Thursday 11 June 2009

Storytelling

The plan was to blog weekly and already I've veered away from the plan. There is a good reason for it. I’ve been busy. Finishing the draft for FireWalker. Yay!

I made the deadline, with a couple of days to spare, being prepared for the meeting tomorrow with my mentor. For a day or two in there, I thought I wasn’t going to make it. Going away for the long weekend made it dodgy. I surprised myself and wrote while away. Only had one day off last week and that was due to the 6 hour drive on the back of a lack of sleep the night prior.

My tally for the first week for the RWA NaNoWriMo was about the 16,000 mark. I knew it would be high and this week balances that with only about 9,000ish. There are still days left so we’ll see. The tally I set includes playing with a novella. I’ve yet to decide which one I want to play with. So many ideas, only so many hours in a day.

I was very fortunate to be one of the guinea pigs for the now very popular and successful Year of the Edit series of workshops run by the Qld Writer’s Centre. We had the very talented Kim Wilkins as our tutor. I’m pulling on my notes from that year to work on the scene map and commencing the structural edit for this book. I know a lot of people would say it needs to be ‘frozen’/placed in the drawer etc for a bit but I’ve discovered I’m an odd duck. Well, I already knew that but as I discussed the story with my partner, (who also write) he was amused to see how I really do not have any memory of writing some of my scenes. Even ones with my favourite characters are forgotten about. It means as I edit I am reading my story with a ‘first time’ overview. To edit a story detached and methodical are two words that are heard over and over and well, over again.

It leads credence to my theory I am first and foremost a storyteller. If I had lived a few hundred years ago, I would have been quite happy being a travelling bard, telling the stories, slightly different each time. Possibly, I may have had to be male as well, but that is another post for another time. Now in this day and age, stories, to a degree, need to become a static document, captured in time for repeated reading pleasure. It will be interesting to see how detached I will be as in the past my modus operandi was to abandon the baby aka story altogether. It was told, out of my head why would I want to look back at it?

Tuesday 2 June 2009

Committed to June

June is a busy month at the best of times. There are multiple birthdays to remember – some even landing on the same day. This year June also means a month out from my trip to New York visiting my sister. So, why did I think finishing the manuscript by mid-June was a feasible and workable idea? I have no idea. I don’t think any vodka was involved in the decision making process either.

Once I finish the verbal stoush that is occurring in the current scene I will have made it to the beginning of the end of the book. Yay! Though the thought of reaching the end fills me with as much angst as any other section of the book. It happened in the last book I wrote too. I become caught in a state of stasis, unable to move forward or backward. I wonder if I’ll ever write again? If the story will work?

So we come to why I’ve committed myself to the 50k in 30 days challenge. Though in my case I chose 30k in 30 days. I like repeating numbers and also, the book should be ending in about 20,000 words. But having the commitment and guilt to achieve this being answerable to other real human beings…well, that ensures that FireWalker will be done. The wonderful discovery is that the real humans I am interacting with are a very supportive, wonderful bunch of people. I’m sure June (and the word tally) is going to fly on by.

Finishing under my tally means there will be 10,000 words to play with in another world arena that has been brewing for years too. Yes, you read right. Both worlds I am/wish to play in have been in my head for awhile. In some cases, the characters have been living in my head for nearly a decade. Even if they fill my brain to overcrowded levels, many have become like those comfortable old, fluffy slippers you can’t bear to throw away.