Author Spotlight: Melina Marchetta

Pre-ordered a French Cinema book about two weeks ago. Don't really have any idea how long it's going to take to get here, because the book in still in publishing stages. Book depository told me that it would be published by now, but that appears to be a lie, so I'm tossing up asking for my money back. But I really want the book. So shall see what happens. I started film school on Monday, I'll talk more about that later, but the point is several French directors/films have so far been mentioned by various people so that will be helpful for when I get around to this French Cinema plan that I keep talking about. Anyhoo! No point moping about not blogging about that topic, so I'll blog about something else right now!

I will try and do some regular posts on various authors/books that I love/hate (I say hate because who doesn't love a good rant? Stay tuned for Veronica Roth's Divergent, people. I'm only 50 pages in and I just know a rant is coming on). I also have two or three films in mind that I want to screencap, so hopefully I'll do another Screencap Saturday soon.

My reading lately has mostly consisted of Melina Marchetta material. I received Saving Francesa as a requested gift last Christmas and read it for the first time a couple of months ago. It is now on my (depressingly short) mental list of 'most-loved YA books'. I have since read two other Marchetta books and am currently consuming a fourth. So let's blog about why this writer-lady is so brilliant, in order of book-publication-date, even though I didn't read her books in that order.

First up, Melina Marchetta writes Looking for Alibrandi, not to be confused with John Green's similarly-titled novel, Looking for Alaska. Published in 1992, Alibrandi is Marchetta's debut novel. Here's a quick blurb from Penguin:


 Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen and in her final year at a wealthy girls' school. This is the year she meets her father, the year she falls in love, the year she searches for Alibrandi and finds the real truth about her family – and the identity she has been searching for.


Upon picking the book up from the library and settling down to start it, I expected the story to be somewhat dated; it would be about ten years before Marchetta published her second novel, Saving Francesa. But what makes Marchetta such a great writer is that aside from some unavoidable fashion and technology references, the story in general stands the test of time. Marchetta's characters, including protagonist Josephine Alibrandi, are relatable to their target audience (roughly aged 12-16), and Marchetta's early writing style, albiet slightly clunkier on these pages than in her later books, is pleasantly varied and easy to read.

Marchetta's writing style only gets better - which is expected, seeing as she had so much time to practice. It wasn't until 2003 that Saving Francesa hit the book stores and graced everyone with its much-needed presence. The story is about a sixteen-year-old girl trying to save her social life (whilst attending a "co-ed" school that only recently opened its doors to year 11 and 12 girls), her family (now that her usually spirited mother Mia is suddenly suffering from a heavy depression), and hardest of all, herself.

The beauty of Francesca comes from the titular character's raw honesty and relatability, even though as the narrator she doesn't quite realise how honest she is. It is easy for almost any teenage girl to identify with her - from her annoyance at not being allowed to watch Buffy at her aunt's house, to her desperation to be part of a group despite how obviously awful the girls in that clique can be to her. We've all been there at one point in our lives; I can't even count how many times I nodded my head and thought 'yes, I know exactly how you feel' when reading Francesca's emotionally-complex narrative.

My favorite detail in the novel was Francesca's tendency to call people by their full names, or by their first names, in the case of her mother. She refers to the girls in her class as "Justine Kalinsky", "Siobhan Sullivan", and "Tara Finke", distancing herself from them while she deals with her tense family life on her own. Until at one point about halfway through the novel, this happens:

     I ring up Michaela from Stella's and ask her if she'd like to do something. I try to remember what made our relationship work in the past. Was it because she had a sense of humor and treated me well? And if it was because of that, why did I feel so grateful that people treated me well? 
     But Michaela can't do anything tonight. She's having a sleepover at Natalia's. I want to invite myself over, but I keep on thinking she'll invite me instead. 
     But she doesn't. 
     So I ring Justine Kalinsky and I say, 'It's Francesca Spinelli', and she says, 'Francesca, you've got to stop using last names. How are you doing?', and I say, 'I feel like shit,' and I don't know how it happened, but by eight o'clock that night, I'm lying next to her on the couch with Siobhan and Tara and we're eating junk food and watching a Keanu movie. 
     And I want to stay on that couch for the rest of my life. 


It's from this point onwards that Francesca ceases the full name use. It's also at this point that she accepts what she's been subconsciously trying to deny - these girls that she's been trying to distance herself from, they're her real friends. They're the ones who care. And that moment, when she realises ... that's what makes this book so beautiful.

Marchetta's third novel is On the Jellicoe Road (2006). Here's your basic back-cover-blurb to get you up to speed:

"Taylor Markham is not a popular choice. She is erratic, has no people skills and never turns up to meetings. Not to mention the incident when she ran off in search of her mother and only got halfway there. But she's lived at Jellicoe School most of her life and as leader of the boarders that's her greatest asset. Especially now the cadets, led by the infamous Jonah Griggs, have arrived. The territory wars between the boarders, townies and cadets are about to recommence.

