|
Take a short story or a scene from your current novel, and write its opposite. You might reverse the genders of the characters, or the moral of the story. Don’t just do a search and replace, but write a companion story that explores the same images or themes or relationships in a completely opposite way. If you have a story in which keeping secrets breaks hearts and destroys lives, write one in which keeping secrests is necessary and right.
Last week we watched the film Labyrinth with the children. In this film there is a kind of puzzle the main character has to solve: two doors are before her, each with a guard. One leads to certain death, one to all the good stuff. One guard tells only the truth, one tells only lies. She can ask only one question of one guard. I love the twisted complexity of this riddle and its answer: but it also suggests a story. Write a story in which one character is always honest, and the other always deceitful. Don’t tell the reader which is which , or make it obvious, but explore the implications.
They say Rome wasn’t built in a day, and a novel cannot be written in one either. Instead, you need patience and perseverance. A one-day-at-a-time, or a one-sentence-at-a-time methodology that will get you there in the end. Try writing for a set period of time every day for two weeks. It’s best if you can do this at the same time each day. Print out your words after each session and put them somewhere you can see them. Not the words themselves, necessarily, but the fact of how many there are. Think happily on how well the pile grows, and how much easier it gets each day to write more.
Start collecting leads: set aside a little time each week to follow up opportunities like short story publications or competitions, awards or funding opportunities. Print out the guidelines/details of those you are going to enter and put them in a folder. Keep them in order according to deadlines: from soonest to latest. Write the deadlines on your wall calendar, and block out time to work on something to submit for each of them.
***
issue 09:02 | archives by category | archives by author |
