Melanie Ifield's Blog: Writing with Illness - Posts Tagged "novels"

I understand that blogs are meant to be meaningful or your daily life or even some sort of challenge – if you have ever read or watched Julie & Julia then you know what I mean. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t have a particularly interesting life that would require a blog for every day of it – regardless of the challenges I may think I have to face. Right at the moment the greatest problem I have is not so much writer’s block, because I tend on the verbose side as it is, but a little bit of difficulty making my thoughts behave in the order I want them to.
I’m writing another novel and I know what is needed to be said. The only trouble is, because I know this, my brain has decided that it’s already done. It has said, oh that’s how its going to end and what the different plot lines are. In that case, consider it done. Which is lovely for my brain to do for me (thank you Brain) but on the other hand, I am finding it increasingly difficult to settle it down and make it continue. In the mind, the novel is done and dusted. In fact, the brain has washed it hands of it, thinks the whole thing is sold and making me millions and is wondering what the next project is going to be. I don’t have a problem with an overactive imagination (writer’s live on them) but I need my Brain to stop having galloping consumption and focus on the completion of the task at hand. Nice to idealize my life and believe I have it made, but I need to do the work first!
The trouble is, I have multiple characters all racing around in my head all wanting their story told or at least, to have their voice heard. Sounds lovely. No lack of plot lines there. Except when they wake you up at 3am and start having a general confab in your head without your expressed permission and keep you awake until dawn, then it’s not so great.
Once they have had their say, they go quiet. No matter how much I tell them that is only part of the deal. How do you explain to figments of your imagination that the rest of their job is staying with me until I’ve written the damn thing. Allowing my brain to dictate what parts of what stories can be told because it has already decided someone has had their turn isn’t something I want to encourage. It’s just a wee bit messy. I have all these chapter ones…. and the completed novels trapped in my skull.
I know that out there somewhere, someone will read this and say ‘why doesn’t she have some discipline?’
Sounds wonderful. Someone want to finish this blog… I’ve got a novel to write.

Are you in the habit of re-reading a novel that grabbed you?
Do you watch a TV show or a movie and just have to watch it all over again?
I was watching a movie I'd seen... well, let's not get into numbers of times or I might seem a little obsessed - let's just say, multiple times and be done with it!
Anyway, there I was watching it and it made me think: How does this movie make me feel and what makes it different to everything else I watch? Why do I go back to it?
And that took me on a journey to my favourite TV Shows and why I have seen them so many times I can quote the lines before the actors say them.
And lastly, I thought about all the novels I've read - over and over - like an addiction.
What is it about them that sticks? How come we can re-read some things countless times and not others?
I'd love to hear all about what you watch or read obsessively (just so I feel wonderfully like everyone else! :) ) but also - why?
I thought about it and for me, it is the meeting up of old friends.
Sure, I know what those friends are going to say and do (sometimes I really wish the characters would change their dialogue, but sadly, no!).
I know what is going to happen and still I'm on the edge of my seat, hoping they get out of it all okay.
And that's just it. A great read, or movie, or TV show, drags me into the world of the characters so well, so deftly, that I am left with an ache when I finish. I feel as though I've lost contact with vitally important friends and am bereft.
Do you feel the same way? Like you've lost people important to you when it's all over? And thus, are led back, to experience the highs, the lows and loves and losses once again? (And again and again ....)
For me, feeling engaged with the characters, wanting to know them, knowing that if they just happened, in some distant universe, to be real, they'd be exactly the sort of people I'd enjoy knowing - or at least want to be - that is what brings me back.
That and excellent writing. Both in the books I re-read compulsively and the TV shows I watch to unwind, the writing sparkles, and I think 'wow, now that's what I'm talking about!'