"But Taylor has other things on her mind: a prayer tree, the hermit who whispered in her ear, and a vaguely familiar drawing in the local police station. Taylor wants to understand the mystery of her own past. But Hannah, the woman who found her, has suddenly disappeared, leaving nothing but an unfinished manuscript about five kids whose lives entwined twenty years ago on the Jellicoe Road."

The first chapter or two of this novel is, to be honest, shockingly clunky. It took me a while to work out what was actually going on - who Taylor was, how old she was, what her relation to the characters around her was and also what the slightly confusing italicised story-within-the-story chapters were. But then I got there. Taylor is a pretty selfish person to begin with, but to Marchetta's credit instead of annoying the heck out of the reader by trying to force us to like this character anyway, she lets us side with Taylor's friends for a little while, who frequently point out her faults, while Marchetta carefully reveals the rest of Taylor's character layer by layer, and I began to like her a lot more as the story went on. In the end it was probably the characters that drove me to finish the book, because I liked the different relationships and the way they all interacted with one another. I'm pretty fascinated with the way people relate and connect with other people, and I enjoyed that aspect of the book.

The major problem with this novel, aside from the clunky beginning, was the failure to establish exactly WHAT kind of world we were living in. I couldn't get a handle on whether the story was supposed to be completely "real life" or if there were moments when we were submerged in the overactive imagination of the main characters. If the former, it wasn't very believable in places - the lack of adult supervision for these secluded-boarding-school students was a little worrying at times, particularly when the teenage characters got into fights. Taylor's friend Ben is hurt pretty badly in one scene, and I didn't find it at all believable that there were no teachers around to break things up or sort things out after the ordeal, so the only explanation I could come up with for this was that Taylor (as the 1st person narrator) had exaggerated the incident and Ben was really as hurt as she'd made him out to be. I get annoyed when my narrator is unreliable so neither option was working for me anyway.

Despite all the issues I had with it, I found Jellicoe crazily addictive. One night during my reading I was less than two thirds of the way through the book and was suddenly overcome with a desperate desire to KNOW THE ENDING RIGHT NOW. Not one to peek or skim ahead, I stayed up til 1:30 in the morning finishing the silly thing. And I liked it. If you've enjoyed Marchetta's other books, I'd say give this one a go, but don't make it the first one you read.

At this point, Marchetta changes genres and delves into the world of Fantasy with Finnikin of the Rock.  I have about fifty pages left of this one, so if I loathe the ending I may have to come back and update this post. It's always risky talking about a book you haven't finished, especially if you're telling people you like it before you've read the ending (*cough*hungergamesseries*cough*).

I could get you a plot blurb for Finnikin, but I'm such a hater of "ye 'old cliched Fantasy blurb" that I'm going to skip that and just tell you about it myself.

Basically, Finnkin is this young man who spends pretty much the entire book Walking the Earth with a typical mentor character Sir Topher. They end up travelling a girl named Evanjalin (another thing I hate about high Fantasy - authors screwing around with typical spelling for something more "exotic". Can't she just be called Evangeline? I mean really, Marlina.), who claims that the long-lost-king is alive and she can lead them to him. Which basically means that the first few chapters are LOADED with Infodumps about said long-lost-king and his connection to the land and to Finnikin and all that jazz.

Seeing as she spent so much time on world-building I could tell Marchetta was enjoying the genre change. She particularly enjoyed the freedom that she had to torture her characters in ways that you can't really do in a 'real-world' story. By the time I was halfway through the book, the lead characters either endured or were revealed to have endured between them: punch-ups, sword-fights, strangling, ambushes, branding, thievery, defensive killing, numerous battle wounds, and attempted rape (probably loads of other things too that I've forgotten about). Oh, and let's not forget all the name-calling, of course. We are in a Fantasy novel, after all!

Once again there was something about the characters and the writing style that gripped me, and I found myself taking the book to work and devouring a few pages on my break. I was thinking about it A LOT, which is a big deal for me when I'm reading a book. I kept wondering what was going to happen next.

Now, if you're planning on reading the book, here's the part I can't help but mention, but beware, VAGUE SPOILERS AHEAD (I say vague because I'm only really giving stuff away if you're a cluey kind of reader. I'm not so cluey).

I was pretty ok with all the happenings of this story until I got within the last third of the book. Remember, I still haven't finished it yet, so I may have to update if my opinion on the ending changes.... But CURRENTLY I am pretty annoyed. You know that moment when something predictable shows up on the horizon of the novel, and you're like "nah, I trust this author. She'll do something different. There'll be a different twist that's not so predictable"...

And then before you're ready, the unfortunate King Incognito trope, coupled with its typical partner in crime Not Quite Dead comes crashing down upon the story in all its glorious clichedness. AND to make matters worse, the ever-hated (by me, anyway) LAST-MINUTE PERMANENT NAME CHANGE of one of the characters throws itself in for good measure, and as usual, the new name sucks compared to the original name (Shasta/Cor, anyone? UGH.). I searched for about half an hour for a name-change trope that suited this, but I couldn't find one, surprisingly. If you locate it, let me know please!

