Yesterday I was given a small wooden writing desk by a nice friend. Topped with a red enamel mug full of sharp new HB pencils and a few favourite pens it is now my very own writing space. I had been using our lovely old maple dining table but got sick of piling things on to the sideboard at mealtime. This created Mountains of Mess containing the odd surprise layer of a Star Wars DVD, a sock or an overdue electricity bill. Not good. So now I have my own cute little table with three drawers all for me. Small sigh of happiness.
I began today with some critiquing. This is surprisingly fun. Especially since the writer is not here to argue my changes! But it really is useful for both parties on several levels and I strongly recommend it. I also recommend Natures Cuppa organic tea. 'The tea that puts flavour in a writers masterpiece.' Sorry, bit of product placement there.
So after making lot's of fun changes to someone else's hard work, I proceeded to do research on my fantasy trilogy. This involved looking up some inspiring images of settings and character.These I cut and pasted together to make inspiration sheets which help me to to instantly get a feel for a scene or dialogue for a character. The thing is I am rather enamoured with one of my male characters who happens to look amazingly like James McAvoy. This is a handy coincidence as I was able to trawl through hundreds of images (I take my work seriously)of James McAvoy to find the ones that looked most like my character. Who would have thought research could be so much fun? I was certainly smiling through a good deal of it. Anyway after several hours I had to stop, pour a glass of cold water over my head and get on with other research that needed doing.
So the thing I learnt today, is that research is terribly important, just don't get caught up in the fun stuff and over-research an area. It may be amusing but it doesn't a book maketh. Darn it.
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