Creative Writing Workshop.

 Well, as if I did not have enough to do, and yes, I had Covid for three weeks and two of those weeks, I was very ill, a week at least of fevers and congestion and lots of coughing. It was scary at times. Lots of medications, but despite all that, I am back at work, on my schedule, and even decided that I wanted to take a Creative Writing Workshop that is really a Graduate Class, only I am not getting graded. I got my textbook and looked at it. It's just what I needed so I sort of decided how I could push through and do it. But sometimes, I feel like I am left behind, that there are new things to learn and I just have to go for it. I hope I come out a better writer. It will slow me down a bit on the novel but not by much and I will still finish this project next year. What really set me back was losing 2025 when I had to stop writing and reading completely for that year. I did some audio books and read at the most 2o pages then stopped. But I never felt confident until I got the pass the next year in February (2026) It was me being a bit paranoid at going blind. Me still emotional about all of it. Just the idea of that experience hit hard. I walked mostly. Just walked and planned. Made notes. But mostly I walked. Walked all the fear out of me.

Tam Lin Ballad lines

If my Love were an earthly knight,
As he's an elfin grey;
I was na gie my ain true-love
For nae lord that ye hae.

The steed that my true-love rides on, Is lighter than the wind;
Wi' siller he is shod before,
Wi' burning gowd behind.


Tam Lin Ballad

Dracula

 I think I'd like to reread Dracula again before I tear into Jane Eyre. Not sure. Since experiencing Covid (I am still unwell) I've taken stock of what I'd really like to read and why. One of the things I'd like to revisit with Dracula is its structure and how it was written and why that worked so well.

Reading Jane Eyre soon.

 

Frankenstein

 I don't know how it happened, but somehow I began reading the 1818 text of Frankenstein and that is where I am at the moment. I'd like to reread Miranda Seymour's bio of Mary Shelley and maybe a couple of others, one about her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. I've been suffering from a mean little virus and could not do much else but lie in bed, sleep and read. Outside commentary and appendixes and all, Frankenstein is around 200 pages. It seemed like a good fit for this time of year. I have not read the 1818 text in over twenty years, I do believe. Maybe more, I don't know. I know what started it. I watched the film Mary Shelley! What a horrible mess that was. I suppose it would be all right for a teenager who wanted to get interested in Mary Shelley but it was really a terrible film. I was shocked. I loved all the actors, they were fine, but the script and the story was just silly in more ways than I can recount. Perhaps it was fine to boost Mary Shelley and her book, but at the expense of Percy and Claire, I think not. Not even Mary Shelley would have approved, well, the Mary Shelley that Percy loved. It's hard for me to talk about Mary Shelley, because I have the greatest sympathy for her, wish all her work read and all that, but I don't think we need to make her out to be something she was not. She had a hard time, no doubt, with her headaches, her nerves, her depressions and dealing with being the widow and all. 

Anyway, I have all her books, have read her, admire her but I love Percy Shelley and I love Claire and I don't know why so many scholars fall into separate camps. It's such a waste of brain work.

Dragon-Slayer by C.S. Lewis

I have come back with victory got -
But stand away - touch me not
Even with your clothes. I burn red-hot.

The worm was bitter. When she saw
My shield glitter beside the shaw
She spat flame from her golden jaw.

And then we closed. I do not know

How many hours we struck below

The hollow sky. The grass, also,

Was burnt to ashes where we fought;
But I have killed her as I ought,
And the great treasure-hoard have bought.

But now, I am so fierce and hot
With the beast’s blood, that touch me not!
Go, leave me. I have victory got.

           - C.S. Lewis, Dragon-Slayer

Love Pope, A Quote in my WIP

“All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good.
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, 'Whatever is, is right.”
― Alexander Pope🩶

Dracula

 

I finished. 

Wow, this is one of my favorite books of the 19th Century and I would always add it to list of Victorian fiction to read for everyone. There are many themes, the new woman, science vs superstition, good vs evil, and I suppose the changing world of technology vs the rural lands. I don't know how I could just pin it down. It's told in letters and etc. I loved that. I've read a couple books in letters this year and I'd like to see more books that do this. Dracula is also a history of sorts, of a man who became a demon in order to cheat death and to maintain power. A plus of this book is looking at this mythology which the author paid special attention to. The chase to save people and destroy this evil is one of the best things written in the 19th century. It's Gothic, dark, and has so much subtext. I wanted to read it slow, but I finished a couple of days early. Toward the end, I could not put the book down. I think everyone should read this book. Bram Stoker did a fantastic job. It's a stunning piece of fiction if you really think about it. READ!!!! Perfect for Autumn and Halloween. Dracula and vampires are forever!

More coming and why Dracula inspired me to make some changes on my own story. So much that I decided to read The Norton Edition of Jane Eyre. This probably makes no sense to anyone but me and maybe my BFF, but somehow reading Dracula led me to Jane Eyre and then to how I could solve a problem that has been haunting my manuscript since spring. And this goes to show, that reading does really help writers see new ways to work.

