My latest post on Writer Unboxed is about integrating all kinds of narrative forms–such as for instance, newspaper articles, blog posts, transcripts of audio or radio, and more– within a novel, in order to extend the main narrative. Hope it’s of interest–read it here.
An article in which I was a joint contributor, wearing my hat as Chair of the New England Writers’ Centre, has just been published in the international academic journal Reflections, which focuses on issues of community writing engagement. The article, written with Ariella van Luyn from the University of New England(who is also on the NEWC Board) and Lyn Aspey, current NEWC program manager, is about how NEWC had to move our program online during 2020 and the first covid lockdown, and is centred in particular around the online course in historical novel writing which Ariella ran that year. Each of us wrote our sections from a particular perspective; myself as Chair, Ariella as course facilitator/presenter, and Lyn as both a course participant and later program manager. Ariella also wrote the introduction and conclusion.
Thought it might be of interest to readers: check it out here.
In my latest post on the international writing website, Writer Unboxed, I write about physical journeys in fiction, concentrating on how I’m doing that in a historical novel for children that I’m writing at the moment, plus looking at the classic adventure novel I consider to be one of the great ‘road trip’ novels, Jules Verne’s Mikhail Strogoff. Here’s an extract from my post:
At the moment I’m writing a historical novel for children, set in the Roman province of Brittania (Roman Britain) in the late first century AD/CE. The novel involves a great deal of journeying, as the main characters attempt to meet up with someone who always seems to be a day ahead of them, and whom they have to chase after from town to town. Eventually they do catch up with him, but not in the way they hoped and it makes matters much worse as they then have to flee cross-country to escape pursuers! This is the part I’m up to, and I know my poor exhausted characters still have a way to go!
Most of my novels in fact involve journeys of one sort or the other, it’s a natural theme of my writing—perhaps because I was brought up between two countries, France and Australia, and we travelled so much as kids. But in this one, the structure and plot of the novel absolutely depend on the physical journey. Now when you’re writing a novel like that, you have to work hard to make sure that the constant traveling doesn’t get boring for the reader (as well as tiring for your characters).
You can read the whole post here–and please do make comments(on the Writer Unboxed site) if you like!
I’m two-thirds of the way through writing my audio novel now and it’s going really well. I’m also exploring next steps to make the actual audio book a reality(more on that another time, when plans have firmed up) but something that’s happened recently is a pretty important change: the title of the novel.
A Turn off the Path was a good working title to begin with. It conjured up for me quite a few things: the path literal(ie the Camino) and the path metaphorical(ie the different turns we take as we go along our life’s path). But after discussion with other people who suggested it might perhaps not quite be the right final title for it–not strong enough or memorable enough or unusual enough–I decided it was time to think of something else. For a while, it foxed me–titles can be tricky beasts to catch!–and then quite suddenly it came. It was there all along, hiding in plain sight, in a text message conversation between two of my main characters, Helen and Tony, and Tony tells Helen that there are a hundred words for butterfly, in Basque…
I’d written that quite a while back, and just seen it as part of a conversation, though one that Helen really responds to, as an imaginative artist. But suddenly, I knew that’s what it had to be, the new title: A Hundred Words for Butterfly. It felt right, at once. It was simple yet enigmatic. Memorable yet not overdone. It could conjure up so many images in so many cultures yet was distinctively expressive of something from that place, that setting. I tried it out on other people, especially those who had expressed a certain dissatisfaction with the original title, and they confirmed their immediate affinity for this new one, too.
So that’s what it’s going to be. A Hundred Words for Butterfly…
Today, on Writer Unboxed, the international writing blog to which I am a regular contributor, I write about the impact that these very strange times we are all going through has has on my writing life, and how I’ve tried to deal with it in various ways.
I wrote it in the hope it may help other writers struggling with the same things, and on Writer Unboxed, I’ve asked to hear about other people’s experiences–and I hope readers of this blog might visit Writer Unboxed and consider sharing theirs.
Feathers of the Firebird 