A Novel Idea.

Yesterday, as an exercise for a workshop I'm currently undertaking with Dean Wesley Smith, I sat down and outlined a novel.

I consider myself a short story writer and I've given little thought to writing anything longer for the moment. I feel I need to develop my skills at the shorter length before I attempt anything bigger.  A novel not only means more words, but a bigger vision and world to write in. So I was very surprised at how I managed to get this exercise done.

And I was pretty happy with the result.

Not that I'm planning on working on this particular idea, but writing a novel no longer seems as unreachable as it did even two days ago.

And, I must say, Dean Wesley Smith is my new hero. If I could only convince him to come to Australia to run his Character voice and setting workshop here.

The World Is Round.

And BANG!, just like that I had an epiphany.

I'm in the middle of a writing workshop and yesterday, while doing an exercise, a whole lot of things suddenly made sense. Structure, character, setting, opening. I can suddenly see how these things need to work together.

I'm all re-energised about my writing. A half-completed story is no longer a problem. I have more ideas than I know what to do with. I expect my writing will improve leaps and bounds over the short term.

Today is the second last day of the school year. I should soon have some free time in which to let my imagination roam free.

Bread And Butter.

Way back in the early 90s, while teaching English in Japan, I bought a couple of grammar books to help me along. I wasn't qualified to teach English (or anything else for that matter) and was unsure of a lot of the terminology.

One of the books I bought, Elements of Style (Strunk & White) continues to rear its head. Jack Dann in his workshop repeated "Strunk and White"  almost as often as "Show, don't tell." They were virtually mantras by the time we were done.

Since the 90s I have updated my edition of this book, and re-read it from time to time. I've also completed a couple of degrees in English and English Education, and ended up teaching conversation and grammar in Japan for around six years. I've also taught high school English for 8 years now.  I'm reasonably confident in my grammar, and I tend to write very clean copy.

I recently stumbled across a blog by a "writer" lamenting a lack of success and sales. Unfortunately his ramblings were almost undecipherable. Sentences were incomplete, punctuation was missing, words were misspelled. Whole sections of the post made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Surprisingly, this writer claimed some publication credits. I didn't follow through on checking them out, and I'd never heard of any of the markets, so I'd question the status of said credits. Of course, I haven't read any of his stories either. Perhaps he's a brilliant ideas man, who has an amazing editor who pulls it all together.

I suspect not.

Strunk and White. Strunk and White. Strunk and White. Om Mani Padme Hum.

Grammar is a writer's bread and butter. It's the foundation, the basics. Typos and spelling mistakes can be forgiven, and that's what spellcheckers and beta-readers are for. But tense changes and no sentence structure? That's not on.

Nine Thousand Divided By Four?

I never did get that story started on the weekend.

My computer decided it was time to crash, and so I spent much of the day saving files from the C drive (they were all backed up, but it was good to make sure I kept everything in its very latest form) then rebuilding the machine.

I'm one of those unfortunate enough to have had the issues with Windows 7 on their system. Whenever it's loaded, the machine locks on a black screen. About a year ago, I worked out how to fix it. Unfortunately I didn't take notes and this time it wouldn't work for me. Eventually I gave up and installed an older Windows.

Then I started installing all the software I need. Of course that didn't run smoothly either. I found the Office installation disc, and that was fine, but for the life of me I couldn't find the pocket it came in. And that's where the product key is printed. (Yes, legitimate software here.)

I did eventually find it, on Monday night, but by then I was tied up with work stuff. I made sure I found the time to tweak the story I'd written for the Jack Dann workshop, but beyond that I still hadn't written my words.

Of course Saturday is the 30th, and the end of the month is the natural time to close subbing periods. I had a brainwave for one antho on the weekend, which you may have noticed my peers decided to discuss in the comments section of my last post, but no ideas for the other.

And now it's happened. I've had an idea. Which means I should write two fresh stories and rewrite another by Friday night - all ready for subbing on Saturday. I completed the first draft of one last night, and I'm pretty happy with that, but it still needs a lot of work.

I can do it. I know I can. If Sean Williams can write 784 Star Wars novels in 18 months, I can manage 9,000 words in a few days.

Can't I?