Deckarförfattare Camilla Läckberg berättar om sina skrivarvåndor och nya deckarmanuset "Tyskungen". Läs under posten 23 augusti.
Camilla är väldigt generös med att berätta om sitt skrivande i denna blogg!
Posts
1 hour ago
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Friday, August 18, 2006
Bra länksida
Fick tips från Carol på denna engelskspråkiga sida.
Och sen kom även detta tips som är "superinspirerande ingångar iskrivandet om man nu skulle ha råkat köra fast, eller behöver infoga lite
friska fläktar i sin story". Tack Carol!
PS: Ikväll är det en dokumentär på TV om engelske barnboksförfattaren Roald Dahl ("Kalle och chokladfabriken") - där kan ni se mer av hans lilla skrivarstuga :-)
SVT2 kl 20.00. Repris 20/8.
Och sen kom även detta tips som är "superinspirerande ingångar iskrivandet om man nu skulle ha råkat köra fast, eller behöver infoga lite
friska fläktar i sin story". Tack Carol!
PS: Ikväll är det en dokumentär på TV om engelske barnboksförfattaren Roald Dahl ("Kalle och chokladfabriken") - där kan ni se mer av hans lilla skrivarstuga :-)
SVT2 kl 20.00. Repris 20/8.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Entusiastisk agent
En amerikansk litterär agent bloggar här bl a om sin entusiasm inför ett fantasymanus som hon fått in. Klart läsvärt! Titta under posten "New client?"
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Chamberlaine igen.....
Hon är så inspirerande med sin glädje över att skriva:
"Ahhhh. . . four wonderful hours at the Opium Den this morning. Me, all curled up in a cushy purple chair with a maple oat nut scone, too many cups of coffee, and a fresh pad of yellow lined paper. Heaven. I’m serious!
My subconscious and I work so well together sometimes! Since I am working on both story and character simultaneously at this early point , here’s how I spent my time. I skimmed/read/skipped through parts of Gail Saltz’s book, THE ANATOMY OF A SECRET LIFE. Ideas came to me as I read and I wrote them down. It’s such a strange and interesting thing that happens when you’re lucky enough to be blessed with an out-of-control imagination. If anyone read my notes and also read Saltz’s book, they’d never connect the two. It’s just that reading anything short of cereal boxes at this point in the process inspires new ideas. It’s such fun. I know the central players now, but they are pale shadows of who’ll they’ll become. A new and intriguing character came to me who will play an important role, and some of the plot twists are popping into my brain.
I’m trying to make three very important decisions: who is the central character, the protagonist? who has a POV (point of view)? and will I write in first or third person?"
Läs mer här.Under posten 14 augusti.
"Ahhhh. . . four wonderful hours at the Opium Den this morning. Me, all curled up in a cushy purple chair with a maple oat nut scone, too many cups of coffee, and a fresh pad of yellow lined paper. Heaven. I’m serious!
My subconscious and I work so well together sometimes! Since I am working on both story and character simultaneously at this early point , here’s how I spent my time. I skimmed/read/skipped through parts of Gail Saltz’s book, THE ANATOMY OF A SECRET LIFE. Ideas came to me as I read and I wrote them down. It’s such a strange and interesting thing that happens when you’re lucky enough to be blessed with an out-of-control imagination. If anyone read my notes and also read Saltz’s book, they’d never connect the two. It’s just that reading anything short of cereal boxes at this point in the process inspires new ideas. It’s such fun. I know the central players now, but they are pale shadows of who’ll they’ll become. A new and intriguing character came to me who will play an important role, and some of the plot twists are popping into my brain.
I’m trying to make three very important decisions: who is the central character, the protagonist? who has a POV (point of view)? and will I write in first or third person?"
Läs mer här.Under posten 14 augusti.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Man ska skriva, inte blogga.....
Miss Snark, uppskattad litterär agent med egen blogg, läxar upp bloggande wanna-be-författare....
Att skriva överallt
Författare av kärleksromaner bloggar om sina äventyr i bokbranschen:
"I work in a cubicle farm, in a sunless, fluorescent office breathing recycled air, the kind of place where everyone gets frequent headaches and no one knows why (the air? the ventilation? the bad ergonomics? the unnatural light? there are too many possibilites to choose from).
