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I have “finished” writing my novel
Late last night, after about 18 months of hard labour, I finally “finished” writing my novel for children set in Nepal.
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!
My writing is back on track
It has been quite a few days since my last post here. Sorry – I’ve been distracted by working on my novel for children.
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.
Review: Searching for the Secret River
No Comments »6th September, 2010; Category: Authors, Books, Fiction, Non Fiction, Novels, Reviews, Writers, Writing a novel
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.
What point of view should I use?
An important aspect of writing a story that the writer needs to consider is point of view.
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.