Peter Pan, J.K.Rowling and Beginnings

Morning folks, an early update given that I’m on holiday. How have you been? Fabulous, I hope. I’ve had a great start to the New Year – I’ve managed to keep the resolutions that I’ve imposed on myself. I’ve read more, practiced my instruments more and have written everyday. Now, that in itself is a biggy for me – I rarely write everyday. I always try too but I usually fail, but for the last nine days I’ve written everyday (yes, I started that NYR before 1^st Jan). I’ll try my damnedest to continue the pattern – it can only benefit my work.

As mentioned last blog, I’ve retrieved Whaley’s ‘The Positively Productive Writer’ from the bookshelf for another reading to boost the self confidence. I received a kindly tweet from the man himself after I’d mentioned it in a tweet. If you haven’t read it then I really would recommend a viewing – this year I’ve implemented his daily word count spreadsheet to see if it helps my daily writing goal (The Positively Productive Writer ISBN 978-1-84694-851-0).

As you can see my word count for my projects are increasing but I’ve had a brutal overhaul of project TFD as I suddenly felt that I’d started the story at the wrong point. This happened to me previously with ‘Her’ so, this time I had thought long and hard about the opening scene only to now disagree with myself five days in – urrggggh! Anyway, I have set about changing the first few pages, as always nothing is wasted in writing as I’ve snipped and re-knitted the written paragraphs together. Tomorrow I have an entire day in which to write so I’m looking forward to notching up a couple of thousand on the word count widget.

My Christmas read was ‘The Casual Vacancy’ by J.K. Rowling – so far I’m enjoying it. I wasn’t surprised to find her writing style so very different from the Harry Potter books – it’s a different genre so the author changes style. I have read some reviews in which she’s be slated but hey, I’m sure she isn’t worried by the negative comments. I am enjoying the detailing of a small community which I think she’s captured beautifully – maybe the critics aren’t quite aware of the diversity behind each household’s front door. I can see where her experience as a school teacher comes shining through in regards the details about school life and the pupils.

I’ve had a free week regards writing groups due to the New Year, everyone wished to start next week, so I’ll have Wednesday and Thursday groups to attend.

This week I’ve had to study the J.M. Barrie’s play ‘Peter Pan’ (1904) of which I knew very little about. Yesterday I spent six hours trawling through the text books and was shocked and a little saddened by the tragedy and dark side to the pantomime. Barrie’s life seems so insular and isolated in many ways and his childhood so uncaring – as always the final story evolves from the depths of the man. My next step is writing a two thousand word essay which needs to be complete by Sunday night – so I’d best get to it.

Remember you can follow me on Twitter: @odwyer-author – I’ll let you know how tomorrow’s writing day goes. Enjoy!