12 days to go. Think that last post was written in a bit of a hurry. It's not that I can't write, I have to write all the time and have written several creative things for publication and many for performance.
It's just this big sprawly big fat novel thing it's so daunting. My dissertation at university was around 100,000 words, it's doable. Admittedly that was a textual analysis of UK radio phone-ins and whether or not they are a democratic forum.
Screw all that for a bit though. I just had some oats. Aren't oats fantastic? Raw oats with a drop of milk and a sprinkling of fake sugar (Nothing Comes Closer To Sugar - Silver Spoon, the best sugar substitute out there). Got about 1 stone to lose To get down to my ideal weight now. Everyone says I don't need to lose it but they're wrong. Wrong idiots. Don't worry this is not a food disorder emerging.
Where was I? Slouched a lot yesterday. Am now kidding self that I need to do nothing and just relax in order to cure current bout of insomnia that is waking me up at 3am and all the antisocialness that it then brings about when I'm knackered by 11am and absolutely must sleep by 5pm for a bit.
In the novel writing class this Monday we will all be commenting on the first chapter of 4 of the students. They sent them out by email on Friday. I've not yet red them. Am gonna pour over these shortly, once I've got a cup of tea.
Goldfish I think you're probably right with the two person perspective thing but I worry that this is the best way forward for my novel. If I submit chapter one and it's only from one person's perspective and doesn't give the basic idea (you'd need to read two chapters to understand the two main characters) ... it's not what I'd be wanting to put across. I realise chapter one isn't going to be anything like my final chapter one but, ya know, it's a pride thing. I know I can write well and want to display it a bit to best effect.
Third person would be the next best ... but ... I dunno.
I'm always a last minute person. I like to mull things over so that every last idea is thought through. So that the environment that I live in, the world, has the opportunity to drop in new things that could help me with the construction of my work. I do this with my columns on Ouch, used to do it with essays at university. Never understood those students who wrote their essay within a day of receiving instructions ... they would either hand it in straight away or sit on it and find themselves rewriting it. And This was in the days before students had lots of good access to computers and it was still ok to submit handwritten work. 1994 before you start making up how old I am. 1994 was also the year when we stopped using pit ponies in Britain ... bet you didn't know that? Just heard it on LBC.
Chapter one, then.
Needs to explain the background of the main character ... who, oddly enough, is a blind fella. Background isn't the right idea, more about motivation really ... to understand him well enough to then be able to write about him and have the reader understand why he might do or think things ... and also so that the reader starts to care about the character.
Why do I write this blog? To get my writing juices flowing. ON days when I don't write the blog I'll be writing something else, just to get things flowing. I had writers block last year and that wasn't good.
Apparently if you mix a bit of honey into some dry oats and, stick it in the oven and bake it for a short while ... they come out rather nice and crispy and delicious. I need to try this.
On another topics ...
Weirdly I've developed a bit of an intolerance to caffeine these past few weeks. But, to add to this, since Thursday I've noticed I've got a real problem with sugar too! I get a nasty head rush and headache shortly after consuming anything sugary. It happened on Thursday after eating a Kit Kat. I'd rather badly had only a muffin to eat all day and when I got home I had a 2 finger Kit Kat which sent me reeling. Same happened yesterday when I had a Kit Kat. Sugar is dreadful. If they invented it now it would be banned.
4 comments:
Is that dissertation available somewhere? I am working at the linguistic department at the University of Hamburg and democratic language use and everything related to it is quite an issue at the moment. We are specialized on Sign Language, but it would be great to have it in our libary for comparative sudies.
Oats..They are pretty amazing. Never noticed, but apart from being gluten free & lowering cholesterol, they help the nerves (eg good for people giving up smoking) and ther cool stuff, like stabilising blood sugar levels.
Good foods, rich in potassium: dried apricots, green leafy veg, potapoes & bananas.
Also good: celery, parsley, artichokes & blackcurrants. (diuretics.)...Any of those appeal to you, Damon?
Never tried oats myself Damon, are they good?
I like eating those Alpen muesli bars, the strawberry and yogurt one is quite nice though!
Glad things are going well in your novel, Sounds great. I like your poems too which you had a link too on the Ouch messgeboard, Very creative. I'll send you a poem of a cat that I worked out one time.
Dr Johnson defined oats as a food which in England is given to horses, but in Scotland to men. Smirk.
Whereupon somebody came back with "And where will you find such fine men as in Scotland, and such fine horse...?"
Smirk wiped off.
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