Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Rolling up my sleeves

As mentioned in the comments on my previous post I've decided to dig through my old stuff in a effort to get working. I'm going to call this not wasting decent ideas rather than see it as running out out of new ones:)
First up is a 5-8 year novel that I never could come up with a name for. Reading through what I still have of it (lost the finished version, but I do have about 2/3's of it), it was my first go at prose and pretty bad ( hope I've improved!), but what really lets it down is a some terrible plot contrivances to move the story on. Not sure how I'm going to sort the plot out just yet, but it's good to have to do a bit of work on it instead of just cranking it out.
Plot is quite hard I think. When it comes to reading I like good prose and interesting characterization and could care less about plot.... until I started trying to write. Once you write a bit you realise that it's the plot that ties everything together (like a good rug!), I mean, you've got to give the characters something interesting to do and react to.
Over at Jeff Smith's blog there's sample art for the (not soon enough) upcoming Shazam, knowing I'll never be that good is a reason to keep trying harder!
Oh, and the Moomins comic collection is out adn I've bought it, so should EVERYONE!

5 comments:

Faff said...

Moomins comic collection yaaayyyyy. That and the new Popeye collection are the only things on my Christmas list to Santa.

Danny said...

" When it comes to reading I like good prose and interesting characterization and could care less about plot.... until I started trying to write..."

Well said - christ knows how many times I've been having fun embellishing and adding ticks and quirks only fo rthe whole thing to just run out of narrative steam...

paulhd said...

We think alike Peter:) Looking forward to the Popeye collection, as well as the eventual new Fantagraphics Pogo collections in the same format as the Peanuts books (see what those lovely books kicked open - there's a Dick tracy collected series out that I need to add to my mental shopping trolley (bigger than a basket) too)

Nimiwey said...

Have you felt it weird and enlightening to say 'my daughter'? i still do sometimes with my son and daughter. it's something i thought i'd only hear my mother say.

you seem like you're an awesome dad!

we went to the bookstore and got a daniel (clowse?) graphic novel (ghost world) thanks to the movie 'art school confidential' which you may enjoy if you went to art school, which brainmarket did (leeds polytechnic). we checked out some harvey pekar (also famed in 'american splendor'. we thought of you :-)

paulhd said...

More weird than enlightening Nimwey, but good all the same.
Awesome? Nice of you to say so, feels like I'm fumbling in the dark wearing idiot gloves!
Love the Clowes, Ghostworld was a great adaptation adn I will get round to seeing Artschool eventually, but this being Lancaster not on the big screen.