Already posted at my book blog, but moved here - any more in this series will also be here.
AKA The Road to the Trojan War
SPARTA, a long time ago
HELEN was the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, so all the kings of Greece wanted to marry her. Her father, TYNDAREUS - well, technically her stepfather as her biological father was ZEUS who seduced her mother LEDA in the form of a swan (as you do) - was King of Sparta and afraid that if he chose one king over the others they would turn hostile. The last thing anyone needs is all the monarchs of Greece turning up on their doorstep to wage war.
It looked like there would be a fight anyway, until WILY ODYSSEUS came up with a solution:
WILY ODYSSEUS: How about we all agree that we'll support the marriage of Helen regardless of who her father chooses for her? In other words, if anything threatens the marriage, we attack it.
TYNDAREUS: Yes, that sounds fair, and I fail to see how that could lead to all of Greece going to war against a foreign power. It is a truly cunning plan, Odysseus. Bearing that in mind, I choose Menelaus for Helen because he has money.
WILY ODYSSEUS: In payment for fixing this problem I want to marry your niece, Penelope, whose marriage you also have control over.
TYNDAREUS: Fine, fine, she's ugly compared to Helen and far too smart for a girl. Take her off my hands.
And so it came to pass that Menelaus married Helen and became King of Sparta. His brother, Agamemnon, King of Mycanae, married Helen's sister, Clytemnestra. Wily Odysseus married Penelope and took her back to Ithaca. And everything seemed right with the Greek world.
MEANWHILE, in a field outside TROY
PARIS, son of KING PRIAM, is watching some sheep when HERA, ATHENE and APHRODITE appear before him.
ATHENE: We have a problem and have decided that the only person who can help us is a callow youth who will no doubt make a daft choice. You're the first one we saw.
HERA: This Golden Apple has been awarded by Eris, Goddess of Strife, to whichever of us is the most beautiful. We cannot decide who is the most beautiful. It's as if Eris wanted to cause problems.
APHRODITE: We need an outside judge to help us. Zeus claimed conflict of interest, Poseidon and Hades have disappeared, and Apollo told us to bugger off. So it's down to you, Paris, to choose which of us is the most beautiful.
ATHENE: Being deities, we are prepared to resort to bribery. Choose me and I will make you the wisest man in the world.
HERA: Choose me and I will make you the most powerful man in the world.
APHRODITE: Choose me and I will give you the Most Beautiful Woman in the World.
PARIS: Hmm, wisdom, power or sex? Aphrodite is the most beautiful.
ATHENE: Oh, excellent, and I suppose you two geniuses remember that the Most Beautiful Woman in the World is already married?
APHRODITE: Psh, technicality.
And so Paris went to SPARTA and left with Helen, either because a) she really did love him more than Menelaus, or b) Aphrodite put a love spell on her. Whichever is true, Helen had eloped, her marriage to Menelaus was threatened, and the Greeks now had to go to war with Troy to get her back. The Greeks set about gathering their forces.
ITHACA
WILY ODYSSEUS: I can't go to Troy, even though this pact over Helen was my idea. I'm too insane to fight, watch as I sow my fields with salt and then plough them even though I'm king and have poor people to do that.
PALAMEDES: Wily Odysseus, we're not buying this. You're sane, mate, time to go to war. Look, here's your new born son, Telemachus, I'm putting him in front of the plough. If you're really insane you'll run him over.
WILY ODYSSEUS: Guess I have to go to Troy, then. Bye, Penny, I'll be back in a couple of years, see you soon.
SKYROS
WILY ODYSSEUS: Right, where's Achilles? If I have to go and fight then so does he.
THETIS: I'm not telling you where my son is, except to say that he's definitely not here, disguised as a woman.
WILY ODYSSEUS: One of those women over there, you mean? Hello, ladies, I have a fine selection of jewellery and weaponry for sale, take your pick.
WOMEN: Ooh, jewellery.
ACHILLES: Cool, a sword!
