Drafting ideas...
Not every blog post is created equal. Some are long, some short. But they are all meant to be read. And sometimes it can be good to throw a simple idea out in the open.
So here is my new experiment. Micro blogging on a mobile device and automatically sharing it on social media. Oh, how modern can one be?
I have been thinking about a new novel, now that Under the Black Sand is complete and online. All kinds of ideas fly in and around my head. But the moment I sit down at the computer, they vanish. Like the screen was radiating some erazor beams from space.
So I need to find a way to capture the butterclies before they get shot down.
It’s been oh so quiet around Under the Black Sand recently. I blame it on rebuilding a whole attic and full time job. A kid helps as well. But enough of that.
Today I managed to get back into the story. The original screenplay took place in Iceland. As the novel progressed, the story was moved to the UK. One of my feedback-readers suggested I move it back. After thinking about this, I decided to dive back in and rewrite. It would be a lot of work. Many things that apply in the UK, don’t make sense in Iceland. We have no construction companies with a history stretching back to the early 19th century. We never had any railways to speak of. We didn’t take any serious part in fighting during the two world wars. – Yes, this book is something of an epic. – So, a lot of things had to change.
I saw this as a two-edged sword. In some ways, the story would make more sense in Iceland. It was originally based there and a few things were a bit of a stretch in British context. But there were so many things that would be uninteresting and flat in Iceland, compared to the rich history of the British Empire. Or so I thought.
Before I could start rewriting, I had to figure out what would replace the 200 year old firm, the gothic cathedral, the conflicts in Europe. I reintroduced a few twists from the original screenplay and thought up a few new ones to make it all work. And guess what? The story is now tighter than it ever was. The conflict between certain characters more intense. On the whole, the story seems to be even deeper.
Funny how other people can sometimes force you to rethink things and come up with something completely unexpected.
Now it’s just a matter of getting it all done. Write, write, write until the book is the best it can ever be. I will have to finish it one day. Decide, this is it. Now, go out into the world and live your own life.
Posted in novel, personal, thoughts, writing | Tagged black sand, church, inspiration, novel, personal, thoughts, writing
It is a well known misunderstanding that inspiration will come to the artist like a divine light from the heavens, and he will create his best work when sprinkled with the magic stuff most mortals don’t have. Talent, combined with the magic dust is what makes an artist. The untalented masses are merely consumers of the arts and will never fully understand the minds of the creative geniuses.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, sometimes an idea sparks a fire in the writer’s mind and a masterpiece is born. Most of the time though, it’s keeping at it. Having a schedule and not neglecting your work.
Paul McCartney once said that the reason he went straight to the studio to record his first solo album after the Beatles, was to keep going. He was afraid that if he’d take a year off, he wouldn’t be able to get back into it. This state of mind an artist finds himself in when on a roll.
I work a lot and we are rebuilding the attic. I haven’t touched my novel in over two weeks. It’s work and DIY. This morning, I had around two hours to play with, so I fired up Scrivener and got ready to write. I sat there, looking at the words I had written previously. Nothing happened. It was like a boring school assignment. I just couldn’t get into it.
It’s not that this part of the novel is boring. It is a turning point, a confrontation. I have gone through it a few times and I know it’s one of the key moments in the book. The scene wasn’t the problem. I was.
I had allowed myself to float to the surface. I couldn’t dive deep into the mind where the magic is found. I have been thinking only of work and screws that needed to be drilled into wood. I had lost contact with my creative self. I had become one of the supposedly talentless masses.
Talent isn’t a gift. It is a state of mind. I slipped out of it and will have to work on getting myself back into it. That’s all there is to it. Talent and inspiration comes to the open mind and it’s up to us not to close it.
Distractions. They are everywhere. They are the writer’s worst enemy. Someone said that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. It’s all hard work and keeping at it. An updated version of this quote was that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% avoiding the Internet. Keep writing, they tell us. Write daily.
But sometimes it’s not quite that simple. Work gets in the way and there is nothing we can do about it. We all need to pay our bills and buy milk for our babies. If we have no babies and need no milk, then we need to buy a computer every few years, a software to write on and coffee. Lots of coffee.
Then there is the self-inflicted time-eating stuff we subject ourselves to. Our attic needed attention. We had the dormers replaced and have spent the last few days building a laundry room. A typical day has been waking up at 4:30, being at work at 6:00, home at 15:00, hammering until 19:00, dinner and sleep a couple of hours later. Not that I like to go to bed early. I am a late-night person at heart. But days like this make it hard to sit on a sofa and stay awake.
Needless to say, any writing has been put on hold. I could possibly find an hour here and there, but there is no point. Writing when exhausted results in drivel, useless garbage that will need to be heavily edited later.
But all is not lost. Inspiration struck me a couple of days ago. I typed my incredible prose on the iPhone, only to find that it had watered a bit. As great as the device is, it isn’t the best way to write anything more than a simple message. A Little Black Book would have been better. So I’ll go and get me one. Technology may be fantastic, but its not the answer to everything. In fact, I recently found a twenty-year old book I had scribbled in. One page had info on a detective and it inspired me to make The Girl from Nowhere. Old scribbles can be a gold mine, inspiring and fun to read.
And when the attic is done, I will have a cosy and inspiring den where I can spend all those non-DIY hours writing my next masterpiece.
And so I don’t cry for the days and hours spent on home improvement. Yes, they are delaying the completion of my novel, but I will end up with a nice little place where I can sit in a comfy chair, burn incense and look out the large window at the clouds as I write sentence after sentence.
Or so I tell myself.
Writing a novel is a huge undertaking. Millions of people try it, but only a few manage to finish it. Sometimes, when we are in the middle of the novel writing process, we get tired of the characters and the universe we’ve created. We shelf the project, and many never return to it.
Short stories can be a good distraction. You get your time off, but you keep writing. And that is important. Don’t stop writing. Coughing up a short story is like taking a weekend off and changing our surroundings. It clears the head while keeping us active and when we return to the novel, we are rested and ready to dive back in.
My background is films. It has been a hobby and borderline profession for a few years. Under the Black Sand was originally written as a screenplay. It only became a novel when I failed to raise a million to make the film. One day, I keep telling myself.
So for me, making the occasional short film or music video is a way to lay my creative egg, get distracted in a good way and to relieve the pressure that builds in people that have this need to create.
Late 2011 was a slow time for Under the Black Sand. I had yet to discover Scrivener and it was nothing more than a million words in a massive document. I had lost sight of the goal, the light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t in sight. It wasn’t forgotten though.
The opening scene in the film was intended to be in black and white, Film Noir style. So, when heavy fog lay over Amsterdam for a few days, I coughed up a short script and shot a Film Noir. It’s not perfect. Nothing ever is, but I was happy with it. See the link below.
The Girl from Nowhere