It's a badly-run company, with too many layers of management coming up with lousy ideas, leaving the cubicle slaves to shovel the shit, overworked, understaffed, and chided for abysmal morale. I am one of thousands.
I have written on lunch hours, on buses, in hospital waiting rooms, in doctor's offices.
I write longhand, because it's still the most mobile format - I write on scraps of paper, yellowed pieces of binder paper found in a drawer, spiral notebooks lifted from the office supply cabinet (oh, stop, we've all done it) - I have written on stolen breaks, wandering around my office looking for a few minutes of privacy with a door closed, where no one will ask the dreaded question "Whatcha doing?" (I've never found it.)
I know which seat on the commuter train has the wheelwell in the floor, allowing the writer to prop her knee up, angling her notebook away from the passenger in the next seat.
I remember writing an entire short story on the streetcar, scribbling madly, ignoring the queasiness, desperate to get the words out of my head. I have typed everything into a succession of PCs, backing up to floppy disk, carting the disk to work in the vain hope of getting some writing time.
I have tried to get in touch with my muse at 9:30 on a Tuesday night, so stressed I feel like weeping, the house uncleaned, the dishes undone. If I can't write - I'm driving, say - I have perfected the art of writing in my head, storing it up for transcription when I can get my hands on my notebook.The work sells the soul, but the writing restores it. As long as I'm writing, my soul is forgiving of my endless transgressions against her.
It took me longer than you would think to realize that most people don't do all this - that only writers do it. That I'm not actually a worker who writes - I'm a writer who works.
There is a big difference, and the mental shift is not only significant, it's hard. In my case, it wasn't conscious; it bubbled up from somewhere down below over the period of writing my second novel, and actually considering sending it out for publication. If you're going to try to get published, my subconscious said, then you're actually a writer. And my conscious mind said, At last, thank God."
"I work in a cubicle farm, in a sunless, fluorescent office breathing recycled air, the kind of place where everyone gets frequent headaches and no one knows why (the air? the ventilation? the bad ergonomics? the unnatural light? there are too many possibilites to choose from).
It's a badly-run company, with too many layers of management coming up with lousy ideas, leaving the cubicle slaves to shovel the shit, overworked, understaffed, and chided for abysmal morale. I am one of thousands.
I have written on lunch hours, on buses, in hospital waiting rooms, in doctor's offices.
I write longhand, because it's still the most mobile format - I write on scraps of paper, yellowed pieces of binder paper found in a drawer, spiral notebooks lifted from the office supply cabinet (oh, stop, we've all done it) - I have written on stolen breaks, wandering around my office looking for a few minutes of privacy with a door closed, where no one will ask the dreaded question "Whatcha doing?" (I've never found it.)
I know which seat on the commuter train has the wheelwell in the floor, allowing the writer to prop her knee up, angling her notebook away from the passenger in the next seat.
I remember writing an entire short story on the streetcar, scribbling madly, ignoring the queasiness, desperate to get the words out of my head. I have typed everything into a succession of PCs, backing up to floppy disk, carting the disk to work in the vain hope of getting some writing time.
I have tried to get in touch with my muse at 9:30 on a Tuesday night, so stressed I feel like weeping, the house uncleaned, the dishes undone. If I can't write - I'm driving, say - I have perfected the art of writing in my head, storing it up for transcription when I can get my hands on my notebook.The work sells the soul, but the writing restores it. As long as I'm writing, my soul is forgiving of my endless transgressions against her.
It took me longer than you would think to realize that most people don't do all this - that only writers do it. That I'm not actually a worker who writes - I'm a writer who works.
There is a big difference, and the mental shift is not only significant, it's hard. In my case, it wasn't conscious; it bubbled up from somewhere down below over the period of writing my second novel, and actually considering sending it out for publication. If you're going to try to get published, my subconscious said, then you're actually a writer. And my conscious mind said, At last, thank God."
