However crucially, they don’t knock me out at all. Unless my taking them has coincided with an upturn in my health, I didn't know how well I was. It’s wonderful – I have been writing, writing, writing all weekend, getting completely distracted and contributing essays to the discussions on the Ouch Messageboard, but still making loads of progress with my novel. Having a lot of trouble with flash backing. I need to tell quite a lot of back-story on account of an important character being dead at the beginning of the book (don’t ask) but it is a thriller so I don’t want to distract or bore the reader with things that happened in the past. It is a difficult balance to strike...
The axe-wielding maniac walked slowly towards her. In desperation Suzanne picked up the heaviest book from the shelf - the photo album - and hurled it at the man. It merely bounced off his hulking form, landing on the floor and falling open at a picture of the holiday she had taken with Keith five years ago. They had gone to Majorca and lying on the beach at midnight, the stars above them, the cool waves gently lapping at their toes, he had asked her to marry him. The axe-wielding maniac paused, distracted by something. Suzanne followed his gaze to the ornaments on the mantelpiece which included the plastic bride and groom from Keith and Suzanne’s wedding cake. They had been married in the early spring, when the snowdrops were in flower. The cake had been a three tier affair trimmed with candy pink ribbons to match the bridesmaid’s dresses.
The axe-wielding maniac turned back to Suzanne and stepped forward. He was almost so close now that he could take her head off with one swing of his silvery axe. Suzanne found that she had retreated to the edge of the rug, the rug upon which she and Keith had made hot sticky love so often throughout their first summer together. If only he was here now! she thought as dark figure of the maniac loomed over her, though on this occasion she would prefer Keith to have his clothes on.
You can see the sort of thing. You’ll be relieved to learn that there are absolutely no characters called Suzanne or Keith or indeed any axe-wielding maniacs in my novel - no way, José! Nor do I write this badly. Honest!
But it is hard working out how much information to include and at what point and how. I know everything there is to know about these characters and events, so I have loss any sense of the minimum a person would need to know in order to believe and understand it all.
Anyway, if I carry on as I have in the last few days, I'm going to be done soon.
3 comments:
Hi Goldfish, Those pills give you a strange side effect don't they?
Erm... I think you need to sort of sit quietly and calmly after taking them.
Your book sounds brill, it doesn't sound bad at all! It's great! Keep writing because it sounds like you have a great story and you will soon work out what each character is doing, and what goes on. I used to be very creative like you by writing stories and plays, and I could come up with great ideas for them, I still can but not much now!
I wrote that as a joke Katie, to illustrate my trouble - I hope my book is much better than that. :-)
What sort of stories do you write?
I used to write stories about people from the famous world,I came up with a story based on a newspaper office but haven't come up with anything since, I tend to write about disability issues now, that's why hopefully I want to write for Ouch, and make up articles about disabled actors and hopefully the Ouch team if they let me!
Post a Comment