Writer's voice

I'm going to go a little meta here, and write about writing.

Something I've always struggled with is finding my voice. I have scores of ideas for stories, some based on vivid dreams which even on waking, I found utterly fascinating. Yet when I put pen to paper, the epic tale becomes childish drivel, or pretentious prose.

No matter how many novels and writing guides I read, I couldn't seem to remedy this. The maddening part, was that not all my writing suffered this, and it took me a long time to figure out the difference. Knowledge.

If I had knowledge and/or experience on a topic, I could comfortably write about it in my natural voice. Just look at previous posts here: Ghost Train was written while on a late train, Insomnia was written while I was tired but unable to sleep. I wasn't thinking about sounding clever while writing them, I just combined my personal experiences with a little imagination.

Of course, this doesn't mean that you can't write about anything you don't experience personally. But we do need to research those topics heavily. Even for fantasy, we need to know about the world we're writing, though it's one we create.

So if you have trouble finding your voice, if your writing lacks confidence, or exudes pretentiousness, get back to basics. Write about what you know to find your voice, and research what you don't to expand it.

Insomnia

Focused freewrite on the theme of insomnia. The beginning is based on my own experiences, I have on occasion got to the point of minor visual hallucinations, thinking I see small spiders and bugs in my peripheral vision. Not fun when you hate bugs.

Insomnia is a bitch. Especially when the hallucinations start, doubting your sanity is a nice extra on top of being too exhausted to care. Those little flickers out of the corner of your eye having you whirling around for the bug you're certain was crawling on the wall a second ago. Nothing like seeing bugs that aren't there to make you even twitchier.

This was the longest stretch of insomnia I'd had by far. By this point I'd normally have just dropped from pure exhaustion, and if I'd been in my right mind I might have wondered about that. I was too strung out to eat, or buzz myself up with caffeine. By all rights I should have been face down on the floor breathing in carpet lint.

I wasn't even thinking about how tired I was. Just numb, which I suppose explains partially why I wasn't so shocked about what happened. I was sitting numbed out with music blasting, twitching occasionally and swatting the non-existent bugs.

My fingers caught. I instinctively pulled my hand back and turned to look at what I somehow managed to catch them on in mid-air. Nothing. I waved my hand vaguely in the same direction and squinted, looking for cobwebs from those pesky spiders I kept missing (though I'm not sure how I made this leap of logic with a brain full of mush). But a few minutes later I was back to my vegetative state.

My eyes started to flutter closed, and I tried to push myself off the chair, hoping to get to my bed before I conked out. I stood up wobbling and waved my arms around trying to steady myself. My fingers caught again. This time, some vague sense of curiosity kept me from withdrawing my hand. Instead I peered at it, wondering where my fingers had gone. It was like they had been chopped off at the knuckles, but without the accompanying gore. I wiggled them tentatively and could feel them move, could see the tendons moving in my hand.

I placed the palm of my left hand against my right, and began sliding it forward, watching in fascination as the fingers disappeared centimetre by centimetre. I slowly spread my two hands apart and tried to peer between the two. It was dark, but that in itself was odd, as I stood in a brightly lit room. I pulled them farther apart and still all I could see was an inky black space between them. The space was almost big enough for me to put my head in and peer through, but just as the thought crossed my mind, I felt a tightening around my hands as though someone had wrapped an elastic band around them. I tried to hold them open and keep pushing, but my hands were quickly forced together and pushed out, leaving me standing looking at my fully intact hands wondering what the fuck had happened. My eyes burned, my head ached and I managed a few stumbling steps to collapse on my bed before I fell into dreams.

Ghost Train

This is the first draft of an opening to a short story piece I have in mind. It is inspired by that strange detached feeling I get sometimes when travelling on a bus or train late at night. When it is so dark outside, and the lights are so bright inside that you could almost imagine there is nothing out there. And if you dozed off you could end up anywhere.

Ghost Train

The train rattles along the rails, its slight swaying trying to lull me to sleep. No, must not sleep. I'll miss my stop. Who knows where I'd end up? It is black outside the windows, a thick and swallowing darkness that permits no escape. A pinprick of light here and there; nothing to tell if it is a star low in the sky or a far distant house on a high hill.

Fatigue claws at my eyes. Must not sleep. Nothing to keep my attention outside, I must look within. There is nothing. I am alone in the carriage. I hear only the sound of my own breathing above the rattling of the train. Am I the only passenger? Is there even a conductor, a driver? Am I alone on this train, hurtling along to nowhere, to the ends of the earth?

Such silly thoughts. Tiredness is getting to me. Thick hedges now edge the tracks and the branches tap against the windows. It's almost like they want to come in. Tap tap tap. Clawed, skeletal fingers reaching, tapping, let us in... They are swept away suddenly as the train shoots into a tunnel. I resist the urge to hold my breath, we will be out soon, no need to fear.

The glaring fluorescent lights seem so cold and harsh in the enclosing darkness just outside the windows. It feels like it's pressing in, that the night will pass through the walls of the train and swallow all that's within. We must be nearly out now. I think I may go mad if we don't get out soon. I'm sure it's not that long, and I'm fairly certain we haven't slowed any.

Relief! The train races out into the night. The darkness outside looks little different, just a black mirror reflecting the lights inside back at me, showing a wide eyed and pale face peering at mine. But the dark seems infinitely more welcoming than the close and lurking night of the tunnel.