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Småbarnsföräldrar som vill skriva
"Balancing Writing with Parenting"av Angela Giles Klocke - ladda ner e-boken gratis (scrolla ner lite på websidan så hittar du titeln).
Så började det
Läs om hur Lisa Jewell m fl började sina författarkarriärer:
"Her literary career started on a bet. She was offered a free meal if she could write the first three chapters of a book in a month. She did and, on a whim, sent them off to 10 agents.
She says: 'I didn't expect anything to happen and sure enough, as the weeks went by, rejection letter after rejection letter landed on my doorstep. I'd expected nothing more. And then one morning a letter arrived from the last of the ten agents. She liked what she read and wanted to see the rest. After peeling myself off the ceiling, I started panicking. There was no 'rest' of the novel - I'd only written three chapters.'"
"Her literary career started on a bet. She was offered a free meal if she could write the first three chapters of a book in a month. She did and, on a whim, sent them off to 10 agents.
She says: 'I didn't expect anything to happen and sure enough, as the weeks went by, rejection letter after rejection letter landed on my doorstep. I'd expected nothing more. And then one morning a letter arrived from the last of the ten agents. She liked what she read and wanted to see the rest. After peeling myself off the ceiling, I started panicking. There was no 'rest' of the novel - I'd only written three chapters.'"
Kate Harrisons metod
Kate Harrison berättar i sin blogg hur hon arbetar fram ett romanmanus:
Stage 1:
Vague Concept
This usually begins when I am in the final, agonising chapters of the work-in-progress, wishing I'd never started it. Other ideas appear like sparkling gems: the idea that will make me a billionaire, simultaneously winning me the Booker and a movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt. I have learned that the sparkle soon wears off, but I try to follow up the most promising ideas, using lots of 'what if' questions to build a scenario that's intriguing...what happened if the nastiest girl in the school organised a reunion? Could you make a better job of your life by re-learning your Brownie badges as an adult? What if the worst happened to a girl who has always lived her life afraid of what's round the corner?At this point I might have two or three ideas for the next novel...
Stage 2:
Synopsis with Holes
This is where I try to flesh out that idea with characters and plot twists. Often I'll write the first chapter or two, to help me imagine the most important people and 'where' the story begins.It's often suggested that stories should begin or in the midst of things, i.e. when when there's action underway. Yet often we start with our character in stasis, i.e. stuck in a rut before the 'call the action.'It's an interesting decision: with my first three books, it's definitely an 'in media res' situation, whereas the current book - in the first draft at least - shows the main character in her rather frustrating life before the action kicks off.I might still have two ideas at this stage.Often, even after writing the synopsis, I don't know what will happen to my heroine or the other characters - I know the psychological state she'll end up in, but not quite how she'll get there. Which helps to give me a reason to write the book, of course.
Stage 3:
Opening Chapters, More Tweaking and Playing
At this point, I'll begin writing. I tend to have done more work on the first few scenes anyway and they are also an exercise in getting to know my characters, making decisions about everything from their eye colour to their fatal flaw. I will tweak the plot a bit, maybe scribble down a few plot ideas, but I tend not to go back and revise the synopsis in detail.
Stage 4:
Revision of Plot/Brainstorming
If this was a map, it would be marked YOU ARE HERE because this is the stage I'm at now. I've spent the day playing with scenarios. Now that I know my characters in more detail, I can mess about with their lives, test their weaknesses, and give them the endings they deserve. Lots of fun.I also like to have more than one timescale going on within a book, so structure is also important: how can I make it clear to a reader that I've moved backwards or forwards in time? I might do this by changing Point-of-View, or tense, or simply by putting a date at the beginning of a new chapter.Today I worked through the storylines for the past and the present narratives, and also worked out how to test my main character, Jo, to the limit. Quite hard work, mentally, but satisfying as I can compare it to my original synopsis and see how far I've come.
Stage 5:
Race to Finishing Line
So now, in theory, I have all the information I need to write the book in - I don't know - a month? I cut and paste the few sentences I've written for each chapter into my manuscript, and use those as a template as I write. New ideas will occur to me, but I know I have a fallback positition. And a plot!