THETIS: Dammit, Achilles, now you have to go to Troy and die!
AULIS: The Gathering of the Greek Forces
AGAMEMNON: Where's the wind? We can't sail without wind.
CALCHAS THE PROPHET: You know that deer you killed last night? Well, it was sacred to Artemis and now she's pissed off so you have to sacrifice your eldest daughter, Iphigenia, if we're ever going to sail.
CLYTEMNESTRA: There's no way he'll sacrifice our daughter, no way.
AGAMEMNON: Yeah, I'm not going to do that.
ACHILLES: Fine, then we'll put Palamedes in charge.
AGAMEMNON: *sacrifices Iphigenia*
CLYTEMNESTRA: You wait till you get back from Troy.
TROY
HECTOR: Right, Dad, you know you said it was great when my idiot little brother returned with Helen?
KING PRIAM: Yes.
HECTOR: And you know you said I was being overly pessimistic when I predicted that her husband would not be pleased?
KING PRIAM: Yes.
HECTOR: Well, I hate to say 'I told you so' but a thousand Greek ships have appeared on the horizon and there are rumours that they're here to besiege us and burn the topless towers of Ilium and generally wage war against us until we give Helen back.
PARIS: I don't want to give her back.
KING PRIAM: I don't see why we should give in to a vast army that could destroy our home.
HECTOR: Fine, fine, I'll go down and defend the beach, then. It's not like this whole thing could be sorted out diplomatically or that it'll end up lasting ten years and causing untold loss of life. I'm sure it'll be over soon enough.
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - Chapter One
Ah, Harry Potter, my love/obsession for this series occasionally annoys my friends.
Chosen to be first in this experiment not just because it's the most popular series of all time omg but because I can clearly remember where I was when I first read it: in the changing room of New Look in 1999. I'd been complaining that I had nothing to read, so Mum steered me towards these books she'd heard were quite popular (she's an infant school teacher). I bought the first one because it was a magic school - I have fond memories of The Worst Witch books - and because the copyright page told me the J stood for Joanne which is my name. Another Joanne had been published; apply logic and this meant I could be published*, huzzah! So, while my sister tried on clothes, I sat in a dusty corner of the changing room and read:
We then get a brief description of the Dursleys, and then mention of a "secret" surrounding Mrs Dursley's sister. As Cheryl Klein notes in this article, this is the start of reverse characterization to make us sympathise with the Potters - because we don't like the Dursleys, we automatically like the Potters. Anyone the Dursleys disapprove of must, by extension, be awesome. This carries on throughout the series (even when we know that James was something of an arse) and is used to keep us sympathising with Harry.
But where this chapter really scores, I think, is in the mysteries it sets up. Some of them are answered here - what's with the owls? Why are all these people so happy? - but some of them won't be answered until the end of this book (how did Harry survive?) or Order of the Phoenix (why did Voldemort want to kill Harry in the first place?). The biggie of the series - how the hell is Harry actually going to defeat Voldemort? - is enough to keep us going till the end of Deathly Hallows and, in my case, through eight years of obsession and waiting and speculating.
This is getting a bit long and I should really do a proper in-depth reading rather than just winging it on what I remember from having read this book repeatedly (my first copy fell apart) so that will follow. To sum up my initial thoughts on chapter one of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone:
1. Tone is important, especially in that first line. You want to draw the reader in.
2. Mysteries are another great way to make the reader want to continue, although you have to be careful to make sure they're intrigued rather than confused.
3. Though this may be HP-specific, but reverse characterization can be a good way to guarantee sympathy for your protagonist.
*This was before Azkaban came out and everything went really mental. I hadn't heard of Harry Potter at all before this day, so I didn't know the phenomenon that was about to explode.
