Losing NaNoWriMo - not the end of the world for me!

It is the end of November and I did not win NaNoWriMo this year. People are still saying not to give up. Apparently it can still be done. But I lost, I lost faith and I lost hope. I feel almost bad about it. Yet, I think that I can achieve in my own time.

I have a YA novel on the back burner, simmering away and popping parts out here and there. It is strange because I never saw YA as a possibility for me. Since I read Twilight in my early teens that it all YA has been to me. Stupid teenage romance about stalky guys and the supernatural. I never really realised what it could be, not until now.

Now I am so far passed YA that I think I can better understand it. I can look back and see passed all the creepy brooding vampires. I mean, that part was a nightmare. But, then there is Northern Lights and more recently A Fault in Our Stars. YA can carry important messages about life and friendship, about acceptance and diversity and it is that part of it that I want to write about.

I have always felt like I had something important to say. I think most writers will tell you that, especially the unpublished ones. They will say that they have something important inside of them and they just haven't found the right way to say it yet. And, I believe them. Once they find the right way, the perfect way, to say that one important thing, they usually become something. They might not get published but they become something. At least, I hope so.

So here I go, putting NaNoWriMo behind me and writing something else instead. Something that I do not want to rush through! I am a huge believer in not editing until the first draft is done, but you cannot rush art! At least, I hope not. I do not need November to write, it is a bit of fun, a challenge. Really though, I write all year round and after the year I have had I know that things really cannot get worse. So with nothing in the way, here I go!

I must be mental.

Today I resign myself to the loss of NaNoWriMo. I have written 23000 words of one novel and it just is not working. I know the idea is to push ahead and get to the parts that work, and I have done that in the past when I thought that it could work, but I have to face up to the fact that I can no longer sit day after day and stare at that particular scrivener project. It is a sad day for me, I do not like to give up, I do not like to lose. Although, whilst I have given up on one novel half way a more confident side of me is whispering, we can still do this.

I had a very strong novel idea for the start of November, which I kicked in for something that I thought would be easier, now 23000 words into that one I am beginning to look back to that first novel and think, that is the one. That is me. I have been lying to myself over 23000 words and that is not okay. Sometimes the words did flow but they never had a sense of rightness to them.

I am a lost writer. I grew up believing that high fantasy would always be my passion but over the last few years I have changed. Those 23000 words were my last chance at reeling back in the spirit of high fantasy, but I pulled out an old boot instead. A worn, shredded old boot that has lost its charm. I am not saying that I dislike high fantasy, I am just saying that I as a writer have evolved from it. It was my springboard into writing, and I do not believe that many writers in this world have stuck with their springboards. The very nature of a springboard is to launch you to another place, the very nature of a writer is to evolve.

I have said before that I am always learning and want to continue to learn. It is why I am pursuing a MA and want to teach. I have never been disillusioned, I have always written because I could not exist any other way, I have never expected anyone else to understand that, to read my work and see it. I have my hopes set on a teaching job that will allow me to exist and to pay the bills.

And so, I have to be true to myself. This year NaNoWriMo has taught me that above all else. The first year I did it I learned that I could, the second year I learned that I could do it and go beyond it, and this year I have learned that it is okay to change what you write - that if you do not roll with the changes you are going to be on the floor days, months later wishing you had. This is not a sad moment for me, I am not giving up I am moving on and starting again, because believe me I am not done trying.

So, to sum up:

- Restarting NaNoWriMo

- Not afraid of change

- Writers are awesome

NaNoWriMo

I am taking part in National Novel Writing Month and I am over 5000 words behind. Yet, I am still feeling rather optimistic about winning. My plot is reasonably flawed, a few of my characters are already flattening out and there is this annoying little voice in my head that says university work is more important. Also, if I do not write anything today this will be my third day in a row without writing. 

