Guybrush: I wanna be a pirate!
Apr. 19th, 2006 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lathanyMe: I wanna be a writer!
But... why?
I've been an avid reader for as long as I can remember. I have no idea what I started with, but at some early point I was reading the Janet and John books and, some time after that (primary school, anyway) I hit Enid Blyton. And never looked back.
I guess it would be nice to attribute an interest in writing to some morecelebrated, better, more adult OK, at least less racist, sexist, classist and everything else-ist writer, but I can't. I was reading things like The Famous Five (my favourite was book three - Five Run Away Together), the Adventure books and the Faraway Tree books. I was absolutely hooked. I decided there and then that I wanted to write adventures like that. Adventures that involved doing the impossible with all sorts of strange things and creatures. And happy endings, of course.
The next author to appear on my radar was Diana Wynne Jones. I was in my last year of primary school when I first came across her (she was a favourite of our teacher and he read us The Ogre Downstairs and Eight Days of Luke). I still read her, still love her books. Unlike the Blyton ones, they've stood the test of time for me. Additionally, I found in them the complete-absorbing fantasy stuff that's still close to what I want to write myself. My favourite is Power of Three, closely followed by Deep Secret, Eight Days of Luke and Fire and Hemlock. I think it's for the mixture of the adventure, looking at ideas and people from different perspectives (Gair, Gerald, Hafny) along with a story with pace.
Next I reached secondary school and started writing stories for English homework. I wasn't particularly good at it. Thing was, the teachers really weren't interested in stories, per se, instead it was sentence structure, grammar, spelling (!), correct use of words. By the time I got to 'O' Levels I wasn't writing stories for exam marks, I was doing the descriptive stuff because I found that if I wasn't trying to produce a decent plot, I was paying rather more attention to the things they were looking for.
At the same time (fourth year) I found a whole new interest; English literature (the subject I mean). I suppose that we'd technically done this before in our English classes, we'd certainly been set reading books (I remember I Am The Cheese and The Gift) and had to write about them. However this was the first year I'd had a decent teacher (Mrs Fletcher) and certainly the first year that anyone had started to get the class to consider the text beyond broad, dull questions that could apply to half a dozen books. I don't recall finding a new author around this time, although I did love my O level books (Twelfth Night, Hard Times and An Inspector Calls). Oh, and I found Lord of the Rings at about that time.
Applying for sixth forms and courses I hit a big problem. I was keen to do English Literature at A level and no-one (my teachers I mean, my parents have never expressed any opinion on my academic history/options/career/call it what you will) who had seen my science marks (my maths marks were better, but I was talking about doing lit with maths so that wasn't under debate) wanted to hear of it. I made a bad call and decided to take their advice (with hindsight it was a mistake because I would never have done a degree in science; too much lab work when I was much better at the theory) and then stopped studying literature for seven years.
Across my A levels (double maths, physics, chemistry) first degree (maths - mostly pure) and master's degree (stats - sort of) I had rather mixed tastes. On the one hand there was stuff like Dragonlance (etc) and L M Montgomery, on other I started on Jane Austen and Margaret Atwood. Then, a couple of years after I meant to, (put off because of the work sponsored master's degree) I started on an OU degree in the Arts focusing on Literature and Classics.
To me, the degree was both fun and necessary. Fun, because I enjoyed studying literature, plain and simple. Necessary because I still wanted to write and yet had little confidence in my own writing skills.
Perhaps that sounds rather odd; wanting to be a writer whilst thinking I couldn't write. But... I had two separate things in mind here. The first was the stories I wanted to tell. The second was the method of communication. To me, the first was why I wanted to do it; the second was the hurdle I had to get over to be able to.
The Open University degree took seven years:
Year 1 - Art foundation (Lit - Hard Times (!), history - 1850-1890, music, art history and philosophy - utilitarianism)
Year 2 - 5th Century Athens (a pre-requisite to Homer or I wouldn't have done it; I really enjoyed it though)
Year 3 - Homer (plus a long essay on storytelling and roleplaying)
Year 4 - Introduction to Literature (Included Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein)
Year 5 - Literature in the Modern World (Included Things Fall Apart, Passage to India and Mrs Dalloway)
Year 6 - The Enlightenment (Included Dangerous Liasons)
Year 7 - Shakespeare: Text and Performance
I loved it; although by the last couple of years I wanted to move on and actually write.