I rub my eyes. Must not sleep. So tired. I'll just rest my eyes for a moment. I won't fall asleep. Just need to close my aching eyes. I won't fall asleep. Never know where I'll end up. I... won't... fall... asleep...

NaNoWriMo

For those of you who haven't heard of National Novel Writing Month, you don't know what you're missing. The basic idea is simply to write 50,000 words between November 1st and 30th. It is not necessary to have a plot, or in fact any semblance of coherence. The point is quantity rather than quality; turning off your inner editor and just writing. It's often said that 99% of what a writer writes will be crap, so you need to write a lot of crap to get that 1% of good stuff. Sounds a bit mad, and I assure you, it is. ;)

So far, it has been an amazing experience. I've passed the 20k mark, and am extremely surprised to have gotten this far, but its such fun! Some days its been a slog, and I've had to force myself to write despite being tired, or having a headache. But other days it has been wonderful. I've gone sailing past my required daily word count, completely caught up in writing. So far I've written 3 complete short stories (though one would be better called a flash fiction piece), and I am fully intending to edit them later and try to get them published. I'm not saying they're wonderful, but I really enjoyed writing them, and felt very proud when I finished them.

I just have to say, that you will never meet such a bunch of crazy, funny and friendly people as you will while attempting this. It has a thriving community with so many people trading tips on writing, plot realism, dares to spark off a wavering plot, and just offering huge amounts of support. People getting discouraged after the first couple of days are met with a slew of posts offering advice and encouragement to keep at it. I've been enjoying it so much, I'm not sure what I'll do come December! I am definitely doing this again next year. :)

Assignment, part 3

The final freewrite attempted as part of my assignment:

Focused freewrite - Prompt 'An overgrown garden'

Vines of ivy creep over the walls, so dense that you'd almost think the walls were made of ivy. You're never quite sure if the walls are sheltering the jungle within, or merely containing it. Well, jungle is a bit of an exaageration, but not by much. Looking closely though, you might see hints of the original garden within the chaos that now reigned.

A large oak was the centrepiece, its long boughs casting a shadow over the garden. It was surrounded by what must have once been a well manicured lawn, but was now a haven for weeds. Around the edges of the garden were various flowerbeds. Originally it seemed they were a mix of shrubs and flowers, but were now an overgrown snarl, weeds choking the few original delicate flowers that remained.

But in all this chaos, there was still beauty; beautiful wildflowers alongside the choking weeds. One could still see the love and care that had been put into this garden once upon a time, and it shone through with its own beauty. And even in the prevailing chaos, there was an unexplainable feeling of peace within those walls. Sitting beneath the tree, I rested and was at peace.

Assignment, part 2

This is the second freewrite I attempted while doing my assignment:

Focused freewrite - Prompt 'A lost letter'

She sifted through the papers listlessly. Old bills and brochures and letters, Grandmother never threw anything away. What to do with all this stuff? She was supposed to be sorting her Grandmother's effects, but how could she throw anything away when the pain was still so raw? She sighed and flopped onto the chair with the sheaf of papers.

She started to read through them, trying to decide what should be kept, and what could be thrown away. Old bill, paid, toss it. Holiday brochure with money off coupon, expired twenty years ago, toss. And... how odd, an unopened letter, addressed, stamped, ready to post. She wondered for a moment if it was a bill or something she never got around to posting, but it was dusty and slightly yellowing like the other papers it was with.

She looked at it for a few moments, wrestling with her conscience. She didn't recognise the name or address on the envelope. Really though, what justification did she have for opening it, other than curiosity? Whatever was in the letter probably wasn't important anymore. On the other hand, who would it hurt? And perhaps she would learn something to comfort her loss.

Decided, she carefully opened the envelope and pulled out its contents.

Freewrite assignment

For my first assignment in the creative writing course I am studying, I was required to write a focused freewrite based on one of the provided prompts, and develop it into a short piece of fiction, biography or auto-biography. Three of the prompts yielded material which I may develop further, so here they are, beginning with the piece that I decided to focus on for my assignment:

Focused freewrite - Prompt 'A scar'

It was a curious scar, an odd curved shape, broken in the middle. I wondered what sort of accident could cause a scar in that shape. Particularly at the inner part of the elbow, how does one accidentally injure themselves there? Maybe I should stop staring and just ask. Or maybe not. I dare say the explanation is so mundane as to be remarkable purely for being so boring. Besides, how does one broach the subject? ‘Excuse me, I was staring at your scar and wondered what happened.’ Yeah, real slick. My reverie was interrupted by a gruff voice coming from the other occupant of my seat.

‘You gonna stop staring and ask?’

I flushed momentarily, but soon turned my embarrassment to anger.

‘Fine then, what happened to your arm?’

‘Well… it is a long and harrowing tale of woe. I’m afraid I’d barely be started ‘afore the journey’s over. So how’s about we find a café when we get off and discuss it over lunch?’ He said with a cheeky grin and an amused twinkle in his eye.

I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Sure, it’s a deal. If the story’s good enough, I’ll even foot the bill!’

‘And if it doesn’t meet your expectations m’lady, I’ll quite happily pay it, purely for the pleasure of your company.’

I laughed again. ‘Save the charm for the story-telling you smoothie!’