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It has been a long time
It has been a long time since my last post here – far too long. Sorry about that.
Late last year there was a family situation which required a great deal of my time and energy, and then my wife and I left Australia for a six and a half week holiday in Ethiopia, Morocco and Spain. I had limited internet access during that time so no posts appeared here. Besides, we were having too much fun exploring new countries and having wonderful experiences. I’ll be writing about these experiences and showing my 1000s of photos on my other sites, Trevor’s Birding and Trevor’s Travels.
While I was away I still kept up my writing. Every day I added new entries in a journal. In all I wrote nearly 140 pages describing what we’d done and seen, and responses to those experiences. Much of that journal will be expanded and posted on my travel site. The beauty of having a book to write in as my journal was the convenience factor. I didn’t take my laptop with me though I could have used my daughter’s computer. Instead, I could write in my journal anywhere: on the plane, in the waiting lounge of airports, on a train (we used trains a lot in Morocco and Spain), in bed or even in the garden.
Taking a notebook with you wherever you go is an important way of keeping your writing moving along and developing. You can jot down anything that comes to mind: a scene, a description of a character based on a real person, accounts of little scenes that may make it into a novel or short story, or even a poem or two as you are having a coffee break.
During my travelling time I wrote in my journal every day. But I also wrote a great deal of poetry. I usually can only produce a dozen or two good poems a year, but in the last 7 weeks I’ve written 55 poems, so inspirational was the journey. Some are haiku but most are much longer impressions of what I was seeing and doing. All the non-haiku poems were free verse. Some will find their way onto this site in coming weeks.
We went to Ethiopia first to visit our daughter who had been teaching in an international school in Addis Ababa. What they are doing there is inspirational and she is planning on returning in a few years’ time. After two weeks there, my wife and I, accompanied by our daughter, toured Morocco and Spain, spending two weeks in each. Many of our experiences will inevitably find their way into short stories, more poems and even a book or two. My wife has already come up with a picture book idea based in Ethiopia.
Good writing.
A good day of writing
I had a good day of writing today.
It’s noteworthy because such days have been rather a rarity of late. After the rush and intensity to finish my degree last year I allowed myself some space for a few weeks to recover. An unwelcome side effect has been losing momentum with my writing. Sure, I’ve been doing a little here and there, but it has been very spasmodic and not at all intentional or planned.
Time to get on with serious writing again. I’ve actually been thinking in this way for quite a few weeks, but a few health and life issues intervened. Today was different and I have much to show for it. I was under way with a short project early this morning and haven’t let up all day. It is very satisfying when the words flow freely. I managed over 4800 words today, the most I’ve ever done in a day if my memory is correct. (My memory is increasingly failing me, but that’s another story.)
The writing project I started – and finished – today was updating my personal journal. I like to write in this journal at least once a week – more often if I can – and I hadn’t done anything in it all year. I’d recommend writing a journal if you don’t already have one. I find that journal writing gives me excellent writing practice, it clarifies my thinking on many important issues – quite often not writing related – and it records major events in my life. My journal has an audience of one: me. Someday my children or grandchildren may get to read it. That’s not why I write it.
Good writing.
Journal Writing
No Comments »18th May, 2010; Category: Articles, Journal Writing, The Writer's Life, Writing a novel, Young Readers
Some writers do not understand the power of regularly writing in a personal journal.
Journal writing is an excellent way of honing many writing skills that are essential to the writing process. It doesn’t matter much whether you write fiction, non-fiction, articles or blogs, regular writing practice is essential. If possible, I’d encourage all writers, especially beginner writers, to write every day, even if in the first few months or years journal writing is all you do.
I’ve kept a personal journal since July 1990. That means the 20th anniversary is coming up very soon; I must remember to celebrate it here on this blog. I write about anything that comes to mind about events and people in my life. I filled several hand written volumes at first but in recent years I have tended to use my computer. One day I might get around to printing it all out and binding the pages into booklets.
More recently I have also been keeping a writing journal. In this I have recorded the processes I have gone through in writing my stories, especially my recent novels. The journals include details of my ideas, sources of inspiration, research findings and the decisions I had to make along the way. In part you can read how I went about ‘Writing a Novel’ here.