I guess I should really go and bloody write something rather than waffling in a blog post. Surely a blog post is not superior to the march of adventure that is NaNoWriMo? Because, it is an adventure. Not only that but it is a challenge. One that I think every writer should attempt. I have spoken to people who do not think that just hammering out a first draft is the way forward. To them I say, at least I am moving forward. That is, after I have throttled the editor in my and shoved him in a box. 

I think learning to quiet the editor is a good skill. Perhaps even a very important one. Even if you take nothing other than that from NaNoWriMo I think it has been worth the time. Just do it for one year, do not bother with the rest. I promise you will learn something.

This is my third year taking part. I am of the opinion that a writer can have never learned enough. And so year after year I put myself through the ordeal that NaNoWriMo becomes. I will probably just scrape by like I have the previous two years. I will probably finish the novel over the months after NaNo, just like the last two years, and then I will print out a triumphant first draft, put it on my side and never visit it again. 

Because editing is the bloody hard part.

In a way I suppose the march stops there for me. I am probably doomed to fill drawer after drawer with horrendous first drafts. Even as I type this my mind is straying to the first draft I wrote last year and I'm thinking, perhaps I should do a rewrite for NaNo, perhaps I should scrap what I have written so far this year. Perhaps. Perhaps, I should write the second novel in the series I started last year.

Now I am feeling conflicted and will have to go away and think about this some more. 

Present Vs Past

I am trying to decide on wether or not to use the present tense for my NaNoWriMo novel. It is not the most common tense to write in. I have never written anything longer than a short story in the present tense. But, somehow it feels a little better. A lot of my writer friends despise the present tense and refuse to read anything that is written in it. I too have often turned my nose up at novels written this way. But, I do not think that is just because of the tense. It is because they use the present tense in a strange way.

The challenge when writing in present tense is making it sound 'right'. I use that word with some caution as I am not sure what the correct term for well written work is, as everyone has a different idea of it. What I mean is some sentences sound strange when written in the present tense, they make complete sense and feel comfortable in the past but transferring them straight over to present is just... strange. This is where the challenge comes from. I have been writing a short piece in present tense. When I read over it I find myself tweaking small parts that would sound fine if I just changed the bloody tenses.

However, when I started this piece I was writing it in the past tense and it felt wrong. And if it feels wrong then there is nothing I can do but bow to the whim of my idea. It is set in the close future, and that, for me, seems to be enough to push it over the edge when I am writing in the past tense. It doesn't even feel like sci-fi to me, it is that close to the present, so it wouldn't make sense to write in past tense. Does that make sense? It seems to, but then I think about it and I know it should not matter.

No matter the tense, as long as it is written well it should get good feedback. I just want to avoid those who would rather chop their hands off than read present tense. I guess my aim with this novel is to appeal to those people especially. To have them pick it up, read it, and find themselves thinking, 'well I don't usually like present tense, but I love this.'

Originality is dead.

A few of my more recent lectures have made it very clear that no idea is new or original. This has lead me to want to throw myself from a very tall building, seeing as, you know, none of the work I have ever slaved over is original anyway so who cares. Originality is dead and I would argue that technology killed it.

Every idea I have ever pitched has at some point met with this response 'Ah that's kind of like this book/film/article where...' Every idea we come up with is like something else. This is because our lives are solely intertextual. We cannot help but see similarities between works of fiction, in tweets or status updates. Why is this? How have we become an intertextual society?

Technology is the answer that I would give. We can share work at the click of a button, we can link articles, surf world news, read newspapers from other countries and time periods. We can watch shows we have missed, shows from years ago, films, all online. We have surrounded ourselves with material and it all interweaves with and comments on everything else. Any person who is sitting at home on their computer, sitting on the bus on their phone, sitting in class on their tablet, can be a critic, an artist, a social presence and an amateur blogger. We can be and see so many different things at once, we can interact with them. No wonder we have brought that notion into our films and literature. 

Contemporary writing, films and articles are filled with references to other writing, films and articles. Sometimes this is deliberate, other times it is subconscious. We are constantly becoming involved in several things at once online, it is not possible for us to keep this out of our creative work. Right this minute, as I am typing, I may be reminding you of someone else, or something else. I may sound like an article you read the other day, I may use the same phrases as a character you were just thinking about. We contrast and compare naturally, it is only human to do so. Originality is dead, then, and perhaps humans killed it. It would not be the first time we had throttled a state of being out of existence.

