Struggling for Words - 24th April 2024
So Struggling for Words is late this week, what can I say, other than ‘sorry’. I was on holiday, more of that shortly, I also had some unexpected visitors for a couple of days, which took all my free time.
Thanks for continuing to read Struggling for Words, I’m hoping you find at least some of it worth the effort.
I’m continuing to post free chapters of A Handkerchief for Maria and this week it’s Chapter 12, where Maria begins to face her toughest challenges yet. Click the link below to read it.
If you need to catch up, all the previous chapters are available via the following link.
I mentioned I’d been on holiday. We spent a few days in Bruges, Belgium. A beautiful town full of old buildings, canals, waffles, beer and chocolate. To say it’s full of chocolate is a serious understatement – it’s everywhere. Three days is hardly enough to do it justice.
Whilst there I visited a gallery dedicated to the work of surrealist Salvador Dali. Whilst his better known works are spread around the world’s museums, on display in this gallery are sketches and dozens of woodcuts he’d produced as book illustrations. Dali’s intent appeared to be to force us to question assumptions, sometimes by shock tactics, sometimes with humour, and it occurred to me there are parallels with writing. If we’re not exploring the human condition in our work, what’s the point?
There’s a new article in the Let's talk about writing series, this time on whether or not to use software/apps for planning a novel.
When I returned from Bruges I ran a workshop for a local writers group – another reason Struggling for Words didn’t get out.
As part of this, the group undertook some exercises which helped come up with an initial idea using newspaper cuttings, then invent the ‘normal world’ of their protagonist, they took this on to develop an ‘inciting incident’, and finally established a number of barriers which their hero would need to overcome to fulfil their deepest desire.
The exercises took less than twenty minutes and it was staggering both how inventive the writers had been from a standing start, and how many of them really did have the bones of a novel in place if they wished to pursue it.
Creativity is a wonderful thing.
That’s all for now, let me know in comments if there’s something in particular you’d like to hear about.