.usd.edu/~ssanto/brain.html

Revising my first draft

2009-08-10T19:59:00.008+08:00

The How to Think Sideways course has been a great help in getting me from the start of a project to the finish, learning techniques that include how to come up with an idea on a deadline, how to discover the different genres your work will fit into (with some minor tweaking), how to surprise yourself, how to find the right ending, and how to revise.

I have two finished drafts done. It's a great achievement and I'm proud of myself for having done it.

On the re-read of my first finished draft, tentatively entitled When Worlds Collide, I realise that my first drafts are pretty rough. The major details are there, the characters are quite well filled out, the scenes are set up and the story moves forward towards the conclusion, but I see a pattern of not describing characters or setting. In my head I can see the settings, but I don't get the details down on paper. Not in the first drafts anyway. This is my 'weak' point.

I have three wise guides and the ones I chose (outlined in this post) are helping me with my weak point.

Make a Scene by Jordan E. Rosenfeld breaks down different scene types, outlines the elements that need to be included and the best way to let the scene unfold. The second scene in WWC is a dialogue scene between my heroine and her grandmother and Rosenfeld recommends describing the setting of a dialogue scene within the first couple of paragraphs before developing the dialogue.

Elizabeth George, in her book Write Away, writes that setting can do two things: 1. set up an atmosphere, and 2. reveal character.

The dialogue scene takes place in the kitchen so I took the time to do an exercise I came across some years ago. (I can't remember where, unfortunately, and googling the main keywords produces no results).

Describe the setting using details that the pov character can see;
Rewrite the description to include details that the pov character can hear;
Rewrite to include details that the pov of character can smell;
Rewrite the description to include details the pov character can feel/touch - e.g. texture (imagined or real), temperature, etc.;
Rewrite the description to include details the pov character can taste - and this can apply to settings that don't include meals or eating;
Re-read the description. There's a lot more detail in the paragraph than needs to be there. Pick out the ones that create the atmosphere you're looking for, or the most eye-catching or evocative;
Rewrite the paragraph with these details only.

My second wise guide, Word Painting by Rebecca McClanahan, teaches the reader/writer how important it is to select the right word, not a word with an approximate meaning, or a word "that will do". It's important to know the shades of meaning that exist between synonyms. It's important to consider the music of the word. It's important to consider whether the word fits the atmosphere you're trying to create.

While I was doing the exercise on the kitchen setting, I was reading Terry Pratchett's Equal Rights and I love how Pratchett created such a vibrant picture of Mistress Weatherwax's house on the page. It was marvellous. If I can manage to do the same with the grandmother's kitchen in WWC I'll be ecstatic!

My third wise guide is Dialogue and this relates directly to my scene type. I have my dialogue in place, more or less. I need to work out the chronology of the sentences because two important messages or life lessons are given to the heroine by her grandmother. Thinking about it, it's quite possible that I'll have to put them into two separate scenes.

Another important consideration with dialogue scenes is to avoiding Talking Heads. Talking Heads happens when characters are having a conversation divorced from a setting, time and physical activity. Picture a couple of heads suspended in mid-air talking to one another! :)

It's slow going. I know the standard I want to achieve in my writing (which is basically write something I would love reading) but I have to take the time to learn the skills. That's why it seems to be slow going. However, the more I learn, the more I practise, the more I write, the easier the process will become.

Bit by bit my first drafts will become better and better and need less revising than they do now.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying the learning process.

2009-08-01T20:51:00.002+08:00

If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death. ~Charles Sanders Peirce

It's coming to that time of year again when I dust off my Belladonna persona and start thinking about the 20K novella for the GothNoWriMo challenge.

An official trailer for New Moon and a quote I found (while searching for a new one for my sig) coupled with an experience I had at work some months ago are mingling together in a tantalising fashion that has my muse sitting up wide-eyed, contemplating the possibilities...

I'll let the pondering continue over the weekend and see what happens.

Three Wise Guides

2009-07-19T16:59:00.005+08:00

One of the chapters in Chapter after Chapter by Heather Sellers suggests that a writer limit her- or himself to no more than six guides. (A guide is either a how-to book on the craft of writing, or a book in the genre of the one you're writing.)

