Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Choosing a Writing Project
I haven't ben using this blog for quite a while. I have been trying to finish the story I started more than a year ago.  I seem to have finally resolved the problems and sorted out a satisfactory ending. Satisfactory, did I say. No, not entirely satisfactory, but good enough to complete the exercise. That is what this piece of writing has been, an exercise, a learning process.  I have written several short stories some of them have even been published.(in litnet and Itch) but anything longer has been much more difficult for me. I started a crime novel, but had to abandon it.  Then when I was attending Paul Mason's group he gave us a "tryptich" of stories to read and suggested we try to produce something similar. (If I remember there were three stories linked by one particular character. The first described an incident in this character's childhood and was written in his voice. The second, an incident in his youth narrated by the same character's wife and the third, a later incident related by the character's daughter. The stories put together were about as long as a short novel.  I chose the theme of Betrayal. I set the first in the seventies in the central character's early adolescence.(verkrampt childhood)  The second would be narrated by a friend and comrade at university and would be set in the eighties (student unrest) and the third narrated by a lover. (struggle)
I never got beyond the first story, which could possibly have stood on its own.Although I was pleased with the beginning, I was less pleased with the ending which was very weak and definitely needed re-writing, but I couldn't think how to improve it.  I abandoned it also.  I did finish a short novel for children. I was fairly satisfied with it, but it got lost when I acquired a new computer. Somehow it hadn't been properly backed up. Now recent technology has caused it to be out of date.  I still have fragments and might reconstruct it.  A fourth story which had a promising beginning was about a teenager with an alcoholic parent. (I had become aware of the fact that publishers like 'Youth Literature' to be full of misery and angst.) This also did not get beyond Chapter 3. 

Perhaps I may return to one or other of these, when I finish the present project, encouraged by the knowledge that I am actually able to  complete a piece of writing longer than 2000 words.
On the other hand I might do as my daughters suggest and write some more chapters of my Memoir. At least I will be sure of an audience even if the readership is confined to my family.