Anything to Avoid Writing

Miracles do happen.  I spent three hours working on my book, With Love From Neil, Sunday afternoon.  Mr. Jules took the girls off to the Area Dance show and Oli was in his garret recuperating from a party so I had the house to myself.  Usually I find every displacement activity possible to avoid the actual grind required with getting back into the book – take ticks off dog, water house plants, match up socks from lost sock basket – but this time I was straight at it like a dog to a bone.

So something good came out of the London trip which included Black Friday where I had to pitch my dirty, naughty, “blog” to a room of strangers (the other course participants) and two agents, one TV and one books.  I take full responsibility for it being Black as I was trying to wing it because a) I hadn’t worked out what exactly it was I was pitching and b) the whole idea of having to sell myself appalls me. 

Americans are so much better at it.  When I took some post graduate writing courses there during a year following Mr. Jules around in 1986 BC (before children), I was astonished at how at ease they were standing up and reading out their written work.  I suppose it is that great British thing of always worried about embarrassing ourselves.  Oh when are we going to give that up?

Anyway, in a nutshell I was hopeless at selling myself and felt faintly disrespectful to be writing a blog in the first place.  Many people go all sniffy at the very idea thinking that a real writer would never do such a thing.  Yeah right and a real writer lives in a tower and writes with a quill and ink and never has to pay the bills.  There is some substance to the louche blog reputation I will agree with though.  I hate those blogs that are blatantly selling advertising space and although I have always said I would never put advertising on this site, there will come a day when I will have to monetise it in some way, which would be nice for me and Mr. Jules would be ecstatic.

The Monday course, however, with Oscar nominated screen writer Shah Hussein was brilliant and insightful and spurred me on to sharpen my pencils and finish what I started.  (For those of you who don’t know, for the others who do just avert your eyes to this bit, I have written a book based on a true story called With Love From Neil  which is a coming of middle age story about a group of forty year olds who meet at a school reunion held in honour of their friend Neil who has tragically died.  It is a comedy about death in the true British black humour style which is 75% finished, the remaining 25% is the rewriting of the second half).  Shah set us all a 90 day challenge and so mine is to complete the book that I started before electricity in 2002.

So I mind mapped the whole book as Shah showed us how to and put in the ACT I ACTII ACTIII formula which is the backbone to all good novel writing.  Act I : Protagonist – that’s me Oh didn’t I tell you the protagonist was me?  – meets all the characters in the book and reader discovers main problem of story.  Act II : The Complication or destruction of the hero’s (my) plan.  Act III : The Resolution of the Problem.  They use the same formula in screenwriting, boy meets girl, boy can’t have girl, boy and girl wed OR if I was writing the film ACT III, girl dies and boy falls in love with brother over death bed and discovers his true sexual identity after all ahhhh.  Don’t think Disney would pick it up though, pity.                                      

Now I just have to sit down and write the missing bits around the formula and I will get straight to it I swear only I just have to ……

Copyright Jules Ritter May and rain 2008