Anyways. I'm not a big fan of High Fantasy because of all the tropes and cliches that are always around, but I still enjoy Marchetta's writing. Why? I honestly can't answer that for sure. But there's something about her writing that grips me, and I only hope that one day my own writing has that little piece of special magic that keeps the reader reading.

Realism VS. Relatability

Disclaimer: The Spiderman/Batman character examples that are to follow have nothing to do with the original comic book characters ... well, they might, but I wouldn't know because I haven't read them. So the point is, if you're a Spiderman/Batman of comic book origin lover, please don't argue with me, I admit I am uneducated in ways other than the big blockbuster movies. No offence is intended. 


The age-old Spiderman VS. Batman argument comes up a lot in our house. This blog post isn't necessarily an argument - that is to say, I'm not trying to diss Batman. The argument here is Realism VS. Relatability, and my superheroes are the vehicle. 


Before we get into this, my computer tells me that relatability is not a word. The online merriam-webster dictionary tells me otherwise (but who knows how reliable that is). I can't think of any alternative word that means what I'm assuming we all know relatability means, so I'm going to roll with it anyway. I'm a writer! I can make things up! And I say if it wasn't a word, it is now!


On with the show. So what is the difference between realism and relatability? Why does it matter? 


As a writer and a reader, I enjoy both of these things in a novel. I like finding ways to relate to the characters, the situations, the emotions in a story. I also appreciate the effort an author puts in to make their story world and the way their characters act and react realistic. However, in most stories there is a point where, for the sake of the epic tale you are weaving, an element of your realism must be left behind. This is where Suspension of Disbelief, aided by relatability, comes to the rescue. 


Suspension of disbelief basically means, 'I'll accept your skewed reality because I'm enjoying the story'. It's that moment in the story where - what the? - Harry Potter is a wizard. Mole does spring cleaning. Christian wins Satine's heart with a love medley of pop songs while the moon sings and fireworks appear out of nowhere. John McClane miraculously survives, again. This is the moment where the writer must let go of the story's safety harness. It's time to freefall, and the reader/watcher is the parachute. Are they going to stick with the story?


In the examples I've used, I would safely assume that the answer is yes.  But why is that? Why do we love this stuff? Why aren't we yelling at the book/TV screen in confusion? This stuff can't happen! It's preposterous! Magic doesn't exist. Animals don't talk. The moon doesn't sing! And if this were real, he would have died back there. So why do we stick with the story? 


Simply, it's because we enjoy imagining things that couldn't really happen. But to be more specific, we enjoy it because despite the lack of realism, there is still an element of relatability that is realistic to us. Harry Potter thought he was an Average Joe like the rest of us. Mole's OCD reminds you of someone you know. The love Christian has for Satine is real to us. And John McClane ... well, we'd be disappointed if he died when he should have ... so we're rooting for him against the odds! 


What does this have to do with Spiderman and Batman, you ask? Well, these two heroes are what sparked the idea for this post. My brother Justin tells me that the great thing about Batman is that because he doesn't have proper super powers, it's his awesome technology that makes him a superhero. It's cool and realistic and whatnot because it could potentially happen. I agree with him on this, but my problem with Batman is that as a 19-year-old Australian girl who is disappointed about missing out on $100+ pay because she's home sick instead of working her 6-hour shift at a local cafe, I find Gotham city billionaire Bruce Wayne a leetle difficult to relate to. (Although right now, I probably sound a touch like Batman ... where are those lozenges?)


Spiderman, on the other hand? Photography-loving, nerdy teenager who, after getting his powers, spends his evenings scribbling away with textas designing a superhero costume? This works a little better for me.


The big point here is, who do you want your story to relate to? There's obviously a difference between the relatability of Spiderman and Batman (which includes the emotional states of the characters, their interactions with other characters, and the inner journey they take throughout their stories, but I won't go into all that detail). This isn't to say that I don't like Batman. I like the Batman films and there is much to love and appreciate. But as a big believer in the ability and need to emotionally invest in a character, I don't really have any emotional attachment to Batman (like, if he dies at the end of his upcoming film ... well, nice knowing you Batman.)


How much have you considered realism and relatability in your story? Have you found a balance? Are you reaching out to your target audience? 


In my own novel I have a lot of different things to consider. I'm already relying heavily on the reader's suspension of disbelief because by the fourth paragraph of the first page, one of the characters is revealed to be a shapeshifter. A big portion of realism has already flown out the window at this stage. And now it's up to me to keep my reader hooked. Sure, the fact that something totally out of the norm has just happened is enough to keep any reader going for several more pages, but in order to get them to Chapter Two, I need some relatable material. My shapeshifter is about 60 years old, rather gruff, lives in a rundown terrace house and probably hasn't showered for a week. He's not really relatable to my YA audience (roughly aged 15), so I bring in a younger character who, despite her air of confidence, is secretly a little scared of this guy. Now we have relatability. And we also have intrigue. What's she doing at this guy's house? What will happen there? 


