Some inspiring things

I may not have managed to write much today, but I have found a few really thought provoking and useful web resources, both thanks to Kate Harrison's blog. This web site, by Caro Clarke, has lots of useful advice. The practical tips (such as the four most common mistakes in first novels) are all explained with examples, so they make a lot more sense. I also enjoyed this speech by Arthur Levine. It suggests that authenticity is all important, i.e. writing as you. Now that gets me thinking...

Writing to find out

Yesterday I went to a seminar about 'Science in Fiction' where Maggie Gee was in discussion with Philip Pullman, Brian Aldiss and John Carey. At one point Philip Pullman said, 'If you knew what was going to happen when you started writing, you'd go mad. You write to find out.' Everyone wholeheartedly agreed, which surprised me greatly. I imagined that writers all work out the plot completely before they start. How liberating to think you don't!

Cliche spotter

Andy (my partner) is brilliant at critiquing my work. In particular, his pedantry means I don't get away with anything at all. I've posted Activity 6.3 (about the character who can't forget the history of a place) into the cafe for more feedback because Andy pointed out so many things he 'didn't get'. I want second, third and fourth opinions! He looked at my Pitt Rivers piece (Activity 6.2) and picked out the phrase, 'her voice sounded far away' as a cliche. To prove his point, he typed it into Google. How useful was that! It's an immediate cliche spotter! There was some pretty terrible writing up there... Try it.

Unblocked

It's strange how disparate things can come together and inspire. I came home from work in a low mood after another difficult day, and checked to see if my TMA was back (for the 57th time). It isn't. Then I thought I'd have a quick bash at Activity 6.2, which asks you to describe a place twice, and conjure two completely different moods in the setting.

I'd wondered about the idea of a woman with morning sickness being freaked out by the creepiness of the Pitt Rivers Museum, and the same woman, feeling well, loving the atmosphere (after reading someone elses 6.2 which used morning sickness). I'd played around with it at the weekend and left myself uninspired. Today I had some feedback in my tutor group about another exercise, that starting 'in the middle of the action' worked well. This made me think of starting with the woman staring at a shrunken head and her reaction to it. Suddenly, it just poured out of me, and I got really into refining and refining, working on each word. I'm quite happy with the result, so got straight on and did Activity 6.1. Could it be starting to flow again? I must remember that the way to get started is just to do something, just start, even if I'm not in the mood.

Blocked, stuck, miserable, decaffeinated

I'm stuck, stuck, stuck. I just don't seem able to start writing. I'm still working on chapter 5 weeks after I last posted about it. I've been feeling more closed up each day, more unable to think of anything to write, and more self-critical. Perhaps it is 'real' life intruding: work has been stressful to the extent I've arrived home each night and just wanted to curl up in bed, escape in a book and then blank my worries with sleep.

At times like this I feel as if I have a nagging, critical monster on my shoulder, whispering in my ear all day: 'Do you really think you can write? You may have written a story for the TMA that a few people seemed to like but now you've got to write lots more words, and you realise that you can only really write in the first person, don't you?'

Today I'm standing up to it and having a go, but I'm struggling because every attempt feels banal. I know the theory is that you write even if it's rough and unpromising, because there will be gold in the muck. Right now I just feel over my wellies in muck.

I'm trying to do activity 5.2 at the moment. The task is to take a stereotypical character (like an old fashioned elderly person) and write a description of them that makes you realise they are more complex. I'm going to try a freewrite to try and get started, after another cup of tea...

Characters are 'found'

Chapter 5 of the A215 workbook quotes Elizabeth Bowen saying that characters are 'found' in much the same way as someone slowly becomes visible across a dimly lit railway carriage. Rubbish, I thought: you make them up, don't you.

Over our snowy weekend away, I was thinking about the character of a 12 year old boy that I have been developing. His family are important to my story, and his elder brother in particular, so I decided to 'round the brother out' as the workbook suggests, by deciding what he looks like, what his biggest disappointment in life is, what makes him laugh, what names his brother might call him and so on. Having thought this would be tricky, I found it exhilerating. I circled round and round the character, finding that each fresh thought or question filled him out more, and sparked more ideas about my main character, about their relationship, and about the plot of my story.

I always thought the hardest thing in any story was naming the characters. As a child, the names I made up sounded false, like badly fitting wigs. By contrast, as I thought about my character and his brother, their names just came to mind, and fitted perfectly. I could immediately hear the banter between them, how they shortened their names, the versions they'd like to be called and the ones they'd hate.

It was at this point that I thought back to the description of characters being 'found' and understood it better. It's not as if they pre-exist and you uncover them, but it did feel as if making up one part of them seemed to 'reveal' another; they seemed to take on a life of their own. After a little while, I started to feel I knew what would be right for them and what they wouldn't like me to say about them.

A few weeks ago I read some thoughts in a blog about a character the writer had 'on her mind' and I couldn't relate to it at all. I had no experience of feeling like that. It's good to feel I'm moving on. I still can't figure out how to use colons and semi-colons correctly, though.

Stories in everything

I rather think writing is changing my life for the better. It's not the act of writing: it's the transformation of the everyday. On a snow spattered moor in Derbyshire this weekend, Andy indulged his joy in peculiar sports (disc golf) and where I might previously have sneered and retired to the pub with my notebook, instead I decided to go along for a while. I stayed until lunchtime, following the group around the moor and watching what was going on. The difference is that now there is so much to see, hear, wonder about. There is a possible story in everything, even prints in the snow.