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scrivenings

I started using Scrivener a couple of days ago.  It is pretty impressive! By the end of this morning I had managed to create a full scene outline of my novel, import everything I’d already written, and start making a synopsis. It makes it easy to structure your work, because you can split it into folders and files without you having to open different documents – and you can also view it as one long document if you prefer. You get a good overall view of the big picture of your novel, and at the same time, you can go into detail on whichever part you want.

I’m surprised at how much I like this. I always thought that outlining was incredibly boring (but total pantsering really scary!) Now I think it was just the idea of one, long, linear document that I couldn’t handle. With Scrivener, it’s all hypertext – you can go wherever you like, but still keep your place.

I don’t know if it will help make sense of what is a rather muddled mess at the moment, but every time I open my project file, I have a sense of calm clarity about what I’m doing. Not to say it’s good or bad – but at least I’m not panicking about it!

Is anyone else using this software? Would love to know what you think.

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the fridayness of things

Bonjour! C’est la fin de semaine and that’s about all the French I can manage at this time on a Friday afternoon.

Managed to work out the voice recorder on my phone, and dictated notes and thoughts as I walked to work. Quite a lot of useless ramblings but now at least I can listen back and sort out any good ideas. I got a few funny looks as I was walking past people saying things like ‘It’s very important that she dies now,’ and ‘maybe I should just kill them all.’

Have nearly finished 1Q84, and will report back soon. It’s definitely too long though. I reckon he could have cut it by at least one book. But I guess if I were a bestselling and widely admired author, I might come to believe that people really wanted to know my every last insight into the world and characters of my story. Which perhaps they do. I don’t, but that’s just me.

Finally, I have been thinking about how lovely and elegant the Present Perfect is. But why don’t we call it the Present Retrospective? I would like it even more then.

Voila! À demain!

 

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we have the technology

Remind me again why I wanted to be The Daily George? The last couple of days have been crazy hectic, and my head is full of all sorts of stuff, most of which is not really bloggable. Blogging every day is great fun, but I may have to reel it in after December. Twice a week?

I realised today that if I put my headphones in whilst I’m walking to work, people will assume I’m talking to someone on the phone, rather than talking to myself.  (I am actually talking to myself. Quite loud.) I find it helps to talk through story problems – it would probably be even better there was more than just one person in the conversation, but even so. I can’t imagine anyone else would want to listen.

I also need to find out if I can record my one-sided conversations on my phone. Today I plotted out a good quarter of a novel, but I’m not sure how much of that I’m going to be able to recall once I finally get to my writing time tonight.

Et vous? Do you use any smart technology to help your writing or writing process? Or is it pen and paper all the way?

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Yikes!

Just realised I hadn’t blogged today! Am fixing that right now. Time has just got away from me – was teaching this morning, then spent three hours planning lessons and another two hours catching up on other paperwork, and now I am hungry and I still have to do at least an hour of proper writing… So, yikes all around then.

What I want to know is, how do you fit writing in with your other work? It seems to me that you can be a full-time writer if your partner supports you, or you have some kind of independent means, or you are writing bestsellers. The rest of us need jobs. So how do you fit writing in? Get up early and do it before work? Stay up late? Sacrifice something else?

I try to write every day, even if I only manage 15 minutes. Some days, even that seems hard to achieve.

How about you?

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progress

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman with one novel on the go is always hankering after another. I honestly think that the best way to guarantee a steady flow of exciting new ideas is always to be working on something that keeps you away from writing anything new.

That notwithstanding, this morning I hit a sweet spot with the novel I’m working on and managed to get about 3000 words down. I’m finding that splitting my writing time up is working well for me – I start by revising and polishing what I wrote the day before, then I write new stuff after that. I don’t know if that method would work with every project, but it seems to be keeping me anchored in the world of this story and the voices of the characters. I reckon I’ve got another 40, 000 or so words to write on this one (having cut about 20,000 already), so it’s not going to be finished very soon. Unfortunately I haven’t got a big chunk of free time to throw at my writing at the moment, and am just trying to fit in as much as I can every day.

Thank you for your thoughtful comments, fb messages and emails on the ‘sympathy with the devil’ post I wrote a few days ago. Everyone’s ideas and advice has been really interesting. I know it’s a difficult and emotive subject, so thank you.

In other news, I’m hungry and off to forage for food. Anon, my dears! Laters, innit!

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half-face illness

A bits and pieces sort of post this morning.  Brain is not cooperating fully and is demanding eggs and fruitcake.

Working on novel yesterday – not the ‘finished’ draft, but the half-written novel I abandoned in order to write the other novel. I was so incredibly stuck with it when I gave it up, and couldn’t see anything worthwhile in it at all. A few months later and I have somehow once again found the thread of story and interest in it. The lesson I’m taking from this is that sometimes, you just need to back off from things for a while. If something isn’t working, maybe it just needs time.