My hopes are that these elements combined will lead to my reader turning the page and continuing to unravel the story. If I'm a good enough writer, I just might be right. 


If there are any writers out there reading this (a big squishy hug hello if you've come via NaNoWriMo), I hope this post is of some use to you. Happy writing!

Get It Right The First Time

That's what my brain has been telling me all week, and it sucks. Every time I sit down to write chapter four of Semblance, my brain stops me because I know I'll do it wrong and I'll have to rewrite it later.

Um.

Hello, brain?

That's the point of a first draft!

So this morning I got up and did some cleaning. And after I write this post I'll go and do some more cleaning, and then I will cart myself and my laptop off to the library for a distraction-free/internet-free environment and write the stupid thing. And it doesn't matter if it sucks. I would have to rewrite and edit it anyway.

What's difficult about chapter four is not just the content (I'm almost parodying the typical "protagonist-has-to-learn-new-skill-in-order-to-proceed-with-the-story" scene). This is point in the story where two of my three heroes get over the hump of being acquaintances and become real friends. They let loose a bit. They show each other their true colours. They do silly things. They argue a little. They have fun, but then things don't work quite the way they wanted. At the end of the chapter they feel much closer to each other, but as one character has super powers and the other doesn't, there's still a kind of distance between them. Urgh. In terms of character development, it's the most difficult chapter until close to the end of the novel. If I can get past chapters four and five it will move quicker from there.

As mentioned in my last post, I tried just skipping it but when I did that I accidentally screwed up my order-of-events because I forgot about the gap in the timeline between the end of four and the start of five. It's messier than it sounds. Better to write this first. On with the show!

Murdered Darling Monday #1

Got another segment for ya. I stole this one from the lovely girl who runs *Headdesk*, which I insist you check out if you haven't before. Especially if writing is your thing.

This segment, appropriately titled Murdered Darling Monday, is for scenes that I've written that I liked but had to cut for various reasons. If you're one of my beta-readers for "Semblance", you'll be familiar with a lot of the dialogue in this brief scene, but I thought I'd post it anyway. This was the first draft of the meeting between two of my main characters, Jordan and Hayden. The context is a funeral (changed to a wake in the current draft), and previously Jordan spotted this boy during the service, looking like he might faint from the heat. "Semblance" is the first in what I expect to be a series about some teenagers with super powers. In this scene, Jordan is unbeknownst to the fact that Hayden is a cryokinetic, someone who can create and manipulate ice. 

  ‘Hey, excuse me.’ 

  She looked round. The sweaty boy was standing by the air-conditioner, motioning for her to come closer. She glanced back to see her father nowhere in sight, and so went towards him. The boy smiled as she approached. ‘I saw you earlier - you look really familiar - have we met?’ he asked. 

  His eyes were bright green. Jordan scanned the rest of his face and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’ 

  The boy shrugged. ‘Can’t place you anyway. My name’s Hayden Connor.’

  She took his outstretched hand and shook it. ‘Jordan Elliott.’ 

  At that, his eyes widened. ‘You’re an Elliott? Is your dad’s name Daniel?’ 

  ‘Well, yeah -’

  ‘Oh, my gosh. Your dad is Daniel Elliott. The Daniel Elliott?’ His hands curled into excited fists. ‘I don’t believe this!’ 

  Jordan frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’ She’d never heard anyone talk about her father like that. ‘What’s so special about him?’ 

  ‘Daniel Elliott,’ Hayden repeated. ‘He was on the last elite team in the academy. His strength powers are amazing, I’ve heard.’ 

  ‘Strength powers? I - what?’ 

  Hayden stared at her. His shirt collar rippled under the blast from the air-con. ‘But you must know…’ His eyes darted back and forth, and for a moment he was silent. Then he said, ‘Do you … not have powers?’ 

  She couldn’t make sense of his words, and so she just shook her head. His shoulders sagged a little. 

  ‘Oh. Well,’ he added, with a twitch of smile, ‘Maybe you’re like a late bloomer, y’know? If something ever changes, you can come train with us. My dad says his powers lay dormant until he was almost sixteen. Maybe it’s the same with you. Sometimes you just gotta give them a kick-start.’

  She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but at that moment she heard her father call her name. 

  ‘I have to go,’ she said. She started to trail backwards, and his green eyes followed her as she went. 

  ‘See ya round,’ he said.

  Daniel was waiting by the door, his sunglasses hanging around his neck. ‘Who was that you were talking to?’ he asked. 

  Jordan shrugged. ‘His name’s Hayden. He knew Hezekiah.’ And you, she thought. 

