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I am a bit surprised to find myself home. Varuna is such a dream-place.
I have taken a quick look at my blog and can't get over how much fun you all had while I was gone. Thank you, Brian and Kaaron and Nicole and everyone else. Murders and cooking and writing. And turning into mothers.
I had a ton of things to report on, but they are on my USB and I am reconsidering. You don't really want all the exciting bits of life in the Blue Mountains, do you? If you do I can do a real report.
The novel I ended up working on was the one I have been dreaming about writing for a while but got bogged down in structure. Last year I gave up on etnirely and turned what I had written to date into a claustrophobic novel about one quietly insane mirror and its many ants. I edited that one while I was away and I might have to start sending it into the big wide world soon. Or I could bite the bulet and hunt an agent.
Anyway, I started again on the parallel moden/medieval while I was away because the idea needed exorcising. I moved most modern happenings to Katoomba which meant I could research as I went. I don't know why Canberra didn't work as a setting and Katoomba did, but the moment I made that change the story just flowed and I have done 50,000 words, which is almost all of the modern section and just a little of the Medieval.
As I describe it, it sounds a bit like Illuminations, but it isn't, really. No footnotes!! Nothing academic at all, in fact. The whole idea behind it was that if human beings are faced with a set of problems, they make choices partly according to who they are as a person, and partly acording to where they live and when they live. I wanted to railway track lives - similar choices with the actual outcomes of the choices according to person, place, period. My young medieval woman does things like fight to defend her town's indpendence and fight to keep her own independence. Modern Priscilla is older and more beaten by life - her choices are more about emotional integrity and whether dreams are acheivable past a certain age. This means that each of them faces the same questions in their own way.
I hope it works. My gut feeling now says that it does. And it has some good things in it. It has love and death and private conversations with the Three Sisters. It has an insane cat and lefties and an apothecary. I am aiming for a battle scene.
I feel like a school student who has reported on what she did during the holidays. I might have written 50,000 words, but what I really did during my 'holdiays' was have a fabulous time.
If any of my writing friends have even a whiff of Varuna (and I believe there are some opportunities for people outside Australia - lots of Irish writers seem to end up there) then go for it. Don't wait. Apply now.
I have taken a quick look at my blog and can't get over how much fun you all had while I was gone. Thank you, Brian and Kaaron and Nicole and everyone else. Murders and cooking and writing. And turning into mothers.
I had a ton of things to report on, but they are on my USB and I am reconsidering. You don't really want all the exciting bits of life in the Blue Mountains, do you? If you do I can do a real report.
The novel I ended up working on was the one I have been dreaming about writing for a while but got bogged down in structure. Last year I gave up on etnirely and turned what I had written to date into a claustrophobic novel about one quietly insane mirror and its many ants. I edited that one while I was away and I might have to start sending it into the big wide world soon. Or I could bite the bulet and hunt an agent.
Anyway, I started again on the parallel moden/medieval while I was away because the idea needed exorcising. I moved most modern happenings to Katoomba which meant I could research as I went. I don't know why Canberra didn't work as a setting and Katoomba did, but the moment I made that change the story just flowed and I have done 50,000 words, which is almost all of the modern section and just a little of the Medieval.
As I describe it, it sounds a bit like Illuminations, but it isn't, really. No footnotes!! Nothing academic at all, in fact. The whole idea behind it was that if human beings are faced with a set of problems, they make choices partly according to who they are as a person, and partly acording to where they live and when they live. I wanted to railway track lives - similar choices with the actual outcomes of the choices according to person, place, period. My young medieval woman does things like fight to defend her town's indpendence and fight to keep her own independence. Modern Priscilla is older and more beaten by life - her choices are more about emotional integrity and whether dreams are acheivable past a certain age. This means that each of them faces the same questions in their own way.
I hope it works. My gut feeling now says that it does. And it has some good things in it. It has love and death and private conversations with the Three Sisters. It has an insane cat and lefties and an apothecary. I am aiming for a battle scene.
I feel like a school student who has reported on what she did during the holidays. I might have written 50,000 words, but what I really did during my 'holdiays' was have a fabulous time.
If any of my writing friends have even a whiff of Varuna (and I believe there are some opportunities for people outside Australia - lots of Irish writers seem to end up there) then go for it. Don't wait. Apply now.