Sunday, March 01, 2009

An Epiphany...





A PHOTO I TOOK RECENTLY AT THE ILLAWARRA FLY.


NB: HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH POST, POSTED FOR AESTHETIC PURPOSES ONLY.




Sometimes I feel like I'm doing the wrong thing by my characters.

I change tack while I am writing and try to move the storyline in a different direction to avoid my character having to suffer.

But I think this is the mistake I have been making over and over.

It isn't my job to protect them. It is my job to let the story evolve without judgement - (my role of course depends whose point/s of view the story is coming from)

And so those 'safe' novels get dumped. Booted out into the 'major problem basket'. But this novel I started a month ago is NOT safe - And it is working out so much better. I am already up to 5000 words.

Some of the short stories I have written, I have been less worried about protecting my characters. And some of them, I think might be worth sending away....

One of my characters (although not the main character) that I am currently working on, has experienced a great loss. And I find the writing sometimes exhausting and really difficult emotionally - I think I have been protecting myself from that with other pieces I have written. While I feel 'good' about this epiphany, I also feel a bit annoyed that it has taken me 4 lots of 20,000 or 30,000 words and buckets full of bits a pieces, to work it out.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Aha! But you've made a huge discovery and now have the freedom to write what you want, in the way you need to write. Congrats - keep going!
And I'm very very curious about your short stories.
Onward!

btw, I love the picture.