Hello!
As we say in Australia, it’s been a long
time between drinks, hasn’t it? My apologies for my extended radio silence, but
since I last blogged I’ve been hard at work on my manuscript, Blood of the
Heart, revising and editing until, at the end of February, I reached a
milestone in my writing journey and finally, FINALLY, sent BOTH out to beta
readers.
Exciting stuff!
Oh, it’s very far from perfect; and far,
far from done … but that’s the point. It’s time to let it go, to let others
read it and tell me what’s working and what’s not, for I’m so page-blind I
truly cannot see the forest for the trees.
But I’m here, at a point I sometimes
doubted I’d see, and with a bit of time on my hands I’ve been mulling over what
I’ve learned since finishing my first draft in December 2009 (yes, that long ago.)
Writing a first novel is like studying a
whole university degree. Well, it was for me. I’ve
been on one heck of a learning curve since I typed my first tentative words
back in 2007. In fact, I’ve written and deleted enough words to fill close to
two whole books. Seriously! But I don’t regret a minute of the time it’s taken
me to write BOTH. Really, it couldn’t have happened any other way. Learning a
new craft or profession requires a period of intense learning; and the way I
always looked at it (to stop myself from feeling like a slow-poke failure) was
that if my law degree took me roughly six years to complete, learning to write
fiction would be no different. And so it was …
Hello. My name is Rachel Walsh and I am
an Outliner. That I ever attempted to act upon my
urge to write fiction is thanks to Diana Gabaldon and the story she shared of
how she began writing. For those who don’t know the tale, in a nutshell, she
came up with a character, she started writing as scenes came to her - out of
chronological order, in chunks - and she didn’t stop. Boiled down to these
elements, I thought I might be able to give this writing caper a shot. So I
started …
Suffice to say I’ve learned enough about myself
through writing BOTH to know my brain is not wired like Diana’s. :-) To keep from veering off into no-man’s land (and thus having to
delete thousands of precious words) this little black duck needs – NEEDS - an
outline to follow. But hey, some things in life you can only learn by trial and
error. And it was fun to work this out ... in a masochistic kind of way. Cough.
Thank God for square brackets. Another tip from Diana Gabaldon - use square brackets as
place-holders when you get to a point in the writing where you need to go chase
down a fact or two. That way, you keep writing, keep it flowing, without
stopping to spend five hours pin-pointing a half-demolished street in 1864
Paris in which a character might have believably lived … yes, such are the
rabbit holes I’ve ventured down this week as I plug the gaps in my research.
Sigh. I’m mighty glad I left all this until now, otherwise I’d still be at work
on chapter one.
Immerse yourself in your genre. I can’t recommend this highly enough. At one point I stopped
writing for a good six months while I did nothing but read and deconstruct book
after book of the type and style I was trying to emulate. I’m no master of
mystery and suspense after doing that, for sure, but I have a far better handle
on these genres than I did before.
Wallow in resources on the craft of
writing. Whether it be Donald Maass’ THE FIRE IN
FICTION or Robert McKee’s STORY, or the brilliant blogs of Anne R. Allen or Roz Morris, I’ve learned something new, or at the very least have come away
inspired, every time I’ve dipped into these resources. Do it. It’s good for you
and your brain.
Beta readers are GOLD. Don’t ever be afraid to ask others to read your work, when you’re
ready for it. Having someone else cast their eyes over your work and give you
carefully considered feedback, positive and negative, is absolutely priceless.
And something for which you should be extremely grateful. I know I am.
So, what now? Well, while I’m waiting on
crits to come in, I’ve dipped my toe in the next book I want to write. Mainly
researching at the moment, but I’ve dashed out a few very rough scenes … and in
fact, I think I might even have the first sentence of Chapter One:
“The moment she was ushered into the
plush drawing room of the Countess of Marle, Lucinda Stone knew precisely which
of the assembled aristocratic guests was the thief.”
Well, it’ll do, for now. :-)
