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On writing
I'm enjoying my serial novel. It's hard to find the time to write, in between twelve or thirteen hour shifts and the necessary sleep, but it's not as if it's hard work.
My main worry is that all the characters sound alike - sound like me. Ann is nowhere near as much the Californian babe she should be. Quint should have more foibles, be more lovable. Kim should be more into bureaucratese. And Harley should be more sophisticated than he's turning out to be.
I'll look on this online publication as a first draft. I've repeated myself in some descriptions of Canberra - I'll have to go back to get rid of duplicate scenes. And I've dropped a clanger or two along the way. Monash Drive and the Campbell shops aren't going to be found by earnest readers retracing the steps of the characters. No Monash Drive, to begin with, and the path reserved for the motorway through Campbell bears no relation to the thoroughfare I've described. That's okay. That's deliberate. I've realigned my fictional street to give a cross section of the suburb, and to have it end on a Constitution Avenue corner, just across from the ASIO site. Where I've installed a major character in a block of non-existent flats.
Heartbake and Ann's bookshop don't exist in Campbell shops. The knowledgeable wine merchant is there, and I'll describe the rest of it faithfully, but Heartbake has been moved across from Manuka and restaffed. Ann's bookshop is every second-hand bookshop I've ever loved, with the exception of All Booked Up. No work of fiction could ever include that magnificent confection and remain credible.
Erstwhile Garden doesn't exist. Sure, there's a retirement village abutting the Campbell shops, but it doesn't look like a prison. Not now nor in its previous incarnation which was even more human in design.
The flats on Blamey Avenue aren't on the Constitution Avenue corner. Not even close. Hundreds of metres away. There's a whole other intersection between the Vasey Crescent corner where they are actually located and Constitution Avenue. You'd think as a Campbell resident and a taxidriver, I'd know this. But sometimes my mental map and the real world aren't quite in synch. I see streets as srtraight lines, even when, like Adelaide Avenue, they are bent better than a banana. And bits of empty land get compressed to nothing.
Perhaps my biggest clanger is the waiting room at the McKay Gardens medical centre. There isn't one. There's a central garden, where people might meet and wait, but in the middle of winter you'd have to be a hardy soul to linger. I might rewrite that scene to have Kim cooling his heels while he waits for Colonel Kern, who is turning out to be more of a character than I first imagined.
Olivia. She predates the whole novel, being a co-character in a short story I'd once imagined. I'm not sure if the taxidriver in the story was Harley or a fictional me, but she existed all right. She didn't have a name, and only the fuzziest description in my mind.
Every author knows how characters can sparkle into life, making their own way through a work of fiction while the author looks on helplessly, scribbling down their unexpected adventures. Olivia's like that. But worse. She's jumped out of my mind and into someone else's. Her name, her description, her lover are the creation of a cowriter. We two drove down Route 66 a few weeks back, discussing where this novel would go and possibilities for others in a series. And now she's throwing in plot twists, characters, names and descriptions. She's even writing Olivia's backstory. And refusing to let me read it!
I should be finished some time in January. I'm not quite a third of the way through the whole story. I know what's going to happen in broad terms, but not the precise details. Assuming it all works out and I'm not thrown any googlies by my partner in crime, I'll then sit down and revise it, work on the dialogue, cut out any repetition, iron out inconsistencies, and publish it on Lulu, taking down my blogsite and commencing another serial novel.
My main worry is that all the characters sound alike - sound like me. Ann is nowhere near as much the Californian babe she should be. Quint should have more foibles, be more lovable. Kim should be more into bureaucratese. And Harley should be more sophisticated than he's turning out to be.
I'll look on this online publication as a first draft. I've repeated myself in some descriptions of Canberra - I'll have to go back to get rid of duplicate scenes. And I've dropped a clanger or two along the way. Monash Drive and the Campbell shops aren't going to be found by earnest readers retracing the steps of the characters. No Monash Drive, to begin with, and the path reserved for the motorway through Campbell bears no relation to the thoroughfare I've described. That's okay. That's deliberate. I've realigned my fictional street to give a cross section of the suburb, and to have it end on a Constitution Avenue corner, just across from the ASIO site. Where I've installed a major character in a block of non-existent flats.
Heartbake and Ann's bookshop don't exist in Campbell shops. The knowledgeable wine merchant is there, and I'll describe the rest of it faithfully, but Heartbake has been moved across from Manuka and restaffed. Ann's bookshop is every second-hand bookshop I've ever loved, with the exception of All Booked Up. No work of fiction could ever include that magnificent confection and remain credible.
Erstwhile Garden doesn't exist. Sure, there's a retirement village abutting the Campbell shops, but it doesn't look like a prison. Not now nor in its previous incarnation which was even more human in design.
The flats on Blamey Avenue aren't on the Constitution Avenue corner. Not even close. Hundreds of metres away. There's a whole other intersection between the Vasey Crescent corner where they are actually located and Constitution Avenue. You'd think as a Campbell resident and a taxidriver, I'd know this. But sometimes my mental map and the real world aren't quite in synch. I see streets as srtraight lines, even when, like Adelaide Avenue, they are bent better than a banana. And bits of empty land get compressed to nothing.
Perhaps my biggest clanger is the waiting room at the McKay Gardens medical centre. There isn't one. There's a central garden, where people might meet and wait, but in the middle of winter you'd have to be a hardy soul to linger. I might rewrite that scene to have Kim cooling his heels while he waits for Colonel Kern, who is turning out to be more of a character than I first imagined.
Olivia. She predates the whole novel, being a co-character in a short story I'd once imagined. I'm not sure if the taxidriver in the story was Harley or a fictional me, but she existed all right. She didn't have a name, and only the fuzziest description in my mind.
Every author knows how characters can sparkle into life, making their own way through a work of fiction while the author looks on helplessly, scribbling down their unexpected adventures. Olivia's like that. But worse. She's jumped out of my mind and into someone else's. Her name, her description, her lover are the creation of a cowriter. We two drove down Route 66 a few weeks back, discussing where this novel would go and possibilities for others in a series. And now she's throwing in plot twists, characters, names and descriptions. She's even writing Olivia's backstory. And refusing to let me read it!
I should be finished some time in January. I'm not quite a third of the way through the whole story. I know what's going to happen in broad terms, but not the precise details. Assuming it all works out and I'm not thrown any googlies by my partner in crime, I'll then sit down and revise it, work on the dialogue, cut out any repetition, iron out inconsistencies, and publish it on Lulu, taking down my blogsite and commencing another serial novel.