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Abstract

son, flutters from its safe place, down through clouds and storms and light drizzle and the low rumble of tin drums, to land at your feet like a golden ticket.</p><p id="d20f">We look around for men in black, monsters or mean-spirited writers who will dive in and hide it in the folds of their cloak before we can say ‘golden ticket’. But seeing no-one, we furtively pick it up, smell it (has to be done) and clasp it to our breast. Except we don’t. It is more like the ping of a message that distracts you, and even though you know you’ve read it — ‘you should write a novel’ no less — it keeps showing up unread. Drat. Press press, bang bang. Go away.</p><p id="fb75">How many things do we do just to get rid of them? Is that why I want to try? To say, <i>I tried, I failed</i>. Back to the beepers. I don’t know.</p><p id="d12d">You can’t write a novel in a day, I hear you call from the rafters. I’m with you; I know. But in a way, you can. In the seed is the potential of the whole fruit, and if I can plant that seed deep enough in the ground and cover it up and water it just a little, so as not wash it away — all in a day— is it not written in some potential landscape that we cannot see? I believe so.</p><p id="ffab">So, thinking about ‘the day’ on my walk today, I randomly opened to the chapter, ‘The Outline’, in my writing book that promises ‘craft secrets’. I lifted my nose in the air and was poised to skim to better chapters such as, ‘The Nature of Art and Artists’, when I realized that the author was right: if I can’t outline the story, I most definitely cannot write it. It will become a spaghetti-junction of starts and stops and honking frustrations. No matter how many jump-starts I give it, noxious fumes will ooze and the words and plot will clang like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And yes, that is almost onomatopoeic.</p><h2 id="7c1a">Getting To the Point</h2><p id="ec68">The ‘seed’ will prob

Options

ably just be a juicy outline, which, in case you now have purple envy and want your own holed-up day, will comprise —</p><p id="cd5d"><b>Complication Development: 1. 2. 3. Resolution</b></p><p id="4cf8">According to Jon Franklin in <i>Writing For Story*,</i> each of the statements must be just three words — a noun, a strong concrete action verb and a direct object, i.e. Joe eats apple. The development statements show what happens at the end of that section as you write towards it, not from it. The resolution must be just that — it must resolve the complication in some way. Simple as banging a tin drum.</p><p id="590a">So, there’s my seed in my palm and if I can fill-in-the-blanks and maybe start on into the action, just a pipsqueak, I think holing-up away from home will be a very golden-ticket kind of day.</p><p id="036a">*Franklin, J. (1986) <i>Writing For Story, </i>Penguin Books.</p><figure id="9be7"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*R1duiakT3F4AJYfEOKjgMg.png"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><p id="8412"><b>And if you are curious how the day went…</b></p><div id="2247" class="link-block"> <a href="https://baos.pub/playing-at-being-a-woman-618df1fef9b5"> <div> <div> <h2>Playing At Being a Woman</h2> <div><h3>And on important tasks in small spaces</h3></div> <div><p>baos.pub</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*P7FP23xRWfeIEgjESYmiOQ.png)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><p id="a717"><b>If you’d like new posts emailed to you by Medium, <a href="https://medium.com/@mimosadays/subscribe">here</a> is the place to go…</b></p><p id="8334">© 2024 <a href="https://medium.com/@mimosadays">Mimosa Days</a></p></article></body>

WRITING LIFE

Holing Up to Write a Novel/la

A la-la land approach to a serious craft: Or is it? (plus author audio recording)

**La-la love.** Credit: Vecteezy edited on Canva

Audio link hidden here.

Next week I will be ensconced for one day in a secret location to write a novel.

It is a writerly sort of place not far from home, but it isn’t home, and as I want to write from a part of me that doesn’t have a micro-fibre cloth hanging out my jeans’ pocket, one ear listening for the cooker beeper, the other the washing machine beeper, and the other for my husband climbing the stairs to find out exactly why I am not attending to any of these particularly unwriterly activities, it is perfectly perfect.

I hear your scoffs and throaty chortles, and whispers of ‘naive’, shouldering out the sounds of your own life’s beepers, but the day is the bouncing baby of an impulsive response to a cute sounding email; a little rebellion to my own abilities; and a fairy-cake dusting of sugary throwing caution to the spiciest, sweetest sounding winds of change.

Because frankly, if I don’t try, I will never know if I am capable of ransacking my life and experience and know-whats and don’t-knows to produce a story that will keep a reader from page 1 to 150 (I’m going for sausage-dog sized story — long enough to be noticeable, but short enough to be ditsy, and, I accept the possibility, trodden underfoot).

I suspect we have all got an envelope slipped inside a book somewhere, on that celestial shelf of hopes and dreams, that sometimes, for no reason, flutters from its safe place, down through clouds and storms and light drizzle and the low rumble of tin drums, to land at your feet like a golden ticket.

We look around for men in black, monsters or mean-spirited writers who will dive in and hide it in the folds of their cloak before we can say ‘golden ticket’. But seeing no-one, we furtively pick it up, smell it (has to be done) and clasp it to our breast. Except we don’t. It is more like the ping of a message that distracts you, and even though you know you’ve read it — ‘you should write a novel’ no less — it keeps showing up unread. Drat. Press press, bang bang. Go away.

How many things do we do just to get rid of them? Is that why I want to try? To say, I tried, I failed. Back to the beepers. I don’t know.

You can’t write a novel in a day, I hear you call from the rafters. I’m with you; I know. But in a way, you can. In the seed is the potential of the whole fruit, and if I can plant that seed deep enough in the ground and cover it up and water it just a little, so as not wash it away — all in a day— is it not written in some potential landscape that we cannot see? I believe so.

So, thinking about ‘the day’ on my walk today, I randomly opened to the chapter, ‘The Outline’, in my writing book that promises ‘craft secrets’. I lifted my nose in the air and was poised to skim to better chapters such as, ‘The Nature of Art and Artists’, when I realized that the author was right: if I can’t outline the story, I most definitely cannot write it. It will become a spaghetti-junction of starts and stops and honking frustrations. No matter how many jump-starts I give it, noxious fumes will ooze and the words and plot will clang like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And yes, that is almost onomatopoeic.

Getting To the Point

The ‘seed’ will probably just be a juicy outline, which, in case you now have purple envy and want your own holed-up day, will comprise —

Complication Development: 1. 2. 3. Resolution

According to Jon Franklin in Writing For Story*, each of the statements must be just three words — a noun, a strong concrete action verb and a direct object, i.e. Joe eats apple. The development statements show what happens at the end of that section as you write towards it, not from it. The resolution must be just that — it must resolve the complication in some way. Simple as banging a tin drum.

So, there’s my seed in my palm and if I can fill-in-the-blanks and maybe start on into the action, just a pipsqueak, I think holing-up away from home will be a very golden-ticket kind of day.

*Franklin, J. (1986) Writing For Story, Penguin Books.

And if you are curious how the day went…

Playing At Being a Woman

And on important tasks in small spaces

baos.pub

If you’d like new posts emailed to you by Medium, here is the place to go…