And the rewriting continues...

I set myself a goal to write for 20-30 minutes each day, and I've been doing pretty close to that. Mostly I've been working on adding detail to the manuscript and also writing a couple of new scenes.

I chucked the whole convict doco storyline that I started working on in January- it was awful!
The girls are still working on an English assignment,but it's a much more interesting one that involves an artist who paints beautiful but quite macabre paintings. It's much more suited to the tone and themes of the manuscript.

I'm also making some changes to the structure. The biggest change is that all traces of diary entries, notes etc from Tash are pretty much gone. Instead I'm writing in some new scenes where Tash's behaviour gives a pretty clear indication of where her head is at.

I originally wrote the diary excerpts because I wanted Tash's voice to appear unadulterated in the story, without being filtered through Malia. But it wasn't working. I thought of writing whole chapters from Tash's perspective, but this is a story about Mal & her growth in trying to fix a problem that isn't hers.

I don't want to get too Jungian, but it all does come down to archetypes. And for this story, Mal is the Rescuer. Tash's time to tell her side of the story will come...just watch out for the sequel!

Scholarly expert?

According to one of the readings I had to do for uni, the exegesis (that thing I'm supposed to write for my masters) should demonstrate 'scholarliness' and that the writer is 'an expert in the field.'

Looks like I'm screwed...

Post-Jungian shadow archetype despair has set in. (Hey, did that sound scholarly?)

To be honest, I'm not even sure that see the point of the exegesis, much less want to write one. The readings I've been doing for uni so far have meant to give me a greater understanding of what an exegesis is and its purpose. But for me, the readings have made me question the necessity of such a document at all.

I want to write a manuscript. I want to write the best, most entertaining manuscript I can write that will appeal to my target audience, take them away into a different world for a while and, when they come back, maybe even make them think.

I enjoy doing research to the extent that it can give me new insights and ideas. But do I really want to crap on for 7,500 words about my process of writing the manuscript, its place in a historical/literary/cultural context and defend it against possible criticisms?

I really hope I've got it wrong and that's not what I've signed up for...

Getting into research

I've got 10 days off work to get stuck into my research & weirdly enough, I'm starting to enjoy it. I'm finding the same writers' names in my research around Jung and his shadow theory, so I'm thinking that I'm on the right track.

Even better, I'm really starting to see how this research can give my writing more depth. As I write down notes from the books/papers I'm reading on one page, on the opposite page I jot down random thoughts about how these ideas can apply to the characters.

One character I'm a little concerned about at the moment though is Mrs Steppa. At the moment she seems to be working as a caricature, a plot device rather than a 'real flesh & blood' character. I'm hoping that during my research I can find something to make her come alive. Otherwise, she may drop off the pages and cease to exist. I'd be sad about that, because I kind of like her. Maybe I'll just have to listen a bit more closely to what she has to say.