Defining myself as a writer

Words are slippery things. Trying to find the right one seems impossible at times and it can seem like everything has been written before. That's when your brain seizes up and nothing flows and the only thing coming off at the end of your fingers are pedestrian sentences that plod along into nowhere.

Words sometimes behave like stubborn toddlers, like when you're dragged as a kid into some interminably boring place and you literally dig your heels in. I do have a method of dealing with these type of toddler words. It's by no means a foolproof method and it probably just shows up the fact that I'm no literary genius but it is a method nonetheless. I rewrite the same phrase, adding in new words, replacing them, twisting them, trying (but usually failing) to trick my brain into surprising me.

Here's a random example:

Mona jumped off as if frogs were biting her arse and motioned to a blue-uniformed attendant, who hurried over to Ava and helped her off the wheeler as if she was a fragile snowflake or a piece of glass on the verge of shattering, perhaps even a glass snowflake.

And another:

Better, better, best, bitter, butter, bust. The ideas flooding into her head now were scaring her shitless because they were coming in like little shooting rockets, pinging into her neurons, spiking her neural pathways with nettled hooks, digging their way in with barbs that could not be pulled out without causing irreversible damage.

Yes, when I sit down to write, this is some of the stuff that travels from my brain down into the ends of my fingertips, onto the keyboard and onto the screen. Does it make any sense? Not really. Will I ever use any of it in a story? Maybe. I do like the bit about Mona jumping as if frogs were biting her arse.

Maybe one day, in a few years' time, I'll look back on this stuff and be able to pinpoint the birth of a perfect sentence. Perhaps in the juxtaposition of pinging with nettle hooks, or with snow, glass and shatter. But more likely I'll stick with the image of the arse biting frogs because I think that's my true voice as a writer.

So the next time I'm asked to define my writing I'll have this response: my writing is defined by the type stories in which people jump as if they've been bitten on the arse by frogs.

Maybe that's what's really missing from Girl in the Shadows...

Rejection recovery

It's a week since I got that rejection that devastated me and I've had a chance to cry about it and talk to my friends about it and slowly I'm getting some perspective on it.

I think it's a good idea for me to leave the manuscript alone for a while; not look at it and not submit it anywhere else. I need to get some distance from the manuscript and the whole project. Maybe by the end of the year I'll be able to get some objectivity about it and look at doing another rewrite. I could get another manuscript assessment done but there's probably not a lot that would achieve, especially as I have the examiners' comments to work with.

So for now, at least, Girl in the Shadows will remain tucked away from sight while I get my head around the reasons why I write and whether or not they are enough to keep me going.

A master at last (almost)

I've passed my masters - yay!

I still have to do a few minor updates to it but I've officially passed. I was really happy with the examiners' comments both for the manuscript and the exegesis.

One examiner described Girl in the Shadows as "an engaging and well-paced work with credible characters, convincing thematic development, written in a style which was both clear and yet suggestively obtuse in parts, and with plenty of suspense with which to maintain the reader's interest."

The other examiner said "The writing has a lovely fluidity about it and the atmosphere is created very vividly. The dialogue is especially strong and the conversations between Mal and her mother are very good. I also think the relationship between the teenage girls is well constructed."

As my daughter would say "Go me!" :)

I'm really happy with the outcome. And although the masters was a lot (and I mean A Lot) of work, I'm a much better writer for having done it. Doing all the research, as painful as it was sometimes, really paid off for me.

Now all I have to do is find a publisher...

Synopsis

To enter the Text Publishing young adult fiction competition, I have to come up with a 100 word synopsis for Girl in the Shadows. So far, I've put together three I'm reasonably happy with but I'm not sure which one works best. What do you think?

Synopsis A
What happens when you look in the mirror and see a face that isn't yours? You hope it's a nightmare, a horror story. But it's real. It's the part of you that you don't want anyone to know about. And it's not going anywhere.

When Tash first sees a strange girl's face staring back at her from the mirror, she and her best friend Mal think it's a ghost: a restless
relative, perhaps, or something more sinister. But the truth is more sinister than any ghost story ever could be. And it will send Tash to the edge of madness.

Synopsis B
Tash has good looks, brains and freedom: the perfect teenage life. But when she looks into her mirror, a stranger’s face stares back at her. Her best friend Mal believes it’s an evil spirit. But the chilling truth is not supernatural: it’s flesh and blood.

Spell books and ouija boards cannot fix a problem that comes from deep within the soul. It will take a journey to the edge of madness for Tash to face the truth inside her heart and see the evil that lurks in her home. And Mal’s love and courage to pull her back into life.

Synopsis C
What happens when you look in the mirror and see a face that isn't yours? Tash has everything a teenage girl could wish for: good looks, brains, beautiful home and freedom from her busy parents. But when she looks into her mirror, she sees the face of another girl staring back at her. Her best friend Mal believes it’s the spirit of a restless teenager looking for a new body to inhabit. But the truth is more chilling; and tarot cards, ouija boards and spells cannot fix a problem that comes from so deep within the heart.

Off to the manuscript assessment service

Yesterday I emailed my manuscript to Sharyn, my supervisor, who will now send it off to the manuscript assessment service.

The assessment process will probably take about 6 to 8 weeks, so it should be ready for me to get into just after I come back from New York.

I'm pretty happy with Girl in the Shadows as it is at the moment, but I'm sure that the assessors will find plenty to pick on. I haven't read the manuscript as a whole since I rewrote the ending, for example, so they may find some disjoint between the beginning, middle and end.

I do know that both Mal and Tash, the main characters, go through a lot through the course of the narrative, so it's natural for them to change. (And isn't that what a good story should be about - how people change and what makes them change). But in any manuscript there's so much to think about - plot, character, style, structure and more - it's hard to keep a handle on everything.

What I'm looking for from the manuscript assessment process is some clear direction on where the manuscript can be improved and how much more work needs to be done before it's at publishing standard. If I can get that out of it, I'll be happy.

And now, I suppose, I should focus on writing the exegesis. I wonder how I'll motivate myself to get back into that?