I thought I’d experiment with a few character sketches from the play. First on the list is ‘A kind but poor gentleman’. I’m not sure exactly how old he is, or whether he wears a hat… So I drew a couple of kind men. In hats. Hats make the gentleman, probably. I imagine him sort of shabby but refined although that patently doesn’t come over in either of these, they both appear quite well to do. OH WELL. This is why we do research.
As discussed, this month I am going to do the 28 Days Later Drawing Challenge. I am posting the pictures here too because there is a literary theme – I am doing a series of images as research for a new theatre company called Inglenook, who are debuting a kids show called East of the Sun and West of the Moon at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Image the first is an inglenook, or old fashioned fireplace – because they’re going to need a logo at some point. I thought drawing this might help me think of an idea for one, but no joy so far. I mainly just feel the need for some better pencils. And shame that I haven’t drawn without the aid of a graphic tablet in months.
Anyway, if you want to see what other people are doing this month, or even join in, you should ‘like’ the Facebook page. I would highly recommend you do as well, there are already loads of brilliant pictures on there.
In November 2010 I completed National Novel Writing Month, a challenge where you have to write 50,000 words of a novel before midnight on November 30th. From this adventure, an idea was born.
The received wisdom is that once the first draft of a novel is written, you’re supposed to leave it alone for at least three months before returning to edit – preferably longer. Coming back to it with fresh eyes means you’re more likely to be ruthless about cutting stuff that doesn’t work. But what do you do in the meantime? For me, the answer was write more. Essentially, NaNoWriMo created a monster.
In 2011, I set out to write the first draft of a novel every month of the year. I gave each month a genre, and off I went. It was hard going, and I only reached the hallowed 50, 000 words twice throughout the year. But I don’t regard that as total failure, more as a lesson in what is physically possible.
Whenever I was tempted to beat myself up about it, I went back to the fact I was working four days a week as an office temp throughout the year, as well as producing monthly columns for The Broughton Spurtle and Ten Tracks, and other articles for Mslexia Magazine, IdeasTap, The Guardian and STV as I went along. I may not have produced 50k fiction every month, but I think I probably did reach 50k across all my writing. I blogged about this in June to serve as a constant reminder.
But what was the final word count? Drumroll, please….
Continue reading “12 Books in 12 Months: A Review”
Now that I’ve written the bare bones of twelve books, every publisher and their granny have announced their intention to accept manuscript submissions from un-agented newbies. Well, maybe not all of them. But a few.
Continue reading “Opportunities for Writers”
Every month The Rogue Verbumancer posts a photo on his blog and demands the people of the internet write a short story about it, posting links to every entry at the end of the month for all to see. He calls it the Pictonaut Challenge and you can join in too, if you like, for it is open to all. This is my one for January.
Continue reading “The Reliquary”
Another day, another hare brained scheme! Today on 12 books, the ‘do a creative thing in a short space of time’ mantra strikes again, this time in the format of 28 Drawings Later – a project begun by artist Victoria Evans last year. She wants YOU to draw something every day in February and upload it to Facebook in a constantly evolving digital art exhibition. I asked her why.
Continue reading “28 Drawings Later – Interview with Victoria Evans”
12 Books in 12 Months 