Rewrite: Day 16. He came. He saw. He conquered.

Today, I sent off my short story to The Bath Short Story Competition and I crunched Chapter 9 of the novel but I'm struggling with the dominant point of view in the story, that of the protagonist, Broderick. It should be straightforward but it's not. I can't blame the paper or the pen. I can't blame the computer. The problem is in my brain. 
What did Broderick do? 
He came. He saw. He conquered. 

I went looking for help on the web and here, below, is a summary of some of what I found.  Imagine ...

Life is hard 
A crisis devastates the protagonist’s world
It is a lose-lose situation for the protagonist

The protagonist (Z) is working against the clock
Z walks into trouble
Z works against insurmountable odds 

Z is teased, tested and tempted
Z has too much to handle
Z is run ragged trying to please everyone and keep all the plates in the air
Z is moving towards pleasure and away from pain

Ultimately, up the ante.

Know what the protagonist wants but frustrate its fulfilment
Distract, interrupt and delay
Add conflict, barriers, complications and failure

(OK. I'll see what I can do.)

All this good advice, and much more, can be found at Writers Digest.
In particular,
Nine tricks to writing suspense fiction. Simon Wood. 
How to up the stakes for your main character. Victoria Lynn Schmidt.  

Ends 

The Rules. The Rules.

Apologies, but I have to get this write, right.

It is submission day. The story is complete and ready to go, bar one last spit and polish. So, what am I trying to do? These brief extracts from the rules are for my own benefit (and the comments are my own); my brain does not deal well with rules.  
These are The Rules for The Bath Short Story Award.

• Any theme or subject (OK)
• Maximum length 2,200 words (OK)
• Typed, double or 1.5 spaced (think I can deal with that) (OK)
• Plain legible font (what the heck? Times New Roman? boring) (OK)
• Each page should be numbered (Yo!) (OK)
• Each page should ... carry the title of the story (Header/Footer, right?) (OK)
• Online entries must be submitted as an email attachment (No problem ...) (Done)
• Online entries must be submitted ... in PDF format only (... hells bells! PDF?) (OK. Sussed it)
• Closing date ... is Saturday, March 30th, 2013 (Under control. OK)
  
• There is a fee of £5 for each story submitted (Oh-kay... Oke Dokie. Dosh, eh?)
• You may pay via PayPal (Yeah. Got that, done that, somewhere, sometime, somehow; I'll ask the wife) (I did. She knew. Done)
• Entries must not have been previously published (No problem-0: OK)
• Do not put your name on the pages of your story (No, no, no) (OK)
• On the entry form:
• Contact details 
• name
• address
• tel. no
• e-mail address (Yo) (Done)
• The title of the story(Yo) (Done)
• Wordcount (Yo) (Done)
• (Yo-Yo) (All done)

That's some load of rules: legible font? PDF format? PayPal? Hope that's all of them. This is seriously challenging. Good job I've got four days to complete submission. Where to begin?
Existential panic. (Arrrrrh. All done. Sent. Scary moment.)

The Bath Short Story Award: The Rules - the real rules, unexpurgated.

Ends

Rewrite: Day 15. Long story, short story

I achieved three things today: Chapter 8 of the novel, 750 words on 'morning pages' and a short story for The Bath Short Story Award.
Chapter 8 is the door into Part Two of the novel. This is where it gets exciting, isn't it? If Part One of the novel is the set up and Part Three is the run-out, then Part Two is where it all happens. Part Two is, it seems to me, where novelists can enjoy themselves, break all the rules and let rip. In her interview in The Guardian on Saturday, Julie Myerson is reported as saying: 

"I increasingly feel that writers aren't taking risks and that disappoints me. I like brave writing."

Part Two is the place for 'brave writing'. I'm not sure if I managed any today but ...

One thing that could help 'brave writing' is the 750 words webpage, which gives you a platform for your daily free writing. Write anything you want, but write 750 words. This morning was my first serious attempt and I ended up with more than I needed. After 350 words or so, I got lost in the writing and only came to the surface with 920 words on the board. I didn't notice the words tick by.

The third thing was the short story. I added some material and then polished and etched the text to make it shine. I think it's ready. I have been reading through on the Tab2 but when I wanted to make a correction involving more than three words the Tab2 crashed. Three words? I dashed upstairs to the studio and made the corrections on the laptop. All fixed now, I think. Tomorrow will be submission day - but I'd better make sure I read the Rules first. Not my strong point. It's sub clinical autism. Well, that's my excuse.

• The Guardian, Julie Myerson interview: A life in Writing
• 750 words webpage: 750 words
• The Bath Short Story Award : The Rules

Ends

Rewrite: Day 14. Week 2.

No rewriting today.
It's Sunday and time to back off for a few hours. Although I did add 700 words or so to a short story to bring it up to length for The Bath Short Story Award. That will need finishing tomorrow and then I'll have to send it off.
There are the stirrings of some ideas in my mind that are relevant to the rewrite - about how to engage with some of the antagonistas and about how to tell story.

Tonight we watched Beasts of the Southern Wild on DVD. That's storytelling. Perplexing. Entrancing. Touching depths. Magical. I'm still reverberating to Neil Gaiman's storytelling heard on the Neverland radio serialisation and seen on the YouTube May Tale video (see previous posts).

