Ramblings of a Young Aussie Writer

A writer lost in her own imagination

The Moment You Realise Your Character Isn’t Actually A Real Person — December 11, 2013

The Moment You Realise Your Character Isn’t Actually A Real Person

Recently I’ve found myself wondering how “Alex” is going and what she’s been up to. The problem with this is that Alex isn’t actually a real person. She is but a figment of my imagination or my current favourite character. I’m proud to say that I’ve written a whole 100,000+ word manuscript and edited it basically. I absolutely loved writing this manuscript/novel/whatever you want to call it. I’m a new writer and this was my first proper size piece of writing. Somehow my brain thought up an exciting story that I personally really enjoy reading (and writing). Maybe it’s because I’m new at this, maybe I don’t have exciting enough friends or maybe it’s even that I feel I can relate so much but regardless of the reasoning the result is that my main character Alex is like a best friend to me. Oh how sad I know. Yes Alex is younger than me and certainly cooler than me but I just feel so connected to her in more than a creator kind of way. She’s so much more than just a made up character in a book and the novel (I like that term better although calling it a book at the moment is just a little too pretentious). The novel is a series (hopefully the name Harlequin sticks) and the first one ended in a bit of a cliff-hanger. There were a fair amount of answers but hopefully for more than just me, it ended making you want to read more. I have so many ideas, plots and subplots to write in and I have started, only just but still started, writing book 2. Another book idea has since come to me and I got side-tracked and have ended up writing a new novel. In both of them the main character has been a female who is psychologically strong but that’s where the similarities end. In this new manuscript (Surrender) the main female is called Temi and as much as I love her, I sometimes let my mind drift away to where Alex might be. Temi is ethereal and dutiful; Alex is fiery and righteous. Surrender doesn’t have a sequel (well so far I plan to leave the ending how it is) whereas with Harlequin, Alex’s journey is far from over. Alex has a love triangle and I have spent countless hours trying to decide if or who she ends up with. My poor husband has sat patiently and listened to me try and rationalize my decision only to change my mind an hour later. From the small amount of experience I’ve had with writing, I mean like under 200,000 words small, I’ve found that my brain makes all the decision for me and they seem to bypass my confused thoughts and head straight down to my fingertips where it becomes a story. Sometimes I stop to read my work and find myself saying ‘that’s really cool and exciting, how did I come up with that?’ When I am doing a read-through of my book so see if it makes sense, I find myself asking what happens next only to be disappointed because I don’t have to wonder, I wrote it. I want to look forward to seeing what happens but then I realise that I’m in charge so I get to decide.

My goal when it comes to writing is to create something that people love and enjoy reading so much that they, just like me, wants to know ‘what happens next.’ I hope to inspire people’s creative genius and provoke their imaginations so that while they wait to find out the answer to the question, they can fantasize about what they want to happen next. I want to widen people’s imagination. How great would it be if a reader had the same thoughts as I do today, ‘I wonder how Alex is going?’ 

Signing off for today to go help Temi’s story get out into the world.

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A Love That Inspires Me — December 1, 2013

A Love That Inspires Me

So it’s a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon in my happy little paradise and next to me lies my husband, asleep on the couch. Knowing he’s here, knowing he loves me unconditionally gives me the desire to write and provokes endless ideas for stories and writing. I’ve read lots of romance books and watch the girly movies but with every relationship I got into, I fooled myself that that was fiction and this was life. Relationships don’t work like they do in the books and movies. They’re are many more fights, tough times and sometimes there’s a shadow of doubt about how strong your love is for that person. That’s what I thought love was and for nearly all of my teenage/adult life I stuck with that. High hopes lead to disappointment and loneliness. Right?

WRONG! I can look at my life now and without doubt say I am truly happy. We don’t have a lot of money but enough to have some luxuries and a house but I have him. As soon as I saw him I was drawn to him, I never wanted this human out of my life and I didn’t know why. Our ‘love story’ is long and almost unbelievable but today is not the day to clear those thoughts out of my head. They’re not ready to sprawl across my laptop screen.

In short, my neighbours of 11 years who had always had a crush on me (unbeknownst to me till now) came into my life after a natural disaster left us both with nothing and him trying in vain to find him dad. I was lucky that I never had to convince him that his dad would not be found alive. We both knew and that made things easier. From the moment we met properly we never left eachother’s side to the point where for the first at least month we had never spent more than a few hours apart. Still days 3 years on, we have only ever spent 3 days apart at a time (which was once). People used to tell us that things would get harder for us but hell we had a hard start with everything. In actual fact things got easier and life is sweet now. 

I write about females in love but of course for the purpose of the story there must be complications which are usually to do with a conflict in the males personality about if he should love her or vice versa. That’s the hard part. I’m writing about true love but I must write in problems between the couple. My husband, John and I don’t fight. Like seriously I think we’ve had about 5 “fights” all up but there has never ever been yelling or screaming or throwing things. I get cranky or he gets cranky, we walk away to cool off then an hour or less later we both apologise regardless of who’s fault it was. This is my life and I know every relationship is different but the inspiration for the bad fights, tense moments and overall negative parts of a relationship come (sadly) from my sister’s relationship. So sad but she seems happy most of the time. I fear that one day things for her and her husband may go very wrong but for now she is happy or so I believe. Past relationships that I can only describe as messed up also give me inspiration. You must know pain and heartbreak before you can truly understand pure true love. It’s funny to see things on facebook about how every girl wants to wake up to a message saying ‘good morning beautiful.’ Well John leaves for work before I get up and every morning I wake up to a text that says exactly that – good morning beautiful or something similar. 

I have only written two manuscripts so far that I believe at least one person will want to read once they are edited properly (fingers crossed). My biggest fan never stops believing in me and encouraging me (Love him so much). In my absolutely favourite manuscript my main character feels strongly about two males and the one she thinks she loves ultimately doesn’t choose her over something else when he should. Many times I’ve fought with myself over which male she ends up with but it always comes down to one thing – I would do absolutely anything for John and I know he feels the same. There is nothing that could stop us from being together. My choice is and always will be John, no matter the question. This is the deciding flaw in my main male character and therefore he does not get his love. Like many sad relationships I’ve been through, you think they love you like you love them but when things get tough they don’t choose you. Ultimately there should never be a choice, there’s no need to think, when you love someone so unconditionally you just know.

I have perfection. His love is all I need