dotinthesky | (no subject)

I've been swimming every day and I'm going to write a novel. Don't laugh, I'm serious. The last time I tried to write a novel (a year ago) I didn't have a story in mind, or characters. I had a collection of images for writing exercises - I closed my eyes and selected one of these images randomly. Then I glued that image (it was of a young man in his underwear, posing seductively on a bed, found in some gay magazine or other) onto a notebook and made a plan: I would write 8 pages everyday, regardless of how I felt, and it would be a story about that image.

It was a good exercise because I had to create something out of nowhere, out of no inspiration. The problem became apparent after I'd written over 100 pages: I didn't have a story. I'd resorted to setting character's homes on fire, plagiarizing my own past, and I clearly had no focus to the story. In the end, I ditched the whole project.

If you have been reading my journal then you know that I've recently thought of a story which could be turned into a horror movie script. After much deliberation, I've decided to try writting it as a novel (or even a novella). This time I have a story, a situation, and also characters I would like to explore and care about. I haven't been much on Livejournal this week because I've been researching, jotting down notes.

I have to partly thank Stephen King's memoir "On Writing", which I read over last weekend, for giving me a needed kick in the ass.