Chosen to be first in this experiment not just because it's the most popular series of all time omg but because I can clearly remember where I was when I first read it: in the changing room of New Look in 1999. I'd been complaining that I had nothing to read, so Mum steered me towards these books she'd heard were quite popular (she's an infant school teacher). I bought the first one because it was a magic school - I have fond memories of The Worst Witch books - and because the copyright page told me the J stood for Joanne which is my name. Another Joanne had been published; apply logic and this meant I could be published*, huzzah! So, while my sister tried on clothes, I sat in a dusty corner of the changing room and read:
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.The tone is perfect, summing up not only the Dursleys themselves but also letting us know what to expect from the book and series. We might not yet know where the magic is going to come from, or who this Harry Potter boy is - is he the Boy Who Lived? What does that mean anyway? - but we get a taste of Rowling's style. And there's that implication that something strange or mysterious is about to happen to the Dursleys, though we don't know what.
We then get a brief description of the Dursleys, and then mention of a "secret" surrounding Mrs Dursley's sister. As Cheryl Klein notes in this article, this is the start of reverse characterization to make us sympathise with the Potters - because we don't like the Dursleys, we automatically like the Potters. Anyone the Dursleys disapprove of must, by extension, be awesome. This carries on throughout the series (even when we know that James was something of an arse) and is used to keep us sympathising with Harry.
But where this chapter really scores, I think, is in the mysteries it sets up. Some of them are answered here - what's with the owls? Why are all these people so happy? - but some of them won't be answered until the end of this book (how did Harry survive?) or Order of the Phoenix (why did Voldemort want to kill Harry in the first place?). The biggie of the series - how the hell is Harry actually going to defeat Voldemort? - is enough to keep us going till the end of Deathly Hallows and, in my case, through eight years of obsession and waiting and speculating.
This is getting a bit long and I should really do a proper in-depth reading rather than just winging it on what I remember from having read this book repeatedly (my first copy fell apart) so that will follow. To sum up my initial thoughts on chapter one of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone:
1. Tone is important, especially in that first line. You want to draw the reader in.
2. Mysteries are another great way to make the reader want to continue, although you have to be careful to make sure they're intrigued rather than confused.
3. Though this may be HP-specific, but reverse characterization can be a good way to guarantee sympathy for your protagonist.
*This was before Azkaban came out and everything went really mental. I hadn't heard of Harry Potter at all before this day, so I didn't know the phenomenon that was about to explode.
I'm not going to quote the Sound of Music
Even if I am going to be talking about beginnings and the best place to start them. And this is a bit long so scroll down to the underline if you can't be arsed to read the teal deer (though I think it's a pretty fine specimen of the animal).
Because that's where I am. Now that the glorious madness of NaNo is over, I'm back to working on my other novel, the one I actually need to - shock horror - think about. The one I love, which has characters I adore and a plot I'm marshalling into shape and lines that are perfect, but which is also driving me ever so slightly mental. I have to pay attention to what I write, rather than enjoying the freewheeling fun of writing without a plan or an outline or any real thought at all. Consequently, I'm finding getting started difficult.
To clarify: putting words on the screen isn't the hard part. That's easy enough. First day of NaNo this year (to brag completely) I did 5564 words. They're not particularly good words and there's a lot of placeholders where I didn't have a correct term for something so just typed MONSTER or similar, but they were fun words to write. The first four days I did over 16K, so being able to get words down isn't my problem - it's getting the right words down. (That and avoiding repetition, hello use of 'word' 6 times in that paragraph - but that's fixable at a later stage)
When you know that what you're writing has the potential to count for something, when you know it's what you want to send to agents, when you know it's what you'd love to see in a finished book in an actual bookshop...then the panic and confusion sets in. Suddenly what you're doing matters, really matters, and you have to make sure it's good. No matter how many times you tell yourself "oh, but this is fixable, you're not going to be submitting this because it is rough as and you need to edit the hell out of it" you still have the internal editor telling you that this time it has to be right, it has to be perfect. Which leads to no words at all being written, because you're agonising over every one.
