<p><span style="font-size: small;">There are numerous problems for a playwright trying to write prose.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">1) The director will sort that out. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">What is narrative? Ah yes, let's see if we can prise apart that section of dialogue and give the reader a few clues as to what is going on in the writer's head. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">2) The actor will know how to say that line.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">What is the character feeling and should the writer be feeling an adverb coming on?</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">Okay, it was that basic when I went back to writing prose after a longish gap but I do now remember those things and the novel has progressed a little since I last wrote on here. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">I've also had a moment of enlightenment this week and written the instigating event scene - but&nbsp;kept it&nbsp;in the file of planning stuff.&nbsp;The result is that&nbsp;I don't have the&nbsp;novel beginning at the wrong place.&nbsp;I commend this to you.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">Off to collect grandson from a school inside one of the no parking zones being set up for the Pope's Edinburgh visit. And, yes, it is now raining.</span></p>

<p><span style="font-size: small;">Widows and mistresses had the most fun in the Regency, but gosh is the late husband in my WIP causing me problems. This is the WIP I set aside to enter M&amp;B's first chapter competition.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">The chapter went up and one or two of you were kind enough to drop by - thank you. Sadly, it didn't catch the selectors' eyes but I enjoyed the characters and the premise of Beloved Bluestocking (still on the M&amp;B site <em>romanceisnotdead</em>&nbsp;for anyone interested). I think it will be my next project if I can finally get through the character problems I'm having in the current one.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">EWC held a character workshop last night ably led by <strong>Louise Ironside</strong> who many tv fans may recognise as a prolific writer for River City and now Waterloo Road. I came away with good ideas about character creation but, unsurprisingly, none about how to de-construct a muddle already in existence.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">You'll all have been there and I know many folk would say if a character is taking over to kill him off. As mine is already dead that option isn't available. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">So, having done the ironing, some domestic admin and let off steam to you long sufferring readers, I'll get on with it.</span></p>

<p><span style="font-size: small;">Open any drawer in my house, well the study, and you'll pull out an unfinished sleeve and a half-written ms. What is it about the novel, the full length play, the whole cardigan that prevents me getting to the end?</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">I think it's having worked out the puzzle.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">Not to deny that the current work in progress is re-writing itself as the characters find stronger voices. Even the dead ones - see post mortem - want to reinvent their history and represent their motives. This changes the nature of the puzzle which sustains my interest but doesn't take me any closer to the finishing line. In fact, despite writing a chap by chap synopsis, it's prolonging the whole thing.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"></span></p>

<p><span style="font-size: x-small;">I'm currently immersed in writing a love scene in the WIP so clearly need a quiet hour away from the computer now and then to let it simmer a little more. Trying to do what they say - ie Let the characters drive the story, not the plot drive the characters - is very, very hard. I've been writing the love scene since Tuesday and it now covers several pages and hasn't happened as I thought it would. It has, however, opened a door to shine light&nbsp;on a plot problem so doing what they say is paying dividends.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">The new varifocals were ready for collection and I finally took along two obsolescent pairs to be dismantled. No one has found a way of re-cycling them through aid agencies but the frames might be useful and I wandered along to a charity shop and handed those in. Then home for a coffee and that quiet hour with the December issues of Writing and Writers' News. Two very good winning short stories in their competitions and lots of writing opportunities in WN. Always spurs me on to see how other people have succeeded.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Now time to get back to the day job, aka Katerer, but it was a lovely quiet hour.</span></p>

<p><span style="font-size: x-small;">I hate snow. No matter how many words for it the Inuit have in their vocabulary, I hate it in all those guises too. Nature will not be denied her fun and if that makes the rest of us too miserable for words so much the better she seems to say. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Right, I've done the weather. It does have some compensations, however, and I got back into the WIP last night as we couldn't go out to the dinner we'd been invited to. The characters were waiting for me and a thousand words pinged onto the screen before I could draw breath. Now, is that a good thing? I haven't been back there yet this morning, but I noticed the quality of my National Short Story challenge went down in the last episode when I was working against the clock to get it up, serve dinner and be settled in time to watch Strictly, the results. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Strictly, particularly in this series, tells us at least one necessary fact of writing life. The reader knows what the reader wants. No matter how good your prose with&nbsp;its&nbsp;perfectly placed participles, perfectly selected metaphors and perfectly adjusted punctuation,&nbsp;if you don't tickle their fancy in the first paragraph, the readers&nbsp;won't hang about.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">I've always felt sorry for Anton as he has never seemed to be allocated the better dancer. That, in this series, may prove to be his strength. Ann has said he'll be allowed the Glitter Ball for his mantelpiece.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">My vote is for Matt. His passage to the Glitter Ball is, therefore, doomed.</span></p>

<p>How easy it is to convince yourself that a month must have passed when in fact you sent out the inquiry two days ago (and thirteen hours, three minutes and 45 seconds).</p> <p>I have of course, after all these years trying, got used to competition judging periods and critiquing periods but now that I've got a novel I think is of publishable standard, the waiting for an editor to agree or turn it down seems interminable. It fills the brain with longing when I should be actively crafting the next one. It makes the family nervous as I 'just check my e-mail' for the seventh time in the morning (don't have one of those pinging alerts).</p> <p>So I thought I'd take action and I sent out an enquiry letter about my newest unperformed play.</p> <p>Was this a good plan, substituting one baby out in the world for two?</p>

<p>Romance may very well be in the air but as far as the MS described in my 'Waiting Game' post is concerned, that's where it's staying for the present.</p> <p>No sale!</p> <p>However, I have had a success in the Filler field which I discovered by accident. A writer friend was celebrating having her poem selected by Prima so I bought the mag to read it and found my own letter on their 'questions' page. Every month they ask a question or pose an opportunity. This has been, for example, 'I never leave home without...' Next month's can be found by going to their facebook page. If selected there's a prize of &pound;25.</p> <p>So - as for romance? Well, I was accepted onto the RNA's new writers' scheme for another year and I've been plotting. I think I'll go contemporary this year.</p>