I am blank!
There are no words to adequately describe what I’m feeling with everything that’s happening right now so I won’t try.
But please stay tuned. I’m hoping to start documenting my journey to publication right here.
Fongeers crissod. (Oh, that what you get for trying to type with your fingers crossed!!!!) LOL
“We’ll build a world of our own that only we can share…” (Oh, you’re probably too young to remember The Seekers!)
As writers we have to build worlds we can share with our readers, layering our manuscripts with info and images, sprinkling a little setting here, a few senses there.
For inspiration, I’m getting out, away from my desk and the imaginary characters and places I create, and into the real world. In other words, I’m doing lots of looking, listening, feeling, smelling and touching (oh la la!!). Seriously, it’s amazing what you notice when you focus on breaking down something as simple as a walk on the beach into touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell.
I also went to Ulmarra the other day. About an hour or so by car, it is a quintessential Aussie country town.
While my Calingarry Crossing is a fictional town, I drew a lot of inspiration from Ulmarra’s hotel (no come on, I mean inspiration from an architectural perspective!!) Even while drawing inspiration from an existing place, I think using a fictional town in your writing is much better than a real town. I recently started reading a novel but in chapter eight the author slams Coffs Harbour as both a place to live and visit.
Why do it? Why alienate readers when you can make up a town that is slightly north or south, give it cute name and get on with a story that keeps people interested?
I stopped reading.
So I’m sticking to building fictional worlds. Here are a few pics of Ulmarra.
I discovered a fetish recently and it’s (oh, there I go again!) using too many ‘its’.
An e-publisher recently requested I submit a full manuscript and in the process of preparing the 90k word ms to send, I did a FIND and HIGHLIGHT.
Thousands of the little buggers lit up. (My ms looked like the Harbour Bridge on NYE.)
So I’ve spent the week de-itting the ms.
It amazes me when it… (Oops! Let me try that again)
I am amazed how replacing an ‘it’ can improve clarity and flow in a manuscript.
Not long ago I overcame my ‘ly’ fascination. I remain confident that this fetish (no doubt I will discover more) can be controlled without any intervention or drugs — other than caffeine as I attempt to de-it my other two completed manuscripts.