Sunday, August 23, 2009

On writing

I've started back at uni. This time I'm doing a Graduate Certificate in Creative Industries (Creative Writing) and I'm having a ball. I haven't written a short story in four or five years and in the first week of term I wrote three. I've written a few more since then as well. I'm trying to find an interesting story premise for around the 1500 word length that doesn't end up being a conversation between two people or a monologue. It's not long enough to have a lot of characters in so I'm not sure how I'll do it. Meanwhile, trying means I've begun a series of short stories that are exploring relationships between women - to the extreme, of course; I could do nothing less.

I'm also doing a subject that focuses on the novel. The major assignment is to prepare a partial which I think is extremely useful. My only problem is I need a partial now, not the end of semester.

I went to the RWAustralia conference last week and pitched a book to a publisher and an editor. They've both asked to see a partial even though they don't really deal with the kind of books I write. I assumed that to mean I talked the talk really well and they want to see if I can actually write. Even if both reject the manuscript I'll at least have a polished partial available. My problem is knowing when to stop polishing. I hate writing synopses and know I'm not good at it but I've finally got one that sounds close to what I want it to - but the first three chapters don't match it that well. I'll have to go back to the book and ramp up the tension a bit so that what I said in the synopsis is actually happening.

Meanwhile the clock is ticking. I can't leave it too long before sending it in or they'll forget all about me, but I don't want to send inferior work either. And that's the end of my break time. Time to get back to work.

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