The art of writing a novel.

Call me silly but I always thought writing a novel would be, well, easy.  I just needed a great idea.  I have the natural urge to write, and write a lot.  My greeting cards are like War and Peace, I keep a day planner which is filled with scribbles and I never had any trouble writing stories for assessment for uni.  Writing a novel was always something I had in my mind that I would do later in life, for fun, maybe in my 30s. 

As of late I have been having a lot of very extravagant, bizarre and wonderful dreams and thus started to write them down.  With this creative spurt, and this here blog, I thought hey why not start a novel now?  This is where my would be novel smacked me in the face.  I would write down my dream all in one go as fast as I could, and end up with a paragraph.... I then would rewrite it and it would still be a paragraph.  Then what every lustre I had would die and id be left with just that paragraph.  Ok so the dream thing isn't working.  Another time I tried again, feeling positive and sure, I sat down at my outrageously green laptop and started to tap away again, same thing, one paragraph in then...... What was going on?  I was so sure I could write a novel when the mood struck me, especially when there are so many bad novels that are published and being sold.

Then I read an article which suddenly changed my way of viewing my own work.  As writers or any sort of artist we are very self critical, this being so, its often hard to find our own work good and worthy.  Especially in our first few years of the art.  This writer explained that most people who have a creative passion give up on their art within the first few years because they aren't producing work to a standard that they are happy with.  The writer also said its very rare that someone, especially a teacher, will make you aware of this.  The key is to keep your creative juices flowing, write a short story every week, it sort of gets the bad stories out so the great ones can begin.  This article really opened my eyes, I wont be put off and I will admit that I cant write a novel on the first go (ha imagine if I could!) but I will simply see everything before this hopeful moment as practice.  I will write a novel, but wont force it, I'm back to thinking it will happen in my 30's.

Antisocial socialising - be in the moment.

Be in the moment, these are resounding and compelling words screamed at an audience member who was watching a show through the lens of his iPhone as opposed to just watching it.  Dylan Moran was on stage doing his usual sexy, drunk, English man bit when he stopped and actually seemed to be annoyed, "why are you even here if your just taking photos and recording me?" he asked.  And it is true, why was he there. If all he wanted to do was look at pictures of the show later he should have just Googled Dylan on stage and stared at photos and films there, would have been a lot cheaper.  But of course this poor fella is not the only person who has fallen victim to the convenience of the iPhone.  We are a snap happy generation.  We all carry cameras and recording devices around with us and aren't afraid to whip them out at any moment to capture what ever maybe be happening at the time.  I love Instragram and who doesn't love a good Snapchat.  But with Dylan's words in my head I've started to be aware of how much taking photos actually removes me from whatever I am doing.  Do I spend more time taking photos, editing, hashtagging and sharing photos of my dog then playing with him, and for that matter all moments in my life? 

Earlier this month I went away on holidays to Singapore so or course was in full photo taking mode.  But my other half is not so inclined to take photos of everything and share them with the world.  Most of his Instagrams I have taken and the only reason he is on Facebook is so everyone knows we are in a relationship (this is perhaps another issue).  But his lake of online enthusiasm is actually fantastic, it made me super aware of how much I was taking photos and how often he was just enjoying the moment, it actually changed me throughout the trip.  Anybody could see from my Facebook upload rate that the first half of the trip was filled with snaps, and the second half was fewer and more select.  Of course there is nothing wrong with taking photos, they are beautiful, can be shared with others and are a great way of remembering.  But I feel I need to stop living life through the lens.  I need to look at the waterfall as it is, not imagine what it could be with some cropping and editing, eek what have we become?

And this outrageous need to be online and sharing all the time of course doesn't stop at photos.  It is all online socialising.  Which is of course actually very unsocial, I dine out a lot and ALWAYS notice when two people are having a meal or drink together, but are both on their phones, what is this?  If you're on the phone to someone else, maybe you should be with them and not the sap on the other side of the table.  I would like to not even take my phone to a café, but of course I need to check in on Facebook, Urbanspoon and maybe post a few things to Instgram....what a curse.  And how about Facebook and the constant status updates. Being 24 means that a lot of people my age, thus on my Facebook, have started to get engaged.  And I swear within minutes of the question they are online changing there status and posting their rings...did you even say yes or just grab your phone to share the news.  I cant help but think all these ways of connecting to the people we maybe don't care so much about, are taking us away from the people and things that we really do love and should be paying more attention to, like the boy across the table or the pet curled up at you feet.  Just a thought.