Stage 6:
Edits (Including the Implausibility Conundrum)
The edits can be as much work again as the rest of the process, depending on what my editor thinks, and how I feel it's working. The Implausibility Conundrum is one issue: everything must be believable in the context of the world you've created as a writer. That last bit is crucial - otherwise how would J.K. Rowling get away with broomsticks and Quidditch and Dementors? The question of how far you can go is a fine judgement: for example, a lot of new (and not so new) writers rely on coincidence too heavily. A little coincidence is forgivable: a lot is simply another version of that literary cop-out, 'and I woke up and it was all a dream...'
Stage 1:
Vague Concept
This usually begins when I am in the final, agonising chapters of the work-in-progress, wishing I'd never started it. Other ideas appear like sparkling gems: the idea that will make me a billionaire, simultaneously winning me the Booker and a movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt. I have learned that the sparkle soon wears off, but I try to follow up the most promising ideas, using lots of 'what if' questions to build a scenario that's intriguing...what happened if the nastiest girl in the school organised a reunion? Could you make a better job of your life by re-learning your Brownie badges as an adult? What if the worst happened to a girl who has always lived her life afraid of what's round the corner?At this point I might have two or three ideas for the next novel...
Stage 2:
Synopsis with Holes
This is where I try to flesh out that idea with characters and plot twists. Often I'll write the first chapter or two, to help me imagine the most important people and 'where' the story begins.It's often suggested that stories should begin or in the midst of things, i.e. when when there's action underway. Yet often we start with our character in stasis, i.e. stuck in a rut before the 'call the action.'It's an interesting decision: with my first three books, it's definitely an 'in media res' situation, whereas the current book - in the first draft at least - shows the main character in her rather frustrating life before the action kicks off.I might still have two ideas at this stage.Often, even after writing the synopsis, I don't know what will happen to my heroine or the other characters - I know the psychological state she'll end up in, but not quite how she'll get there. Which helps to give me a reason to write the book, of course.
Stage 3:
Opening Chapters, More Tweaking and Playing
At this point, I'll begin writing. I tend to have done more work on the first few scenes anyway and they are also an exercise in getting to know my characters, making decisions about everything from their eye colour to their fatal flaw. I will tweak the plot a bit, maybe scribble down a few plot ideas, but I tend not to go back and revise the synopsis in detail.
Stage 4:
Revision of Plot/Brainstorming
If this was a map, it would be marked YOU ARE HERE because this is the stage I'm at now. I've spent the day playing with scenarios. Now that I know my characters in more detail, I can mess about with their lives, test their weaknesses, and give them the endings they deserve. Lots of fun.I also like to have more than one timescale going on within a book, so structure is also important: how can I make it clear to a reader that I've moved backwards or forwards in time? I might do this by changing Point-of-View, or tense, or simply by putting a date at the beginning of a new chapter.Today I worked through the storylines for the past and the present narratives, and also worked out how to test my main character, Jo, to the limit. Quite hard work, mentally, but satisfying as I can compare it to my original synopsis and see how far I've come.
Stage 5:
Race to Finishing Line
So now, in theory, I have all the information I need to write the book in - I don't know - a month? I cut and paste the few sentences I've written for each chapter into my manuscript, and use those as a template as I write. New ideas will occur to me, but I know I have a fallback positition. And a plot!
Stage 6:
Edits (Including the Implausibility Conundrum)
The edits can be as much work again as the rest of the process, depending on what my editor thinks, and how I feel it's working. The Implausibility Conundrum is one issue: everything must be believable in the context of the world you've created as a writer. That last bit is crucial - otherwise how would J.K. Rowling get away with broomsticks and Quidditch and Dementors? The question of how far you can go is a fine judgement: for example, a lot of new (and not so new) writers rely on coincidence too heavily. A little coincidence is forgivable: a lot is simply another version of that literary cop-out, 'and I woke up and it was all a dream...'
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Diane Chamberlaines arbetsmetod
Läs i Diane Chamberlaines blogg om att hitta sin berättarröst och om hur hon arbetar i posterna "Voice" och "How I Work" från 29 och 30 /7 2006 .
Fotografiet är taget från hennes blogg.
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