So what hope do our creative minds have? Little, I am afraid. Creative people will never be able to escape the scrutiny of human nature. We are attuned to references, we like to criticise. We like to look at a great piece of work and shoot it down because it has been done or seen before. It gives us pleasure to think that one great artist or another is actually not so great because someone before had worked in the same way. I find that the one criticism I cannot bare is 'it has been done.' We have been brought up in a society that lauds originality and criticises repetition. 

But, that does not mean that we should just give up. I am still writing, I am still writing. I am still writing. I am learning and reading and finding different ways in which to express myself. Good writers, I think, are aware that intertextuality is unavoidable. Great writers use this knowledge, and create work that cannot be criticised for being unoriginal because that was how it was supposed to be. This does not mean that great pieces of art are complete regurgitations. This means that great pieces of art are taking those regurgitations and twisting them into new forms. I have not yet found the right way of doing this, I do not hold the secret to great writing. But, I am willing to try and find it. 

 

Mammoths, fantasy and defining modern writers.

I am an unpublished writer. I am an unpublished... writer? I am unpublished, therefore I cannot be a writer. 

That last statement is untrue. I am a writer. I have sometimes wondered if other people see me that way. Are there people out there who think that they cannot be writers because they are unpublished? Probably. It was how I used to think. But, I have and am studying writing, I think I should get some kind of title for that. Princess, would be my desired one. World dominator, empress! But, what if I applied that thinking to other subjects? I have studied history so... I am a historian! No. And the reason that I am not a historian is because I do not feel it. I love history, but in my heart I am a writer. I always will be. And also a little bit of an empress too.

I started thinking about this because I started thinking about submitting to a magazine. Or online journal, or anywhere. I am not at this point going to be picky. The thing is, I have gone through this process before. I have thought about submitting, researched for hours the best magazine to submit too, gotten a piece ready for submission, aaaaand backed out. I just cannot hit that button. I have done, and I have a slew of rejection emails to prove it. But, why can't I now? I think it is because that as a writer I do not know who I am. 

Writer is too broad a term. I am a writer of fiction, we could narrow it down that far at least. But then within that, what am I? Once, I would have said 'I am a writer of fantasy fiction.' Yet, I no longer class my writing as fantasy. Sure, there are fantastical elements to all of my pieces but they feel too real to be fantasy. Fantasy can be a comment on reality and real society but I think that my work goes deeper than that. At least I like to think so. I think it strikes real elements with a sledge hammer rather than encompassing them as fantasy fiction does, sometimes. I am well aware that fantasy is a very broad term and it could be applied to my work. 

Yet, fantasy is not the right world. Surreal sounds better. So going back to the top. I am an unpublished, surreal fiction writer. Does that sound right? Not quite. I do not think it is quite there. I want something harsher, something that screams look at me I'm being fucking amazing over here! Empress Jodie, sauntering through. Marching through. No, charging through! I want something that charges through with a lance, riding an elephant! No, a mammoth! Let's bring mammoths back! Let's all ride mammoths and charge into the world of fiction. Or better yet, let's all stop labelling ourselves as writers. The term is too broad, too encompassing, too much like fantasy and fiction. 

I propose that we all choose our own terms to describe our work and who we are and who we want to be. I have been stringing something together throughout this post. And after much more thought than there seems to be here I think I know who and what I am.

I am an empress and my work is a charging mammoth.

This Summer

Come and find me in the summer,

I'll be standing by the window.

In a white dress.

I will paint my lips red,

darken my eyelids for you.

Stain my white dress.

Let us spin a bedroom,
I will draw the curtains,
you can paint the sheets.

Let us stand together,
by the window and,
watch them as they dry.

You will leave me in the winter,
when I have to close the window.
I'll fold my white dress.