At the same time I did a few short stories; a couple of which I still have. On a grander scale (in terms of volume) there was Clans. The writing I did for it was horribly clichéd (high fantasy) both in plot and character and I certainly didn't put much time into getting the language right; but I got something important out of it (other than a fantastic game, I mean :-) ) because it taught me that I could write a large amount without giving up in the middle.
Then, as the degree drew to a close, I began my first book.
The book was Mourn's Gift (the working title was Gifting) and it took several years to complete. At the time I was very proud of it. Actually, I still am, but I can see more flaws than before. I could see flaws at the time; I'd never planned to get it published so I didn't bother to restrain any of my writing impulses. Hence it's got a good claim to literally having a cast of thousands and the number of characters who get a section/chapter told from their viewpoint is truely impressive (I've never counted, but I think it's about thirty). OK, some appeared more often than others (Mire, Obero and Dithi) but even so. On the plus side, there are still things I'm proud of - starting with having finished it (it's 100 thousand words). After that I feel I've managed to produce a well-paced last third (for anyone still reading it by then), an excellent end to the Obero thread (Challenge) plus detailing three high fantasy cultures (one is human) which aren't too clinchéd.
I lent the book out for feedback and got written (typed) comments from a number of kind people (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chrestomancy, TheHattedOne, venta, frax, cardinalsin and dr_bob, plus bateleur and my mother). All of which had an impact on books three onwards (book two was mostly finished by the time I'd lent Mourn's Gift out). The thing that makes me happiest about it is that my mother (a fantasy fan) loves it and has read it four times.
The second book was Roland versus Sophie and I was again proud of the end result. This time I'd written science fiction and was please with the main plot. I never tried sending it to publishers; although I did enter it in a competition. Thinking about it now, it's still a nice piece of work. OK, it has flaws; still too many characters and too many narrators plus it could be rather tighter and faster. However it's (IMO) better than Mourn's Gift.
Book three (Empty-handed) didn't work. The main plot has a major flaw in it. There are some nice set pieces in it and I may use one or more of the characters somewhere else, but this book is never going anywhere except as a lesson for the future.
The future being book four; nearly ready to go out to publishers (all written, synopsis drafted, just a few minor comments to deal with). Book four was the first book that I planned out in detail beforehand (how many chapters, what would be in them, about a paragraph of summary for each) and it's worked very well. If it's possible to be picked up cold by an agent or publisher, then I believe it has some chances... but I'll have to wait and see.
My focus is still very much the plot and pace. I'm never going to win prizes for my writing style and, that's OK, I just need to make sure it's good enough that it can carry the tale I'm trying to tell. Also, I'm never short of ideas. Whilst I have time issues through other commitments; I'm rarely staring at the screen wondering what to write about. My characters are a bit of a mix; some of them come across beautifully, but others can still be a little too vanilla - but I now feel I can write both sexes and all sort of types convincingly (Raine, Christian, Paul and Elliot all spring to mind). Consequently I'm happy enough with them because I know that that I can do it.
Comparing Mourn's Gift/Roland versus Sophie to book four:
Things I'm much better at:
- Starting well (straight into the plot with a twist at the end)
- Having fewer characters (roughly ten main, fifteen named and only three viewpoints)
- Removing or combining chapters with sparse amounts of plot.
- Moving from one mystery to the next rather than keeping the reader in suspense about one thing from the start of the book.
- Writing style.
Things I still need to work on:
- Writing style.
- Making characters less nice/vanilla.
- Writing about fantasy (any type) without sounding cliché or shuffly.
- Having a plot which becomes larger and more encompassing, moving flawlessly from one stage to the next without a noticeable shift in gears.
Will I ever make it as a writer? I don't know. Will I ever have readers who are gripped to the page and find they can't put the book down? I don't know (my mother excepted here of course!)?
But I mean to go on trying.
But... why?
I've been an avid reader for as long as I can remember. I have no idea what I started with, but at some early point I was reading the Janet and John books and, some time after that (primary school, anyway) I hit Enid Blyton. And never looked back.