I have chosen the following three wise guides on the craft of writing:

Dialogue: Techniques and exercises for crafting effective dialogue by Gloria Kempton (Writer's Digest Books)
Word Painting: A guide to writing more descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan (Writer's Digest Books)
Make a Scene: Crafting a powerful story one scene at a time by Jordan E. Rosenfeld (Writer's Digest Books)

I know my first drafts are a bit thin on description which is why I'm using Word Painting.

I also want to make my scenes work as hard as they possibly can in terms of pacing, setting, how the scene unfolds, what to include in it so that a reader isn't overwhelmed by too much action (or not enough). Ditto for emotion, information revealed, tension and all the other elements that go into making up a scene.

Dialogue is action. I want to write it as well as I can so that a reader is amused, enthralled, excited, or angst-ridden in all the right places.

I chose these three particular facets of the writing craft because I know that I either need to develop my skills in these areas or they're elements I particularly enjoy.

Working through Holly Lisle's One Pass Revision technique (part of her How to Think Sideways course, but there's also an article about it on her website in the For Writers section) has uncovered another aspect I'm enjoying while I work on this revision of When Worlds Collide.

I have a revision notebook and I find I'm using it as a sort of journal. I write down my thoughts about the scene I'll work on next and also my thoughts on what I've read in the three wise guides and how I can use what I've learned in my next writing session. I'm finding that it's a great way to prepare myself, get my muse involved, and come up with details and plot points that add depth, and make my scenes work harder.

I'm working on putting together the second three guides to make up the six Sellers recommends. When I've found them, I'll post the list up.

Duet from The Corpse Bride

2009-07-11T21:08:00.000+08:00

Not writing related, but I found them in my Favourites on You Tube and couldn't resist.

From The Corpse Bride:

Lovely! :)

First Draft Finished!

2009-06-26T22:57:00.004+08:00

YAY!!!! I have finished the first draft of my gothic novel Greenwood Manor!

I am THRILLED, OVER THE MOON, and ON A HIGH!!!!

One of the interesting things to happen while I was coming to the end of this novel was the way the characters from my NaNo novel kept turning up in my thoughts. Editing the NaNo novel, When Worlds Collide (working title) is my next project, but every now and again I'd find myself thinking about the characters and the plot.

I'll be starting the edit in July so I have a couple of days just to relax and think about what I'm going to do.

ANOTHER FIRST DRAFT FINISHED! HURRAY!!!!

A deadline looms...

2009-06-24T22:06:00.004+08:00

I have given myself until 30th June to write the ending.

At the moment my heroine is hiding from the villain and has lost sight of the hero who came to rescue her. Everyone is stumbling around in the dark and it's a question of who finds who first.

I didn't get any writing done tonight (I had an evening class), but as Sellers recommends in her book Chapter after Chapter, I have been constantly thinking about the book. It's never far from my thoughts and I'm very happy with where I've left it: it's an interesting spot to resume at. :)

Tomorrow evening I'll get in a writing session and Friday's session will be a lot longer as I'll be at home and can concentrate on it to my heart's content.

Writing Scenes

2009-06-06T17:48:00.006+08:00

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about writing scenes. Scenes are about change. If nothing changes, then there is no scene. That's the basic definition of a scene, and one I learned from Holly Lisle. (If you're not familiar with Holly's site, check it out. She has some excellent free writing articles and excellent-value writing workshops there. It's a writer's treasure trove!)

A scene is about change, but what else? I had the deep certainty that there's more to crafting a scene than I knew how to put into words. Instinctively I know when a scene is satisfying or not, and there are many writers whose work I enjoy, but they are also vastly different and what works in one genre, does not always work in another.

I did a bit of research and came across the terms scene and sequel or, as Evan Marshall calls them in his book Novel Writing: 16 Steps to Success, action scenes and reaction scenes. If you want to know more about scenes and sequels and the main differences between them, here are some links you may find useful:

Mike Kaassen on Scene and Sequel
Writing Hood - Lesson 13 on Scene and Sequel
How to Write a Novel in Six Months (Week 7 deals with scene and sequel)

From having read Robert McKee's Story some years ago, I was also familiar with the concept of scene beats. Beats are small points of change in a scene that move the story forward. If you'd like to know more about beats, check out Scriptwriting in the UK (the theory applies to novel-writing too), or read Robert McKee's book.

Today I was browsing a bookshop and came across Make a Scene: Crafting a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time by Jordan E. Rosenfeld. Part 3 of the book includes chapters in which scenes are categorised into, for example, the first scene, suspense scenes, dramatic scenes, and contemplative scenes, among others.