  A look of recognition flitted across Daniel’s face, but for some reason he didn’t elaborate on it. She wondered what he would say if she told him what Hayden had said. Maybe Hayden had had the wrong person. Either that, or her father was hiding a very big secret. 

Why it's a Darling: I was really happy with the description of Hayden and the air conditioner, and was disappointed that it wasn't fitting in the rewrite of the scene. I did, of course, keep some of the lines of dialogue the same in the rewrite, because in terms of character they worked very well for me. I also liked the way Hayden just sees her and starts talking, leading the conversation the whole way, which is very like him. He still does this, but in a slightly different way, in the current draft.

Why it got Murdered: The big problem was that the context created a huge problem for me when I tried to write the scene after this. The setting was too vague, and I knew I had to make it more specific. That's why I reset the scene at a wake, in a house, by the pool in he backyard. It works much better for me.

Anyway! Currently writing chapter four, which is going well, albeit slow. Better keep going with it. The goal for today is to finish it, which means I have about 1800 words still to write! Gonna get cracking. Ta ta. 

Sometimes, things stop working.

I've been having trouble with the opening scene of my novel for several weeks now. I've known for ages that the problem is my main character's behaviour. Every time I attempted to write the scene she would just stand around and not do or say anything productive to move the story forward.

Tonight, I finally figured out the source of this problem. I've recently made a lot of changes to the character, particularly her backstory. I knew that this would result in some major personality changes, which is what I wanted, but all in all she would still be the same 'person', if you will.

That's what I thought, anyway. Turns out I've been trying to write this scene with two conflicting ideas - one being the idea of what the character must be, and the other being what the character actually is. So I ditched all ideas about how the scene was "supposed" to play out and gave my character back her free reign.

This might sound strange, especially to non-writers - how does the author give the character free reign, you ask? Surely you're always in control of the character - after all, they're fictional! They don't have real brains!

Of course they don't. When I talk about my characters like that, I mean I've let go of the boundaries in my head. I've dropped ideas such as "the scene MUST start like this" or "she HAS to do that before this happens". I went back to old drafts, rereading scenes where my character was present. I searched for her voice again - the voice that I had lost during the changes. I reminded myself how she acted, thought, and reacted, and then I went head-first into the new draft. I wrote without thinking about what had to happen, and simply let my character do what she does. And voila! 900 words!

Letting the characters be themselves and do what they want works wonders for the word-count.

Okay.

Laptop? Check. Notebooks? Check. Markers and highlighters? Check. Flashcards? Check. 

Three-Act Plot Guideline? Check. Juicebox? Check. 

Let's finish this plot planning once and for all. 

So, I got a little sidetracked...

...and thanks to Kristy and Jessie my main characters have dress styles. Hee.

Hayden Connors

Sienna Hawthorn

Jordan Elliott

Josh Elliott

Thompson Lewis

Lily Bryce (the antagonist) VS. Marcus Kitch (her shapeshifter disguise)

ARLKSJDKLASNBIAMEXCITEDFORMYWRITING.

Flipping holidays can't come soon enough! Holiday time means writing time (and friend time, but that's not what this post is about...).

Having one of those moments where the story idea in my brain is positively bursting with AWESOME and I just want to write it. As you've probably heard I'm revisiting my superpowers story, and revamping the characters that have been with me since 2008. It still shocks me that they've been around that long. Finally, I think I've figured out what their story is supposed to be. And who doesn't belong in the story. Many a character has been scrapped. Also many have died. But that's a different novel, to be written one day when I'm famous and my readers are begging for the backstory....

Totally pumped for the epicness that will be this book! I'm using NaNoWriMo to bust out 50k for it, which is kind of cheating since I've already started the story, but seeing as NaNoWriMo is made for personal gain, I guess I can use it for the best benefits possible. Right? Heh. We're all NaNo rebels sometime or other (or every time if you're me...).

I was talking to Keira yesterday about the authory things that I wish I could do but don't yet have the skill. Number One is better foreshadowing. I wish I could master foreshadowing for a huge series like Harry Potter. JK Rowling is a genius. Don't believe me? Go read The Prisoner of Azkaban again.