I guess it would be nice to attribute an interest in writing to some more
The next author to appear on my radar was Diana Wynne Jones. I was in my last year of primary school when I first came across her (she was a favourite of our teacher and he read us The Ogre Downstairs and Eight Days of Luke). I still read her, still love her books. Unlike the Blyton ones, they've stood the test of time for me. Additionally, I found in them the complete-absorbing fantasy stuff that's still close to what I want to write myself. My favourite is Power of Three, closely followed by Deep Secret, Eight Days of Luke and Fire and Hemlock. I think it's for the mixture of the adventure, looking at ideas and people from different perspectives (Gair, Gerald, Hafny) along with a story with pace.
Next I reached secondary school and started writing stories for English homework. I wasn't particularly good at it. Thing was, the teachers really weren't interested in stories, per se, instead it was sentence structure, grammar, spelling (!), correct use of words. By the time I got to 'O' Levels I wasn't writing stories for exam marks, I was doing the descriptive stuff because I found that if I wasn't trying to produce a decent plot, I was paying rather more attention to the things they were looking for.
At the same time (fourth year) I found a whole new interest; English literature (the subject I mean). I suppose that we'd technically done this before in our English classes, we'd certainly been set reading books (I remember I Am The Cheese and The Gift) and had to write about them. However this was the first year I'd had a decent teacher (Mrs Fletcher) and certainly the first year that anyone had started to get the class to consider the text beyond broad, dull questions that could apply to half a dozen books. I don't recall finding a new author around this time, although I did love my O level books (Twelfth Night, Hard Times and An Inspector Calls). Oh, and I found Lord of the Rings at about that time.
Applying for sixth forms and courses I hit a big problem. I was keen to do English Literature at A level and no-one (my teachers I mean, my parents have never expressed any opinion on my academic history/options/career/call it what you will) who had seen my science marks (my maths marks were better, but I was talking about doing lit with maths so that wasn't under debate) wanted to hear of it. I made a bad call and decided to take their advice (with hindsight it was a mistake because I would never have done a degree in science; too much lab work when I was much better at the theory) and then stopped studying literature for seven years.
Across my A levels (double maths, physics, chemistry) first degree (maths - mostly pure) and master's degree (stats - sort of) I had rather mixed tastes. On the one hand there was stuff like Dragonlance (etc) and L M Montgomery, on other I started on Jane Austen and Margaret Atwood. Then, a couple of years after I meant to, (put off because of the work sponsored master's degree) I started on an OU degree in the Arts focusing on Literature and Classics.
To me, the degree was both fun and necessary. Fun, because I enjoyed studying literature, plain and simple. Necessary because I still wanted to write and yet had little confidence in my own writing skills.
Perhaps that sounds rather odd; wanting to be a writer whilst thinking I couldn't write. But... I had two separate things in mind here. The first was the stories I wanted to tell. The second was the method of communication. To me, the first was why I wanted to do it; the second was the hurdle I had to get over to be able to.
The Open University degree took seven years:
Year 1 - Art foundation (Lit - Hard Times (!), history - 1850-1890, music, art history and philosophy - utilitarianism)
Year 2 - 5th Century Athens (a pre-requisite to Homer or I wouldn't have done it; I really enjoyed it though)
Year 3 - Homer (plus a long essay on storytelling and roleplaying)
Year 4 - Introduction to Literature (Included Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein)
Year 5 - Literature in the Modern World (Included Things Fall Apart, Passage to India and Mrs Dalloway)
Year 6 - The Enlightenment (Included Dangerous Liasons)
Year 7 - Shakespeare: Text and Performance
I loved it; although by the last couple of years I wanted to move on and actually write.
At the same time I did a few short stories; a couple of which I still have. On a grander scale (in terms of volume) there was Clans. The writing I did for it was horribly clichéd (high fantasy) both in plot and character and I certainly didn't put much time into getting the language right; but I got something important out of it (other than a fantastic game, I mean :-) ) because it taught me that I could write a large amount without giving up in the middle.
Then, as the degree drew to a close, I began my first book.
The book was Mourn's Gift (the working title was Gifting) and it took several years to complete. At the time I was very proud of it. Actually, I still am, but I can see more flaws than before. I could see flaws at the time; I'd never planned to get it published so I didn't bother to restrain any of my writing impulses. Hence it's got a good claim to literally having a cast of thousands and the number of characters who get a section/chapter told from their viewpoint is truely impressive (I've never counted, but I think it's about thirty). OK, some appeared more often than others (Mire, Obero and Dithi) but even so. On the plus side, there are still things I'm proud of - starting with having finished it (it's 100 thousand words). After that I feel I've managed to produce a well-paced last third (for anyone still reading it by then), an excellent end to the Obero thread (Challenge) plus detailing three high fantasy cultures (one is human) which aren't too clinchéd.
