The Gift

I’m halfway through draft 4 of The Gift.  While working on this draft I realised that I was missing some scene setting for example, I could clearly see Villa Rosario in my mind and I knew this was the home of the Garcia family, but I hadn’t described it for the reader.  I managed to find some photos of the places I had imagined to help me set the scene.  Rather than have a description of all the characters on a word document I have drawn a plan for each main character on an A3 sheet of paper with their physical description and the important events/people in their life.  I’ve found this has been a great help, especially with the tying up of dates.  It is amazing what one spots when doing a re-draft for example the colour of one of my character’s eyes seems to have changed from blue to brown!     I am wondering if I will ever feel this will be ready!  

Short-list Success!

I have just found out that my Au Revoir short story, which I entered into the Global Short Story Competition back in September, was one of six short-listed.    This story grew from a creative writing exercise I did with my creative writing group where we wrote a short story using the following prompts:- moving house, a funeral, starting a new job and the end of an affair.  In my usual gloomy style I chose “a funeral” as my prompt.    They patiently listened to me read it out and gave me valuable feedback so thanks!  The story can be found under the short story section of this blog.    

November is National Novel Writing Month

November is National NovelWriting Month (Nanowrimo).   It is an annual internet-based project.  It challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new novel in the month of November.  The focus is about quantity not quality and the idea is just to get the words on the page and not worry about anything else, such as editing.   I participated two years ago and found it a liberating experience.  The Gift was the result - I can’t believe I’m still working on it!  I’m tempted to have another go this year as I have an idea bubbling away, but tempting though it is I’m going to crack on and with The Gift.  

Good luck to those of you who are participating in Nanowrimo this year.

Draft 3

I’ve just finished draft 3 of The Gift.  It is now 59,000 words long so a little on the short side for a novel.  While working on draft 3 I realised I wanted to hear more from one of my subsidiary characters, Pilar.  I've portrayed her as an embittered old woman, but now feel the reader needs to know why she is this way and so I want to give her a voice.  My only concern is that too many narrators may confuse the story - at the moment I have three.  I have decided to keep draft 3 as it is and to re-work another version, which will include some narration from Pilar.  It will also increase my word-count. So now on to draft 4!     

Success!

Back in July, I wrote a short story for a competition being run by the online writing group, WritersAbroad.  

I’m pleased to report that my piece was accepted for publication in their anthology, Foreign and Far Away!  The anthology, the fourth published by Writers Abroad, is out today and contains a selection of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  It is available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

Book Aid International will benefit from the proceeds of the anthology.  This charity increases access to books and supports literacy, education and development in sub-Saharan Africa. 

You can find out more and see a complete list of contributions and authors on the Writers Abroad website, www.writersabroad.com.

The Parisot Literary Festival

I’m feeling inspired as a result of going to the ParisotLiterary Festival at the weekend.  I managed to attend the sessions by Maree Giles, Amanda Hodgkinson, Martin Walker and Victoria Corby.   I can’t imagine the amount of organisation it took to make this event a success.  It is a real tribute to the organisers – thank you.  I’m already looking forward to next year’s festival! 

The talks by Amanda and Martin were back to back and it was interesting to hear how differently each author went about their writing.  For Amanda her story, 22 Britannia Road, began with hearing about a woman living in a forest.  This image stayed with her.  She wrote a poem, but the image refused to go away.   Martin writes the Bruno Chief of Police series.  He explained that he writes a detailed synopsis for each chapter and knows exactly where his story is going, although Bruno does, at times, have a will of his own. 

Victoria’s talk was about gaining confidence as a writer and it was refreshing to hear an author admit to being nervous at times.   Anyway, enough procrastinating – today I have a free day stretching out before me so I’m going to get down to doing some writing!

Generating ideas

I find it difficult to get ideas for new stories when dealing with every-day “stuff.”  Ideas usually come to me when I’m either walking or driving long distances – not sure why, but it is something I have recently discovered.  Having just come back from a walking holiday I now have three ideas that I’m hoping to develop.  Two are for short stories and the other is for a longer story.  One of the ideas came as a direct result from meeting someone on the trail and then bumping into them again and seeing them in a completely different light and asking the “what if” question.  The other one came when we were in a desolate fishing town and I happened to notice two red roses floating in the sea, which seemed to be a good prompt for a story - so watch this space!