“What do you think is the hardest part of any major creative project? For me and for my writing it is starting. Taking that leap of faith that your idea will work and that it is worth investing your time and energy into.” Sue Jeffrey

I’d have to agree that starting can be very daunting. It’s a bit like starting a train rolling, taking off in a plane or a moving large vehicle of any kind. Most of the energy is expended in starting. Once moving, the energy needed to keep going is vastly reduced.

Writing is very similar, but once started I find that the story builds its own momentum and carries me along with it. That’s exciting, and momentum builds its own form of energy and sustains the forward movement. I have found that to be true when writing my most recent work, a novel for children. I struggled to get the first few chapters going, but once I was several chapters into the story, it developed its own momentum, building up a head of steam that kept the wheels of my locomotive turning faster and faster until the destination was reached.

One of the interesting observations from all those who have read the whole book, including my examiners for my MA, is that the latter two thirds of the novel are far stronger than the beginning, with the exception of the first chapter. I’d agree because once I’d built that momentum the writing became progressively easier. That first chapter went through many revisions and major rewrites, so no wonder it is good.

Harder yet

While I agreed with Sue that starting a new writing project is hard, I find that rewriting and editing can often be the hardest part for me. Once I get under way I find that the story often carries me along, an enjoyable place to be. I just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. Yes, sometimes the ride can get a little bumpy, but the thrill of discovering what happens – even when I have a strong plan and outline – outweighs any periods of momentary discomfort.

I find the necessary stages of rewriting, editing and proofreading to be tedious, mind numbing and even boring at times. I know what happens, I know the characters and I want to leave them and start something else – to go on a new adventure.

STOP.

These latter stages are terribly important, especially if one wants to see the story published. During my degree I learned to not only appreciate this vital process, but I also realised how creative editing and rewriting can be. The finished creative work is much better, stronger and publishable than that rough gemstone we call our first draft.

Still harder yet

There are three even harder elements to the creative process like writing a novel or story.

1. Deciding when the story is polished enough to send to a publisher.
2. Deciding where to send the story.
3. Waiting for a reply.

The best thing is just to get on with writing the next story or novel.

If you can only get started.

Good writing.

Further reading:

• Writing a novel – some thoughts on momentum
• More about momentum with your writing
• Editing my novel
  

And with a Distinction, too.

After three years of intensive, hard and sometimes frustrating work, I finally get to wear the funny hat and gown in a few months’ time.  It has been a difficult and testing time, but there have been many highlights and fun times in there as well. My final thesis paper was a 40,000 word novel for children plus a 10,000 word exegesis essay on the research, influences and processes of writing. You can read more about the process in a series of articles here. Now I start the next phase in the process; trying to find a publisher to give my precious novel a good home. This could prove to be the hardest part of all.

So what have I learned?

Doing my degree has taught me some valuable lessons:

1. Writers can always improve: no matter how much you think you know about writing, you can always get better.
2. Writing is hard work: I have put in literally thousands of hours of writing, rewriting, editing and proofreading into my essays, assignments and novel.
3. Writers need persistence: I must admit there were times when I almost gave up, when the task seemed too much or health issues intervened. By persisting I was able to finish the race.
4. Writers learn to write by writing: there is no other way. Write, write, write – and your writing skills will develop.
5. Rewriting is as important as writing the first draft: too often I have been satisfied with the attitude my first or second draft of a story or poem. Most first drafts are rubbish. My novel went through an incredible 17 drafts before I was truly happy with it.
6. Editing is a part of the creative process: I used to hate editing my stories. I found it tedious and boring. I wanted to be rid of the story and to get on with the next one. Editing is an essential part of the writing process; ignore this stage and your writing will remain mediocre – and unpublished. I still don’t love editing, but I have come to appreciate its importance.
7. Proofreading is an essential writing skill: editors and publishers are almost unanimous in their chief gripes about writers, and this one is almost always near the top of their list. If you don’t proofread your writing before sending it off to a publisher you stand a very poor chance of having the work published.

I could go on, but these seven things stand out. I probably could add patience too, because that lesson is still coming. Sure, I have had to wait a long time to get my final results, but the wait to hear from a publisher is sure to be much longer, and then the wait to hold the book in my hands may be even longer. But as they say, good things come to those who wait.

And if patience is a virtue, then I must be very virtuous.

Good writing.

Further reading:

• The importance of rewriting
• Patience is a virtue
• Good things come to those who wait
  

I am trying to be very patient. If patience really is a virtue, I must be very virtuous indeed. You see, I’m waiting for the results of my Master of Arts Creative Writing thesis paper. Regular readers will know that over the last 18 months I’ve been writing a children’s novel set in Nepal during their recent civil war. I submitted the novel, along with a 10,000 word exegesis essay on the writing of the novel, about mid-December. We were told we might wait 6 to 8 weeks for the results. Two days ago the 9 week mark was reached, so I am trying not to get impatient. Two of my fellow students have heard their results but they submitted the week before me.

