Welcome!
This blog post is a bit different from my usual and a bonus
for the month of June. Thank you to Rosanne Hawke
for inviting me to participate in the Blog Tour Award.
Firstly, these are the rules:
1. Pass the tour on to up to four other bloggers.
2. Give them the rules and a specific Monday to post.
3. Answer four questions about your creative process that
lets other bloggers and visitors know what inspires you to do what you do.
The questions are:
1. What am I working on at the moment?
2. How does my work differ from others in my genre?
3. Why do I write or create what I do?
4. How does my writing/creative process work?
I really appreciate the talents of some other up-and-coming
authors: Wendy Noble (writer, reviewer,
editor, speaker and very diligent blogger) and James Cooper (all-round
writer, writing teacher, and chief editor of the group blog author.docx). Wendy
will post her Blog Tour Award on Monday 29 June and James on Monday 6 July.
Although
this blog is mostly built around my short stories and poems, I’m going to tell you today about my major novel project.
1. What am I working on now?
The short answer is – the same novel I have
been working on for six years! But the more informative answer is that I’m
actually now writing it as four novels in a series.
I’m thinking of calling the series 'Find Freedom' and this first novel by the same title. In it we follow
Meg, a forty-two year old journalist in the City-State of Encaedion in the year
2230. She has been the ‘voice of the voiceless’ throughout her career and has a
large following, but she’s starting to ask the hard question: what
difference is this actually making? Already discontented with her work and her
marriage, life takes a serious turn for the worse when her teenage son is
convicted of subversion. Where can you go when your life is falling apart?
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| my writing space |
I don’t write to genre – true
confession: I don’t really understand how genre works – which leaves it in the
miscellaneous category called ‘literary’. But I’m not clever enough to be what
the reading public thinks of as literary…my focus is to write using English
well and to tell stories that make readers feel like they know these characters
as neighbours. I write about transitions, so the ages of my protagonists (and
therefore my target audiences) vary according to the nature of the transition.
3. Why do I write or create what I do?
I ask myself this question quite often. In
the end, I think that it has the same answer as a lot of other things in my
life – that I have the opportunity, the desire and a sense that it’s something
I was made to do.
A related question: what can I offer
uniquely to the myriad of books currently being published? My answer is that
there is room enough in the world for every human being to be creative, each
uniquely because we are actually unique. There isn’t a quota, or a standard to
meet apart from using what we have to the best of our ability and opportunity.
It’s not actually a competition (unless you’re after fame and fortune).
4. How does my writing/creative process work?
This is harder for me to answer because
it’s still developing.
I put aside a day a week to write. I
learned the hard way that it doesn’t work to do it in the lounge room when your
family is around. I key my stories directly to the computer, but I handwrite
poetry – for the practical reason that experimenting with formatting is easier
with pen and paper. (I used to say I couldn’t think without a pen in hand, but
it turns out I can think just as well with a keyboard.)
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| A map of Encaedion City |
I also use an art journal for a haphazard
collection of items: newspaper/magazine clippings, hand-drawn maps, arguments
with myself about why I need to approach an aspect of the story differently,
and for times when I haven’t access to my computer. I am not a visual artist by any means, so mud-maps are about as exciting as it gets in the non-verbal department.
A process flowchart:
· an idea about theme, setting, and the key
character
· a rough structure mapped out (plotting is not my
forte)
· lots of character notes, scenes written to make
the characters act, interviews with them, etc – I had 65,000 words of notes
before I began actually writing the story
· a first draft (meaning that some chapters were
written five times and others only once)
· feedback on the first quarter from my writing
group
· most of a second draft
· decided to convert it into four novels, and
proceeded to rewrite the first quarter AGAIN, this time four times longer
My next post will be in mid-July – I hope you’ll pop back
for another short story, poem or excerpt from my novel writing. And feel free to drop me a line
by comment or email.
See you next time!
Claire Belberg
