Some serious writing commences- Novel update #1

Now that the prologue and chapter one have been completed, I had the idea of keeping a sort of diary, a blogdate if you will, of how the novel is progressing. This is for the reasons that I can share with those of you who are reading this in how it is going and also that I can sit back and reflect on my work in pride, though I am  merely 5,000 words in with 75,000 to go...

I have to admit that the prospect of writing something as gargantuous as a novel was first of all exciting. To be able to hold an actual book of some density and say I DID THIS! was the immediate appeal. The idea of creating a story for someone to read, characters to divulge into and provide a revolutionary book of deep meaning and purpose,yada yada yada... that was nice but not all too important at the time.

It was not until I began writing chapter one that nerves began to kick in like a kick in the bollocks. Both painful and unnecessary.




Chapter 1 is done!(ish).

The first draft of chapter 1 is done. It has been sent off to the guy who's given me the opportunity to do this for his feedback and redrafting. Though this is not to say that it was as easy as sitting down and typing away.

To summarise...

700 words in I restarted. 300 words into the second attempt I thought it was all crap and deleted it. On the third attempt I followed the pattern of a novel of the same genre and it off started much better. Then everything started to go inside out, inside in, outside in and outside out,

Tense began to confuse me, words began to confuse and life became a big disappointing piece of shit when I realised that writing something like this was not going to come out of me like air. Every word I typed seemed wrong. My description felt cheap and cliche. The way I hit the keys on the keyboard felt wrong. And all this in the first chapter!

I felt demotivated and stupid. As if I shouldn't have taken on this project. But I laboured on and eventually finished it.

I was happier with it than I imagined. It started to read like a novel and something a little greater than my previously thought skill level. So before I started to question what I had done, I gave it a quick once over for spelling etc and deemed it was ready to send. Happy with my resilience and first breakdown recovery.

When it came to clicking to send, I was terrified and hesitant. More than sending off any piece of coursework I have done at university where things such as a plagiarism, failure, embarrassment or some other life threatening result could occur. And even though I knew I was sending it to someone who would give me quality feedback and do it in such a manner that I wouldn't collapse emotionally and destroy every piece of creative work I have ever done, I still felt an air of pessimism as it came up with 'Sent'.

Almost immediately he replied saying that he would get round to reading it in the next couple of days when he found some time and that he was greatly looking forward to it.

I was happy with this, knowing I could rest my mind from the novel for a couple days and focus on doing nothing.

However, to my surprise, two hours later he emailed me again.

His name popped up on my phone and a sense of dread filled me, not knowing why he felt the need to email me again.

Thinking the worst, I read on.

'Matt. Couldn't resist it and had to read it tonight. My first impression - I love it! Really well done.'

I cannot begin to describe the relief felt and looking back, I did not have any particular reason to be really worried. I had sent him my best work and with all my effort put into it. But I always prepared myself for the worst so that anything above this would lift me into a cloud of complete ecstasy.

I was and am still on that cloud.

My writing style was correct. My understanding of what he wanted was bang on. My added story fillers worked. Everything was spot on.

I now am awaiting for his feedback, which he promised would be minor, so that I can alter it to final copy. Then within the next couple of days I will begin chapter two. A chapter I am now far more confident about approaching.

 So to conclude I have finally taken the first major step. Now it's time for me to learn to jog.

Writing a novel?

Well then...

I will try to make this as brief as possible.

About a month ago I received an email through university about an opportunity to help assist writing a novel. It was incredibly brief and asked for a bit of information about myself, some of my influences and what I thought about the opportunity.

The person who sent the email, Ross, then replied with thanks for the email and gave a bit of information about himself and the project. The novel would be his ideas, plot, characters etc. with myself having the freedom to write in my own style and have my name on the book. Percentage of profits were discussed but obviously that is not for you to know. Money is not the motivation for this at all but let's face it... it sweetens it a little. If the first novel were to go as well as we hope, it would then go on to be trilogy and then on to film.

A couple of emails later, he asked for a small passage of some of my work. I sent him a small piece from a Short Story Coursework assignment I recently did. He found it of a good enough quality to then send me through to the next stage of selection. This was for myself to write out 2 out of 3 scene descriptions he had sent me. One was a car crash, one was a fight scene and the last an emotional dilemma. I did the emotional and car crash scenes. I was lucky enough to have some amazing support from some friends at uni and they gave my work a look over for spelling mistakes and some opinions before I sent it off.

Nervously I waited for a few days for a reply and a few days later he did.

He said that he found my work engaging, saw great potential in me and wanted to work with me if I was interested in committing. I waited a day or two to reply, didn't want to seem too keen, and said yes. He then asked for a day and a phone number to have a chat.

We have since then had a chat and planned out everything. He gave a brief overview of the plot and it all appealed to me immensely. He has sent me some books through the post for me to read from the same genre as our novel will be to have an idea of how it is usually written.