It doesn't help to read articles about beginnings. I mean, obviously it does help because they're all full of excellent advice and thoughtful discussion, but they add to the panic and realisation that what you thought was amazing/clever/brilliant/perfect is actually far from it. Knowing exactly what a beginning has to do, what bases have to be covered and what you have to achieve is both useful and infuriating - as with much of writing. The actual craft of it is a pain in the arse (and yet I still love doing it, so clearly I'm either a masochist or a lunatic).
None of this is particularly helpful, except for giving me a chance to let loose herd of teal deer and splooge all over the interweb, but there is a purpose to it - I'm going to do some close reading/case studies of books and TV shows I love in an effort to figure out this beginnings malarkey. Not 'once and for all', as I nearly wrote, but to at least get myself into a better headspace. And if this looks like procrastination, it kind of is, but I'm justifying it with my powers of justification so there. I'm still fiddling with the plot of Novel, and need to work on the first act, but this is something to occupy me while I work on that. Also, TV.
The Plan
Choosing the things to watch/read
Books & TV from last 15 years - this is just going to be things I love/which are popular and these are not always the same
Books
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
The Hunger Games
Twilight
Stormbreaker
TV
Buffy
Doctor Who
Torchwood
Merlin
Not a complete list but where I am at the moment. I'll probably post the TV ones on livejournal, along with the books (which will also be here), but will link to everything.
And a quick link to my delicious list of articles on beginnings.
Now to get started...
Because that's where I am. Now that the glorious madness of NaNo is over, I'm back to working on my other novel, the one I actually need to - shock horror - think about. The one I love, which has characters I adore and a plot I'm marshalling into shape and lines that are perfect, but which is also driving me ever so slightly mental. I have to pay attention to what I write, rather than enjoying the freewheeling fun of writing without a plan or an outline or any real thought at all. Consequently, I'm finding getting started difficult.
To clarify: putting words on the screen isn't the hard part. That's easy enough. First day of NaNo this year (to brag completely) I did 5564 words. They're not particularly good words and there's a lot of placeholders where I didn't have a correct term for something so just typed MONSTER or similar, but they were fun words to write. The first four days I did over 16K, so being able to get words down isn't my problem - it's getting the right words down. (That and avoiding repetition, hello use of 'word' 6 times in that paragraph - but that's fixable at a later stage)
When you know that what you're writing has the potential to count for something, when you know it's what you want to send to agents, when you know it's what you'd love to see in a finished book in an actual bookshop...then the panic and confusion sets in. Suddenly what you're doing matters, really matters, and you have to make sure it's good. No matter how many times you tell yourself "oh, but this is fixable, you're not going to be submitting this because it is rough as and you need to edit the hell out of it" you still have the internal editor telling you that this time it has to be right, it has to be perfect. Which leads to no words at all being written, because you're agonising over every one.
It doesn't help to read articles about beginnings. I mean, obviously it does help because they're all full of excellent advice and thoughtful discussion, but they add to the panic and realisation that what you thought was amazing/clever/brilliant/perfect is actually far from it. Knowing exactly what a beginning has to do, what bases have to be covered and what you have to achieve is both useful and infuriating - as with much of writing. The actual craft of it is a pain in the arse (and yet I still love doing it, so clearly I'm either a masochist or a lunatic).
None of this is particularly helpful, except for giving me a chance to let loose herd of teal deer and splooge all over the interweb, but there is a purpose to it - I'm going to do some close reading/case studies of books and TV shows I love in an effort to figure out this beginnings malarkey. Not 'once and for all', as I nearly wrote, but to at least get myself into a better headspace. And if this looks like procrastination, it kind of is, but I'm justifying it with my powers of justification so there. I'm still fiddling with the plot of Novel, and need to work on the first act, but this is something to occupy me while I work on that. Also, TV.
The Plan
Choosing the things to watch/read
Books & TV from last 15 years - this is just going to be things I love/which are popular and these are not always the same
Books
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
The Hunger Games
Twilight
Stormbreaker
TV
Buffy
Doctor Who
Torchwood
Merlin
Not a complete list but where I am at the moment. I'll probably post the TV ones on livejournal, along with the books (which will also be here), but will link to everything.
