Tuesday 14 May 2013

Rain, my Novel

I have a very serious question about my book that I am asking myself. I'm not sure I'm the right person to answer. I would do a circle to get some clarity but it's tipping it down of rain. Rain-so symbolic. it was the Rain that started my entire novel. one day when I had scammed a day off school, and the window of my bedroom was grey, the house was empty and quiet and the rain was pouring down. It was just like it is right now, it was hammering. Outside the water that fell from the sky was like mist. I was only fifteen and my hair was still a long sheet, I still wore it humiliatingly as a curtain to hide my face, even alone in my room it fell over my shoulders and I remember thinking I wish it were a vibrant red, bold and courageous, I wish it were curly, an erratic display of wildness and beauty-everything I wasn't.

In those days I didn't just get a random idea and expand on it, I would sit with my notebook and think of a story to start writing. That's what I was doing then, I was holding my notebook, pen poised, watching the rain. I'd actually taken to sitting on the window sill, I'm looking at it now wondering how I actually managed that...hmmm it's difficult I just tried, I've filled out and grown taller in the last five years. I was thinking about myself, how I would make a character, how boring I must look on a page, just sat there, but boring was real I thought. So I wrote myself, the hair, the flat chest, the broken nose, and then I scratched that and decided fantasy was always better...

Grace was born that day and she was all I had, that and the rain. I knew it had to be raining because England was always raining, and I loved England and it's water. I loved the sky grey or blue, I loved the idea of flying. I loved the idea of having wings.

Now then my question...I have tossed and turned at night thinking about our world (the mortal world) and the one where the fun stuff happens...I've wondered how to get Grace there and came up with a way, but after that the whole idea of 'our' world seems completely and utterly irrelevant, it's not mentioned again, it's not needed, in fact it even ruins the story because it calls into question how each side works and corresponds together. Ohhh that's too complicated for me. So I'm thinking of axeing that off. I guess I wrote Grace to start in our world because that's where I am, and the idea of escaping was so welcome to me I wrote it down as if it could be true, but I've realised now I've never been here, not really. I have always had what psychiatrics call 'a happy place' and I live there through my character. So yes, I think I am going to axe the 'normal' world and place Grace into the fantasy land immediately. I'll work it out.
 

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