The Settled Version of The Ambitious Fairy Projects

 Just a note:

It's amazing how a novel evolves in our minds, especially if we have time. Some of the best stories I have written or worked on were products of having enough time, where others had little time. Time constraints can be both good and bad. When I do have constraints, I am a much better writer, but if the constraints are too tight, I end up shortchanging the work. That said, too much time gives a writer too much time to think. That is kind of what happened to me on this project. It began as one thing and now it's going to end as a completely new thing. However, I have no regrets because this project has been a heart book in many ways, it has been overly ambitious, and I've been making serious changes from the beginning. One reason I was able to do this is I had a team behind me who said, "Do what you want." I have never really had that. I was always writing with a contract and a due date and the constraints were so tight, I had to work long hours every day to finish. My first draft of this book was done long, long ago before my husband died. It was a very rough draft, the first time I had written a novel like that. By the seat of my pants. It was an experiment. At the end of that journey, I knew I had the wrong character as the MMC and the wrong setting. It was a contemporary set in USA. I think much of that story was just nostalgia. I sometimes just write something to get it out of my system. Frankly, I have done that a few times. And sadly, I had no interest in rewriting this story or even keeping anything but one big element. 

What did I do? Well, it took a few years, but I wrote another version the same way, by the seat of my pants and this time, I set it in a new place but it was still contemporary. I printed it off. I did not keep a digital copy. I did not like it at all. I trashed it and I remember my sister thinking I was crazy. But sometimes, we write because we just need to sit there and tell a story and it is meant for no one but ourselves.

It was then that I realized, after-let me count four books (one was a completely different book that I loved and may finish one day but it would be a lot of work, how I can see it as a companion to this book I am working on) ... after four books, and hundreds of thousands of words, I realized that writing by the seat of my pants, not writing as an iterative drafter was just a waste of time for me and I would never finish a novel if I did another book by the seat of my pants style. That is not my process. I am the deeply iterative artist and drafter and I write slowly, with lots of intent and thought. And because my story does evolve and it changes a lot as I go I have to rework a book while drafting from the beginning. If I write an entire draft on a single form, it is nothing but a waste, like those four books I drafted by the seat of my pants. I did not revise, refine, or work as I went along. Four versions of a story that went nowhere. And I have to live with that. I do live with that.

So I stopped and said, I cannot do this anymore.  I am going to trust my instincts and make a plot, pay attention to structure and if I have changes along the way, I go back from the beginning and write it all in. I revise and revise and inch forward as the novel grows and develops into the story I feel best represents that vision in my head.

DOING this, I have learned my weaknesses as a writer, too. And so along the way, I have made changes to enhance my gifts and to mitigate my weaknesses. I have also applied this to the story itself. What can I change to make it better, which basically means smaller, tighter, more focused, to be able to make it propulsive without losing interiority. The latter was a hard lesson. I am still working on that. But really, no one wants big giant books with heavy prose. If authors are getting that, they have a reputation, a backlist, and a good agent.

That brings me to why I wrote all this mess. I knew my book was still too big and I was trying all the time to make it smaller by changing things. Deleting things.

The BIG THING was setting. I keep changing not the place, but the time. I had to ask myself this very week if I could make the story leaner and more mythic by moving time again and the answer was yes, but I did not want to move it to an era I did not love or know, just for the sake of fitting in with so many novels in the genre I write. It was a friend who said, I know what period you know best because you studied it for two decades when you were young. I about fell out of my chair at that comment. And then I knew how I could write the exact same story smaller, just by moving the time. My plot wouldn't change a bit, just descriptions would and even some of those would not. I just started laughing because that is what happens to all writers when they envision their story just one way. I was stuck on one decade and I moved the time back and forth in that decade until I had to decide. Then I realized since it was Alternative Fantasy, I could borrow from other decades within reason. So I finally settled and feel so free. But I am cleaning up that mess. I have always been a messy sort of creative creature. I remember Frieda Hughes describing how her parents worked at the same table. At one end was Sylvia Plath, with every single thing in order, all arranged neatly, pencils laid out in a row, etc and so forth and at the other end of the table was Ted Hughes sitting there with lots of paper just everywhere, some written on, some with scratches, all balled up, wadded up, in fact. Just a big messy pile. When I am working, I destroy everything. I have books opened, marked, and piled up, paper wadded up, post-its everywhere, even drafts thumb tacked to my wall by my desk. I can't write anywhere but at my desk. I can make notes in coffee shops, but I don't really work. I just dream and write down things. Same with painting. I have to put on painter's clothes. I have to protect my floors, I am covered in paint. Some of this is just how I developed as a child artist. How I played. How I still play.

One reason I am writing all this is I want to write a CHARACTER DRIVEN story, with a big theme. It's not a trail ride, it does not reply on gimmicks or shocks. It's a character driven story with lots of surprises created out of character motivations and basic human needs. There is a big story, that must be written small.

It did not start out that way, but that is how it will end. And everything I do serves that purpose.