Tag: inspiration

New Ideas

Building My Community, One Step At A Time

carolyncordon

Writers, especially those who have no high range publisher holding their hand as they write, have to find ways to fund their writing, if they are going to be able to keep on writing.

I am a self-published writer, a freelance writer and a volunteer member of the community. I edit the local newsletter, and am able to use it that to further various of my other community outlets. I, of course, am mindful that I need to keep things in the Town newsletter relevant to as wide a range of residents as possible.

At the moment, my novel writing is taking second place to a community project I am promoting, and in fact organising. I am interested in working on building a greater sense of community in the township I live in, a small place around 60 or so kilometres from Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia.

Now I am not a great shopper, buying high fashion, at high prices, I am happier buying a much loved item in the right colour and style, and I usually find such things at op shops, and garage sales. I am also pretty terrible about having a tidy home, because I have far too many ‘things’.

I’m a big ideas kind of person as well, and when I get one of my ‘big’ ideas, I love it if and when I can get started on the idea straight away. If I have to hang around waiting, I get bored sometimes, and want to move on to the next big thing.

So I am thrilled to be working at the moment on my new big idea, taking actions required, and getting the word out to see who else wants to be involved. I am taking all of the steps needed so I can run a fantastic Yard sale for the whole of the township I live in, Redbanks. Well, for as many of the residents who I can get interested, anyway.

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(This photo was taken at my place in Redbanks, where I live. Can you see the dancer, just above the (real) tree? Cloud images can be so inspiring!)

I’m hoping to get the Mayor of Adelaide Plains Council involved, and already have one of the councillors interested in it all. The writing related thing about it is that I have written in one of my other blogs about it, earlier today, and used images of two of my self-published books in the blog post, and said copies will be available for purchase at the sale.

I hope I can have some information about my writing group available there too, and it would be fun to have some of my writing friends there too, if they interested in being there. I want to know more about the people living around me, why they moved here, what they do, what they like. I love people, and if I can help them dispose of their unneeded treasures, and make some money too, that will be great.

As I indicate in that other blog post, I will be collecting the fee from those who get involved in it, and giving the money to Mallala Primary, the local Primary School. I’m so excited about this, I hope the weather will be fine, but if it rains, well at least I tried!

Any hints and tips from people who know about these things would be very welcome!

 

Writing

The Writing Of My Novel

carolyncordon

Today was Anzac Day, and my writing group held a Writers Lock In at the venue we meet at every week, the Prince Albert Hotel in Gawler, South Australia. Four of us got together when we could in the morning, and stayed until our usual group meeting time. We wrote, and wrote, working on whatever of our writing projects were that we wished to put a big effort into.

I had previously decided I would spend my time putting as many of my small bits of my novel-in-progress, a story with the working title of “Talloola Travails”, into the main file of that work. Last night I wrote down the current word count I had so far for the novel. it was nowhere near as high a number as I need, but there were all of my bits and pieces I have been writing at our group meetings, when we are given a writing prompt, and I have been thinking about my novel, and what my main character will do with that prompt …

I have many such hand written words, of around 150 to 300 words each, in various notebooks I have. If I put all of those words into the actual file of the novel I have on my laptop, and then add the bits I have on my phone, (in Notes), that will add many more words to my total. I did 1661 words today and there are probably at least twenty times that many words left to type up, and transfer …

So that’s 33220 plus the words already there – and that makes 47645 words in my novel, without writing anything new. Then there will be the words needed to join all of the pieces together, plus words to draw out the various plot pieces and sub plots, many of which exist only in my head …

If I add all of that together, I expect I will have around 60,000 words in total, and in this day and age that is enough words to make a novel, except for the genre this story is, I probably need to have more words than that. I’ll look that up now, while I’m thinking about it.

OK, so my book is a political thriller, of sorts, and the given word length for that genre is 70,000 to 90,000 words. Another word count, on another web page has given 75,000 words as the minimum count, with an upper limit of 130,000 words. I certainly can’t see this work getting to that high number of words, although who knows what might happen? The lower numbers are quite achievable I think.

I have been working on this piece since 2016, writing these small responses to prompts, using some of them to place written pieces inside of a plot outline, using the “Heroes Journey” format. This link gives a great description on what that format is, and if you want to write fiction with some kind of high level action to it, this classic style is a golden oldie, much used for exciting stories, both novels and movies.