And a quick link to my delicious list of articles on beginnings.
Now to get started...
Saturday, 23 October 2010
NaNo & Me
So, I've been thinking about NaNoWriMo and my own thoughts/experiences as November looms around again (in the course of doing this, I will probably state my opinion as to whether or not it's a Good Thing, but what the hell).
I tried NaNo a couple of times, but it wasn't until last year that I actually won. I don't know if that's because I'd voiced my decision to take part to more people, thereby making the embarrassment of failure greater; because I finally discovered an untapped well of self-discipline*; or because I had the right story this time, but I did it. Just over 50,000 words in just under a month. Oh, I was smug. I think that's something NaNo is good for (here comes an opinion) - it makes you prove to yourself that you are capable of writing that steadily for that long, that you have a story that can flow for that long.
Saying that, what I produced during that month was not good. It was messy as hell. Plot lines petered out, characters disappeared then bobbed up again, I realised the entire main action plot was wrong, and at one point I changed tack so completely that I went from numbering my chapters to lettering them. I wound up with 'Chapter 3a' and 'Chapter R2 use this one not the other'. The ending was completely pasted on in an effort to narrate the finale and get over 50K. It was, in short, something that I will never show anyone and which I haven't looked at since December last year.
So, what was my NaNo draft good for? The characters and the general idea were there, and I've been working on turning it into a proper novel (with properly numbered chapters) ever since. That has been hard and difficult and there have been stretches where I've given up completely because it is so tricky and surely it's easier to watch a load of crime drama and not think about the festering mess that is my novel? But I know, from experience, that that's how I write, so I don't think I'd be doing anything differently if it wasn't a NaNo novel - in fact, I probably wouldn't have even got to the end of the Plot That Was Wrong without NaNo.
Am I doing NaNo this year? Yes. I'm still in the middle of turning last year's muddle into something coherent, but I want to a) write something new; and b) fall in love with writing again. That is a hideous cliche, but I miss the freewheeling madness of working without an outline or thoughts of themes and subplots and character arcs. To plunge in and write whatever pops into my head with no worries about whether the first line has a good enough hook, whether the plot fits classic structure and whether I'll be able to turn it into something publishable. In the middle of November, hyped on coffee and checking your word count every five minutes, it's actually fun.
This is turning blathery, so to cut it down: NaNo worked for me. It got me to finish what I started, which is rare, and it got me to do it without running the deadline up to the wire, which is even rarer**. I can see why agents and editors would get pissed off with it, because there is a temptation, during the euphoria of finishing, to view your creation as the Most Perfect Thing Ever and send it out in all its manic, messy glory. But that isn't what (I think) NaNo's for - to me, it's about getting a massive push to write something that may not be publishable or polished or even on nodding terms with good writing, but which is still yours, and proof that you can do this writing thing if you try.
That is quite a preachy note to finish on; I feel the need to lighten the mood, but I can't think of any way to do that. Er, The Apprentice is good so far...
* Said well having remained hidden throughout school, college and university.
** I was one of those people who finished essays the night before they were due in, sitting up till 4am mainlining coffee and fumbling through books for the exact quotation of Sarpedon's death oh where the hell is the head drooping like a poppy bit I can't find it I'm going to fail this time for sure maybe my friends will kill me so I don't have to hand this in.
I tried NaNo a couple of times, but it wasn't until last year that I actually won. I don't know if that's because I'd voiced my decision to take part to more people, thereby making the embarrassment of failure greater; because I finally discovered an untapped well of self-discipline*; or because I had the right story this time, but I did it. Just over 50,000 words in just under a month. Oh, I was smug. I think that's something NaNo is good for (here comes an opinion) - it makes you prove to yourself that you are capable of writing that steadily for that long, that you have a story that can flow for that long.