This experience has got me thinking about the patience that all writers need. Here are some of my thoughts:

Why writers need patience:

1. Some writers need to patiently wait for writing ideas.
2. Writers need patience when a story or novel is not going along as it should.
3. Patience is needed when life gets in the way of writing schedules, especially if the writer has another job, or a family needing attention.
4. You need patience when waiting to hear if a publisher is going to accept your story or novel.
5. Once an acceptance is offered by a publisher, patience is needed when waiting to see the work in print.
6. When a story or novel has been published, one needs patience waiting for a payment.
7. Reading through reviews of one’s work can severely test a writer’s patience.

I’m sure most writers could add many more examples. What can you do while all the waiting is going on?

Waiting productively

1. While waiting for a idea for a story, read, read, read and do other creative activities to stimulate the mind.
2. While waiting to hear from a publisher, go on with other writing projects to maintain momentum with your writing.
3. While waiting for your work to be published, be sending out more work to publishers. Keep your momentum going.
4. Remember that waiting is inevitable and a part of the writing process. Use the waiting time productively.
5. Don’t give up.

Good writing.

I’m sorry I haven’t updated this site much in recent months. I have been extremely busy working on finalising my Master of Arts Creative Writing thesis paper. This paper consisted of a 40,000 word novel for children (ages 10-12) and a 10,000 word exegesis essay on the writing of the novel.

Last week I finally finished all the last minute editing and proofreading. I had it professionally printed (3 copies) and bound. With a sense of relief I handed it up to my supervising lecturer who organised to have it sent off to two examiners. Now I have a 6-8 week wait to find out if I’ve passed my degree. I am quietly confident of passing because all three of my supervisors approved the final draft, noting that it had improved vastly from earlier drafts.

I found the rewriting phase both fascinating and frustrating. It was frustrating because right up to the final draft I was making changes. Considering it was the 17th draft that I submitted, that’s an amazing amount of rewriting. On the flip side, however, it was fascinating to observe the effect of all those changes. Towards the end of the process I read the whole manuscript aloud several times. Despite being too close to the story, even I could tell how much it had improved in the final stages. Other readers were very positive in their feedback concerning the changes.

One of the most significant changes I made after the 6th draft was to totally rewrite the whole novel, changing it from the third to the first person. This was more difficult than I first imagined because remnants of the earlier third person persisted for several drafts. Eventually all was ironed out and the story is much stronger for the change. Being inside the head of the protagonist is so much more immediate and intimate, perhaps even confronting at times. His unique voice comes over much stronger now.

Now that I’ve submitted it for marking I am going to give myself a few weeks break before preparing the manuscript for sending off to a publisher. I am mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted at present, so a short break – with lots of reading – should refresh and recharge the batteries.

I might even get to add a few more updates on this site in the meantime.

Good writing.

I’ve been working on the novel for over 18 months and finally it is getting near to ready to submit to examiners in the coming weeks. Then I plan to start it on its journey around the various publishing houses, so fun continues. This novel writing game is not a sprint, and more of a marathon. In fact, sometimes it feels like having to run a marathon every day.

Despite the weariness, I am pleased with the final product and I’ve learned so much along the way. With the help of my critiquing group, friends who are critical readers, and my supervising lecturers, my skills have been honed and my writing has improved way beyond what I had thought possible.

I have learned, above all, not to be precious about my words. I have learned to be ruthless and to cut anything that does not work, anything that is repetitious, redundancies, passive voice, switches in POV and many other stumbling blocks placed in the path of writers everywhere.

Must get back to the finishing touches.

Good writing.

I have written “finished” in quotes because, in reality, the process is far from complete. Because this novel is my thesis paper for my Master of Arts in Creative Writing, it needs to now go to my supervising lecturers for one last look, mainly proofreading and final checking. It then goes to an independent examiner for marking. After that long process I may graduate. And then starts a whole new ball game: trying to find a publisher. That game could go on for another 18 -24 months or longer. [Sigh]

In its current form the novel is in its 10th draft. Some sections have been through more drafts than that. The final draft was essentially just proofreading on my part; very few words were changed and I found only a handful of punctuation errors – even after all those times reading through it.

The hard work doesn’t end there however. Today I focused back on my exegesis essay which must accompany the novel. In this essay I explain the origins of the story, the problems I had along the journey of writing it, some of the technical questions encountered and how I solved them and the influences on my writing from my research, reading  and studies. And its another 10,000 words, of which I’ve written about 3,500. Time to stop blabbing on here and get back to the essay.

Wish me good writing!