This seems to be exactly what I was looking for, so I'm thrilled I came across it. Synchronicity at work. :)

I finished reading Magic to the Bone by Devon Monk and, unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it; mainly because of they way the scenes played out, but there were other reasons which I go into in my What I'm Reading blog.

The main problem I had with the scenes was that there was always something happening. The pace never slowed down. The main character, Allie, never thought very deeply about anything (mind you, she didn't have much time to do so between one catastrophe and the next) which made her a very superficial character to read about. The story felt like a reckless and out of control roller coaster of a ride. The scenery whizzed by and I got out of the carriage wondering what on earth had just happened to me. In a nutshell, there weren't enough sequels in my opinion. A character who thinks too much and doesn't act slows the pace of the story and is very boring to read about. I agree with that; but a sequel does not have to be boring and make the reader skip to the next piece of action. The internal struggle they face is a conflict, and what goes on inside a character and the decision they come to as a result will play out in the next (action) scene. Sequels are important. A reader needs to slow down in order to reflect on the story so far and discover what the main character is going to do next (which they will either agree or disagree with) and then read on to see how that works out for them.

In conclusion, then, knowing the different components of a scene and learning how to put them together in a powerful way, bearing in mind what I'm trying to accomplish with the scene, is very important.

--------------------------------
As for my progress with Greenwood Manor, I can see the end in sight. I have finished my ghost's backstory and the conclusion to that story. I've discovered that there is a parallel between her and my heroine, Katherine, that I never suspected existed until I sat down and let the ghost tell her story in her own words. I had not planned to include the ghost's story in the novel, but she has a very strong voice and it would be a pity not to let the reader hear it, especially as there is such a huge parallel between these two characters.

Tomorrow I'll be concentrating on the scene with Dr Sterling and Katherine where she goes to him to explain what she was doing in the park with another man...

How to travel with a book-in-progress

2009-05-23T17:56:00.004+08:00

We headed away last weekend to Albany for my birthday. The weather was divine, the town was picturesque and the walk on the beach and up to the ANZAC monument was breathtaking. We came home feeling refreshed and vibrant.

A handy tip I picked up from Heather Sellers's Chapter after Chapter ensured that my writing didn't get neglected while I way away. Chapter 19 is entitled Taking Baby Along: how to travel with a book-in-progress. Sellers recommends that a writer prepares for their trip by making a to-do list of things they can work on while travelling. The reason behind this is that if a writer goes too long without thinking about the book, it will be difficult to get back into the mindset on their return. It may not be possible to come up with new material while away on holiday or travelling, but a writer can keep the book alive by working for short sessions on some of the tasks on the to-do list. A session might be a 15-minute warm up followed by 15 minutes on the task chosen for the day.

This was my to-do list for Greenwood Manor while I was away in Albany:

Write the beginning of the scene where Katherine meets Mr Bosworth on the bridge in the park
Write the backstory for the ghost
Brainstorm a list of 10 things Dr Sterling might say to Katherine after seeing her on the bridge with Mr Bosworth
Come up with a list of possible chapter titles for the first chapter

I was away for three days so I made up a list of four tasks. That way I could pick and choose which ones to do.

And the exercise worked! I had no problem getting back into writer mode the day after we got back and sat down to write the whole scene with Katherine and Mr Bosworth on the bridge. The following day I wrote the whole scene with Dr Sterling and Katherine and what he said to her. Yesterday, I wrote the ghost's backstory in her own words and, because the ghost has a very definite voice of her own now, it may become a scene in its own right.

Chapter after Chapter is a fantastic little treasure of a book. Understanding the craft of writing is important, but equally important is maintaining the mindset and the holding on to the motivation to sit down every day and keep the book alive when you can't engage in your normal writing routine.

2009 Goals

2009-05-03T10:40:00.010+08:00

It's a bit late - five months into the year - but these are my writing goals for 2009:

Finish and edit short story (no title as yet) by 31st May
Start edit of When Worlds Collide 1st June
Finish first draft of Greenwood Manor by 30th June
Finish editing When Worlds Collide by 31st July
Start edit of Greenwood Manor 1st August
Call Down Lightning* for GothNoWriMo project on 1st August
Call Down Lightning* for NaNoWriMo project on 1st September
Finish editing Greenwood Manor 30th September
20,000 wordcount goal for 2009 GothNo, deadline 31st October
50,000 wordcount goal for 2009 NaNo, deadline 30th November
Write three more short stories by 31st December
Research publishing houses and markets for short stories, novellas, novels

*Calling Down Lightning is a technique I learned in Holly Lisle's "How to Think Sideways" course. Doing this should see me ready to work through the GothNo and NaNo writing marathons, though I haven't a clue yet what the projects will be about.

