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I like Two Cities and the Void, but wonder whether, for the novel as you’ve described it, The Void Between Two Cities works better? Which is more central to the story – the space between, or the actual cities? Looks like you’re getting closer to finding your title though.
So does that mean we have to come clean on our daily word count? Oh Lord, I really WILL have to buck my ideas up!
Am I allowed the 1st November off? Interview day for candidates for the new vicar…and guess who’s one of the interviewers? 😉Is there a version for NaNoFiMo? (National Novel Finishing Month) I really must get moving on the WIP, but I’ve stalled with everything else going on and I cannot get motivated to write at all. Keep knitting instead…
I wouldn’t have said that any of them give any indication as to the target readership. I’d just assume it was an unusual character name, with possibly a hint of sci-fi, but it doesn’t give anything away about the story.
The time between?
Between times?
The Time Snatcher of London Towns?
A shadow of time… (working on from Jonathan’s suggestions)
A shadow in time?I really hate titles sometimes!;)
I like the ‘Here Ends…’, but what to say is ending.
…the Seven Years of Pain
…the Seven Years of Separation.
Why not something like Seven Years Apart or The seven years of separation. The End Begins Here…? Just playing now!I also wonder if some of the other themes are more relevant to the title? There are an awful lot of themes going on – if you could pick just one or two, what would it be?
I’ve also got a creative exercise I could mail you with, where you let your subconscious find the way to the answer… I blogged about it in my Wolves and Apples post on the Scribbles. Worked for me, in that it pointed me away from the person to the central power in the story. (Still got to actually work out the title though!)
Interesting. I think sometimes, ‘It’s not quite there yet’ can sound like an apology, when it’s actually the admittance of a mature (by which I mean you know yourself and your writing) author, who realises that something created in such a short space of time needs more work. I’ve done it myself!
But of course it takes time to build that confidence in what you write and how you write – which is where a lot of us struggle to accept we’re actually doing something well. I know exactly what Sandra means when she talks about measuring yourself up to amazing books we’ve read. Done that – even among the cloudies, when I see what some folks have written! As Philippa noted, you have to accept the you write a particular way, you can only do your best, and leave the rest to other people!
On the other end of the scale – and something quite different – is when folks say their work’s no good when it flippin’ well is, and they’re just fishing for the feel good compliments.
I’m in Loughborough – I wouldn’t call it quaint or pretty…like any town, there are bits like that, but not in the town centre. I suppose it depends on where most of the action happens…
Not sure where you’re based, Philippa, but happy to show you round if you want to see it!
Well done, Sea! And thanks for setting us off on a monthly comp journey again here in the Den, Daeds.
So…I live in an East Midlands town. With a university, a canal, a market, wealthy hillside houses, poorer terraces town centre and large housing estates springing up on the outskirts. So if you need to run any specifics past anyone, let me know!
But…for a story of abduction and return, perhaps it doesn’t matter which of the settings you pick. You could stay with an ‘ordinary’ home hiding nasty secrets behind closed doors. Or you could go with Andrew’s (?) suggestion of something more upmarket, where the family’s appearance/persona/way of life are at odds with the experience of abduction.
Why do you feel you need to deepen the sense of place? What role does it have within the story? Is it to trigger memories of the past, for example (in which case, how have things changed in those 7 years?) or simply to be experienced in the character’s return? Perhaps when you know why you’re using that setting, it’ll help you know how deeply – if at all – you need to go…
Personally, I find it harder to write a place I know than make it up from scratch!!
crossed with you, Alan. Is failure not trying, or not winning? I’d say the former. Because if you don’t try, you might never win. And even if you don’t win because you never enter a comp, you have still succeeded in writing something.
Not sure ‘enjoyment’ comes into my reason for writing – it’s something that can feel like a chore at times! And there are almost as many reasons for writing as there are ways of measuring success!!
I think with anything creative, there’s the element of personal preference. You know I arrange flowers – well, I see some designs and think ‘how the heck is that flower design?’. Especially when it’s something like a single flower head and a twig. Yet others I see are amazing feats of engineering and have flow and rhythm or colour, and I’m blown away! I’m sure it’s the same with writing, art, drama, music…very much a matter of personal taste for the person on the receiving end.
