I am close to finishing the first draft of a novel on which I have been working for nearly two years. But close, as Rene Russo mysteriously observed in Lethal Weapon 3, is a lingerie shop without a front window[i].
What possessed me to write a novel? Why a fantasy novel? Will anyone take me seriously if I write genre fiction? Why do I care if people take me seriously? What if the story is rubbish? Not good enough to be published? Not good enough to make any money? How much longer can I keep doing this without making any money? What will I say to my wife when the rejection letters start pouring in?
This constant stream of doubts and negative thoughts is slowing me down and making it harder to write. I don’t think I’m the first writer to feel this way! This article is about getting over the finish line in the face of my own fears, without killing my creativity and just writing “fish” twenty thousand times.
(more…)
“Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.”
With the first fifteen words of her novel The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood takes a vice-like grip on the reader. She doesn’t let you go until the last page. It is a powerful book, deeply emotive, and, for my money, has an opening line that rates right up there with Rebecca’s “last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” But what makes it so good? Why does it press all the buttons needed for an effective opening? And what can we do to evoke that sort of sympathy from the first page?
(more…)
Some stories touch us. A great story can make us laugh out loud, grieve for the death of someone who never existed, or even burst in to tears in the window seat of a train. But why does it happen? And, as a writer, how can you make it happen?
In this post, I will consider Peter Stockwell’s “Authenticity and Creativity in Reading Lamentation” and how to practically apply some of his ideas in your writing. Do you want to know what it takes to make your readers cry? Read on.
(more…)
It’s a good question. It’s usually the first thing people ask. So why did it fill me with dread? Why, if someone smiled encouragingly and say “Oh, you’re writing a book? What’s it about?” would I struggle to find a decent response? Was my book doomed?
I’ve spent a lot of time worrying about this over the last couple of months. After a fair amount of soul searching, this article explores the following questions: how do you answer “what is your story about?” and why is it important to find the answer?
(more…)
Recently I was involved in an accident (I got hit by a car). I’m ok, I’m not badly hurt, but I’m taking a fair quantity of prescription pain-killers and they’re making me a little groggy.
What does that have to do with anything? Well, I try to get at least one article a month up on this blog. I’d been working on a piece based on the Digital Film Making course I’ve been studying, and I thought it was in good shape in spite of all the drugs I’ve been taking. This morning, realising I was running out of time, I read it over with a view to publishing.
It was not in good shape.
It made no sense. It was full of errors. It was, basically, bad. And this got me thinking.
(more…)
I am close to finishing the first draft of a novel on which I have been working for nearly two years. But close, as Rene Russo mysteriously observed in Lethal Weapon 3, is a lingerie shop without a front window[i].