Also I’m happy to say that finishing a draft of my other novel has given me the confidence to believe that I can finish a draft of this novel. And I hope it will be a somewhat cleaner draft, although that might be wishing for too much.

Finished reading Book 2 of 1Q84 last night. I think I’ll finish Book 3 before I pass comment, but there were a couple of things I found hugely disappointing and definitely want to blog about.

I am still lurgified, but now I have this weird, half-face illness, in which half my face is ill (running nose, swollen glands, headache, earache) and the other half of my face is totally fine. Bored of being ill now.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll have something more interesting to say for myself. Am off to get breakfast and write more stuff.

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sympathy for the devil?

I think it is a very limited sort of person who can’t find compassion and forgiveness for ordinary human faults. We probably all know a difficult, demanding person who expects too much from people and has no time for normal human shortcomings. Is it a lack of imagination, or simply a deep self-centredness that makes such people so intolerant of others’ faults? I don’t know, but I do know that this, too, is an ordinary human flaw, and it is the sort of thing I can spend hours thinking about and discussing, in an attempt to see the truth underlying it all.

Compassion arises from and encourages understanding of what it is to be human. When we understand someone, it’s easier to have compassion for them, and if we strive to have compassion for someone, we begin to understand them. This is good stuff. And I believe that writers need to develop our capacity for understanding, because we are on a quest for meaning. Aren’t we?

But whilst I like the idea of compassion and forgiveness, and try to cultivate those qualities in myself, I think that they have their limits. There is no need, for example, to forgive those who have abused you, raped you, gained your trust and then betrayed you in terrible ways. The only reason to try to find compassion for these people is if it helps you to live your life better. It may help you more to stay angry, or deal with it in some other way, and I think that is perfectly legitimate, in real life.

But in writing? I’ve realised lately that the limits of my compassion and understanding are also the limits of my ability to write real, human characters. For example, I have a story I’ve been writing for a while, which is very nearly an excellent story. The problem is that there is this character who is a child abuser, and I hate him. No matter what I do, he comes across as a cardboard cut-out villain, and he turns my interesting, subtle story into a cartoon, because he has no depth or realness.

I know that the answer to this (and to almost every) story problem is to go deeper into character. To find his motives, his way of seeing the world, to understand what makes him tick. In other words, to understand and have compassion for him, to acknowledge his humanity. But I don’t want to.

I’m not sure I can properly articulate my thoughts about all this yet – I’m just exploring some ideas. What do you think? How do you go about writing believable villains? Do you have to love them, even though they are evil?

 

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mr white umbrella

I’ve got this story that I’ve been writing for about three years. It’s called Mr White Umbrella. It’s kind of a time travel story, it’s built around a paradox, and it’s pretty riddlesome. It has caused me an awful lot of headaches.

I’m pleased to report that Fantastique Unfettered have bought it for their next issue (which is going to be a good one, featuring Hal Duncan and Mike Allen, amongst others).  FU is a great zine, with an editor who actively seeks out new and interesting voices, and who has a great appreciation for the slipstream, interstitial and weird.  So I’m really happy to have a story of mine published there.

I’m extra pleased because it gives me a reason to stop writing the damn story! It’s basically a story that, because of it’s paradoxical nature, never ends. Which makes my job as a writer really difficult, because I could, in theory, keep writing and re-writing it forever. Which would probably drive me insane before too long.

Selling this story means that’s it, I can’t do anything else to it. I don’t think there are going to be any more edits from FU, because frankly, I don’t think they would know where to start. It’s a very difficult story. I’ve had a few reviews from readers on OWW, and whilst many of them were very positive, quite a number of reviews essentially said ‘Huh?’ Yes, it is confusing, and probably needs to be read at least twice in order to be fully understood. I’m sorry about that. I don’t normally make such massive demands on my readers.

I wanted to write a story based around a paradox, and I wanted it to be a kind of endless story, and in that sense, it is a success. Whether it works for readers is another matter. But please do get hold of a copy of FU when it comes out, and let me know what you think.

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er… thanks

Actually I’m a bit embarrassed by how kind and congratulatory people have been about the Bridport shortlist thingy. I was rather excited about it, it’s true. But in the cold light of day I see that all I really did was lose a competition and I’m not sure that this deserves as much praise as I’ve got. Although it is nice. Very nice. Thank you, nice people.

It has all made me think a bit, though. I think it was about 8 years ago that I wrote my first short story. By which I mean, a story that I drafted, revised, edited, completed, won a competition with and finally sold. (It was made into a short film – not a very good one.) Eight years is not that long, in writing terms. And a lot of that time I spent not really writing, or even trying to write. So, to put all this in perspective, I’m still just a beginner.

But I’m ready to start getting really serious now. What that means in terms of how I organise and plan my writing life, I’m not quite sure yet. But I’m feeling steely and determined, which will probably help me work it out.