The second thing is pushing my characters one step further in the way of er ... torture. I don't know how else to put it. Basically, when you write a story your character has to get past many bad obstacles, and each time they escalate, pushing the character to their limits. I can never seem to get my characters to the step that breaks them, or nearly breaks them, depending on your character. A perfect example of this is Amy in The Doctor's Wife. While she and Rory are lost inside the TARDIS (I still don't know if I'm supposed to capitalise all the letters or not!), Rory gets shut behind and door and Amy finds him only seconds later, or so she thinks. Turns out for him it's been hours. That's step one. Step two is when she's tricked into thinking Rory has waited his whole lifetime for her, and to her horror she finds an old Rory still sitting behind the door. Now, if I had written this episode, that's as far as I would have taken it. The genius bit comes in step three, the moment that breaks Amy. The moment that pushes her over the edge, and gives us a real insight to her character, and makes us care. Because we knew that the old Rory was just a fake one put there by the badguy, so now that the scene is over we don't care anymore. The writers need to scare us. To make us feel what Amy feels. So when Amy next turns the corner she sees DIE AMY DIE graffitied all over the walls and the dead skeleton of her husband Rory, and she just breaks down. Now don't lie, your stomach twisted when you watched that didn't it? You felt it that time. Now the writers have got you to care. And when the real Rory comes around the corner, perfectly fine, confirming that what Amy saw was just a hallucination, the relief that you feel is the WIN for the writer. Yeah that's right, they've got you to love their characters. And THAT is what I want to master. Not everyone realises how important step three is in pushing your character to the limits. It's the final hurdle. Right when you think everything is going okay, something ten times worse gets in the way and you groan at the TV or shake your book in frustration because you just want the character to get through and be all right! You care now. I want to make my readers care like that.

Anyways, the post just sort of became a rant and ended up twice as long as I thought it would. So I'm going to go now. Off to continue this stupid plastering. Have a lovely Sunday!

P.S Had a ridiculously long conversation with Keira last night about names. We came to the realisation that Karen Gillan is a really, really terrible name (especially when you add that her middle name is Sheila! What is wrong with her parents?) and that Amelia Pond is a beautiful, wonderful, roll-off-the-tongue name. I love writers and how much thought they put in to names. :)

Hacking at the Plot

I've written about 700 words this morning, which is pretty nice. Not a lot, but still good. I'm happy with that.

I've realised that writing with an underage princess is no longer going to work, because I've decided to cut out a huge chunk of the plot and not have a regency. Elaine, you're now officially eighteen at the start of the story. The only thing bothering me about this is that I was going to have an epic steampunk masquerade party for your birthday, and now I'll have to figure out how to get that in the story without the excuse of a teenage royal coming of age. We'll work something out.

Sigh ... the things I must do to avoid a regency....

The Queen's Ladies

Good morning!

I don't have class until 5pm today so I decided to kick off the morning with a quick room-clean and then hit the keys for a good crack at Chapter Four. Normally I'm a bit OCD when it comes to cleaning my bedroom but I surprised myself by becoming so eager to get writing that there are still two large piles of clothes in here and dozens of books and papers scattered everywhere. Right now, I don't care!

I've been struggling with how to start Chapter Four. Elaine is supposed to meet with the House of Lords and make her little 'Now that I'm Queen...' speech, but I felt like that was too confronting an opening. I've finally come up with something that I like, and I get to hit two birds with one stone.

Throughout the other chapters I've had hopeless, brief mentions of Elaine's lady-in-waiting Evangeline, and yet I want her to become a strong supporting character later on. So far she isn't working; but I was  watching The Young Victoria (top of my list for ways to get inspiration for my story) and remembered how Queen Victoria's companion was at first her childhood governess, and when she became Queen she switched over to a brand new team of ladies to wait on her. I'm going to take this concept and scratch out all Evangeline's mentions and give her her very own introduction in Chapter Four. It will be much smoother and the subject will aid the introductory conversation between Elaine and Lawrence. Perfect!

Right, off to get this lovely idea out of my head and into my book. Ta ta for now.

Lockdown.

As much as I love sharing the writing that I am proud of ... that's just the problem. I can't let anyone read it unless I'm proud of it.

So, unfortunately for a couple lovely people who have been reading the first few chapters of Eloquence, I have to go into lockdown and say that I can't let any more of the story out for reading until I get a acceptable way through the first draft of the novel.

I hate to say it, but I'm becoming a perfectionist. This scene isn't supposed to be like that and that character isn't meant to talk like that I don't want the reader to get that impression or read this bit without knowing that.... And the list goes on. I'm not writing because I'm too bogged down in trying to get it right on the first try.

I'm telling you, self, it's just not possible!

I finally finished Chapter Three today. It's not perfect. I'm not happy with the sentence structure or the writing style or the character development, but hey, I wrote the first draft! And now I can keep going with the story. Yayness!

Exciting thing of the day:

The proof copy of Seven Stones, my fantasy novel, came in the mail today. Thank you, Createspace! It will now sit on my desk as a trophy, to remind me that I CAN write a book because I've already done it! Now I just need to write a much better one.

I will do this!

Ugh.

So I'm having an awful moment where I'm looking at my writing and thinking, this is all terrible! This is going to need so much editing to be any good!

But then I remember that I need to push those thoughts aside and save them for later. I'll never finish the first draft if I keep going over the first two chapters again and again.

So I changed my desktop picture to give me a little reminder. It's now a white background with the words 'Just tell the story' in the middle. That's my new motto. Just tell the story. Don't worry about the sentence structure or the description or your voice, just get the story out on paper. The other things can be fixed later.

Ugh. Sometimes I consider just forgetting this whole 'writing' thing, but then I think of the finished project that I so desperately want to have and I keep going.