Greenwood Manor is moving along nicely but I have put it on hold for a moment, because, in the middle of researching a couple of ideas for one particular scene, I had a breakthrough on where I'd left my short story. I quickly wrote up a LUC (Law of Unexpected Consequences^) worksheet for the short story and worked out how it moved forward from that point onwards.

This short story is turning into a novella, I fear. However, once I know where the story is going and have written it through in its entirety, I just may be able to prune it back to the essential elements and make it the length I had thought it would be when I started.

I have done some research on publishing houses and markets. One useful link is this one, Ralan.com. Listings for anthologies, semi & pro markets, and paying markets.

Today's Sunday and I'll get back to the writing tomorrow. The weekend is all about spending time with family and that's my focus for today!

^Another technique from Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways writing course

Heir to Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier

2009-04-27T20:19:00.006+08:00

I've already reviewed this on my What I'm Reading blog, and what I'd like to write about here is the UK cover art for the book. I love it!

Jon Sullivan is the artist and you can find his website here. You'll find the full cover art here and see details/closeups.

What I like about the cover art is that there's so much happening in it. The characters from the book are there, of course: Clodagh and Cathal, Becan and the creature in the dog mask. There's so much detail that the images could easily be used as a writing prompt. Who could these characters be (besides the characters in the book)? What is happening to them? Why? What's behind that tree? Where does that river go?

I particularly like the fact that Cathal (on the back cover) looks believable: a strong determined warrior who isn't simply a good-looking face and an attractive physique. Thank heavens!! :)

Right, that's it. I'm off to gaze a bit more at this cover...

"Chapter after Chapter" by Heather Sellers

2009-04-21T19:34:00.002+08:00

This is a real gem of a book!

Sellers look at a writer's life in this book, not at the craft of writing or the technical side of writing.

The chapters include the following bits of wisdom:

Writers are not people who have ideas for books: writer's write.

Writers do not have hectic social lives, flitting from one engagement to another: they can manage about one extracurricular activity and the rest of their time belongs to their writing.

Writers do not write "one book": they will write many, many books, and a lot of them will be hidden under the bed because they're not good enough for publishing. Yet these unpublished works are just as important, because they have taught the writer something about the craft.

Reading this book is like filling my lungs with oxygen and relaxing the tension in my shoulders. As she says in the introduction, writing a book is like plunging off the high dive, and "I'd like to give you the gentlest push. I'd like to nudge you towards the deep end. I'd like to hold your hand on the way down, and grin at you underwater, and make sure you are pointed to the swim ladder, and laugh with you when you come up for air, and say in unison with you, 'Let's do it again!'"

This is a book I will read right through and dip into whenever I need to remember what being a writer is all about.

J.K. Rowling on the importance of imagination

2009-04-13T15:44:00.004+08:00

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association

You can read her speech here.

Achievable goals, the lessons she's learned from hardship, failure and heartbreak ("failure meant a stripping away of the inessential"), and the importance of imagination in our lives.

A wonderful, amusing, moving, poignant and sincere speech.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

My muse is watching!

2009-04-04T20:04:00.005+08:00

Having watched Diana Gabaldon's video and come across an inspirational quote that I wrote down (but can't remember where I got it from), I decided to put together a small laminated card and sit it on my desk so that it's the first thing I see when I sit down to write.

This is the front:

And this is the back (based on the two promises Diana Gabaldon made herself before she sat down to write):

Yup, my muse is watching me!

Because of the Gabaldon video, I have changed the way I work. I am now working on a short story, my gothnowrimo novel, and shortly I hope to get started on the editing of my nano novel. The more I have to work on, the more writing I will get done, because when one piece comes to a halt (as it inevitably does) I have something else to turn to. One piece in particular might grab my attention and enthusiasm, and may even trigger ideas in another piece I'm working on.

This system seems to be working for me because I've been working practically every day on both the short story and on Greenwood Manor. That's a good feeling!

