There are times when I think writing is a self-indulgence, a luxury, when I should be working my fingers to the bone doing something sensible. Like working in a real job, in the real world. Then I remember my my fear of crowds, my fear of small spaces, my fear of small talk, my paranoic uneasiness and my feelings of panic. Perhaps my writing isn't a luxury, after all, but an act of self-preservation. I write so that I don't go mad.
Ten chapters down and finally my heroine plunges into the forest towards the forest and the story can begin. I fear that it's taken far too long to reach this point, that the reader will have ditched the book in frustration before the real story has begun. But I also think I need a solid foundation for the novel, created in those first ten chapters, to give resonance to the ending. It's hard to know what to do. I can't tell how long my "Act II" might be though logic says it should be double the length of Act I, if I was to follow screenplay rules. Somehow I don't think I've got enough story for 20 chapters. But these things don't matter much. A novel takes as many chapters as it needs to tell its story.
There are times when I think writing is a self-indulgence, a luxury, when I should be working my fingers to the bone doing something sensible. Like working in a real job, in the real world. Then I remember my my fear of crowds, my fear of small spaces, my fear of small talk, my paranoic uneasiness and my feelings of panic. Perhaps my writing isn't a luxury, after all, but an act of self-preservation. I write so that I don't go mad.
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AuthorI live in Bloomsbury. You can follow
Diary of a Bloomsbury Writer on wordpress.com where it's called Writing from Alter-Space Archives
June 2021
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