1. Accuracy and realism
So, I am trying to learn the guitar. Not because I want to learn the guitar that badly, but one of my characters plays the guitar. What does rock n roll sound like in prose?
Honestly, I don’t like playing the guitar, the strings hurt my fingers and I keep trying to hold the guitar neck like a violin fingerboard. The frets are meant to make things easier, but it makes the fingerboard look like a complicated chessboard.
I prefer the violin, which I’ve been learning for 4 months. None of my characters play the violin. Maybe they should?
My neck hurts.
2. Read widely.
Virginia Woolf said that if you read a book a day, the words will flow out of you. I’m juggling four novels for inspiration.
A publisher told me that I should also read genre fiction to learn how to keep the plot moving.
I’m reading Dickens’ Little Dorritt, Grenville’s The Secret River, Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle and Steven King’s The Institute.
The words are flowing from me all right.
So now I have a child with telekinetic abilities, living in 19th century colonial Australia speaking Harlem slang. None of my sentences are shorter than 8 lines and I have too many semi-colons.
Nobody wants to read that shit.
My head hurts.
3. Focus.
I need to finish this draft soon. I also have a day job and I need to get another day job that pays for my cats, and for more books. And for a new bookshelf to store the new books.
But there’s Netflix, Stan, Disney Plus, ABC iview, SBS On Demand… We live in a golden age of streamed television.
Plus, there’s the baby beanie for my friend’s son. My friend has been waiting on it for eight years. I really should finish it soon.
I really am learning the violin. There’s so many ways to sound crap on the violin. I should practice.
Everything hurts.
Word upon Word 