I have a tendency to take things a little too seriously. In this instance, it's NYWM. I started it because I thought it would be a fun way to start my character blog and challenge myself in a new medium as well as developing my protagonist from my book further.
Then I missed a day. Then another. And a third time.
I started to get anxious because I wasn't following through with my goals. And I started to get anxious because I thought it was crap and who would want to read it?
The best part was that I was concentrating on my other projects because I was putting off my NYWM goal.
Recently I've started seeing a psychologist, because this worry isn't something exclusive to my writing. He told me I have something called General Anxiety Disorder (GAD). It's treatable and already I'm starting to feel better.
However, I used some of the techniques I've been learning to manage the worry, and applied them to how I'm feeling about not following through with NYWM goals.
I've overreacted a little, and realised that the idea behind NYWM (besides the writing of course) was to have fun. At least, that's how I should have been taking it.
And it's something I need to remember about my writing. I write because I love it, and it is ultimately fun. As soon as I start taking it seriously, nothing happens and my projects lie stagnant. The same with Twitter and Blogging. If I take them seriously as 'networking tools', then all of a sudden, I'm overcome with anxiety and nothing gets done.
So, especially for the rest of this month, I'm going to have fun with NYWM. Who cares if my character blog doesn't go anywhere? Who cares if it doesn't make sense?
Right now, I don't. I'm going to have fun.
Showing posts with label characterisation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label characterisation. Show all posts
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Thursday, 26 May 2011
The Feminist Inside Me
That's not meant to sound dirty, I swear.
This is an issue I've been meaning to blog about for a while but haven't. I was re-watching a few episodes of Mad Men and it started me thinking about it all over again. Let's see if I can do this coherently.
I have always loved reading. And I've known I wanted to be a writer since I was ten years old and my teacher read my poems and stories out to the class.
But until I read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck in year Eleven, no single author had me captured by their language the way Steinbeck did. There are many reasons why I loved the book, but they will do better in another post.
I love Steinbeck, and he became my favourite author from then on. Since then, I've read East of Eden, The Pearl, The Red Pony and Cannery Row.
Now, onto feminism. I feel like even if I hadn't known what feminism was, I would have developed something of this sensibility anyway. My parents split up when I was ten (coincidence?) and from then, it was three women in my house. Three strong women.
Sometime after, Dad introduced my sister and I to our future step-mother. Another strong woman. A woman who helped me realise my dreams weren't so silly after all. She was teacher of screenwriting at a Sydney tertiary institution.
Aside from that, the strongest personalities in my life were women. My grandmothers, and step-grandmothers (lots of divorce in my family, something for yet another post), are very strong women. At the age of fifteen, my paternal grandfather passed away. It sucked. But it meant that I got to watch my grandmother survive beyond that and become an even stronger woman in my eyes.
At some point during my teens, I realised that all the stories I was writing revolved around women, with very few male central characters. And, as many of my readers will know, so many of the classics and books in school, and many books in general, had male central characters. And I felt like I was doing something wrong, and tried to develop male central characters to write. I even had a male central character for the play I wrote as a final project in Drama. A project that many people praised, yet I scrapped it two weeks before it was due, in favour of a play that centred around a female main character because I felt like I connected with her better.
Fast forward to midway through uni. I realised something after reading East of Eden, which was driven home after reading Cannery Row. Steinbeck's women were more absent from his classic texts, than men were from my own writing. All women were either mothers, whores, or two dimensional girlfriends who were only referred to.
So became a flaw apparent in my idol's writing. As happens to a lot of people after high school, I had become a little more self aware. Studying my passion and becoming aware of the different types of Feminism helped too.
I came to the conclusion: so what? So what if I write about mostly women? Don't we need more texts like that? Non-chicklit* texts like that?
So, I decided that John Steinbeck was allowed to be my idol in style. I still try to keep my prose as spare as possible while still giving across the message**.
I still think that as a writer, it is a valuable tool to write from the point of view of the opposite sex, yet I don't put pressure on myself to create male central characters. There are enough.
* I have since realised that from a feminist viewpoint, that chicklit is often derided because it is just that: books for women, by women. Although a lot of it is in itself pretty sexist.
