News & Blog
The Spiderweb Method of Writing
Writing | Posted by Carole on Wednesday 26 July 2006
I’ve just read Lili’s post about finishing her first draft. I agree with her that first drafts are crap. Mine are anyway. I would be horrified if anybody read the first words I type. They are reworked many times before I dare to call it a first draft.
A blank page is a scary thing. Different writers have different methods for filling in the blank page. I read about Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method of writing. That’s not how I do it.
Before I started writing I did a lot of arty/crafty things (everything from patchwork to macrame to photography). I’ve been trying to think of a craft metaphor. In some ways writing a book is like knitting a jumper. A single stitch is just a loop of wool. It unravels so easily. You just have to sit there and keep knitting all those single stitches until you’ve finished a row. Then you have to do more rows until you’ve finished a sleeve, including the hard bits like shaping the armhole. Finally the big pieces are sewn together and you have a functional jumper. All those single loops of wool are part of an intricate, tight fabric.
But with knitting each stitch has to be perfect the first time, each row has to be neat. To correct a mistake, you have to undo the whole thing. That’s where the knitting metaphor falls down.
I think my writing method is more of a Spiderweb method.
I’ve seen docos of spiders building their webs and they start by stringing a single, thin thread, connecting it to any handy protrusion (eg twig or picture frame). Then they gradually fill it in. The first threads are far apart. Then they put more between and finally fill in the spaces. Sometimes they go back and undo a bit and respin it. They might even unhook one of those first key connections and attach it to a different twig. The web starts with a rough and flimsy thread of silk, but ends up tight, strong and complex.
My first words are very, very rough–the bare bones of the narrative in, often, ugly sentences. There are question marks, gaps, paragraphs with ’she felt’ six times. Once I’ve finished a sequence there’s a sense of relief. Many decisions have been made, (So that’s how Ping got from A to B, I didn’t know that till now!). The story arc is now in place. Then I go back and improve the expression, seed in the detail, build up the emotion. I do that again and again. I delete slabs and rewrite them. I change the order of sentences within a paragraph, the order of paragraphs within a chapter.
I enjoy this part. Hopefully, after three or four run-throughs I don’t cringe when I read it anymore. There might even be a sentence or two I’m quite pleased with. I know when I’m getting close to a finished first draft. I lose the sense that the sequence is something I made up. It starts to feel like something that really happened, that I’m recounting. I could go on tweaking forever, but at some stage I have to stop.
But as Lili says the job isn’t nearly done. Then it gets sent off to the editors and a whole new process of rewriting starts.
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More Garden of the Purple Dragon News
News | Posted by Carole on Wednesday 12 July 2006
black dog books tells me that Garden of the Purple Dragon is also due to be published in France (Bayard Editions Jeunesse), Spain (Ediciones B), Germany (Cecile Dressler), Denmark (Bonnier Carlsen), Slovenia (Ucila International). I haven’t got any publication dates for those.
Can’t wait to see those editions. It’s exciting seeing my books in other languages…and often with entirely new covers.
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Prize-winning Dog
Pets | Posted by Carole on Wednesday 12 July 2006
Our puppy, Rita, just graduated from puppy school. At first I thought we would be drawing lots to see who got to go out in the cold every Monday night to take Rita to her classes. Not at all. Once we’d experienced it, we all wanted to go. And we did–me, my husband John and 25-year-old daughter Lili all trouped along with our small puppy.
It was a hoot. There was Jean the instructor who was a fount of doggy information and anecdotes. There were 11 puppies of all shapes and sizes. And their owners–mostly young couples with furry surrogate babies.
At graduation Jean organised games of musical sit and musical drop. There were play-offs. Rita won musical drop, beating the musical sit champion, Hercules, in the Grand Final. She won a squeaky toy lamb. We were all very proud.