The aim is that in 12 months we will have crafted and perfected a novel that will be published. I do understand the difficulty in getting published, I'm not that naive. But hearing about the connections he has and having two minds work on a novel instead of one, it all seems very promising.

I have beaten others across the country to this opportunity and extremely excited to say that I will be writing a novel!

Writer's Block!

It's late. Like far too late for someone who has to be up early and pack for the tedious routine of moving back home from uni. However, after two heavy nights of drinking and this resulting in late wake-ups, my body clock has decided to give up on me. 

I thought that this would be a good time to write. The silence of the house, the nostalgia that fills me as I think of my second year at uni, the issues of other things, it all feels rather inspiring. I have my Word document up as I read over a short story I did a few days ago and begin to hate myself for writing something dreary and static. With every word that I felt myself to be a genius with, another layer of disappointment mounts up at how wrong I was. Writing has always been something I have had some interest in but only in the last few months have I actually tried to sustain a constant flow of creative works.

It is now that I have hit that elusive and immovable wall. Writer's block.

I have tried writing something new but found that it is more useful spilling my anger out onto my blog. It feels that with every word that goes down, a new fragment of frustration goes down with it. When I am 'in the zone' I actually write with a positive and excited attitude. Now I am just spitting words out of a dry mouth, hoping they will elude the bland nature that sticks to them and actually create something interesting. 

My hope was wasted.

I am now reading over a shrinking paragraph. Each re-read cuts another 5 or 6 words until it is a lonely sentence. So far I have mustered up 'Darkness had placed his hand over the city that night. Without a trace of sympathy he latched himself onto every surface and sucked out the colour like a leech. Slowly the buildings and roads merged into one hole and the man with a box for a home fell into it.' 

To me it just feels like a cliche, boring and amateur lump of turd that I was sceptical putting on my blog in the first place. I can safely say this is the most frustrated I have been whilst writing. I know I am naive 20 years of age and will have to accept that these moments will happen again and again but I would really appreciate some advice.

Tomorrow by the side, yesterday over the road

In a moment of what seemed just like a usual day, she stood there next the tree next to the road. The tree was large, huge in fact, and its roots had distorted the concrete beneath her. Its very source of life had destroyed the concrete and made all man made structures look weak and pointless. Yet she stood there with her arm out with a small boy holding it. The boy epitomised the term ignorance is bliss. He looked up at the big tree and was in awe of its size, not knowing what damage had been done beneath. The branches looked alive in the wind and though bear with the season it looked more human than it had in any month of any year. He just looked and began to feel confused to whether the tree was more alive than the woman he was with for she had no expression and was motionless. Her stance was regular. She held the boy's hand in one and the pushchair in the other. Her face was terrible. It wreaked of misery yet it looked plain with no expression. It was as if the tears of previous days had scarred her face with terminal sadness.

She didn't look at the boy at all. She didn't look ahead at the man approaching her. She just looked over the road. She was still and made no body movement or change of facial expression. She was fixated on the building that was across the road. The building had no natural beauty whatsoever. It was just a plain building but it was what was inside the building that trapped her. She looked at the large pieces of stone with carvings that were behind the buildings large and revealing windows. The carvings said 'forever loved' or 'a wonderful husband, father and brother'. The words, though sympathetic, burnt her. Every letter was as bad as the next only because it had relevance to her current situation. She knew one of these stones would be squeezed in the earth in the coming days, but she didn't believe it was the correct way to say goodbye. She believed that something as cold and bleak as stone was disgustingly ironic for its purpose. And though she would constantly change the flowers and make sure some life was there, people would be more interested on what was said on that stone.

The man walking down the road was now very close to her. It was only when he was a few feet away she sort of snapped back into reality and said to the boy 'look at how big this tree is'. The boy was happy she had the same opinion as him and now they both went to the tree to see how hard its bark was. She showed enthusiasm for the boy and he was loving it with questions on how old it could be. She simply replied 'very old' or 'older than me', this made the boy chuckle and she would tap him on the back of the head because of his playful cheekiness.

They stayed by the tree for a couple of minutes and carried on up the road with the boy in one hand and the pushchair in the other. She would keep talking to the boy to keep him amused but the boy was too young to understand the pain behind her kind words. How when he spoke she would barely listen with her mind elsewhere. Her mouth would smile to him but her eyes would scream for yesterday to be back.

Mini-saga (50 word story)

As part of my creative writing module this term, we were asked to go to a museum and take inspiration to write a piece of flash fiction, an exact 50 words story. This was inspired by a replica of a bomb shelter from the second world war. 

The leftovers

In a cold and twisted heap, it stank of decisions of powerful men. The metal with its black scars ripped through the onlookers. Sour understanding the haven from the shells, the unpredictable rain, was never protection but an unmarked grave for those who lack the simplicity of luck and fortune.