Onwards!

I've already decided that if I haven't finished a first draft by November (which is, unfortunately, likely) that instead of writing a whole new novel for NaNoWriMo I will set my own personal goal and try and write 50,000 more words of the story in November. And if in the (also unlikely) even that I run out of story before I reach 50,000 in November, I'll just started editing.

Anyway. Back to Scrivener I crawl go.

I'm on a mission!

Well hello there! It's been almost a month since I last blogged, but in that time I have come to a decision.

As most of you know, I really, really want to be a writer. One that gets things published. And I have come to the conclusion that this will not happen unless I (at least attempt to) stick to one project. Ever since I finished my one book back in 2008, I've been working on numerous projects. Fat Beagles Are Unattractive, Veridical, and Eloquence are and have been some of my biggest works, but I haven't completed any of them.

Yet.

When I wrote my fantasy novel it was the only book I worked on. I wrote it from start to finish, and then continued with a good nine or ten chapters of the second book, intending for it to be a four-book series. That is, until I discovered that my writing was actually not as good as I thought it was and I would need to work hard to make it better, and the best way to do that was to start a new project.

That's when Veridical was started. It too was a bit of a failure and though I wrote over 40,000 words with my ensemble of six characters I struggled with the chronology of the story and after a couple of years, ended up with a huge pile of inconsistent plot and three or four Mary-Sues. Some of the scenes I wrote in that time are still in my mental list of Best-Scenes-I've-Ever-Written, so once again I'm happy with what I did but not nearly satisfied.

And so we come to the now. I have an amazing novel in my mind. A murder mystery set in a mild-steampunk world based off 19th century England, with a huge dollop of political drama and class/status epic thrown in. It's the story I've been dreaming I could write since I penned my first six pages of fiction at age seven.

I adore my characters.

I love the mood and the genre.

I'm still excited about the plot two years after I began to develop it.

Yet I'm struggling to get this story on paper.

Why?

I get the feeling it's because I have not disciplined myself enough when it comes to my writing. This is because of two things. One is that I do not have a proper schedule, and so I can go days without writing and then hate myself for it later on. This will be fixed. I plan to come up with a proper schedule in the holidays. The other reason my story is not getting written is because when I do write, I distract myself from my main story with other ideas, like super powers and rewriting Fat Beagles and numerous other things that come into my head. When I get a good idea I get the urge to write about it immediately. I've decided that this is not the way to do things anymore. Now, when I get a good idea I will write it down and store it away in my filing cabinet for later, and knuckle down and solely writing Eloquence until the first draft is complete.

Ha, easier said than done.

Wish me luck. I really, really, want to do this. I hope I can manage it sooner than I think.

"I will turn over half a library to make one book." ~Samuel Johnson

So I was really excited that I'd figured out all the kinks in the murder scenario ... but I've run into a problem. My antagonist has to poison the King's bodyguard cougars before he/she can kill the King, and I wanted the poison to work within five or six hours at the most. I was going with methanol, initially, because it was looking great to possibly have one of the cougars survive the poisoning, and then be permanently blind, thus limiting their ability to be a witness (gosh, I sound like a lunatic. I promise that I would never poison anything living in real life, really), and then there would have been more layers to my story and more clues.

Unfortunately, as I continued my research on methanol, my perfect poison turned out not to be so perfect. Though it was easily accessible, fit into the time-period, and had symptoms that could fit into my plot, it apparently takes 12-36 hours for the effects of methanol poisoning to onset, and so the possibility of using it was totally out of the question. I need something that works within the schedule of the dinner party. 12-36 hours is way, way too long.

Thankfully though, when I was America I bought this book. It has a little information on poisons, so hopefully it will help me figure something out. I'm really looking forward to finally using this book - I've had it nearly a year now and haven't used it for any of my story, but it has great information on all the details of forensics including autopsies, time of death, fingerprints, bloodstains, trace evidence and firearms, all of which I will need to know about once the detective arrives. I love doing research.

Behold!

My new desk. It's pretty awesome. It's also a belated birthday present. Thank you family :D

Now I feel like a real writer with a real office desk and a real office chair. Now all I need is filing cabinet....

It's over 9,000!

Good morning. It's 6:52 a.m. and this blog is going to be neither long nor, I expect, coherent. I only slept for four hours last night, even though I went to bed before 10:00 p.m. The problem is that over the last three weeks I have done so little exercise or any sort of energy-draining activities thanks to my stupid, stupid ankle injury, my brain is still full of energy and continues to tick long into the night. The clock read 00:50 the last time I looked at it last night, and I think it was another hour before I truly fell asleep.

Ugh. I feel so awful right now. Hopefully some breakfast will straighten me out, and when I get home on my break today I will plan some sort of energy-sucking activity with Justin so that I can go to bed completely and utterly exhausted and hopefully sleep the whole night through. Is it sad how blissful that sounds? Perhaps not.

