Comments on: Quite Secret New Thing

By: MG

MG — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:53:45 +0000

Ah my dearest Ali…if only I could write like that. But I’m lazy. If you write like that you tend to have to do many rewrites, sometimes even totally rewriting the book. It’s fun at first but inefficient and takes lots of emotional resolve to keep going through various drafts, some of which might be so bad they scare you into thinking the project is beyond redemption.
The problem I have – prob shared by most writers apart from Stephen King – is that the first idea which comes into my head is lame. The second one, too. And the third. Then there’s the annoying tendency of characters to go off on their own, often to very wrong places. It’s only after many iterations that anything good emerges. The question is whether you commit those iterations to paper or not.
And like I said, I’m lazy…

By: brightonali

brightonali — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:47:52 +0000

Ahh for chissake stop obsessing with all this write the books by the rules stuff! Just make it interesting! The protagonist can be intriguing (miles more that Harry P and please don’t view the beginnings of those novels as models as they are dull!), and the plot can be intriguing, without the former being on control of the latter. sure4ly the thrill is about the way the P eventually becomes active. Eva Ibbotson books are pretty successful and her heroines just have stuff happen to them for ages. So there. Harumph will be fine.

By: Kate

Kate — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:17:08 +0000

Ah you tease – this sounds really intriguing!

By: Frank Boehmert

Frank Boehmert — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:29:01 +0000

By: MG

MG — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:13:15 +0000

!!!

Frank, you are magnificent.

I know, I should stay quiet until I’m done, you’re quite right. Grrr. It’s going to be ages though…what am I supposed to write about until then?

I am having so much fun today doing research for the book. I’m beginning to fear that it’s a pure displacement activity…

By: Frank Boehmert

Frank Boehmert — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:07:16 +0000

Well here, author friend,
Comes my secret comment:

Harumph harumph harumph

What, dear? You don’t get it?
Your brain cells get fretted?

Well it sure doesn’t matter (for ME)
And I swear it feels better
To SAY than to hear these harumphes.

Please now write your book
THEN give us some look
On hero, on plot and on crook.

But don’t make me bitter,
Don’t do it on Twitter,
Do it HERE, in a posting,
Pretty longish and boasting!

*sigh* THAT would be fine!
(Here I’m missing a line.)

Best wishes from your teutonic
translator ironic,
Who’s afraid his rhyming is a sin,

Frank Boehmert from Treptow, Berlin