Saturday 31 May 2014

A Blank Page


When I started going through the first draft of my novel, ‘Lonely Susan’ I got stuck my protagonist’s first appearance. The first time your main character appears is fairly important (just to understate things) and I knew that Susan’s first showing just wasn’t good enough. However, I just couldn’t come up with anything better.

I sat at the computer for, what seemed like, hours with the section of the story before me, I would go to write something, then just stop not happy with what I was about to write. I tried leaving it for a week or so, but the result was just the same. I didn’t matter how hard I tried, I just could not edit what was there in front of me.

It’s just one paragraph, a few sentences, but I could not get anywhere with trying to change what I wrote. Then thought came to me, don’t try and change anything, just wright it all over again. So that is what I decided to do.

Starting with a blank page, I just wrote the little scene again from scratch.

Here is the original:
He gazed down at the most beautiful face he had ever seen. Instead of rotting bones, a young lady lay in the box as though dreaming. She had shoulder length red hair and wore a snuggly fitting jumpsuit. Rod could have stared forever at the vision that lay before him, had it not been for his father.

 Here is the new version:
Rod hesitated as he looked down, expecting a rotted corpse. Instead he gazed upon a smooth face of almost pure white skin belonging to a young woman what seemed to be peacefully asleep. Her closed eyes had long lashes, and thick red browse start against the light skin that surrounded them. Her nose was long and straight with a sprinkling of freckles, her mouth wide with pastel lips. She had thick red hair that was pulled back into a pony tail that was swathed over her right shoulder. Rod felt he could just stare at her face forever.

I think it worked!

Let me know what you think.

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Tuesday 27 May 2014

Monday Writing Journal: disapointment


The reboot of my writing has been a disappointment so far. However, I only have myself to blame for it.

So, what did I actually do?

Wrote a couple of hundred words for my major procrastination short story 'Ved'. The whole story is in there (in my head), but it just doesn't want to come out. It's shy for some reason.

Started and wrote a couple of hundred words for a story titled 'Jacq'. This is the origin story the Demon Slayer, 'Jacq' who appeared in my story in 'In Fabula-divino' titled 'Crossroads'. I've had the story in my mind for a while, and have now been inspired to write it for the 'Hear Me Roar' Anthology over at Ticonderoga.

I've also submitted 'Radar Love' again.

Disappointing, this week I must do better.

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Monday 19 May 2014

Monday Writing journal: Reboot.


Hi,
At the start of this year I determined to finish the first draft of my first novel. To do this I created a set of goals and a progress report system. Since successfully finishing that first draft I've done mostly nothing.

So, it's time for a reboot.

I'm going to take what I did with the novel and apply it to my writing in general. What this means is that I'm planning to do a weekly writing journal blog each Monday, and a daily tweet up date. I hope this works.

The main idea is to make me accountable to me through this process of reports. I'll make myself do something reportable to meet the obligation to making the reports. If others (anyone reading this) want to follow along, it's a bonus.

I was going to finish with some comment about if I fail, but I'm not going to because I'm not going to fail.

In the coming weeks my tweet reports will be outlining what writing I am planning to do. It will be #rickswriting.

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