Saying that, what I produced during that month was not good. It was messy as hell. Plot lines petered out, characters disappeared then bobbed up again, I realised the entire main action plot was wrong, and at one point I changed tack so completely that I went from numbering my chapters to lettering them. I wound up with 'Chapter 3a' and 'Chapter R2 use this one not the other'. The ending was completely pasted on in an effort to narrate the finale and get over 50K. It was, in short, something that I will never show anyone and which I haven't looked at since December last year.
So, what was my NaNo draft good for? The characters and the general idea were there, and I've been working on turning it into a proper novel (with properly numbered chapters) ever since. That has been hard and difficult and there have been stretches where I've given up completely because it is so tricky and surely it's easier to watch a load of crime drama and not think about the festering mess that is my novel? But I know, from experience, that that's how I write, so I don't think I'd be doing anything differently if it wasn't a NaNo novel - in fact, I probably wouldn't have even got to the end of the Plot That Was Wrong without NaNo.
Am I doing NaNo this year? Yes. I'm still in the middle of turning last year's muddle into something coherent, but I want to a) write something new; and b) fall in love with writing again. That is a hideous cliche, but I miss the freewheeling madness of working without an outline or thoughts of themes and subplots and character arcs. To plunge in and write whatever pops into my head with no worries about whether the first line has a good enough hook, whether the plot fits classic structure and whether I'll be able to turn it into something publishable. In the middle of November, hyped on coffee and checking your word count every five minutes, it's actually fun.
This is turning blathery, so to cut it down: NaNo worked for me. It got me to finish what I started, which is rare, and it got me to do it without running the deadline up to the wire, which is even rarer**. I can see why agents and editors would get pissed off with it, because there is a temptation, during the euphoria of finishing, to view your creation as the Most Perfect Thing Ever and send it out in all its manic, messy glory. But that isn't what (I think) NaNo's for - to me, it's about getting a massive push to write something that may not be publishable or polished or even on nodding terms with good writing, but which is still yours, and proof that you can do this writing thing if you try.
That is quite a preachy note to finish on; I feel the need to lighten the mood, but I can't think of any way to do that. Er, The Apprentice is good so far...
* Said well having remained hidden throughout school, college and university.
** I was one of those people who finished essays the night before they were due in, sitting up till 4am mainlining coffee and fumbling through books for the exact quotation of Sarpedon's death oh where the hell is the head drooping like a poppy bit I can't find it I'm going to fail this time for sure maybe my friends will kill me so I don't have to hand this in.
Thursday, 14 October 2010
I think this post might be filler
Gearing up for NaNo (something new to write, yay!), struggling with Current Novel (blasted thing), and adding to my general procrastination by starting a book blog.
Have vague ideas for some NaNo related posts but they are v vague. Off to scowl at my WIP.
Have vague ideas for some NaNo related posts but they are v vague. Off to scowl at my WIP.
Sunday, 5 September 2010
Get On With It
The trick to writing a novel is, as I have discovered, and as Monty Python illustrates, just to:
This possibly seems basic, and I had a better post on the subject planned before I had some limoncello with lunch (hmm, syrupy lemony goodness; hmm, destruction of brain cells) but basically - to write a book you need to write the book. The first draft will be crappy and bad, there will be plot lines that vanish and characters that act inconsistently, the structure will be woolly/nonexistent, but you need to get on with it until there is some sort of story in place. The language might be repetitive, you might (MIGHT) have characters repeatedly feeling things in their stomachs or you might over use the word 'just' because it is just so easy to do so, but it needs to get written. That is what the first draft is for.
You need to work at it rather than watch TV, or read fanfic, or waste hours on TV Tropes*, or all the other things that the mindsuck of the internet provides for your pleasure, sitting there open while you look at the writing document whose word count does not appear to be growing, which obviously has nothing to do with you. You need to be prepared for the first draft to suck like nothing has ever sucked before, because buried amidst all of that craptastic prose is something that can be fixed and turned into the novel you have in your head. The perfect novel that you had in mind when you first faced the blank page and started writing.