So just give me this summer.
Your sweet lips,
paint my dress.

A single hug.

My Dad hugged me last night. He put one arm around my shoulders and pressed his hand to the back of my head. He stroked my hair. I do not remember him ever hugging me like that. 

I've never had a bad relationship with him. We have just never seen the need to be emotional with each other. More recently he admitted to not believing in depression. He is not an ignorant man, he has just never come into contact with someone with mental health problems. And to have his own daughter diagnosed must have been a shock for him. His reaction when I first told him should be in a comedy. He one arm hugged me, said he needed to go to football, whilst looking at the floor, and left as soon as he could.

Perhaps he is ignorant. Perhaps he is hurting. It might be that I just cannot see it. Either way, as much as I like to laugh at it, it effected me. The man who I had always expected to be there suddenly wasn't. He didn't even believe that there was something wrong. 

It has been around two months since then. I hit a wall at uni yesterday and my step-mum brought me home. I had dinner and said I was going to bed. That was when my Dad hugged me. It doesn't sound like much, but to me it is a big step forward. 

Women and men and changing things. (The worst title for a poem, ever)

If there were a mirror, bigger than the moon,

maybe then I could see your source.

But, the moon reflects only light.

Those are your words not mine.

Glass is worthless, you say.

Yet, you are young, 

and your hair was cut short.

And mine has grown. I let it.

There are things that have always been.

And I realise that I know them,

now. Better than anyone else, I know.

I want to tell you to roll with them.

But, they will chew and keep on chewing.

There is no spittle for people like us.

The moon can see our fated progress,

it has a light and is enough.

For when you are nothing, the faintest light

can bring you to a page.

I will be blunt, we are not all artists.

I will be worse, money is king.

And a king is a man who can

make a woman a queen.

Teaching Creative Writing

I am in the third week of my third year. My very last year at the University of Winchester, studying creative writing. I can not even begin to tell you how excited I am, how scared I am. But, I don't actually want to focus on those parts of it. What I want to focus on is my degree itself, and how amazing it has been. 

There has been a lot of discussion in Britain as to if creative writing can be taught. In America they seem to already have it sorted out, they offer MAs in it as well as MFAs which people over here seem to have only just gotten to grips with. Britain has often been of the opinion that creative writing comes from the person almost entirely and so no one can teach it. But, walking comes from us, and we can teach that. 

Personally, I think that creation cannot be taught. The drive, the light, the spirit of a creator cannot be transplanted. Their mode of creation, art, science, writing, is also up to them. But once they have found their mode of expression I think it best to help them along it. We would not trust a scientist if he had not had a single lesson. 

There are some lucky, natural writers, but even then they have been taught at least the basics of english. And I believe that they could benefit from taking a class, because education forces us to challenge ourselves and modern writers need that. I offer myself as living proof of this.

At the beginning of my degree I refused to write anything that was not fantasy, and I believed that short stories were worthless to me. I remember being in a class that we had to read a selection of short stories for, I remember turning my nose up at it. I think that a part of me did not truly believe that I needed educating. I thought that I had all I needed in my fantasy books and my fantasy writing. 

Now, two years on, a huge amount of time in the life of a young writer, I am interested in writing something that is not fantasy. In fact, I have already written a few short stories that focus a little more on real life. I want my writing to mean something, I am interested in postmodernism's affect on history, I want to write metafictional pieces, and I want to read anything but fantasy. My writing is intelligent, it has themes and it has a purpose. I still have most of the year to go.

Yet I know it will not be enough. I do not think that a lifetime of studying writing and working in workshops would be enough. I am lucky in that I am going to go on to do a creative writing MA, and after that I am hoping to teach in colleges. It is the only way I can think of that will keep me learning. 

I guess what I am trying to say is that if you are passionate about your art, and you are wondering if it is worth doing a university degree, or an MA, it is. It really is.

My first, brief, attempt at metafiction.

