Thursday 22 December 2011

Wednesday 21 December 2011

The New Course

I signed up a while ago to this.

Got the message today - I have homework! Eeek.

To be posted up by Jan 2nd (although there is room for leniancy apparently).

Someone remind me why I do courses.

Tuesday 13 December 2011

Just until I win

"How about a scene on a railway platform with characters fencing with umbrellas?" I ask my two older children.

They nod, acknowledging it as a feasible vision, considering the parameters I have already outlined.

I ask them for some fencing terms.

They turn briefly from the computer game they are playing, mutter a few things which I scribble down. It doesn't look much, but it might do.

I return to my laptop. Open up the file. Try to get my characters off the train.

But my characters don't want to get off. No. They want to talk about cathedrals (Nottingham vs Chichester cathedral) and sheep and job-hunting and sleeping with PAs and the death-rate of Managing Directors. They want to shuffle papers. And argue.

Get off! I say. Get off the bloody train! I need you on the platform. You have an appointment with an umbrella fencing battle. And you're late.

The train approaching Platform 1 is the 14.20 to Derby. Change here for Nottingham.

Finally the mad one (or possibly not mad) cooperates. He sees the woman from the bank standing on the platform at Derby station. Plot-wise, she probably - no definitely - shouldn't be there. But I am grateful for her appearance if it gives my characters an incentive to do something other than squabble among themselves. At last they get off the train.

It's a page of A4 dialogue too late.

I've been typing for an hour, and still no fencing scene.

And a bigger problem: I should have changed narrative voice at some point, according to the requirements of my assignment. I don't want to change narrative voice. I am as stubborn as my characters.

I think about writing poetry. But I have this assignment to finish.

I open up a game of solitaire on the laptop. Just one game, I say. Or until I win.