Oh goodness, yes – we are our own worst critics!!
On the cloud, we often talked about ‘failure’ and ‘success’ and how differently people perceived the definitions of them. So I completely understand that you view not being placed as failure – it was one of a whole range of responses we used to get.
Me – I enter very few comps because I hated the huge low after not being placed. It worked against me and put me off rather than making me try harder. And yet, when I have a reader tell me they love my novels (particularly when it’s the children I write for), I am driven to continue and make my writing even better.
There’s no right or wrong, as long as we can pick ourselves up from our ‘failures’ and get more words on the page!
Definitely not failure if you’ve tried some comps – you had to write the bloomin’ entry first! And from experience, competitions can be a matter of luck as well as great writing – does the judge like your particular genre? Your style? I know from peer-judging comps on the cloud, my own preference for reading material comes through in the kind of thing I think is ‘better’ than anything else, even though the entries are still written to very high standards.
My ‘failure’ is to let life get in the way too much recently and not put writing higher up my list of priorities so that I get my current WIP first draft complete by Xmas. This year, not next.
Haha! He’s the one! I could picture him…but not remember his name!
I looked up the author – her novel sounds brill, must look it up. I like the idea of women ruling the world 😉
Thanks all!
Stella, I’ve not heard of Naomi Alderman at all – I’ll have to look her/her books up.
It’s sods law that what I’ve written makes you think of someone else’s work – originally the Power was rings, and I got slated by an agent over it being too LOTR, when the story itself is nothing like.
Ah well, they do say there are only so many story types in existence – it’s more, to quote that comedian whose name I can’t remember ‘It’s the way you tell ’em!’ 😉
I did a version of this… Rather than setting myself so many days up front, I just made a grid and marked off one square every time I wrote something. That way, there wasn’t so much pressure if I had to allow myself time off when life got busy or I needed a short break. I always wrote in the date so eventually I worked out that a break of any longer than two days was detrimental to the WIP, but it meant I could have a break without feeling too guilty.
Good to know Mashie’s Twittery thing’s working! (says she who has no idea how to Twitter). Good to have you on board, Alan.
Oh, brilliant to hear how York was for you, Skylark! And I’m echoing Daeds when he says that you deserve it all, because you are one of the most generous writers I know. (That’s one thing we had oodles of on the cloud – those who were willing to step in and offer help and support to other writers, and I’m glad to see the ethos had carried through to the Den.)
Gutted I missed it all, but was cheering you on from afar, and will continue to do so. xxx
All the colour disappeared from her world the day she moved in with him.
It’s minimalist, he told her. A blank canvas.
Surely, a blank canvas exists for the sole purpose of being filled, she wanted to say.
But didn’t, because it was all too new, too fresh, too…him. And more than anything else, she wanted him.
As time went on she still wanted him, but she faded in his company. Faded until she no longer stood out against the bare and empty walls of their home. Faded into the background, too afraid to upset the balance, the status quo, his mood.
He found out – too soon – that minimalist, simple living didn’t guarantee a long and simple life.
She bought herself, literally, out of the greyness of mourning with a bright pink skirt, a rainbow striped mug, and a single yellow rose in a vase on the mantelpiece.
A daub or two on the blank canvas at last, because with him gone, she was free to paint the world any colour she wanted.
I raised the same question earlier – Jules suggested putting it into the blogs like we used to, but do you mean the list of blogs we used to have on the side? It’d be lovely to have that, but I’d feel a bit funny about the Scribbles being quite so visible, because my blog certainly isn’t always about writing…
We’d also have to have some way of deciding which blogs are ‘up there’ – would it seem as though we’re endorsing a particular blog?
Must admit there are a few I’ve found useful – like Terrible Minds…
Thanks Philippa – that does all make sense! Sounds like I need to now combine the stakes of the challenge with the overall feel…
The inciting incident isn’t actually that she can/can’t make an orb; it’s the fact that a little later, she decides to practise in secret, drains her Power and needs to refill… and at THAT point, discovers something that is the driving force of the whole adventure as she tries to repair what she discovers.
But I can see how in this scene, the reader could be forgiven for thinking that it’s her continued training that will be at stake…Will keep mulling it over. x