I will start with you standing at a station. It isn’t a particularly new one. The benches are wooden and stained. The guard looks as old as his surroundings, and not because of his age, he has a worn kind of boredom about his eyes. It is the kind of boredom that makes me want to ink out a dinosaur beside him. I would like to see what he would do. He was athletic in his youth, his legs might still remember what it was like to run. I could remind them of that. Instead, I will focus on you.

I will tell you that you are waiting for a train, simply because I have no way of drawing your attention to the timetable. 

NEXT TRAIN TO NEVERLAND: PAGE THREE

You have been waiting your entire life for this train, so I assume that you can wait a little longer. Unless, of course, you are in desperate need of that train. Perhaps you can see your teacher walking towards the classroom, why are you reading before class? Some people would call you a geek, or maybe you are at a bus stop or a real train station and your actual mode of transport is scheduled to arrive in one minute. If you can read so much in so little time I will be impressed. You might even catch my train in one sitting. 

So what shall we do whilst we are waiting for the train? My train I mean, the one I am writing about. If it were my choice, which it is, then I would do what I always do when there is something that I have to wait for. You take a book out of your bag and you start to read.

‘I will start with you standing at a station. It...’

What would happen?

This started from a very simple question, what would happen if I came home from work to find a man lying on my bed? It turned into this, and I still have no idea what I would do.

-

There was a man on her bed and he was bleeding onto her floor. Her new beige carpet. Her first thought was that he was dead. Then he moaned. Emmy grabbed the baseball bat from beside her bedroom door; she had been keeping it there for Harry. This was not Harry. This man had light brown hair and was dressed all in black. He was lying face down on her expensive flowery quilt, one hand hanging over the side, dripping blood onto her floor. He moaned again. She tightened her hold on the bat.

Slowly the man began to move, he put one hand down on the bed and then the other. He pushed himself onto his knees and looked down at the deep gash on the back of his hand. His hair fell into his face, obscuring it from her still. 

She shifted her footing, trying to get it right.

He looked up like a dog pricking its ears. His gaze settled on her, wide and staring. He looked at the bat, and then to her face. He was tan with large bright eyes, blue, maybe grey. But did it matter? His lips parted and he put a hand to his head, his hair was greasy so that when he pushed his hand through it it stayed sticking up. It needed a good cut.

‘I haven’t called the police,’ she said, wincing as her voice came out a little to high.

‘Thank you?’

‘So you can go, no one will bother you.’

He closed his eyes and squeezed his temples for a moment, when he opened them again there seemed a sheen of tears. She still had the bat raised. Was that what he was worried about? She began lowering it and he shook his head. She stopped.

‘What is it?’ she said, ‘You can go. I won’t hurt you.’ She let the tip of the bat touch the floor.

‘No,’ he raised his hand, ‘I think, you should stay ready.’ He said it with his eyebrows drawn together as if he were thinking hard on something. ‘I, I don’t know who I am. I could be dangerous.’

That’s for sure, she thought. He was large, big shoulders, square jaw, black tracksuit bottoms and a black t-shirt like some sort of gang member. And there was his hand, which he had rested on his leg. It still oozed blood when he moved it. 

‘You don’t know-’

‘No, I don’t know where I am, I don’t know who I am. My hand feels like it is on fire and I can’t help but think the bat is a good idea.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

Emmy whistled through her teeth, ‘were you drinking last night?’

His brow furrowed again, ‘you mean alcohol? I don’t even know if I like alcohol.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Do you know if you like burgers? Because that’s what I was planning for dinner.’

‘Dinner.’ He still looked as if he was trying to concentrate. ‘What time is it?’

‘About half six.’

‘In the afternoon?’

‘No dinner is a morning thing.’

‘But it… Oh you were…’

She nodded.

He smiled a little and moved so that his feet were on the floor. She noticed that they were bare.

   

‘Dinner or tea?’ he asked.

‘Dinner. How do you know the difference?’

He shrugged, ‘I just think we are in the south.’

‘London.’