For anyone looking for some inspiration, here's an article entitled "Choose Your Muse" from the Romance Divas Website.

Twilight DVD

2009-04-02T12:14:00.006+08:00

I have ordered a special limited edition of the Twilight DVD. I should have it sometime towards the end of April.

It'll be interesting to see how the film compares to the books. I thoroughly enjoyed the books, and I purposely didn't go to see the film in the cinema until I'd read all four, because I didn't want to take the chance that watching the film would mar my enjoyment of the books I'd yet to read. Watching a film often undoes the pictures you create in your own head while reading the book.

For instance, from what I've seen from the trailers, the atmosphere seems to be a lot more gothic than the atmosphere created in the book. Bella seems to be more distant and unsmiling than I'd imagined - remember, I haven't seen the film yet, just watched the trailers - and Edward doesn't fit in with the image of him that I'd created. I was thinking of someone like Luke Mably in The Prince and I. The Prince's character (also called Edward, would you believe) seemed more in keeping with a young man who lived at the beginning of the twentieth century - his good old-fashioned chivalrousness for example, and that lovely accent. (Bella remarked, in the book, that the way Edward spoke and his vocabulary were reminiscent of an earlier era.)

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how Robert Pattinson interpreted the part of Edward Cullen and Kristen Stewart the part of Bella.

I'm also quite looking forward to seeing how Catherine Hardwicke (the Director) transferred her vision of the book into film.

The Graveyard Book

2009-03-25T18:22:00.003+09:00

I'm reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman at the moment, and this is an interview he did on the Colbert Report about it. I wasn't familiar with this show until I read about in in Neil's online journal, but you can find out more about how the interview came about here.

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To remember: readers are intelligent

2009-03-21T18:06:00.010+09:00

I'm reading With This Ring by Amanda Quick right now and came across a dialogue between the hero and heroine that caused me to stop and think about what I'd read and try to understand it.

Briefly, Beatrice Poole has gone to seek assistance from Leo Drake, an expert in antiquities. Beatrice Poole writes "horrid novels" under the pseudonym Amelia York. Leo Drake's nickname is the Mad Monk of Monkcrest and he is considered something of an eccentric and a recluse. He tells her he doesn't like horrid novels, not realising that he's speaking to a prolific horrid novel writer. He owns a huge hound called Elf. This is their conversation:

"Just because I study arcane lore, Mrs Poole, it does not follow that I relish outlandish tales of the supernatural."

Beatrice glanced at Elf, who was sprawled in front of the fire. "Perhaps your intolerance for horrid novels stems from the fact that you have been the subject of some rather unfortunate legends yourself, my lord."

He followed her gaze to Elf. "You have a point, Mrs Poole. When one finds oneself featured in a few tales of supernatural mystery, one tends to take a negative view of them."

I had to think about that for a couple of seconds and then decided that the dialogue implied Leo Drake and Elf were the inspiration for which is quite amusing, to say the least! :) However, THotB appeared in print in 1901, whereas WTR is set during Regency England, so this can't be the story. It's possible that they're referring to Eliza Parson's The Castle of Wolfenbach, in which the villain is Count Wolfenbach.

This short snippet brought home to me the fact that a writer does not need to explain everything to a reader, and that it's more satisfying for the reader if she works out for herself what the characters mean.

Another example is from Terry Pratchett's Mort. Mort, a gangly teenage boy, is taken by his father to the local fair because he's old enough to have a job and the fair is the place to go if you want to be taken on as an apprentice. They spend the whole day there but no one wants Mort for an apprentice. Finally, on the stroke of midnight, a tall, thin (bony) gentleman dressed in black shows up, carrying a scythe. Death is looking for an apprentice so he can take a break from his heavy workload. :)

At one point in the story, Death takes Mort into a shop to find him some suitable clothes for the job.

When they came out twenty minutes later, Mort was wearing a neatly fitting black robe with faint silver embroidery, and the shopkeeper was looking at a handful of antique copper coins and wondering precisely how he came to have them.

"How did you get all those coins?" asked Mort.

"IN PAIRS."

It took me a bit longer to work that one out, but when I did I was in hysterics. Very, very funny! But it wouldn't have been half as effective if the explanation had been provided.

This is a reminder for me to remember not to underestimate the reader. He or she is intelligent and doesn't need to have things explained. Provided I've set the narrative up properly, the reader is quite capable of reaching the right conclusion.