** You wouldn't think so from my blog posts. Trust me, my prose is edited a lot more :D
This is an issue I've been meaning to blog about for a while but haven't. I was re-watching a few episodes of Mad Men and it started me thinking about it all over again. Let's see if I can do this coherently.
I have always loved reading. And I've known I wanted to be a writer since I was ten years old and my teacher read my poems and stories out to the class.
But until I read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck in year Eleven, no single author had me captured by their language the way Steinbeck did. There are many reasons why I loved the book, but they will do better in another post.
I love Steinbeck, and he became my favourite author from then on. Since then, I've read East of Eden, The Pearl, The Red Pony and Cannery Row.
Now, onto feminism. I feel like even if I hadn't known what feminism was, I would have developed something of this sensibility anyway. My parents split up when I was ten (coincidence?) and from then, it was three women in my house. Three strong women.
Sometime after, Dad introduced my sister and I to our future step-mother. Another strong woman. A woman who helped me realise my dreams weren't so silly after all. She was teacher of screenwriting at a Sydney tertiary institution.
Aside from that, the strongest personalities in my life were women. My grandmothers, and step-grandmothers (lots of divorce in my family, something for yet another post), are very strong women. At the age of fifteen, my paternal grandfather passed away. It sucked. But it meant that I got to watch my grandmother survive beyond that and become an even stronger woman in my eyes.
At some point during my teens, I realised that all the stories I was writing revolved around women, with very few male central characters. And, as many of my readers will know, so many of the classics and books in school, and many books in general, had male central characters. And I felt like I was doing something wrong, and tried to develop male central characters to write. I even had a male central character for the play I wrote as a final project in Drama. A project that many people praised, yet I scrapped it two weeks before it was due, in favour of a play that centred around a female main character because I felt like I connected with her better.
Fast forward to midway through uni. I realised something after reading East of Eden, which was driven home after reading Cannery Row. Steinbeck's women were more absent from his classic texts, than men were from my own writing. All women were either mothers, whores, or two dimensional girlfriends who were only referred to.
So became a flaw apparent in my idol's writing. As happens to a lot of people after high school, I had become a little more self aware. Studying my passion and becoming aware of the different types of Feminism helped too.
I came to the conclusion: so what? So what if I write about mostly women? Don't we need more texts like that? Non-chicklit* texts like that?
So, I decided that John Steinbeck was allowed to be my idol in style. I still try to keep my prose as spare as possible while still giving across the message**.
I still think that as a writer, it is a valuable tool to write from the point of view of the opposite sex, yet I don't put pressure on myself to create male central characters. There are enough.
* I have since realised that from a feminist viewpoint, that chicklit is often derided because it is just that: books for women, by women. Although a lot of it is in itself pretty sexist.
** You wouldn't think so from my blog posts. Trust me, my prose is edited a lot more :D
Thursday, 5 May 2011
National Young Writers Month (NaYoWriMo)
One of the great things about being the member of a writers centre, is you find out about great things like National Young Writers Month. It's going to be in June, so I've got a while to prepare, or psych myself up for it.
The best part about NaYoWriMo, is that us young writers get to set our own goals for the month, and work towards it for all of June.
My initial idea was to finish a draft of something I'm working on. But, there's another idea in my head that's been there for a while, that ties into one of the drafts anyway.
I'm going to start a new blog! Well, it won't be 'me', it'll be one of my characters. After the book takes place, she starts writing a diary to help herself remember what has happened to her.
So! My goal for the month of June, will be for Sal (I may as well tell you her name now) to write three entries a week. This will be a challenge, but I thinks it's time more people met Sal, and hopefully it will give me more insight into this character as well.
Excited!
The best part about NaYoWriMo, is that us young writers get to set our own goals for the month, and work towards it for all of June.
My initial idea was to finish a draft of something I'm working on. But, there's another idea in my head that's been there for a while, that ties into one of the drafts anyway.
I'm going to start a new blog! Well, it won't be 'me', it'll be one of my characters. After the book takes place, she starts writing a diary to help herself remember what has happened to her.
So! My goal for the month of June, will be for Sal (I may as well tell you her name now) to write three entries a week. This will be a challenge, but I thinks it's time more people met Sal, and hopefully it will give me more insight into this character as well.
Excited!
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Recurring Characters
I was walking along the other day. I forget where, I think it was somewhere near my Mum's house.