So, a new week begins tomorrow but it's a short week - only two days! with Easter at the end and family birthdays to negotiate en route - so I need to do five days work on Monday and Tuesday and after that I think there will be silence. For a while.

Beasts of the Southern Wild - webpage

Rewrite: Day 13. A short break.

No rewriting today. I'm taking a short break to regain critical distance.
It is a short break in another sense, too.
The closing date for the Bath Short Story Award is rushing up. To quote Rule 3:

Closing date for receipt of entries is Saturday, March 30th, 2013 at Midnight GMT.

'Midnight GMT' and then the clocks go forward and we are in British Summer Time. We hope. It's like something out of a fairy story.

I had hoped to do some work on a short story during my writer retreat but that didn't happen so now I have to crack on with it. I had done some work on a story before I went away and I had been thinking about it in terms of structure. I don't really understand short fiction. It leaves me feeling inadequate. Although whether that is the fault of the fiction or something I'm missing, I'm not sure. My wife suggested I should dig out a story I had half written once before, several years ago, but I didn't feel convinced. I didn't know how to finish it. Then, this morning, inspiration came, in the form of a facebook post by my daughter, and I knew how to finish the story. I saw, in my memory, my daughter, aged four or five, playing at shops under the stairs in our house in the hills in Mid-Wales. We don't live there now but, in memory, it is an important place for us all. We lived there for eight years and the children did their growing up there.
 
This afternoon, I dug out the half written story. It's not bad, as far as it goes. It stands at 1,170 words or so. Perhaps, if I develop my new ending, it will come up to scratch. It's worth a try. It falls within the word count range required. To quote Rule 2:

Maximum length is 2,200 words.

The other story, the one with structural problems - I'll try and work on that too during this little Sabbath. That story stands at 4,400 words at present and it needs a good pruning. Something for tomorrow. On Monday, I get back to the day job and The Rewrite. The Rewrite will go forward into Part 2 and Chapter Eight. The temptation is to go back and re-rewrite Chapter One but I must push on. Chapter One needs fixing but it can wait. 
I'll fix it later.

• The Bath Short Story Award:
• The rules
• My daughter's facebook page:
• Crafty Bella by Rosie

Ends

Rewrite: Day 12. Driving home - a parable

This is last night's post.
I didn't blog last night. I was depressed, a little. I was in The First Circle of Despair. I'd made the mistake of reading through some of the stuff I'd done during my writer retreat before driving home. It was rubbish. Hence the despair. You spend three whole days devoted to the stuff and it turns out rubbish! I mean! ...
It's OK. I've had a sleep. I'm home. There are advantages to being home. One of them is going for the mandatory walk with the dog, and the wife, if I can put it like that without, you know, offending anyone. One of them always has something sensible or encouraging to say. 
But that's for another blog.

It took me FIVE HOURS to drive home yesterday afternoon. Of course it was my own fault, my own choice. I plotted a route designed to avoid the worst of the incoming weather (snow from the north), the Friday night madness on the motorway and the toll for the Severn Bridge. I had no money in my wallet! OK? So I went up the A38, onto the M5, off the M5 at Gloucester and onto the A40 to Ross-on-Wye. What could go wrong with that? I checked the travel maps on-line before I left. There were no reported incidents. Road works. Queues of traffic. Filton. M5. A40. I must have spent the best part of an hour crawling along at an average of no more than ten miles an hour and it took me over two hours to get to Abergavenny. It takes half an hour if you use the Severn Bridge.

By Brecon, though, the road, the car and my mind were perfectly one, attuned to the greater reality all around. It was one of those out of the body experiences. I could do no wrong. Careful. Do not try this at home. But when it happens it is a gift. Part of the awareness of the greater reality is an awareness of the unpredictability, let's say, of other drivers and their behaviour. Perfect separation from danger is one of the feature of this state of transportation. Approaching Llandovery I passed the monument to the tragedy, last century, no, the century before that, when a stage-coach drove off the cliff in foul weather. It reminds one of the possibilities.
A quick stop in Llandovery and back on the road again, back in the groove, running on rails.
What has this to do with writing? This: Frustration; Slog; Nothing going right; all of these were surpassed in time by the sublime. It can happen. It does happen. It will happen. I got home last night tired but strangely elated and aware that there were other possibilities - other realities - and that there was something worth striving for. This morning I was confirmed in this new optimism by two things:

• My daughter's stall in Beaconsfield Village Market (FaceBook pages):
• The Poster for the Market
• Crafty Bella's stall

Rosie's blog:
Crafty Bella 

• A Neil Gaiman short story on YouTube:
• May Tale (It's brilliant.) 

Neil Gaiman:            ‏
@neilhimself

Ends

Two Top No-Nos: Why your submission fails

A very helpful post by Kristin Nelson (which came to my attention via Twitter) on why, as an editor, she passes on scripts. She says two reasons why your manuscript/chapter submission may fail to attract the attention of an agent/editor are: 

A: There is no 'plot catalyst'  
B: There is nothing at stake 

• Read the original blog post (This is much the best idea.)
• Think about it (I've been thinking about it ever since I read it yesterday.)
• Look at your own work (Mmm. Catalyst? Stake?)
• Go for it.

Read the blog here:
Kristin Nelson

Pub Rants

nelsonagency.com
top-2-reasons-why-i-pass-on-sample-pages
 via Martina Boone @MartinaABoone

 Ends