February is here! While I did manage to finish the outline for my novel I also decided changes needed to be made. I have extended my time frame to finish the outline by a week. Hopefully by the time I write my next blog at the end of next week I will be ready to start writing. Writing an outline is fun but it is also easy to get carried away and it turns into a monster of sorts! In fact a friend told me that an outline is not a novel when it is finished. Maybe he knows something I don’t! I’m outlining two different time periods with two POV characters and possibly three, so with all those dates and interweaving of characters, events and time frames . . .
The beauty of an outline is that I can write any chapter in any order. In a notebook I write answers to my research, characters names, meanings of characters names, in fact anything that pops into my head relating to my novel. I always carry a notebook and pen/pencil with me wherever I go. I have several filled notebooks already on my desk although a quarter of what’s written in them will not be used. It’s a gathering process from which I winnow out what I will use in my story. I don’t research greatly before I start writing because I never know what I will need to research; why research shoes if your character doesn’t wear them? I do the usual things that most writers do: listen to music of the era, watch movies, read books and diaries. I find diaries are a very good source of information as are contemporary books from the era. As I mentioned earlier it’s fun! Have a good writing week and thanks to the people who have commented on my blog and are now following it, cheers Elise
Tag Archives: books
My Writing Journey
Filed under A Writer’s Notebook
Fifty Shades
Hopefully in 2013 we can expect more from authors than books like Fifty Shades of Grey. I haven’t read them. Do they send a good message to the children in our community (especially boys who we have to teach to respect women) who while they do not usually read such books(perhaps a peek), certainly hear mum and her friends and dad discussing them? Politicians on television laugh about these books and confess in a schoolboyish way to reading them. Books for the rubbish bin. Teach our sons to respect women.
Filed under A Writer’s Notebook
Book Waterfall
Artist: Alicia Martins
Casa de America, Madrid
Waterfall made of 5000 books.
Babylon Confidential, Claudia Christian with Morgan Grant Buchanan
“Babylon Confidential is compelling, horrifying and uplifting. Claudia Christian has an amazing story of glitz and darkeness and ultimately a journey as strange and exciting as her films.” -Kevin J Anderson, New York Times Bestselling Coauthor of Sisterhood of Dune.
This is a story that will break your heart at times.
When actress Claudia Christian flees a troubled childhood and moves to Hollywood at age 17, she steps through the looking glass into another world.
This is a story that is sometimes shocking, often humorous, always captivating – Babylon Confidential is a story of hope that will inspire and enlighten you.
Written by Claudia Christian with Morgan Grant Buchanan.
Filed under A Writer’s Notebook
Colette
French writer Colette. A writer who captures precious, painful and uplifting moments. I have recently read her novella ‘Ripening Seed.’
To quote from the back page of the novella: Sharp and sad, haunted on every page by the sights, smells and sounds of the sea coast, this evocation of wounded, and wounding, innocence will be read with tears of sympathy and deep, lasting pleasure.
I loved this story.
Filed under A Writer’s Notebook
Book Across the Years
People from long ago can speak to us through books.
Filed under A Writer’s Notebook
what elise wrote 