Happy Accidents

cut n weave

What's the dirt?  I'm preparing the ground, soil, dirt to write my first novel. I could have done this a number of ways and  one of those ways is the NanNoWriMo way where you write hard and fast for 30 days and come up with some sort of rugged pre-draft novel. And redraft if you dare. Some people do. I didn't. But the process of NanNoWriMo was great in 2012 and taught me that I work well under pressure. Which I kinda knew already. As a commissioned playwright I always enjoy a deadline, and am [usually] only a couple of weeks late.

The way I am currently working on this novel is not like WriMo - I'm taking my time and don't propose to have a draft written in a month or even a year.  Quite the opposite. I've been writing and researching for 6 months, on and off, working with a mentor who has been teaching me a lot about writing technique, building on what I already know as a playwright. I'm learning a lot about about writing narrative as opposed to simply telling story through dialogue. There's a kind of lingering over imagery that I'm immersing myself in and I've extended my notion of visual journals. Part of my research for writing has always included a visual journal but this time I'm actually giving it a focus I never have before. I've always enjoyed drawing, painting, making cards, all that crafty stuff, not in a professional kind of way at all - purely because I enjoy it. It's all fairly abstract, I don't draw or sketch well, simply enjoy putting colour and pattern together. And I'm not adverse to borrowing from other images. Here's an image that is a magazine cut-up that has the kind of feel of a character in the novel. I used a simple cut-up and weave that we are taught as 9 yr olds in primary school. Strange thing is that I was focussed on the other side of the image, which was a desert scene with a railway siding but when I turned the paper over and saw this, it resonated with me in  a much stronger way.  And so I've stuck it  in my visual journal. The novel is so premature that I can't give anything away. I've no idea what the hell is going on. I'm told this is fairly normal at this stage.

Bless me.

C x