‘London.’ He rolled the word as if he had never heard it and was just trying it out. He looked down, his hair fell over his face again. It was then that Emmy realised that she should call the police, because, well. Wasn’t that what you did when random men invaded your home? 

‘Burgers could work,’ he said when he looked up. She noticed his injured hand open and close. He was shaking. Emmy did not want to give him over, not to them. They’d sooner lock him up for breaking and entering than help him. 

She set the bat down by the door.

‘Please, keep that on you,’ he said.

Selfish, egocentric, sometimes lost.

I have always thought of my writing as deeply personal. It is something that most writers say, in fact it may even be an accepted fact. Often published works get torn apart in search of what the writer really thinks, scenes are related to their lives to try and find their beginning. People want to know if writers write about themselves, they want the fact beyond the fiction.

I am here to tell you that writers are an entirely selfish group. We write about ourselves constantly. But, before you go picking through your favourite novel for personality insights you must realise something. Yes, our hearts and souls are in that work, but you will not find us there.

What I am trying to say is that everything I write is a part of me, but unless you know what you are looking for you will never find me in it. I could relate that to the island in Pirates of the Caribbean. 'It can be found only by those who know where it is.' (Probably the wrong quote but it has the same gist) A lot of the time, even I have no idea of exactly which part of me I am divulging in a piece of work. Some make me feel more naked than others, and most of the time I do not even know why. I just know that there is something deeply personal about what I am handing out, and it makes my skin crawl.

I suppose we could add egocentric to selfish. And why not? To share our work is to say look, this is something I like, this is something I am proud of. If we go with my, 'there is a piece of a writer in his/her work' theory then that makes us extremely egocentric. 'Look, stare at this majestic part of my self! Marvel at my psyche!'

So what happens when we begin to lose ourselves?

I have been able to write little but fragments for the passed few months. I may have finished the first draft of my novel but I also feel like when I read over the ending I will not find what I am looking for within it. It is a scary prospect, that we might change, that actually that piece we held close to our heart has drifted from sight. I could read something from a year ago right now and not find a shred of myself in it. It is scarier still that I might have just completed a 95 000 word first draft only to not be able to feel the warmth that I felt when writing it.

Something has slipped, I have slipped. My writing is coming out with a more serious tone, a more realistic edge that I never thought I'd want to feel. Others must have gone through this, to think themselves one kind of writer when they were young, only to turn around and be on an island that nobody can find, surrounded by water. If we run with that analogy then really I am sitting on the edge of my island dipping my toes in the cold, ice water. I want to jump in, and really I suppose I should. It is always best to jump straight in and get used to the cold water rather than dally on the side.

Come Death.

Girl, who loves with Juliet’s first kiss,

Who, a virgin, has Venus on her lips,

Come forth, beauty to match Helen of Troy,

Leave crazy Heathcliff when just a boy,

Step into the dignity of Guinevere,

Give to men that which Arthur should fear.

But take not your share of virtue when,

Passionate throws give to Helen ten

Thousand ships that travel on the wake

Of the poison ruined Romeo must take,

And with haste Guinevere will leave, 

Afresh with winters warm blood breeze.

In Sparta Paris saw nothing, no shadow amiss,

When it was he who shared Juliet’s first kiss.

Expectation/reality on finishing a first draft.

It is no secret, on twitter at least, that I just finished the first draft of a novel. I like to see it as THE novel. The big break, the novel of all novels. If I did not see it that way then I'd have cheated myself. I'd have spent six months wasting my time.


Here is a list of my intentions when telling people about my first draft victory, and their reactions.

My mum - I had been home from uni for a few months and all I got from her was 'you don't do anything, you just sit around, what are you doing?' Because she could not see my sitting on the sofa writing all day as something productive. So I sent her a picture of my completed first draft to just rub her face in the fact that actually, I am a goddess. Her reaction: 'Oo bring it home with you! I want to read it!' I immediately lost. Because I was forced to respond with: 'I can't, it's a first draft, it's terrible.' In future I'll be waiting until I have a slice of brilliance that will blow her away before I start bragging.

