On writing - again!

I had such high hopes for this blog! I still have loads of things I want to blog about - more sciency stuff to try at home, interesting newsy items, and so on, but at the moment the novel is all consuming. Perhaps that's a good thing though!

I had a major re-think last week, about the novel. After the first 10,000 words I started working on a section near the middle of the book, and realised that not only do I work best that way, in a non-linear fashion, but that the novel itself might work that way too. My writing tends to be multiplicitous in terms of narration, and I like to piece bits together to make a whole, so I've chucked the rule book out of the window and am following my heart. It seems to be working, and the latest bits feel much better than my first tentative pages. I now have a very strong 'vision' of what the finished project will look like - the fiction part of it at least.

The other part of it is the thesis that will accompany the novel - that's the bit I get the PhD for, and it's some 50,000 word on top of the fiction! It is also very daunting and means I'm trying to read as much theory and philosophy on writing as I can - all in the name of research. I also have to produce a conference paper at some point - but more on that nearer the time.

So the themes for the novel/thesis are language, culture and identity. The novel is about being linguistically and cultural displaced and is based on experience (write what you know, eh!). I've been spending hours checking Spanish vocab and researching traditional festivals, filling in the blanks in the notes I made in my diaries. What a journey! It's been interesting trying to render Spanish into English and vice-versa, and I'll be fascinated to see how the Fiction Research Group responds to what I've done!

Now it's that time again - kids home from school, dinner to cook, life to live - so better go and get on with it.