Writing Through Adversity....

I particularly liked an article received from www.writers.com/ (Vol. 11, No. 10October 2008) so I hope they don't mind if I copy some of it below:

The more writers I work with, the more I admire them as a whole and as individuals. Writing is hard work. Few writers work under ideal conditions and most, at some time or another, face real adversity. I've worked with novelists with serious health and disabilities -- although I'm usually not even aware there are any problems until after the fact. Folks who can handle raising children and making a living while still finding time to write on a professional level are unsung heroes who probably need more sleep than they ever get. I've worked with writers who are dealing with emotional demons on a daily basis, but who still deliver the goods.

We all face rough patches in life, Sometimes a series of minor stresses mount up to major trauma. I've seen writers deal with life's small bumps and bigger piles of problems and still keep on writing.

Any form of work can serve as both a curse and a cure, but I begin to think writing has a particular power to bring order, calm the turmoil, relieve emotional pressure, and repair at least some of what unravels in the fabric of one's life. Psychologists and psychiatrists have, for more than twenty years, been proving that writing about traumatic, stressful, or emotional events (often called "expressive writing") can improve physical and psychological health. But that's not what I'm talking about here. Nor am I referring to other forms of self-healing or self-discovery claimed for writing. I'm merely saying that the act of creating a fictional world and its characters, composing an essay, trying to meet deadlines, or simply putting words into meaningful order and paragraphs into a whole can -- despite the challenges, frustrations, and stress that writing can evoke -- bring order to your life and release from its anxieties.

What Next?

I know, its a long time since my last post. Have I given up I hear you cry? Not yet....

Recently I took the original novel which I had written in the first person, and tried to re-write it in the third person. I was quite proud of my effort but I sent it to two friends who had seen - and not liked - the original start and they still don't like it!! They wrote; 'still think u arnt writing in your usual style'. I am not sure what to do now....

However, the Poison Pens have organised a workshop with writer Tim Wilson www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/w/tim-wilson/ this Saturday and as part of this he has received a copy of my first chapter. I am going to wait and see what he says before deciding on my next step.

A Quote to Remember...

'Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.' Mark Twain

Quote for Monday:

'Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.' William Wordsworth

Things to do....

Not sure what I have been doing lately or how focused I have been. I have certainly 'gone off' writing for a while. One reason may be the writing of a 'Things to do' list; things to do in the coming year. Things I feel I have not yet accomplished in my life. Big birthdays make you do these mad things.....

I have, however, put

1. Finish one (if not all) of the 3 Novels I have started writing, and
2. Have an article and / or short story published on the list......

Only trouble is there are 36 other 'Things to do' on the list!!!

How Fiction Works....Part 2

A novel should ask the right questions. It does not necessarily have to give the answers.....

First Person: an unreliable narrator who knows less about himself than the reader eventually does. The novel teaches us how to read its narrator.

Dramatic Irony: to see through a characters eyes while being encouraged to see more than the character can see.

Fictional Narration: Do the words these characters use seem the words they might use or do they sound more like the authors?

How Fiction Works....

Just read How Fiction Works by James Wood (Random House 2008) which is a bit literary for a popular crime writer like myself but the final paragraph leaves all writers with something to ponder; ....the writer has to act as if the available novelistic methods are continually about to turn into mere convention and so has to try to outwit that inevitable ageing. The true writer, that free servant of life, is one who must always be acting as if life were a category beyond anything the novel had yet grasped; as if life itself were always on the verge of becoming conventional.