Twitter - I've been about for a while now, trying to build some kind of follow base. I tweeted about the build up to completion and then the completion itself. What I wanted was one of those miracle moments, where an editor stumbles upon what they think is a stroke of genius all contained in a single tweet. What I got did not disappoint me, but it was no editor. The twitter writing community is incredible. I tip my hat to you.

My friends - I am not going to lie here, I wanted some kind of recognition. 'Look, here is this thing that has prevented me from doing all I wanted to do with you for the past six months.' Here is the sad truth of life, your friends do not care about your writing. Especially when they are twenty years old. They are making it in their own lives, you are just this random person they know who is creating, quite frankly, nothing that is going to contribute to them or make you any money. That may make it sound like I have the worst friends in the world, but I can assure you they are not. They just aren't writers.

Writer friends - Now this is an entirely different story. I know how much these people are struggling with their own writerly goings on. I had no intention of bragging, I just wanted to give a heads up, a 'hey guys just so you know I might have something for you to read soon.' As with twitter, writers understand writers. And I felt much more comfortable sending one of them a terrible first draft than I would have if I had sent one to my mum.

I think that about covers the people in my world. I just wanted to share my expectations and realities so if there was anyone else out there struggling with a first draft they would know that actually, completion is worth it. Not only do I feel like a wordly genius but I've learned some things.

The hated A3 sheets of paper!

This is probably a good time to point out that I am not a creative person. That may sound crazy, I am a writer, creation is in the name of the thing that I am. But, I have never felt like a creative writer.  I imagine stuff and I write that stuff down and it becomes words on a page. I cannot create diagrams and pieces of artwork to go with those words. If I had to write it down without a word processor it would be indecipherable, if I had to make a collage for it, it would just be unevenly cut squares stuck down on a page. I have no visual capabilities. And I know this because in my first year of uni they tried to help me develop them.

We had a class in which the tutor enjoyed pulling out big A3 sheets of paper and lots of coloured pens. She would give this huge inspirational speech about how we must fill these sheets with ideas.

'Draw!' she would cry, 'draw your ideas, draw spider diagrams and swirls and write all over everything!'

I would stare at my big piece of paper, select a pretty green pen, and proceed to list my ideas down one side of it. Yes, list. Now, do not misunderstand me. My first few attempts at creation were spider diagrams but, the ideas that came out of them felt deluded and unconnected. I cannot make connections in that way.

And, no matter how many times I have tried to draw one of my characters I never can. I study creative writing at university and many of my friends come out with these wonderful drawings that they can then find inspiration in. I have my lists.

So, when we were told that for our ECP (FYP, dissertation, whatever you want to call it) we could do whatever we wanted many of my friends began to get very excited.

The tutor was standing there like, 'you can make videos and paintings and sculpture or music or dance if you want to! As long as it adds to your final piece.'

And I am sitting there like, 'you will get 8 000 words of genius and you will like it!'

I have handed in my proposal for my piece, I have talked with my tutor. And yet I still do not know what it is I want to write. I know it isn't what I said in the proposal, and I know it isn't any of the ideas I have come up with so far. I have only just decided that I want to write a contained piece rather than an extract.

So, today I am going to sit in my room and go through all of my idea places (Notebook, phone, ipad wherever I've scribbled them) and I am not going to leave my room until I have something. Anything. Even a name would be good at this stage. I am going to write out lists and read books and probably make another blog post and tweet a lot, all in the name of story building procrastination.

Sometimes...

Sometimes I get scenes stuck in my head that have nothing to do with anything. This is one that takes place during a zombie apocalypse, I have a few other oddbits from the same story but no clear plot or idea of what is actually going on. Only that there is this guy looking for his friend. This is the moment he finds her.

-

Ollie was there.

His clothes were torn, and his face smeared with mud and blood, but it was him. It had to be. Jen ran down the steps, pausing at the bottom. She lifted her hands to keep the sun from her eyes.

He waved.

It was him. 

She felt her breath catch in her throat.

