I am writing or, more to the point, doing this before I write. I have laid the foundations and now I’m building the trellises and the supports around which the plants of my story will grow. (image found here) I still agree with John Fowles when he says that writing is an organic process. He … Read More
planning
The Reader: Philip Pullman and The Storyteller’s Responsibility
The Summer issue of The Reader is, as usual, full of wonderful things (I discovered The Reader over on dovegreyreader’s blog a while ago, thank you dovegrey). But the reason this issue (No. 30) is particularly wonderful to me is because of the essay by Philip Pullman called The Storyteller’s Responsibility. It beautifully describes what … Read More
Foot Planning
In the poem called ‘Words’ for Lucy in Don’t Let them Tell you How to Grieve, there are these lines: one foot in front of the otherand don’t forget to breathe They are the last lines in a poem which is full of the words of comfort that people send to a grieving person, and … Read More
To plan or not to plan a novel?
That is the question. A writing colleague and I were talking the other day about whether we should or shouldn’t plan our novels. I said I felt as I’d heard Rose Tremain say she’d felt: that if she plans, the subsequent writing bores her and if the writing bores her, it will surely bore readers … Read More