So I was walking along, thinking about one of my characters, and how I had come to realise not long ago that I had got one aspect of her character wrong. And now that I knew more about her, I wondered how I had come to know that about her. I mulled over other aspects of her character, like personality and appearance. And then I realised what had happened.
Tawny (the character I was thinking about) is a younger, fantasy version of Joss. Joss is a character I wrote about in a short story for class over two years ago now. She is one of my favourite characters, and I've always wanted to write about her more. And then unwittingly, I did, albeit in a completely different circumstance and scenario. It makes me happy, but also makes me feel a little foolish. Have I done this before?
And just as I was thinking that, I realised that Caroline*, the protagonist from the recent short story, is very similar Molly, from the same WiP as Tawny. Granted, the similarities are less obvious, but they are there.
Character similarities across different works isn't exclusive to me, because this train of thought reminded me of those personality tests on Facebook. I did two within a short space of time, 'Which Firefly Character are You?' and 'Which Joss Whedon** Character are You?'. I got Wash, then Xander (from Buffy). These guys are almost the same character.
And there are many other authors and film makers who do this as well as recurring themes and plots. Whether it's a good thing, bad thing, or just a thing, I haven't figured out. But it makes me feel better that I'm not the only one.
Has this ever happened to you?
*Named after my cousin, because she asked me to name a character after her.
**Joss partly was named after him.
So I was walking along, thinking about one of my characters, and how I had come to realise not long ago that I had got one aspect of her character wrong. And now that I knew more about her, I wondered how I had come to know that about her. I mulled over other aspects of her character, like personality and appearance. And then I realised what had happened.
Tawny (the character I was thinking about) is a younger, fantasy version of Joss. Joss is a character I wrote about in a short story for class over two years ago now. She is one of my favourite characters, and I've always wanted to write about her more. And then unwittingly, I did, albeit in a completely different circumstance and scenario. It makes me happy, but also makes me feel a little foolish. Have I done this before?
And just as I was thinking that, I realised that Caroline*, the protagonist from the recent short story, is very similar Molly, from the same WiP as Tawny. Granted, the similarities are less obvious, but they are there.
Character similarities across different works isn't exclusive to me, because this train of thought reminded me of those personality tests on Facebook. I did two within a short space of time, 'Which Firefly Character are You?' and 'Which Joss Whedon** Character are You?'. I got Wash, then Xander (from Buffy). These guys are almost the same character.
And there are many other authors and film makers who do this as well as recurring themes and plots. Whether it's a good thing, bad thing, or just a thing, I haven't figured out. But it makes me feel better that I'm not the only one.
Has this ever happened to you?
*Named after my cousin, because she asked me to name a character after her.
**Joss partly was named after him.
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Heroines
As in, female protagonists of novels. Now this post might drive you a bit crazy because I'm not going to use any specifics. Sorry about that.
So to the task at hand. I'm just in the middle of watching a film based on a book. And I just finished a different book today. Both books have girls as their central characters and I got to thinking about how I imagine characters when I read a book.
It occurred to me that the former book, before I saw the film version, had a heroine who is a fairly two dimensional character and I imagined her as a caricature or with cartoonish features. The second book, the one I finished today, has a heroine who is much more three dimensional - or at least, I identified with her much more as a person. This girl I imagined as a real person, and almost placed myself at the centre of the action.
Both books are told in first person, so there is nothing to argue on that point. However, if the characterisation and narration are done well enough, something like point of view shouldn't matter.
So, how do you imagine characters, depending on how well you identify with them or not? It'd be interesting to see if it's just me.
So to the task at hand. I'm just in the middle of watching a film based on a book. And I just finished a different book today. Both books have girls as their central characters and I got to thinking about how I imagine characters when I read a book.
It occurred to me that the former book, before I saw the film version, had a heroine who is a fairly two dimensional character and I imagined her as a caricature or with cartoonish features. The second book, the one I finished today, has a heroine who is much more three dimensional - or at least, I identified with her much more as a person. This girl I imagined as a real person, and almost placed myself at the centre of the action.
Both books are told in first person, so there is nothing to argue on that point. However, if the characterisation and narration are done well enough, something like point of view shouldn't matter.
So, how do you imagine characters, depending on how well you identify with them or not? It'd be interesting to see if it's just me.
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