A strong wind blew over them causing the trees to bow behind him. He used a hand to push his long fringe from his eyes. It had been shorter last time she had seen it. Short and choppy. Now it hung long around his face at all different lengths. The wind brought with it the smell of burning. Most likely it came from the town that spread out a good ten miles away. She wondered if he had come through it.

Jen looked him up and down. He wore dark jeans and a white t-shirt with a short sleeved shirt over the top. The shirt was torn and the jeans jagged at the hems. Mud smeared his skin and there were scratches on his cheeks and all down his bare arms. His eyes were darker than she had thought, but his smile was just the same. He eased his backpack off of his shoulder and let it drop to the ground.

Ollie held his arms out to her.

‘I come all this way for you, and you aren’t gonna give me a hug?’

It was like a dream, she took one step and then another. 

‘Jen!’

She paused and looked back.

Ethan stood on the top step. Dressed in tight jeans and a shirt, his skin clean and pale Ethan cut a fine contrast. However, he did not smile. His lips pressed tight together, he rushed down the steps and put a hand on her shoulder. The pressure was light and warm but dominant.

‘Ollie’s here,’ she said.

‘He is bleeding.’ 

‘A wall fell on me,’ Ollie shrugged. ‘You can look,’ he held out his arms, ‘I haven’t been bit. I wouldn’t have come for Jen if I had.’ 

Jen shook Ethan’s hand from her shoulder and made to go to him again but Ethan pulled her back. She turned on him, ‘what?’

‘He could be lying. Jen…’

She had pulled away. Moving quickly she found Ollie’s arms and pressed herself into them. She felt him stiffen, and knew that he was looking at Ethan. His cheek pressed to her temple and he pulled her in close. He smelt of smoke and blood. His skin was rough where it touched her own, he had been through hell and back, most likely. 

That was when she remembered. ‘Where’s your brother?’ she asked as she pulled back, his hand brushed down her arm. For a moment he caught her gaze, but he could not hold it for long. 

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’

He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. ‘Don’t be. It’s not your fault.’ 

He gave her arm a light squeeze. It said: it’s mine. 

‘Ollie,’

He let her go and picked up his backpack, ‘well, I didn’t bite her head off.’

Ethan was still standing at the bottom of the stairs. He nodded slowly. ‘If you so much as clear your throat, I’ll shoot you.’

‘And when you miss because of the recoil I’ll break your legs.’

Ethan stepped towards him. Jen placed herself between them. 

‘We need all the people we can get,’ she said to Ethan,.‘And you,’ she looked at Ollie, ‘you’re new here. Don’t start stirring stuff up.’ She took Ethan’s hand and headed up the stairs, having to tighten her grip and pull him after her.

This is this and that is that.

I cannot even begin to list the amount of 'how to' articles I have read about writing blogs. Just google it, it's mental the amount of professionals who just wanted to say: 'Look here kid, this is how it is.' I'm not going to lie, I stopped reading most of them half way through, so if this has a good start but a bad ending then I only have myself to blame. Then again, if it has a bad start and a good ending wouldn't that just turn those 'pros' upside down?

I have never had a 'serious face' blog before. I toyed with tumblr for a while, but that felt like rounding up a flock of immature twenty somethings to look at porn. I left that behind a long time ago and now here I am, fresh faced, porn free and scrutinising myself to death. Is this the right picture? Should I really be favouriting these films? Am I even that interesting? I listed 'American history' as one of my interests. I am never going to be interesting. 

It's the kind of scrutiny that only a writer can understand. 

I am predominantly a fantasy writer. I can try as hard as I like but I will never be anything else. Recently I have been experimenting and asking myself what fantasy is. Then I get bored and throw in a dragon. Or gruesome, murder. I have no idea if introductory posts are the 'in thing', but I thought I should let people know what they are getting into. If you are looking for hardcore reality this isn't the place to be (although, I would argue that fantasy can often deal with the most pressing of real world problems, but that's for another post) I will be talking and writing my kind of fantasy.