My writing week 2(13)

Hi all,

For most days last week I performed all the writerly things that I think a writer should do. I wrote, edited, critiqued and read nearly every day. I also managed to write a couple of blog posts including a book review, joined in an online discussion about the proposed new 12 month rule for imported books, and kept up to date with what was going on in the world by reading The Age. Now I just need to spend more time writing, editing, critiquing and reading.

I am still fiddling with the last chapter of Stalking Tigers. It has failed its editing diet, gaining 2,000 words, and now sits at 7,200 words, which is a bit long so I might have to try and split it into two chapters. At this rate the novel will have reached an obese 180,000 words by the time I have finished editing it.

I critiqued a story for critters.com and another for a friend, while reading the rules for the OWWW workshop and also notes on how they like their pieces critiqued. Their notes on critiquing have already started to change the way I critique. Before I usually just mentioned anything that I thought might be a problem in the story, concentrating on the plot, themes, grammar and potential markets. I never really mentioned whether the start grabbed me unless it did or took too long to start, or told the author my impressions of the characters, unless I found them unbelievable or inconsistent. I only mentioned the ending if it didn't work or surprised me. So my critiques are about to become more substantial. Having said that, I have received many critiques and read many critiques of stories I also critiqued, and I have always felt that my critiques are better than the majority as most critiques tend to be line edits at best and at worst a simple I liked/hated it.

I think I have finally got my head around the parallel importation laws after reading half a dozen articles about them in The Age and participating in the above mentioned discussion, so I will hopefully have a post about the proposed changes later this week.

Graham.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Jonathan Franzen's Purity.

Image
Although this blog is mainly about science fiction, I sometimes read pure literature just to see what the other side is up. Jonathon Franzen is one of my favourite non-genre authors and here is a review of Purity, which I just finished reading.   Purity is literature with a plot. The plot revolves around secrets with the two main secrets being Purity’s search for the identity of her father, and the cover-up of a murder. The novel follows four main characters: Purity, Andreas Wolf, Tom and Leila. Purity is a recent university graduate in search of journalism job. She was raised by a controlling, but loving, mother who always got her own way and would argue for hours about the most trivial matters. Andreas Wolf is modelled on Julian Assange, complete with his own version of Wikileaks. Wolf was raised in East Germany and was a reluctant escapee when the wall came down as East Germany was a seemingly perfect place to keep his secrets. Tom is the owner and editor of an invest...
Read more

Review of The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, by Richard Flanagan

Image
The Living Sea of Waking Dreams is about a dying mother, Francie, and the efforts of her adult children to keep her alive, even though she wants to die. The children have lost the ability to communicate with each other, and are out to show they have the power, at least in the case of Anna and Terzo, to keep their mother alive. While Tommy, a failed artist who was looking after Francie, just acquiesces to the will of his other two siblings.  The novel is also about our dying planet, particularly from climate change, as animals go extinct We say we care, but do little to prevent the unfolding disaster. The novel is set in Tasmania while bushfires rage throughout that state and the rest of Australia.  Anna is the main protaganist, a successful architect, who rather than face her mother's pain, her crap relationship with her son, or the raging climate around her, retreats into social media. Frequently forwarding articles she has not read to her friends, showing how she avoids taki...
Read more

New Blog Look.

I have just updated the look of my blog. I am trying to create a consistent web presence online by ensuring that my blog, website and social media look the same and are connected.  This desire for a consistent web presence is a result of what I have learnt in my studies for a Bachelor or Arts (Internet Communications). I have just completed the first two subjects. One of the subjects, Web Communications, had us creating a new web presence, so I created a new blog on Wix, a new Facebook page, a new Twitter account, and joined Wattpad for the first time. As part of the assignment we were supposed to consistently style all the sites. The central node is here . The other subject was an Introduction to Internet Design. In that subject we had to create, from html and CSS code, a website. I choose to do one for author Graham Clements. For that website, I pretended that I had published four novels that are in reality only unpublished, and in need of redrafting, manuscripts. I am quite ...
Read more