I lent the book out for feedback and got written (typed) comments from a number of kind people (
chrestomancy, TheHattedOne, venta, frax, cardinalsin and dr_bob, plus bateleur and my mother). All of which had an impact on books three onwards (book two was mostly finished by the time I'd lent Mourn's Gift out). The thing that makes me happiest about it is that my mother (a fantasy fan) loves it and has read it four times.The second book was Roland versus Sophie and I was again proud of the end result. This time I'd written science fiction and was please with the main plot. I never tried sending it to publishers; although I did enter it in a competition. Thinking about it now, it's still a nice piece of work. OK, it has flaws; still too many characters and too many narrators plus it could be rather tighter and faster. However it's (IMO) better than Mourn's Gift.
Book three (Empty-handed) didn't work. The main plot has a major flaw in it. There are some nice set pieces in it and I may use one or more of the characters somewhere else, but this book is never going anywhere except as a lesson for the future.
The future being book four; nearly ready to go out to publishers (all written, synopsis drafted, just a few minor comments to deal with). Book four was the first book that I planned out in detail beforehand (how many chapters, what would be in them, about a paragraph of summary for each) and it's worked very well. If it's possible to be picked up cold by an agent or publisher, then I believe it has some chances... but I'll have to wait and see.
My focus is still very much the plot and pace. I'm never going to win prizes for my writing style and, that's OK, I just need to make sure it's good enough that it can carry the tale I'm trying to tell. Also, I'm never short of ideas. Whilst I have time issues through other commitments; I'm rarely staring at the screen wondering what to write about. My characters are a bit of a mix; some of them come across beautifully, but others can still be a little too vanilla - but I now feel I can write both sexes and all sort of types convincingly (Raine, Christian, Paul and Elliot all spring to mind). Consequently I'm happy enough with them because I know that that I can do it.
Comparing Mourn's Gift/Roland versus Sophie to book four:
Things I'm much better at:
- Starting well (straight into the plot with a twist at the end)
- Having fewer characters (roughly ten main, fifteen named and only three viewpoints)
- Removing or combining chapters with sparse amounts of plot.
- Moving from one mystery to the next rather than keeping the reader in suspense about one thing from the start of the book.
- Writing style.
Things I still need to work on:
- Writing style.
- Making characters less nice/vanilla.
- Writing about fantasy (any type) without sounding cliché or shuffly.
- Having a plot which becomes larger and more encompassing, moving flawlessly from one stage to the next without a noticeable shift in gears.
Will I ever make it as a writer? I don't know. Will I ever have readers who are gripped to the page and find they can't put the book down? I don't know (my mother excepted here of course!)?
But I mean to go on trying.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-04-19 07:04 pm (UTC)I can only ever write in the first person. I tend to have a good grasp of character and voice, but I'm less good at actually getting things to happen (I end to do it by having my voice talk about having experienced rather than actually encourage the feeling of stuff happening), and I'm useless at dialogue. I also tend to have a good idea, a beggining and and end, and the middle bits are kind of hand-wavy (except for my short story Catelyn, where I just could not get the ending right).
Can I read one of your books please?
no subject
Date: 2006-04-19 09:57 pm (UTC)Interesting. I never write in the first person; I've never really made a decision not to, I just haven't. Maybe it's because I tend to visualise the scenes as a spectator - do you see them in first person?
Can I read one of your books please?
You can. I'm not sure quite when as I've got something of a phobia about circulating an electronic copy. However I have a hardback of Mourn's Gift (and one of Roland versus Sophie - but
Having a plot which becomes larger and more encompassing, moving flawlessly from one stage to the ne
Date: 2006-04-20 08:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 05:26 pm (UTC)What you are talking about, though, is becoming a published writer, which is entirely different. I am firmly of the opinion that ability to write and ability to get published form the 2 intersecting circles of a very primitive Venn diagram., and it's not the best writers who end up in the intersection (sorry if that analogy is painful given your maths background).
no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 03:12 pm (UTC)(What does the missing bit say?)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 03:23 pm (UTC)