Comments for Anything Fictional

Comment on NaNoWriMo – Day 24 by Bella

Bella — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 01:20:42 +0000

Fantastic, I can hear the freeway zooming from here.

Comment on NaNoWriMo – Day 11 by Bella

Bella — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:25:48 +0000

Congrats on the word count and the insight. I love the fact that the first draft is shit because it means your mind can go anywhere. However this too has its problems – let me tell you a story about a person I know who set out to write a short story about a foreign student, which became a long story, a novella, a novel and finally a trilogy and she isn’t sure where it’s really going hmmmmmm Maybe some mindfulness is good too,
good luck

Comment on NaNoWriMo – Day 7 by Chris

Chris — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:40:13 +0000

That’s an easy mistake to make, especially when juggling something as big as a novel and doing so over an extended period of time. Unless you’re re-reading everything you’ve written regularly, it’s amazingly easy to forget those small details.

Comment on NaNoWriMo – Day 7 by Bella

Bella — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 09:12:57 +0000

Pretty impressive. I on the other hand have written nothing but i was thinking about “The Student” this morning and realised that I have dropped the ball on the mayor’s son mentioned in the prologue. I’d better bring him back or mention that he is out of town…. what a stupid plot mistake!
Happy Nanowriming!

Comment on Seeking honest feedback by Bella

Bella — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:29:12 +0000

This whole criticism stuff is really important to me too. Until I really started to practice writing I’d hoped I was a undiscovered genius because I have the capacity to amuse myself with my thoughts and engage others by storytelling. Unfortunately I am also easily distracted, easily moved by the human condition and fearful of failure, especially public failure which is an unfortunate mix.
1. Easily distracted means no discipline at all and I now know that to get anything finished, even a short story takes a considerable ammount of time and the willingness to go back over it time and again. I have all kinds of skills and am in demand to participate in music, acting, volunteer work, helping others and work activities, I also want to complete a Masters degree and have found that if I am going to do any consistent writing I have to say NOOOOOO!!!! Very difficult.
2. I am easily moved by a good story about real life and forget that it needs to be written well to be taken seriously. I am a sucker for “Hallmark” moments and have the tendency to want to get the whole story down on the page as clearly as possible so that any reader will understand the situation. This is a huge mistake, especially in post modern time. I now know that the modern reader wants more than just a good story, in fact they will reject a damn good story, in favour of something quirky, self referential and gabby.
3.The big one – fear of public failure. As a result of my education experiences I confused good criticism with school room humiliation and would find myself rejecting anything that was less than absolute praise, clenching my teeth and hands as I received the feedback to create some weird kind of physical protection and waiting until it was over. Then I would come back to general consciousness and try to remember what had been said and consider whether it was useful. Very UN-useful behaviour I might say. After some extremely helpful rejections of my clearly written stories I was forced to consider a number of things including whether the stories were in fact any good at all which meant listening to feedback, whether they could be better written which required reading succesful stories and listening and using feedback and considering the suggestions of others! What? Hearing ideas as useful suggestions rather than public humiliation? What a concept?
The writing group has been an absolute gift to me. I have been able to request the level of criticism that I wanted which at the beginning was not much more than the opportunity to have others read my stuff, then offer suggestions and now I want rigorous criticism, within the usual limits of social behaviour ie “I found this difficult to understand.” rather than “This is absolute shit!”
Anyhow I just wanted to participate in the new Chris Kirkby blog empire but need to remember that time spend on my own or other people’s blogs might be just another way to avoid getting back into the novel after a great 3 week holiday in Europe!

Comment on Review: Tropic Thunder by Alan

Alan — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:04:18 +0000

With this kind of review, you might just convince me to go and see it, my expectations have been raised