Anyway, the real reason I came on here to blog was to celebrate the fact that I finally did what I've been wanting to do for so long - I finished planning the murder of the King in Eloquence. I'm so excited and happy and satisfied that I actually got a writing goal done, but due to my exhaustion I don't think my excitement is going to transfer very clearly onto the page ... er, screen. So you'll have to do some imagining or something. But the point is, it's pretty good and if you look to my sidebar you will see my Eloquence word count ... IT'S OVER 9000! Hehe. I completed chapter two and FINALLY someone has actually spoken the words, 'The King is dead.' Took long enough. I came up with the idea for this story a year and half ago, and it's only now that I'm getting somewhere with the actual writing of the plot.

Well, I think I'd better stop here because my writing is soon to drift off into total rambliness that makes even less sense than it does now, and I have to leave in just over half an hour for my class ... ugh, Monday mornings are not much fun. But at least Hannah is being lovely and doing me the favor of dropping me home on my 4-hour break so that I can spend some time with Justin today :) That's something to look forward to.

Tata.

"I'm not crazy, my mother had me tested!"

What up.

Well, it's pretty much winter now so I'm enjoying the last few days my holidays holed up indoors with my Ravenclaw hoodie on to keep me warm. Hoping to get a few more decents blocks of writing in before TAFE begins on Wednesday.

So I'm finally getting into the serious planning of Eloquence. This has included and will include: combining several vague floorplans of Buckingham Palace to create a half-decent map of the interior; timing the minutes that the murderer will have to complete his or her deed between the different phases of a lunar eclipse; creating obscure steampunk weapons with which to assassinate the King of Collinsmere; researching poisons that will put someone to sleep; and taking all the game pieces out of Carcassonne and Monopoly to use as the thirty-one characters who are present in the palace at the time of the murder (and that's not including all the servants).

I think it kind of looks like a combination of a battle strategy map and a game of Cluedo. Thanks Mom for let me take over the world dining room :) 

This my Princess, and her dashing partner at the dinner party, Prince Gareth of Auchterwilde.

 Yes, I have been spending my weekend plotting a murder, no I do not plan to use any of my findings to assassinate the Queen of England. Promise.

God is good. ALL the time.

Hello! I have returned. Only briefly, of course, because I woke up this morning with a better idea for the beginning of one of my stories, and I have to go and write it down.

Once the term starts again I plan on getting into a proper "writing routine", but thanks to my weird TAFE schedule that will prove much more difficult to do than say. Wish me luck!

For now, this is my new writing strategy - I will go to bed every night with my notebook by my bed, and when I wake up in the morning I am not allowed to get up until I write one sentence. Just one. That's all it takes to make sure that I have at least written something today. If I want to do this, really do this ... if I want to becoming a real writer who actually finishes books and gets things published, I need to work hard. Ugh. Once again, easier said than done.

Here goes nothing.

P.S Happy Easter! Remember Jesus and all he has done, our Savior and our King :)

RAWR.

Hello hello. I've been forcing myself to write today because I didn't want to feel like I waste the entire day... my stupid ankle has continued to create a barrier between me and the outside world, so it was home again from dawn til dusk for me today. It's okay. I finished my website assignment so I'm pretty happy :) I also wrote 1000+ words of a story, so all is good. I created a book cover for one of my stories, and I really love it and I wanted to post it on NaNoWriMo to ask for opinions, but the site has been down all day! Some lame Amazon hosting error. Ugh. Hopefully it will be back up by the morning.

I ordered some more books online yesterday but I don't think I beat the holiday break so they won't get shipped until Tues :( oh well. I'll probably have to wait about a month for them because Book Depository is a little hopeless when it comes to postage and handling ... probably because they don't charge you for it! So I guess it's a win-lose, or something like that. I got two more books on the Victorian era to add to my growing collection, plus a novel called It's Kind of a Funny Story, by Ned Vizzini. It's about a teenage boy who has depression, so he checks himself into a psych ward for a week and meets some weird but friendly people. It's sounds strange when I say it like that, I mean you're probably thinking, 'Erin, why on earth would you want to read a book like that?" but I stumbled across is online and as far as I can tell it has a happy ending, so I'm hoping it will be a nice little odd 'feel-good' sort of story. Here's hoping. The problem is, whenever I order a book online it's all I think about and all I want to read, so now when I look at all the other lovely books on my shelf that are waiting to be opened, I think, 'but I don't want to read these books right now...' Hmm. Maybe it will just take a bit of force, like my writing did today. Like I said it's probably going to be nearly a month until I see my order, so that's more than enough time to get started on something else.

By the way, I just made this poster and I'm going to print it out really big and hang it on my wall. 

Anyway. It would appear that I am now nearly out of words. So I shall leave this post here and go back to trying to force some more writing. One of the worst things I can think of is suddenly NOT being a writer anymore, and even though it's hard I never want to stop, so I must press on during the difficult days.

Tata! :)