Do you know children actually do listen to what you say, especially if you're not sure you want them to!
Recently I have started helping out with the kids work in our Church and I've particularly enjoyed helping out in the 9-12 year old group which is made up mostly of 11 year olds with a fairly equal gender mix. They are sassy and full of questions and a great bunch of kids but yesterday, amongst all the usual 'is it OK to talk to dead people' questions I seem to attract, one of the boys asked me what my job was. Quick as a flash one of the other boys answered him. 'Oh she's got a really cool job, she's writing a book!'. Now I know this chap quite well, he's a friends son and lives just up the road from me and recently I've been helping him make a paper mache castle for his history homework. Clearly, while we've been gluing endless bits of paper to balloons I have been talking to him about my story but I had no idea he'd taken it all in until he proceeded to tell the curious questioner all about it, about how mean I was to my characters, about how unfair he felt the death of one of the main characters was and he explained the general plot so well I'm thinking of asking him to write my back cover for me! I was flabbergasted and made a mental note to be a little more sparing of the details in the future. On the other hand I might offer him a job as my publicist, he made the story seem so exciting the other boys were casting the film by the end of the session and getting very excited about all the talk shows I'd have to go on. It was quite heady stuff, I had to remind them that it wasn't finished yet and that I didn't have an agent, much less a publisher so we were all getting ahead of ourselves a little but nothing could dampen their enthusiasm and I think, if I'm honest, their excited anticipation is what led to a mammoth writing session in the wee small hours of last night, I've got to finish it now, otherwise my whole Humanoids class will be so disappointed.
So there you are, my tale of the day a 12 year old outed my secret life as a writer of science fiction and gave me a little taste of fame.
Monday 19 March 2012
Tuesday 6 March 2012
Day Seven
Really must get more inventive with my titles. Any suggestions would be gratefully received.
So, motivation, it's a fickle thing isn't it? Two weeks ago I was actually thinking I was only a couple of weeks from completing The Start, two weeks away from editing and moving into the next exciting stage of learning just how many ways agents and publishers can say 'no thank you'. I was loving the way all the threads were interweaving themselves beautifully and the characters felt like real people.
Then everything changed. I realised that the parallel time lines I have going on for my two main characters, which need to meet at the end, are still four months apart. I also realised a character development I was keeping for the next book actually belongs in this book and, finally, the resolve to write at least one word a day I had been doing so well with disappeared! Result, the book is not finished and still sits at about 65,000 words and I now know it's going to take at least another 30,000 to tell the story well and I've not written a single word this week, if fact right now I'm writing this as a distraction. lol.
Now, whilst it is true that this week I have almost felt ill enough to sleep on the kitchen floor, I have still put off the writing, which is total craziness because once I actually start I LOVE writing, I get a real thrill from watching my characters develop and a buzz from getting to direct their lives - it's better than SIMS for goodness sake! So what's to be done? Well tomorrow I'm hoping my good friend will allow this recovering plague bunny into her home to write and that should kick start me and get me back onto the one word a day thing. If not I'll just have to get my Mum to ban me from writing - that's sure to make me do it for hours and hours on end.
So, motivation, it's a fickle thing isn't it? Two weeks ago I was actually thinking I was only a couple of weeks from completing The Start, two weeks away from editing and moving into the next exciting stage of learning just how many ways agents and publishers can say 'no thank you'. I was loving the way all the threads were interweaving themselves beautifully and the characters felt like real people.
Then everything changed. I realised that the parallel time lines I have going on for my two main characters, which need to meet at the end, are still four months apart. I also realised a character development I was keeping for the next book actually belongs in this book and, finally, the resolve to write at least one word a day I had been doing so well with disappeared! Result, the book is not finished and still sits at about 65,000 words and I now know it's going to take at least another 30,000 to tell the story well and I've not written a single word this week, if fact right now I'm writing this as a distraction. lol.
Now, whilst it is true that this week I have almost felt ill enough to sleep on the kitchen floor, I have still put off the writing, which is total craziness because once I actually start I LOVE writing, I get a real thrill from watching my characters develop and a buzz from getting to direct their lives - it's better than SIMS for goodness sake! So what's to be done? Well tomorrow I'm hoping my good friend will allow this recovering plague bunny into her home to write and that should kick start me and get me back onto the one word a day thing. If not I'll just have to get my Mum to ban me from writing - that's sure to make me do it for hours and hours on end.
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