Editing chapter one
I'm currently writing my first novel. It's simultaneously the thing I want to do the most, and the thing I want to do the least. It's every spare hour and every excuse not to spend an hour, all wrapped up in one. It's the reason I'm writing this blog post after shamefully neglecting the blog for so long, because I don't, must, won't, need to write the bloody thing, and I can't quite make my fingers do it right now.
First draft down, all the editing to go.
I have written 53,000 words about life, love and loss. Some of it is good. Some of it is word vomit, which I painstakingly edit, then edit again, then re-edit, then mentally stamp my feet about and force myself to move past, then re-read, then change again.
The novel is always in the back of my mind, like a low sound that hums constantly in your ear, no matter where you are or what you're doing. It talks to me, trying to coax me into exerting myself on its behalf. "Hey", it says, "you really want to edit me, come on, you know you do. You're just sitting there thinking about me, why don't you give in to me and spend some time filling out my pages?"
The novel needs me, and I need it. It has been poking around inside me since my grandma first taught me how to write a story, when I was three. It sent me to university to study English, it drove me to complete a Masters degree in creative writing, and it threw me into a career of writing, because all I want to do, all I need to do, is write. Write. Write.
Turning hands into pages
My grandmother showed me how to weave worlds into existence. She took my hands in hers and turned them like pages, until I understood how to grow stories. When she came to pick me up from pre-school, all the other children would be listening to my tales, and they refused to leave until I'd finished them.
I wrote all through school until I was fifteen, learning the difference between prose and poetry, understanding how to craft my own words and make my own voice be heard, how to break rules and still convey meaning, how to expand to fill pages. I knew the novel was coming, I took extra classes after school and got all the feedback I could from my teacher on how I could improve. I read and read and read.
Then my dad died and I broke into pieces.
For years I wrote staccato notes of pain. Shards of emotions peppered my pages like bullet wounds. I was so angry that I couldn't express it on paper, so hurt that there were no words strong enough to carry the weight. So lost in the immensity of my loss that I struggled to write anything coherent or that carried meaning. I was more than this, I had something to say, I wanted to reach people, but my words were blocked up behind a wall of pain, and they couldn't break through.
I chose paths that forced me to write, even although I resented them. I completed a book of children's poetry for my masters and got a distinction, but the pain of writing was so great that I didn't write another word for myself. Not for years. And I never sent them anywhere to be seen or published, because they were my words, and I loved them and hated them at the same time.
I started my career as a Copywriter. I wasn't ready to write for myself, but I needed to write. I read, a lot, and I found so much consolation in the words of my favourite author, Jonathan Safran Foer, that I started to see how authors can write with knowing about grief and loss yet still be funny and inspiring to the reader. If you have never read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I encourage you to read it.
Turning a new page
It's been almost fifteen years since my father died, and that same first novel is still burning inside me. Except now it's finally being committed to page, and now I finally feel that I have enough life experience past the pain of sudden, complete loss that what I can say will be meaningful, hopeful and leave my reader how I always wanted to leave them, with gladness and love in their heart.
Life will always throw up obstacles and there will never be a good time to write, but by the same token, it is always a good time to write. My path has always been leading me here, and what is a life half lived, or an author who is so afraid of her own words that she has never finished a book?
I have written 53,000 words about life, love and loss. Some of it is good. Some of it is word vomit, which I painstakingly edit, then edit again, then re-edit, then mentally stamp my feet about and force myself to move past, then re-read, then change again.
The novel is always in the back of my mind, like a low sound that hums constantly in your ear, no matter where you are or what you're doing. It talks to me, trying to coax me into exerting myself on its behalf. "Hey", it says, "you really want to edit me, come on, you know you do. You're just sitting there thinking about me, why don't you give in to me and spend some time filling out my pages?"
The novel needs me, and I need it. It has been poking around inside me since my grandma first taught me how to write a story, when I was three. It sent me to university to study English, it drove me to complete a Masters degree in creative writing, and it threw me into a career of writing, because all I want to do, all I need to do, is write. Write. Write.
Turning hands into pages
My grandmother showed me how to weave worlds into existence. She took my hands in hers and turned them like pages, until I understood how to grow stories. When she came to pick me up from pre-school, all the other children would be listening to my tales, and they refused to leave until I'd finished them.
I wrote all through school until I was fifteen, learning the difference between prose and poetry, understanding how to craft my own words and make my own voice be heard, how to break rules and still convey meaning, how to expand to fill pages. I knew the novel was coming, I took extra classes after school and got all the feedback I could from my teacher on how I could improve. I read and read and read.
Then my dad died and I broke into pieces.
For years I wrote staccato notes of pain. Shards of emotions peppered my pages like bullet wounds. I was so angry that I couldn't express it on paper, so hurt that there were no words strong enough to carry the weight. So lost in the immensity of my loss that I struggled to write anything coherent or that carried meaning. I was more than this, I had something to say, I wanted to reach people, but my words were blocked up behind a wall of pain, and they couldn't break through.
I chose paths that forced me to write, even although I resented them. I completed a book of children's poetry for my masters and got a distinction, but the pain of writing was so great that I didn't write another word for myself. Not for years. And I never sent them anywhere to be seen or published, because they were my words, and I loved them and hated them at the same time.
I started my career as a Copywriter. I wasn't ready to write for myself, but I needed to write. I read, a lot, and I found so much consolation in the words of my favourite author, Jonathan Safran Foer, that I started to see how authors can write with knowing about grief and loss yet still be funny and inspiring to the reader. If you have never read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I encourage you to read it.
Turning a new page
It's been almost fifteen years since my father died, and that same first novel is still burning inside me. Except now it's finally being committed to page, and now I finally feel that I have enough life experience past the pain of sudden, complete loss that what I can say will be meaningful, hopeful and leave my reader how I always wanted to leave them, with gladness and love in their heart.
Life will always throw up obstacles and there will never be a good time to write, but by the same token, it is always a good time to write. My path has always been leading me here, and what is a life half lived, or an author who is so afraid of her own words that she has never finished a book?
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