About my writing

I know I don’t very often actually say anything on here about my writing but I thought I’d do so today. As I have mentioned earlier, doing this MA means that I’m doing 2 modules each semester, and by the end of each module we have to do a 4500 – 5000 words written piece, an assessment.

I have known all along that for one of the modules this semester I wanted to work on my novel “Dreamland”. And that one is coming along, well, quite nicely. Though, I must admit that I have spent a little too much time redrafting the start of it, and not as much time as I probably should on getting the whole of the story down for the first time, the first draft. So now I’m trying to be sort of happy with my 4th or is it 5th redraft of the opening and focus on the rest of the story.

For a while I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do for the other module. I could of course have been working on my novel for that one as well, as we are allowed to work on our main piece of work for all the modules all year through. I’m just thinking though that it might be a good thing to broaden my horizon this year as well, and try to do something different. So I’ve been wanting to do something else than my novel. A couple of weeks ago, this idea that really caught my attention fell into my head, an alternative history for Norway: on 9th of April 1940 Norway was attacked and occupied by Germany. They claimed at the time that they did this to protect us from being invaded by Great Britain, and of course then most people did not believe them, but later it has turned out that they knew what they were talking about when it came to this; Britain did have plans to invade Norway, and Germany might have beaten them with as little as 48 hours in doing so. So I started thinking, how would things have been if Britain had come first, if they had occupied Norway instead of Germany, then what? And then all sorts of things from this alternative history have been coming to me, and I don’t want to reveal all the things I’m thinking about that here, but the idea, just love it. The problem has been however that I haven’t known who’s story this is; I haven’t been able to find a character or a story in there. This alternative story for Norway is of course just a setting; it is part of the story, but sort of more in the background. I have really been struggling these last couple of weeks to find out whose story this is, who it really is about.

Yesterday at the lecture we were talking about the workshops that begin next week, and by then I’ll have to have 2500 words ready, or rather, by Monday I’ll have to have 2500 words ready to send to the other students in my group – and I still had no real story no character. Last night I just could not sleep. I was thinking that I might perhaps have to abandon this idea all together and go back to some other stories that I have been working on as well, but that I don’t really feel like doing right now. When I went to bed I found myself tossing and turning in the bed, not being able to let go of the story, almost cursing because who ever it was pushing me to tell this story just wouldn’t come forward and claim it as their own.

Finally, at 2 this night I had a break-through, and there the character was, speaking to me so loud and clearly it’s a miracle I have not spotted the character and the real story before. It was such a relief. I turned on the light, wrote down all the main details of the story and finally I could sleep. And today I’m tired but so happy because finally I can write this story; it’s all fixed in my head now. There will of course be lots of frustrations and probably more cursing while I try to fix it on paper, but now at least I do know in my head what I’m aiming for, whose story I’m trying to tell and what it is about – and that really makes it a whole lot easier, doesn’t it????