A few minutes ago I finished the 8th draft of the book that has dominated my thinking and writing over the last 18 months. This latest draft is a total rewrite, changing it from the third person to the first person. I think it works, but the real test will come when I read it again – this time I think I’ll read it aloud. This is always a good strategy to find any awkward passages, phrases or sentences that still need a little work and any other glaring errors.

One of the interesting outcomes of this particular rewrite was that my overall word count has risen nearly 500 words and it is now just a few short of 40,000. This is the recommended length for my Masters degree, so I’m right on the money. This increase in words is notable in that I’ve also cut out many hundreds of words, some of them redundant words or phrases. I couldn’t believe how many of these redundancies I had included in earlier drafts. One example: “He felt tears welling in his eyes.” Where else would tears be – dripping from his ears? Or toes? Cut out “in his eyes”.

As I finish off my Masters Degree novel and accompanying exegesis essay in coming weeks and then submit it for assessment, I will be able to get back to more regular postings here.

In the meantime: good writing.

So fast, my current WIP (work in progress) has come to a standstill. Sigh.

I’ve had some frustrating times lately with family and community responsibilities interrupting my writing time. It happens every now and then and I know I should just accept these times and not get too frustrated with them.

Going nowhere fast

Trouble is, I’ve allowed the recent events to grind my WIP  to a complete halt. It’s going nowhere fast. I haven’t looked at it for nearly a fortnight. One thing I’ve found in recent years is that momentum can often be a very great friend. Once I get on a roll with a particular writing project – be it a novel, short story, article, whatever – the momentum created tends to be self generating. Momentum creates more momentum and I get to the point where it is like an unstoppable train, steaming along seemingly under its own power, carrying me along for one exhilarating ride. When that happens I can be very productive, sometimes writing 3000+ words in a day. About 700 words is  my normal average.

Slow and steady wins the race

Sadly, the opposite is also true. When  I don’t have any momentum because of illness, distractions, family or other responsibilities etc, getting up a head of steam to get moving again takes so much effort. Starting all over almost seems too hard and I can easily give up. The secret is to not stop. It is easier to keep a train moving slowly than to start from a stopped position. It is easier to keep going with a story every day – even if it is only a few words or for twenty minutes or so – than to leave it completely for weeks and then have to start all over again.

I should stop this now and get back to that novel.

It’s not going to finish itself.

Good writing.

Cover - Searching for the secret river

I have recently read Kate Grenville‘s historical novel The Secret River. You can read my review here.

Straight after finishing the novel I went on to read her follow up book Searching for the Secret River.

In this second book she goes into great detail about how she researched the novel. The story is based upon the life of her great-great-great grandfather, but she took the facts gleaned from family history and extensive research both in London and in Sydney over a five year period and transformed it into fiction. She has used fact as a broad brush in the hands of her imagination and the finished novel is brilliant. It gives the reader a much clearer view of life in the early years of settlement in the young Australian colony.

Searching for the Secret River is a fascinating expose on the thinking processes of one of our leading authors. Grenville takes us on a journey from the first inklings of an idea for a book through to the finished product. At first she was planning a non fiction book but she struck so many obstacles along the way that she changed tack completely, fictionalising it and letting her imagination run. I’m pleased she did.

While she does address some of the issues faced by all writers of fiction, this is not a handbook on writing. Sure, she does explain why she changed from first to third person, but generally it was the research that so intrigued her that she recounts in the first part of the book. Throughout she grapples with her attitudes, and those of the settlers, towards the Aboriginal people who would have lived in the Sydney area during the time in which she sets her novel. She was confronted by some very unsavoury discoveries. The reader of the novel is likewise confronted by some of the events of those days. Australian history is not always the clean, lovely accounts I read as a student many years ago.

While she has drawn from actual  historical records, her novel is not another version of history. ‘I was shameless in rifling through research for anything I could use,’ she writes, ‘wrenching it out of its place and adapting it for my own purposes… What I was writing wasn’t real, but it was as true as I could make it.‘ (Grenville p. 210)  She has been criticised for her (alleged)  misuse of history. I think she has achieved what most other writers struggle with – she has made history come alive for the reader.

Reference:

• Grenville, K, 2007, Searching for the Secret River. WF Howes, Leicester.

In my current project, a novel for children aged 10 – 12, this has been one of the difficult issues I’ve had to face. I started using the first person point of view. It didn’t work, so I changed the whole story to limited third person POV. That worked much better, but during reworking the novel I’ve found a number of places where I’d slipped up. My critiquing group was also tough on me and pointed out even the most subtle of changes in POV.

Aaaark! I though I had mastered it, but in practice it is very challenging.

I’ve written previously about this important topic:

• Problems with point of view – further discussion on this topic.
• Point of view – articles from my archives where I discuss this issue
• What point of view should you use in your novel – a recent article from Writers’ Digest – a simple, easy to read article covering the main aspects with a brief discussion on the pros and cons of each approach.

Good writing.