before i begin:
i'll be at the African Book Festival in Berlin 18 - 20 July - if you're going, come find me and say hello.
i'm spending a WHOLE DAY giving feedback on manuscripts to new writers with Writing New South Wales on 7 August. Sign up to get your manuscript assessed.
i’m running my Writing Romance and Realistic Intimacy workshop again for Writers SA 16-17th August - stay tuned for more details.
i am co-teaching a creative writing residential retreat with Christopher Wakling for Arvon 8 - 13th September. Last few spots left.
now on to the today of things…
dear reader,
i have been thinking and thinking and thinking. thinking about what useful writing is. what useless writing is. what great and good and bad writing is. thinking about all of this and of course, thinking about my work in progress. i'm coming to the end of it, which is always a sort of sad feeling. like coming amicably to the end of a really long, life changing relationship. it's not a quick thing though; it's a slow division of assets, memories and conversations. you reckon over what you learnt, you hope you had an impact, and then you say goodbye, until the next time you meet. you let time pass and then when you reunite, you rehash everything you ever said to each other and try to come to a better, clearer, more evolved place.
this is actually the fully edited place of your novel, where you are both ready at last, to go out into the world, see other people, maybe experiment again.
perhaps i sound dramatic because the writing process is very much about drama, whether you're wrestling with it, trying to bring out more of it or running away from it. the process is dramatic. get into it.
i've been enjoying getting into it, disappearing into a world of my own invention, trying to push through truth amongst the imagined things, trying to be substantial in my crafting of it. and most of it has been thinking.
i’m trying to do a lot more of that - of thinking more and talking less. i process internally, i always have, and that's not to say i don't see the value in saying things out loud, in untangling tricky bits of emotion with spoken words, but my inside voice is louder than my outside one. perhaps i shouldn't be listening to that voice as much as i usually am because it tends to be spirally and disconnected from reality, but it is what it is. it knows things.
it's my story centre, that thinking voice. the way i narrate ideas and then bring them to life. thinking helps me get closer to the thing i really want to say.
maybe we could all do with a bit more thinking time, more consideration of our actions, before we act.
that's the function of really writing, of sitting down to get that story out. being with your own thoughts and working through the knotty bits of character, plot, structure, narrative and voice, to get to the root of the real thing you're trying to say.
thinking is good.
if you write, you must also think. you must think a lot.
so, dear reader, what are you thinking about?
MB x