As you know, I wanted to focus on poetry for a while before going back to my novel – but it just didn’t work like that at all. I didn’t enter the Cardiff International competition, I have only written a couple of new draft pieces and I have not spent any time reviewing older pieces. The reason? Well apart from the discovery of a brilliant tool for procrastination, I cannot distance myself from the novel when I think about writing.
I reviewed the first chapter almost straight away, and although I know it’s a bit rough around the edges, I really do think it has a strong narrative. So – I’ve begun reading my novel. Firstly I am noting gaps – where there should be a stage between one scene and another, or more information, or I need to do more research. I will then try to bridge those gaps before moving on to character development, story inconsistencies, and detail (eg making sure hair colour doesn’t change accidentally, or no-one has a different name in one chapter to the next!). This may not be the most fluid way of writing, but I am easily sidetracked and need to focus on one area at a time.
This is where my index cards are going to be useful – I have a couple of cards for each character, defining their looks, age, lifestyle, language, characteristics etc. These cards are supposed to stop me veering off-course, so where characters have changed from my initial planning stage, I need to reflect this and update either the card or the story (depending on whether it works for the novel or not).
I am also going to spend more time looking at the environment – much of the story mapping had taken place through conversations and emotions and now I want to add more about the world these characters inhabit. Happily for me, this is a real-world story, based on an environment I am familiar with, so this should be straightforward – although I do love a research trip so may have to get out and take a few photos to aid my descriptions!
In other news – I have now heard back from the magazine I referred to last week, with some general feedback. It was very polite and carefully written, but the sum total of it was that the prose piece (which as you may remember I wasn’t terribly excited about) went too much toward the dystopian view of the future. They also said the poetry worked better if not technical. All I say to that is that I was very happy with one of my pieces, I felt it was gentle, met the concept they wanted, and was inherently positive. So, I will move on with the knowledge that they said all entries were a very high standard, and look for another opportunity to send my work in the future. And they sent me an entry form to another competition for a short story. Maybe I have one that I can develop further…
Also – this week it was International Women’s Day. I thought it would be good to think about female writers whose work I particularly enjoy. There are lots, but I focussed on three, and then spent a few minutes thinking about what in their work I found most enjoyable and what I found most inspirational. I am going to write these thoughts down, and put them somewhere so I can refer to them and think about these strengths as I develop my own work. I thoroughly recommend it as a reminder of what makes a story (or artwork, or song…) stay with you long after you’ve moved on to another piece.
Finally – I found a link to a story competition in the Guardian newspaper this week (http://www.guardian.co.uk/futurescapes?INTCMP=ILCSPRTXT8736I) which I will look into in a bit more detail over the next few days… May be of interest to anyone out there who enjoys imagining the future – and does it more successfully than me!
Happy writing,
EJ
🙂
Leave a Reply