On writing novels

Elizabeth's spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr. Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her. "How could you begin?" said she. I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when you had once made a beginning; but what could set you off in the first place?"

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. IT is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."

Once again Jane Austen has summarised for me the act of authorship.

Can anyone put it better?

That once can find themselves in the middle before they have realised it has begun?

Time flies said the monkey...

As he threw the clock over the cliff.

Why do people wait for New Year to make resolutions? Well, I guess that's another way of asking why don't I? I seem to make resolutions all the time. Some are good, some are bad. Some are fattening. Some are good for your head. Some are good for your credit card (it's called Sense and Sensibility)...

Here are some of my resolutions:

Drink more water during the day. I try to.
Edit, concentrate, edit, concentrate, edit, concentrate. I try to.
Eat more greens. I've got a crush on spinach and cauliflower at the moment.
Edit, concentrate, edit, concentrate, edit, concentrate.
Eat more fruit, and... speaking of fruit...

I wrote a cute poem this week. It was following a call from a magazine which needs filler stuff. It's for kids of course, but I also intend to illustrate it.

But it has been a mixed week. I bought a Kindle on Ebay. Of course the person I bought it from would never have known but it was a first generation model which was only available in the US for the US market. And it took me a day to find this out. I was so disappointed. I've sold it to somebody in the U.S. who can use it like normal and re-purchased - I do like the look of the text on the little machine. I have an iphone and I know I don't need the iPad because I will not use it for a lot of the things many people would do with theirs.

But my today's resolution is to come to blog more often.

That way all none of you get to know what's going on in my creative life.

ZP

My characters are my friends.

It's true. They are my best friends at the moment in my current editing WIP. I love them and they love me.

I gave them life, so they are obligated to me.

But then I'm obligated to them because without them, I'd be very lonely.

So here's to you Simon and Daphne.

Aren't they dead yet?

Somebody died today. I thought WOW she was a one of those people you don't expect to die yet.

However there are people who you think are dead and aren't and ask ...

I thought they were dead... Somebody on the radio talked about Doris Day. Yes people, she's still alive and kickin'

I reckon Gregory Peck's still kickin' and I'm too lazy to Google. I think I really don't want to know.

What about Charlton Heston. I think I turned off him when I found out he was heading the gun lobby. I can't bear the thought of guns and shooting animals. I even hated deep sea fishing when they were all so gleeful about pulling in all these huge fish. Yes I eat fish. (If you are a New Zealander that's fush and chups). Just watching the poor things actually being able to flop around in somebody's cooler turns me off.
Yes I do eat oysters. Yes I do know they are alive when they slide down your throat. Okay so I have perfected the art of double standards. THat's one of the things I know I am good at...

But then who'da thunked Hudson would turn out to be gay.

Life is just a big question mark. What do they say?

Nothing stranger than fiction.

Well it's really nothing stranger than life. Even fiction.

Tech-twittism

Yes. It's true. It's official. I'm a benign idiot. My links don't work. I can't figure out how I got my original list to look nicer. Either they've tried to make it easier to use for people like me - intelligent people who are trying to think like idiots like me - but GUYS IT ISN'T WORKING! YOOHOO! ANYONE THERE?

Write it down before you forget.

It has occurred to me that you should really walk around with an ideas diary. I mean it didn't just occur to me because I've known this for years. For both artists and writers.

Ideas are very fleeting things. Some of them are worth keeping. Some of them are best forgotten. Some of them probably are only temporarily forgotten, and come around every so often, but because we have forgotten them we mistake it for a new idea.

Today I am thinking this because I'm editing my story and I have completely forgotten the plot, even though I know the general plot, the particular, incident by incident has been forgotten. The WIP is good. I know it is, but I still need to work on the editing. It needs upping the drama, without being over dramatic.

Over drama is worse than underdrama.

Oh hell I might as well write it here too...

This day, in response to a post by Miss Snark's First Victim... my comment to her today's post...

It was nice to see you, like me, is a thunderstorm person. “It was a dark and stormy night” and you have to admit, they are a wonderful word backdrop for an old mansion in which its inhabitants are connected by both accommodation for various reasons and… murder. In fact you can almost believe, as you read that first line, that third murder of the night, that dead body of an old lady in the library. And finish off this awful discovery with the words…

“She must have been murdered. She knitted so carefully.”

Well, given that… Sanguine? I believe the word is more closely connected to masochism. You don’t live in the Philippines and participate in that Christian self-flagellation, or, jump in over the barrier to a street in Barcelona which is squashed, squishy tomato spattered blood-red, and let yourself be chased by a bull, or climb the Himalayas rather than wait at the bottom for the video… you, Authoress, write. With quivering heart and mind you chase those words which will set a pathway for you to clash head on with the future and hope… or is it hope and the future?(?)? < this was a cyber shrug by the way. Negativity is part of your make up. Because you have imagination, you can imagine the letterbox or the inbox with that sinking heart when your radar detects signals an imminent and spectacular fall from grace. You sit around eating a box of chocolates. You don’t care if you put on 19 kilos and your face ends up looking like the pestilic red middle of a volcano and you ring up council to come and collect your computer. You go to bed, and turn into Thomas the Tank Engine… I can do it – I know I can – I know I can and ring council the next morning, cancelling the collection order.

You are a religious masochist. You belong to the cult of publishing. To the cult of I write therefore I am. It’s an exclusive cult and sanguine is not quite the word. I think the description is more like, indomitable belief. It’s not ego. You are a Citroen and your logo is: The end of the road is not the end of the trip.

It’s an exclusive cult, and it’s members are few, because out of all those people who claim “One day I will write a novel” you are that one that has never said it. Never said those words. Because there was no beginning. It just spontaneously combustioned like a celestial event. J.K. Rowlings is a member.

But there is one cult you wouldn’t want to be in. The Cult of the Rejectors. It’s the equivalent of publishing hell. There’s a few editors in it. All crying over missed opportunities.