I have a lot more work to do on feeding in and ‘fattening’ various subplots, and possibly will benefit from doing more work on each of my characters, so I know more about each of them. I think I can wait on that task until I’ve got the already written pieces slotted into the novel as it is now, first though, so it will be easier to see what I’m dealing with, in terms of things that need to be written still.

I hope you have found this look into how I am writing this novel interesting, I had a good time looking at some of the bits and pieces of what I’m doing. I realise it would be far more sensible to write directly onto my laptop. I’m not sure why I’d been hesitating about taking my laptop with me to our writers group in the past. There have been problems with internet connection at that venue in the past, but today, there was a good internet connection and none of us had any problems there at all.

I didn’t have my laptop until quite recently though, and I’m still learning about it, so felt pen on paper would be my best way to go, or writing notes on my phone … There are many ways to write a novel, and I am certainly exploring a few different ones! Being open to change, and using what is available are good ways to go in all of life, for sure.

I have no deadline for the completion on this novel, but I want to have a first draft done, and given to others to read for feedback. I’ve been reading my pieces at the writing group each week at meetings, and the other group members always seem to think it’s good, even though they haven’t read it in a connected narrative form just bits and pieces, from disparate sections of the story.

This story has been with me for three years now, and I am beginning to see an end to it all, where until our writer lock in today, I hadn’t really thought much about when this may end, and sometimes I almost decided to just forget about the whole thing. But then at the next writing group meeting, Meredith (my main character), would tell me what was going to happen, based on the writing prompt given by Alex. And I know members of the group would probably to actually like to read the full story to make sense of the scraps they heard from me over the past few years.

I’ve written the ending of the story, so I know what I’m heading toward, I just have to fill in the gaps to bring it all to that place …

If you have any ideas about good ways to write a novel, I’d love to read about it, feel free to leave a comment here.

Uncategorized

My First Ever ‘Stand Up Comic’ gig

carolyncordon

It wasn’t an actual gig, with advertising, posters, lots of money spent on putting it together, and getting the word out to others. It was more a simple case of me taking advantage of an opportunity and going for it.

I wrote a piece, looked at it a couple of times, thought about it, then edited it, printed it out, then went along to that opportunity and went for it! There were a variety of reasons why it was not the best ever Stand Up Comic event, and they were not all my fault.

The event was not set up for what I was doing, the audience had no idea beforehand what I would be doing, the sound quality was terrible. But even with all of that, I’m glad I had a go, and was at least OK, if not great. I am a work in progress in so many different ways!

A stand up comic act will be best if you have an audience set up ready to laugh, if they can easily hear what you’re saying, and if you’re really, really funny. That was not the way it was today, but I’ve learnt things, about the best kind of venue, a target audience, things to do next time, in other words.

Or maybe I’ll just go on being a poet and writer, who is an amusing and lovely friend, and there is no need for me to be that kind of performer. I am going to look further into this though, there is a stand up comic who is aware that I’m interested in learning more about the whole things, and I’m hoping to work with him toward the end of the year.

I am involved in a writing group, which puts on a monthly writing workshop, on a variety of different ‘word’ related things. Stand Up comedy is certainly word related, and I’m looking forward to learning more about how to put together a script, and presenting it to make people laugh.

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I can smile, I want to make other people smile too!

Writing

What Community Means To Me

carolyncordon

Community is one of the overarching important things in my life, and perhaps in your life too. The idea of ‘community’ is about, being there and helping others, getting together to get things done, enjoying good times, cleaning up messes when things go wrong.

A good community will be made up of many people who are always happy to get involved. Volunteers, and organisations and businesses to help those volunteers get their volunteer work done, whatever it is.

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Canna, given to us by a neighbour

I live near a small town Mallala that has an aging population, but with many, many volunteers. These people are members of various groups, filling committees and giving their best, with no expectation of anything, beyond good feelings for how it makes them fee, when they are doing their volunteer duties.

imag0226_1Mallala has various community groups, all of them ‘watched over’ by Council, with a very light hand most of the time. This is a relatively new thing, having Council closely involved, but it seems to go well enough.

