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half-face illness

A bits and pieces sort of post this morning.  Brain is not cooperating fully and is demanding eggs and fruitcake.

Working on novel yesterday – not the ‘finished’ draft, but the half-written novel I abandoned in order to write the other novel. I was so incredibly stuck with it when I gave it up, and couldn’t see anything worthwhile in it at all. A few months later and I have somehow once again found the thread of story and interest in it. The lesson I’m taking from this is that sometimes, you just need to back off from things for a while. If something isn’t working, maybe it just needs time.

Also I’m happy to say that finishing a draft of my other novel has given me the confidence to believe that I can finish a draft of this novel. And I hope it will be a somewhat cleaner draft, although that might be wishing for too much.

Finished reading Book 2 of 1Q84 last night. I think I’ll finish Book 3 before I pass comment, but there were a couple of things I found hugely disappointing and definitely want to blog about.

I am still lurgified, but now I have this weird, half-face illness, in which half my face is ill (running nose, swollen glands, headache, earache) and the other half of my face is totally fine. Bored of being ill now.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll have something more interesting to say for myself. Am off to get breakfast and write more stuff.

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stuff and things

Wrote 400 words of a new short story yesterday. (Go me!)

After the thoughtful discussions here and on facebook yesterday about settings in fiction, I found myself having a very clear idea of when and where these new characters were. It’s interesting to remind myself that the very fact of writing about a place adds an element of fiction to a realistic setting. This can play out in lots of ways. For example, in my story ‘A Rose is Rose’, I had the same setting twice – once as a fictionalised version of a real place, and then as a highly stylised fictionalised version of the same place, where the added fictional elements came from the imagination of the character in the ‘realistic’ setting.

Setting is endlessly interesting and, in my opinion, central to storytelling of all kinds.

I am currently reading ‘Baba Yaga Laid an Egg’, by Dubravka Ugrešić, which is not as good as I want it to be. But maybe I’m being a bit unfair – I’m waiting for my copy of 1Q84 to arrive, which I think is going to be awesome, and  I’m just passing time with this book until it arrives.

Am still lurgified. Dog is depressed because of the fireworks every night. I’m thinking about buying an early bird membership for WFC 2013 in Brighton.  Going to try to get a bit further with my new story today.

Until tomorrow, then!

 

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love medicine

I am lurgified. My head feels like it has been stuffed with bees. In case you are not sure, this is a bad thing. Please feel sorry for me.

Anyway. On with the blogathon.

Recently I read Love Medicine, by Louise Erdrich. It is beautifully written. Her characters are so vividly realised that you can see them, hear them speak. They walk off the page and sit down next to you, telling their stories.  Not only that, but their homes, the towns in which they live, the shape of the reservations, are made utterly concrete and real through Erdrich’s prose.

It made me think about how good writers are detailed and authentic in their settings. I think setting is the most difficult thing for many writers to master. If you do not come from an interesting place, a strong culture, a turbulent history, how do you create deep, realistic settings in your stories?

I am pretty sure that this is one problem that drives many writers to fantasy and science fiction. Writing fantastical worlds is easier than making the truth of how we live now come to life on the page. Not that there is anything wrong with fantastic or futuristic settings – as long as they are well rendered (honest, plausible, detailed), they are a vital element of good storytelling. But isn’t it a little bit easier, when you can draw your own map of your own world?

I’ve travelled a little bit and lived in a few different places, and whilst that definitely feeds the imagination, there is also a lack of depth in my knowledge of places. I currently live in a city that is rather uninspiring to me, although I happen to know it extremely well. The ideal is probably to live in a place that you know deeply and which you also find inspiring. I think writers in such circumstances are lucky indeed!

The issue of setting comes up in my writing all the time, and it is what I struggle with probably more than any other aspect of my writing at present. Do you struggle with setting, or does it come easily to you? Which writers do you think handle setting well? And do you think I should move to another city in order to improve my writing?