When I was a classroom teacher I used Journal Writing as an integral part of encouraging children to write. The skills developed in my programme had some amazing results, not just with writing. I wrote about it in this article: The Power of Journal Writing – a Story of Hope.
This article relates the experience I had with one of my former students. I bring it to your attention now – especially for my many new readers who may have missed it at the time.
Good writing.
Writing a novel – a writer’s journal
No Comments »26th February, 2009; Category: Fiction, Journal Writing, Master of Arts course, Novels, Writing a novel
I am writing a novel.
I need to clarify that statement: I have been thinking about writing a novel. The time for thinking is over. I urgently need to start some serious planning and writing. The pressure is really on, because I have to present the first chapter – or a part of a chapter – at a seminar next week.
Let me back-track a little. Regular readers of this blog will know that I am half way through my Master of Arts in Creative Writing course. So far I’ve been very successful, completing all the assignments and gaining distinctions (or higher) for every one of them. It was hard work, but the writing has been very satisfying. My skills have developed way beyond what I had hoped for, and I’ve produced many pleasing pieces of writing.
I have one unit of study to complete. It’s called Editing and Publishing for Writers, a very practical course aimed at both editing one’s writing and preparing work for publication. The balance of my studies this year will focus on my thesis paper. This will be a 40,000 word novel.
What should I write about?
This is a question that has plagued writers ever since the first stylus was picked up to scratch on a clay tablet in ancient Sumaria. I wasn’t there at the time, so I’m not sure what they wrote about. In varying degrees of perplexity, many writers have always struggled to come up story ideas.
It makes it so much easier if you know the plot line before you start writing. You know – beginning, middle and ending – that sort of thing. Not to forget twists and turns, problems to overcome, births, deaths, marriages, murders and the inevitable taxes.
It also helps to know your characters. Boy or girl, adults, animals, creatures, monsters or aliens: they’ve all been used before and will presumably be used many times more for many years to come.
Finally, it is essential that you are quite clear in your head where and when the story is set. Will it be in a city or a rural setting? Will it be a place near you or far away, perhaps in another country or even another world? Will the story be set in the present time, the distant past or even the future?
Decisions, decisions, decisions
The writer has to make so many decisions when starting to write a short story or novel. These choices are essential in the planning stages and they need to be reviewed constantly while the work is in progress. That is what I will be doing during the coming months.
I will get by with little help from my readers:
This blog will become a journey through the writing of my novel. I plan to write frequently about the process and the decisions I make. I invite reader’s comments as we go; in fact, you can all help me in the process. I will need all the help I can get.
What I am writing: a writing journal
Over the last few days I have been focusing on expanding a journal I am writing for one of the units in my Master of Arts in Creative Writing Course.
This journal is for the Creative Writing: Prose unit. In this unit we have a set text book called Writing Fiction by Australian writer Garry Disher. Most weeks we have a chapter to read which links to the topic of the lecture. We also have a unit reader consisting of short stories gathered together by our lecturer Rosanne Hawke. We are expected to read one or two of the stories each week. We then discuss the techniques used by the writers of the stories. In our journals we are expected to respond to the text book and the stories, commenting on how useful we found each one.
Each week we also have writing activities in the workshop part of the lecture time. This is a very valuable exercise because we have to write on a set topic or theme or a set activity and it is under the pressure of time, usually no more than ten minutes. We are then expected to share these short pieces in a workshop situation. The feedback from the lecturer and fellow students is often very valuable. We are expected to include some of these writings in our journal, commenting upon the activity and including any second drafts if done.
While this journal may not appear to be actually writing fiction as the unit title suggests, it is still a very valuable assignment. It has forced me to consider each element of the lecture and the writing activities, and analyse how useful each one has been. One of the interesting things about some of the writing exercises is that I now have a resource of more than a dozen (I haven’t bothered to count them) short stories which can be developed from 100 – 150 words into longer stories of 2000 words or more. They are great short story starters. All I need now is the time to do that! With seven essays and assignments due in the next 25 days it will be heads down getting everything finished and submitted.
Good writing.