Fool
NaNoWriMo just depresses me. It serves as a painful reminder that my dreams are not unique and that are hundreds of thousands of people more dedicated than I am, more talented than I am.
The older I get, the worse my writing becomes - as though any latent talent I may have once had has all but dried up. It’s singularly the most frustrating thing in my life. I have so many stories to tell but I just can’t get them out - there’s a fundamental flaw in the mind-to-page process that I can’t repair, and my thoughts are not so much lost in translation as brutally bludgeoned to death by a talentless hack.
There are millions of people all over the world trying to write a book and I’m fooling myself if I think I have anything special. It’s been twenty years: I need to let this stupid fucking dream go.
Posted on 10th November, 2007 at 7:00 pm | Comment (0)
Gutted
I wasn’t shortlisted. Not a surprise, but a tad disappointing nonetheless.
Posted on 19th September, 2007 at 6:53 pm | Comment (0)
Slow
It’s been a slow few months. It’s so hard trying to fit writing into the rest of the day-to-day - you know, crazy things like WORK and CHILDREN that so often have to take priority - but I’ve managed to add another five-odd thousand to my running total over the last few months. Not much, but from my perspective - hell, it’s better than nothing.
That said, it’s frustrating to think that many people could spew up an entire book in the time it’s taken me to shuffle together just a few thousand words.
Since submitting the first chapter to competition (results still unknown - winners are due to be contacted at the end of August. I shan’t hold my breath :P), I’ve found that I definitely know more about where the story is going, and firmed up some of the hazy, weaker areas of the story where previously, I understood little of where I was going, and less still about how I was getting there. As I write this today I understand Charlie and Will - their justifications, their backgrounds, their conflicts - considerably better, and feel far better equipped to tell their story. Only Friday, after re-reading an early chapter and noting that, still, I haven’t had the courage to commit to paper the precise moment where their relationship jumps from one of friendship to one of more, I muttered something to myself about sucking it up and just did it. Two thousand words later I have the bare bones, and whilst certainly not polished and complete, at least it’s there. Will did something I hadn’t expected him to (isn’t it fantastic when characters do that?) and I believe it all flows with a naturalness and spontaneity that I couldn’t even have hoped for three months ago.
All I need now is to suck it up some more and finish the fucking thing.
Posted on 19th August, 2007 at 9:18 am | Comment (0)
Submit
It was rushed and not nearly as polished as I’d like, but right at the last moment - and after convincing myself that it wasn’t worth it - I decided to submit to that competition after all. A first chapter and (very poor - not written one before) synopsis left my Outbox less than an hour ago, and in the dying hour of a three-month campaign to push this competition. Nothing like making it hard for myself at the 11th hour.
Think big for me!
Posted on 31st May, 2007 at 10:42 pm | Comment (0)
Plan
Way back when the internet was a couple of super computers connected by a tin-can telephone, I remember wondering how in the hell writers properly researched for their novels. I was young and self-conscious and couldn’t, not for one moment, envisage calling someone up cold and asking them for a chat in the name of ‘research’. Just the thought of it made my toes curl up and fall off.
Things have come a long way. I no longer sit with a huge, beaten Thesaurus by the side of my crap old typewriter for I can now locate that word I can’t quite grasp at the touch of a button. I can write about surgical procedures with (some) confidence thanks to amazing online tutoring sites and write in detail about places I have never seen. I, quite literally, have the world at my fingertips. Writing fiction has never been easier.
But with every silver lining there’s that big fuck-off cloud, too. I still can’t believe how many other would-be writers are out there. I spent ten years thinking that I was a complete freak and not for one moment thought that I was simply one of thousands - maybe even millions. I now realise that I’m not as unique as I’d thought and instead of feeling relieved that I’m not alone, all it does is make me frustrated. I don’t need more competition. Writing is the only thing that I know I do well and the thought of pitting myself against those thousands of others turns me green. But if I don’t do something about it, a would-be writer is all I’ll ever fucking be. No-one’s going to discover my worlds and fall in love with my characters if they never escape the prison of my bloody flashpen.
So. A plan.
For the first time in my life, I’m going to enter a writing competition. The prize - your novel published and a literary agent at your side - is so beyond my reach it’s laughable, so it’s not that that I’m striving for. If nothing else comes of it, it’ll be me finding the strength to make a submission to a Real! Life! Agent! for my chosen genre. It’ll mean that I’ll have to be ruthless with my own work and look at my output more critically. A few weeks preparation for a competition that I don’t have a hope of winning will still yield more careful consideration of my own work than I’ve done in years. That in itself is a prize. So that is what I will do.
Posted on 20th February, 2007 at 8:03 pm | Comment (0)