We have a Museum in Mallala, that is very well regarded, and has many bus tours coming along to see the great collection they’ve put together there. Our Bowling Club does well, when events are held there, the various other sports seem to be well run too. When the community gets organised, they can go on, doing bigger and better things, or doing the small things exceptionally well. That is my town, that is the Mallala community!

 

Gawler is my community too. The writing group I’m involved in meets in a hotel in Gawler every Thursday. This hotel, the Prince Albert Hotel, is also home to the monthly poetry ready we hold on the last Sunday of every month, and we sometimes use the Gawler Community House to record pod casts to the Gawler Broadcasting Association, where we talk about what we’ve been doing, and other interesting things in relation to writing.

imag0049I feel at home in Gawler too, it’s good to be with people who know me and want to be friends with me! So I have a few places near where I live, where I feel I can get on with doing the things that interest me the most, and where my abilities are recognised as being useful to my community. These are surely necessary things, these are needed things, to help a person feel like they are worthy members of the community.

 

 

poetry, Story Ideas, Writing

Doing the Washing, Getting an Idea!

carolyncordon

Inspiration everywhere

Today was washing day – a fine day, with a bit of wind, some cloud, but lots of clear blue sky too. Yesterday was a day from hell, very strong winds from the north, picking up and carrying much dust from the dry paddocks all around the place.

It was lovely to wake up to a much more pleasant day today. I was involved in doing the washing today, sometimes Graham does most of it, sometimes I do, sometimes both of us do some, the other person doing the rest. It’s always my job to put it all away again, I’m not sure why, it just is.

As I was writing a Facebook post about doing the washing, with a photograph, I suddenly had an idea for a possible picture book. It involved the idea that the clothes we washed and dried, then put away again, ready to be worn another time, were actually alive, and had minds, and feelings.

How would they feel about being washed, hung up in the sunshine, then folded or hung up inside in the wardrobe. How would they feel about the various things that happen to them, how would they communicate with each other, and so on.

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Making Mundane More

This idea is in very early stages, but it feels like a lot of fun, and it may have a message that could be useful to pass on to young children about looking after their clothes, perhaps … Housework can do strange things to my imagination sometimes, there’s never a dull moment!

So what am I going to do with this idea? Am I going to turn it into a Picture Book, or not? The answer to that question is a thoughtful ‘Hmm, not yet’. At the moment, I have many, many writing things in various stages of completion, so won’t be working hard on this new idea, not yet.

I’ll go on thinking about it though, and when the time is right for this idea, I may well get it written and published. It’s such a fun idea to think about. Doing the washing is such a boring thing, sometimes. You wash the clothes, wear them a time or so, and then you have to wash them again!

 

But Wait, There’s More

Ideas are everywhere, and now that I’ve started to look at one housework chore in a fun way, what else could be a possible story idea? What about the shopping we buy, and bring into our homes? How might the ‘stuff’ we’ve had for ages feel if or when the various items are supplanted, their newness faded, and the interest from the human owners faded too?

image00000095In our household we’ve gone through various coffee making methods over the years, for instance. From instant coffee, to French Press (called Plunger Coffee in Australia, where I live), to the new Aero Press, which is our newest coffee method (similar to plunger coffee, but slightly different). What might the old Plunger Coffee device think of the new, quicker Aero Press? Would there be anger, fear, jealousy? We still use both, and I sometimes might have a cup of instant coffee too, from time to time. What might the coffee devices think about that one?

 

Making the Old New Again

See, thinking about various ordinary things can take you on interesting journeys. Books for children can be interesting that’s for sure – kids are more willing to think about things in fun ways, because to a child, everything, is a possible toy, or something to do new things with. Children haven’t had the ‘creative fun’ parts of their brains ground out yet, they are always willing to think about things in ways us old folk won’t bother with.

Being old, and having ‘seen it all before’ can lead a person to cynicism, and that can be dangerous if you’re a writer, or really for us all. If we turn our mind away from the fun possibilities in all of life, then life will be boring!

image00000084I certainly don’t want to live a boring life, I want to do fun things, and find interest in the things I do, all of the things, if that’s possible, and it nearly always is possible! When you can look at life and see new possible ways to do things, life can keep on being interesting to you, and hey, isn’t that what it’s all about, having an interesting life? I think so, what do you think?