Isobelle Carmody and letting a story unfold
Recently at Conflux, the speculative fiction conference in Canberra, I listened to an interesting interview with Guest of Honour, Isobelle Carmody. I've heard Isobelle speak before and she is always excellent, honest and generous. One of the things she was lamenting was that publishers don't always give authors time to let a story fully unfold. Given the commercial imperatives of the publishing industry, I can understand why. And yet Isobelle's yearning for time for a story to reveal its full depths and richness was genuine, and it struck a chord.
As a pantser, my entire writing journey is one of discovery, and like any explorer, the journey is rarely a straight line between points A and B. I suspect I would be a quicker writer as a planner, but for me, the joy is in the discovery of the story and in the gradual revelation of characters' hearts and souls, and through them, perhaps my own heart and soul too.
Isobelle's words have come back to me today, on a hot day on the edge of Melbourne, where the north winds are rapidly turning the green paddocks around me to gold. As discussed in earlier blogs, I am editing Book 1 Heart Hunter of the Hunter duology.
As also discussed, this is not the first edit, in fact, I have lost count. I suspect if I went back through my files, iterations of this story (that started as PhD thesis) would be close to 20. So why haven't I stopped? Signed off on it? Launched it? Or given up? I certainly have a queue of other works, such as my Angel series, waiting for my return, but Hunter still holds me.
Why? Because I haven't really discovered the full depths of my two main characters: Fleet/Chant and Tel, nor the full meaning of their respective journeys. I keep getting 3/4's of the way through Book 1 and then going back to the beginning. Today I think I nailed the voice and by so doing, I think I've broken through into what lies beneath Fleet/Chant and Tel's skins.
Why today? I don't know. I've done nothing special except persevere. Or maybe it's the importance of time, as Isobelle pointed out.
As a pantser, my entire writing journey is one of discovery, and like any explorer, the journey is rarely a straight line between points A and B. I suspect I would be a quicker writer as a planner, but for me, the joy is in the discovery of the story and in the gradual revelation of characters' hearts and souls, and through them, perhaps my own heart and soul too.
Isobelle's words have come back to me today, on a hot day on the edge of Melbourne, where the north winds are rapidly turning the green paddocks around me to gold. As discussed in earlier blogs, I am editing Book 1 Heart Hunter of the Hunter duology.
As also discussed, this is not the first edit, in fact, I have lost count. I suspect if I went back through my files, iterations of this story (that started as PhD thesis) would be close to 20. So why haven't I stopped? Signed off on it? Launched it? Or given up? I certainly have a queue of other works, such as my Angel series, waiting for my return, but Hunter still holds me.
Why? Because I haven't really discovered the full depths of my two main characters: Fleet/Chant and Tel, nor the full meaning of their respective journeys. I keep getting 3/4's of the way through Book 1 and then going back to the beginning. Today I think I nailed the voice and by so doing, I think I've broken through into what lies beneath Fleet/Chant and Tel's skins.
Why today? I don't know. I've done nothing special except persevere. Or maybe it's the importance of time, as Isobelle pointed out.
date
newest »
newest »
― Dave Eggers