Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Writing on Wednesday: Back to work

Since Monday I've been back at work. But I've discovered that this isn't such a negative thing, as the more I have to do, the more I get done. Hence, during the holidays, there were whole days where I did no writing. Whereas now, well, I'll get to now.

On Sunday, in preparation for focusing on the revision I decided to tidy up my pinboard.

I found some postcards in my creative box and put them up. That one on the top says: Nobody cares about the adults, write from Ella, Morgane or Leo's point of view. And yes, that is a picture of the Annunciation there. It's a bit of a private joke between me, myself and I.


So the next bit of prep was to pack the old handbag. At the moment there is the light green notebook which has masses of notes about A Twist in the Tail. When that became almost full I decided to shove in the dark green notebook. Just before Christmas I got a new idea to sort out Sands of Time or whatever it's called in it's current form, so a chapter and some ideas went into that notebook. On Sunday night I had this amazing idea for sorting out The Shaelan Sensors. I spent a whole summer writing it, my critique group spent a lot of time on it, and apparently dystopian YA is super cool at the moment, so I think it needs to be sorted. So, to scribble that idea down I decided that I needed to peel off the plastic wrap on another notebook. The thing is that I was in a bit of rush on Monday morning, the notebooks come in pairs , so I shoved both of them in there. On the metro I wrote the idea down and then Alex started talking to me. Alex has made an apparition on this blog before, but I can't find where. He's been talking to me for years. Here I am one of these people who plots, plots, plots, but Alex is always there. He's been there since I was... what twenty? Yep, I think. He was not a nice guy when he first came out, but that was twenty years ago and since then he's come in all kinds of different forms. He even tried to be a girl called Callie for a while, but he tends to go back to being Alex after a while. And now a story has come, I think. I can still call it The Trelawney Funerals and he can still be a dick, but a dick with a heart of gold. I have no idea when I will have time to write all these things, but the bus ride to work at the moment is a hell of a ride.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Michele.
Looks like you have a lot on your mind. I hope you manage to sort them all out..
I struggle with my one and only novel at this point. There are some ideas for my next books but, although some writers recommend that while you take a break from one novel you start writing the next one, I cannot concentrate on 2 plots/ideas/main characters in the same time.
Plus, in the meantime I discovered some great info (http://www.how-to-write-a-book-now.com/how-to-write-a-novel.html) - thank you for your advice, by the way.
So now I put some order in the outline, signposts, character's arc, impact character etc because, I have to admit, when Nano was over, I had a MESS of a novel :-))
Good luck further and inspiration, see you online as usual,
Cristina

Unknown said...

Hey Cristina,

good to see you back. Thanks for the link. I have had a very quick look at it and the page on softward made me laugh, seeing as I had recommended some to you!

And by the way you are not the only one with a mess of a novel. The first draft is to get the idea out. Revision is all about sorting that out.

I've also been given the advice of taking a break and working on something new. A couple of years ago I wrote this huge epic YA fantasy thing and I took something like a three week break before jumping into it. The critique group were fantastic at sorting it out, but it became evident that after a while that I had NO IDEA, and I mean NO IDEA how to sort it out. All the ideas I mentioned in this post are OLD, OLD, OLD and it's the time and distance that is helping me see how I can sort it out. So, although I don't always follow it, I do agree with it.

Right, going to go and read some posts now, I see you have something up!

Michele

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