This mindset is what has bumped my word count from 7K to 21K since Monday, even though most of those words are wrong, even though I'm going to have to go back and redo this whole thing repeatedly, and even though I have no idea where the middle of the novel is going. Even though it sucks and I'm not 100% sure I'm going to be able to fashion it into anything remotely readable. Because I will have written something - and, at the end of the day, that is what matters.
And to prove that my MA supervisor was right and I can't be serious without undercutting it somehow:
* This happened on Friday. I lost hours. But I do now have spoilers for Criminal Minds s5 which = yay, as I was not happy with my DVDs for ending where they did with s4. Want s5 on DVD or for Living to reshow it right naow, if only for Hotch doing what I now know he does while passing the Despair Event Horizon.
And the formatting on this entry is screwed, even though I've tried to fix it. Blast.
This possibly seems basic, and I had a better post on the subject planned before I had some limoncello with lunch (hmm, syrupy lemony goodness; hmm, destruction of brain cells) but basically - to write a book you need to write the book. The first draft will be crappy and bad, there will be plot lines that vanish and characters that act inconsistently, the structure will be woolly/nonexistent, but you need to get on with it until there is some sort of story in place. The language might be repetitive, you might (MIGHT) have characters repeatedly feeling things in their stomachs or you might over use the word 'just' because it is just so easy to do so, but it needs to get written. That is what the first draft is for.
You need to work at it rather than watch TV, or read fanfic, or waste hours on TV Tropes*, or all the other things that the mindsuck of the internet provides for your pleasure, sitting there open while you look at the writing document whose word count does not appear to be growing, which obviously has nothing to do with you. You need to be prepared for the first draft to suck like nothing has ever sucked before, because buried amidst all of that craptastic prose is something that can be fixed and turned into the novel you have in your head. The perfect novel that you had in mind when you first faced the blank page and started writing.
This mindset is what has bumped my word count from 7K to 21K since Monday, even though most of those words are wrong, even though I'm going to have to go back and redo this whole thing repeatedly, and even though I have no idea where the middle of the novel is going. Even though it sucks and I'm not 100% sure I'm going to be able to fashion it into anything remotely readable. Because I will have written something - and, at the end of the day, that is what matters.
And to prove that my MA supervisor was right and I can't be serious without undercutting it somehow:
* This happened on Friday. I lost hours. But I do now have spoilers for Criminal Minds s5 which = yay, as I was not happy with my DVDs for ending where they did with s4. Want s5 on DVD or for Living to reshow it right naow, if only for Hotch doing what I now know he does while passing the Despair Event Horizon.
And the formatting on this entry is screwed, even though I've tried to fix it. Blast.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
"I'm in shock - look, I have a blanket"
I was going to attempt to write an in depth, thoughtful post on planning/outlining versus winging it/praying it all holds together, but that will take time and I managed to slice my left index finger with a bread knife yesterday* so typing is hard/painful. So, instead, some (short) random:
- The fabulous Stephanie Perkins is doing a giveaway on her blog for her novel, Anna and the French Kiss (link is to the UK Amazon page, because you can get it from there). Even though I have pre-ordered, I am still after a free copy, hence this promo of the giveaway (could that be put any more bluntly? Ah well).
- I have written more of my book, though that is going to slow down owing to painful finger/my stupidity.
- Mark Reads Harry Potter is made of awesome. Partly because it just is, but mostly because he hasn't read the books before and he doesn't know many spoilers so it's a bit like going back to when you first read them - with the added joy/pain of someone loving characters you know JKR is going to kill without the knowledge of their fate.
- Also awesome: picspam from BBC's Sherlock. I had not known Benedict Cumberbatch was so pretty until this aired. I did however know that Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss were creative gods.
* Why yes I am a clumsy idiot who would make Bella Swann fear for my safety - well, maybe not that bad, but it was still an act of stupidity.
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