It's been a cold, wet day today, a good one for staying indoors and catching up on writing and chores. I've been so busy the past week, with my visitor (who left Friday) and other events, that I got so far behind my usual writing schedule. So now it's catch-up time.
I'm still working on this same chapter but nearly have it right now, just a little bit more to go and then I can move on. I also did some editing on an older chapter that I'd recently workshopped. My usual routine is to make notes, then write on the computer, then rewrite as many times as I need to until I get it in presentable shape, then workshop it, then edit again and move on. They call it "Block Editing" and it works best for me. I know there's some people who write the whole book through, one full draft, then go back again and again to revise. But I prefer to get it as 'right' as possible and not leave a mess behind me. So when I come to the end of the book, I'll basically just have a final draft to work on. And actually I do enjoy editing.
This weekend I started to do some writing coaching with a fellow writer friend of mine. I found it useful for myself too, and quite an enjoyable task. And later I edited a chapter of another person's work-in-progress which is going to be workshopped at tonight's Scribblers meeting.
My main activities this weekend was attending the theatre, which I found enormously inspiring. On Friday night my friend and I went to see "Moon for the Misbegotten" by Eugene O'Neill. An amazing play. I was so intrigued by O'Neill's dialogues and his use of similes.
Truly a wonderful performance. Then on Sunday I went with my other friends to see a play I've wanted to see for years,
George Ryga's "The Ecstacy of Rita Joe" This is a Canadian playwright about First Nations people and the tragedies that often befall then when they come off the reserve to the city. It was written in the '60's and at that time would have been quite a controversial play, a white Ukranian writer speaking out for the Indian people. Very powerful, and very true. Next week I'm going to see a production of "Richard III" which is my favorite Shakespeare play, and the very first one I ever saw when I was 13 years old.
I like to study the way the plays are staged, the script, etc. Pretty soon I want to go back and finish my Sappho play which has been shelved while I try to complete my novel. Hopefully this will be accomplished by the end of the year so I can move on with my other projects. At least, the end is in sight and if I can keep to my daily writing schedules again, perhaps I will achieve my goal.
2 comments:
Hope you get back into the thick of things with your novel real soon. Sounds like you have a lot of writing projects to keep you busy for quite a while.
Whenever I've been away, I try to remember why I liked the story when I worked on it before, then I allow myself to fall in love with it all over again. It helps to get caught up in the romance, the emotionality of the story. It helps me open the floodgates of creativity.
You'll see by my latest blog (today) that I am back in the swing of it again. It helps to have this awful weather which makes you want to stay indoors at the keyboard.
I am enjoying my writing, lots of excitement and action. And yes, I do have a number of other writing projects but won't start them until I have wrapped up the novel once and for all!
Once in awhile I take a wee break to send off some of my unpublished travel stuff and just learned one piece is going to be published this weekend. Alas! no money for it. But at least I finally managed to break into the Sun newspaper which, til now, has been impossible.
Post a Comment