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Showing posts from August, 2012

Following up the threads

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I attended an Arnold Zable workshop last year. Two things that remain with me from that workshop (I'm happy if I walk away from a workshop with two 'brain stickies'): Every story (short or long) has a hump that you need to push through so you can get to the end.   Sometimes you've already set up in the beginning of a story much more than you think. Sometimes you don't see it and that's when you need to retrace your steps, look carefully and follow up the leads or threads that you've already set up. In early 2011 I began a story (Working Title, 'The Wedding') in which a guy flew from Sydney to Darwin to be best man at his friend's wedding. I went back to this story several times over the next 18 months. What Arnold said I took to be true - I was having trouble finishing the story but I knew the leads were already in there somewhere. Then the Fiji retreat got cancelled. So I set myself some writing goals for the week which, I'm happ...