So Good, You'll Want to Vomit!

Last Thursday, was not like any other inspiring day at uni with my fiction teacher. That day was the THREE HOUR NOVELLA CHALLENGE! Now, if you didn’t read my last blog where I mentioned the before picture to how I was feeling, the link is here (http://book-unfinished.blogspot.com/2010/05/dont-kill-your-mice.html)

So now I write for you the reflection of the experience before, during and after the contest.

This story starts off the Wednesday night when I realized after being perfectly comfortable writing 4000-5000 words in three hours on my novel in the other characters point of view that as I started doing character profiles, I thought to myself
“Hang on, this character can’t do this! They just can’t be a main it’s not right!” I thought it would be pointless to write for three hours on something I didn’t think was achievable, nor worth my time. And plus, considering we couldn’t take time in the three hours to really think about the writing, I figured I should just start from scratch.

Cue the next day.

So I arrived at uni a little annoyed at myself for leaving it go this late and so I really worked hard in the allocated 10 minutes to really plan everything out, instead of wondering how I’m ever going to get through it with such a sugar high (seriously, large amount of candy!)

So, I wrote…

Sometimes, when I’m under stress and I have to write something, my mind goes into a sort of creative spasm. I like my brain for this and I guess it just goes to show that someday I could be a real writer because as I sat down and stared at my laptop I had two lovely words pop into my head

Setting
Country

And bam! That’s all it took. I finally realized I start off with setting. So long as I have the general setting I am able to write a story. It was kind of a nice feeling to find my voice, especially when I didn’t expect it.

When I finally got my setting, I started to question some things to help me gain understanding of the story I was slowly conjuring. What do you see when you think of the country? What does it smell like? How do you feel? And this is when I got words like dry grass, old fashioned small houses surrounded by nothing, cows mooing, fire and smoke.

And here emerged a character. Here are my notes written in the 10 minutes:
1. Loves: the country
2. Her school
3. Her friends. 3
4. Her mums fresh pavlova for breakfast
5. Her blue dress with the brown belt she wore to the summer dance by the lake
6. The fire her dad makes every night, even in summer so they can cook marshmallows. Oozing white and pink balls or delicious balls of joy
7. Sunday at mass
8. Painting
9. Writing
10. The Nothing

Mind you, it’s not the most grammatically correct but isn’t that the point of note taking? I find it hilarious to read back and think
“What was I thinking, delicious balls of joy? YUCK!” But once I got down what the character loved it was enough to really start to think about conflict. Something that disrupts her in the usual routine she seems to have:

1. Hates the river that circles around her house
2. The swinging rope by the river
3. Boys, especially her dead brother
4. Trees that she cant climb
5. Snakes

Also, kind of liked it when I became a bit brutal in the last few minutes of getting this down
“Hates boys…especially her dead brother…” hmmm that was random!

Cue the writing process!

It was draining, and my back ached. I kept finding excuses for taking my hands off the keyboard by grabbing another lolly even though I wasn’t even hungry. I hated my character at the start because her language was so simple and she seemed really stupid. I saw a lot of mistakes and it took all my might not to go back and edit. I crawled and bashed at the keyboard words I didn’t even know made sense in the sentence. I imagined the little man inside my head going nuts and throwing all the English knowledge I had in my brain into the giant recycle bin. I forgot how to spell the at one point, and wrote ushered instead of meaning to dismiss the person. My brain became mushy I felt I could make a dint in my head if I poked it. And suddenly I felt so tired! Like I’d run a million miles.

And then I wrote the last few words down and finished my piece, relieved I did it. It’s not perfect, and it sure doesn’t read well, but the story is there and with a big structural edit, I should be able to come out at the end with some gold! Because I do very much like the story; it’s deliciously mysterious!

Here is one piece of the gold so far which is the opening line to my piece:

The river runs all around the house, as if it’s taunting me and encircling me into the nothing…

I have to say I am quite happy with the outcome of the first line in the first draft. I thought that was a pretty good beginning, yes?

I am so proud I completed the task I set for myself which was basically to finish it. I didn’t even realize how much I wrote until I clicked the recount on word and found myself staring at a whopping 4,800. That is massive to me at this stage in my writing so I was very happy; and even happier when I WON THE NOVELLA CHALLENGE!

This was my prize:

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster and three fun size Mars Bars (only fun when you get three!) Not bad, eh? I can’t wait to sink my teeth into this book. My teacher thought it was a good prize because it’s one of her favourites so she thought it would be nice to pass it on to someone else. I also can’t wait to read it because as she passed it to me her exact words were
“It was so good I wanted to vomit!”


Proudly yours,

Jinx xx