All posts filed under: process

Blue Hour: UK edition

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It’s been five years since SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE was released. In that time I worked on a second novel which felt all consuming to write. A year or so into the project I became terrified, essentially convinced I would never finish writing a first draft let alone deliver a completed manuscript fit for publication: I realised I had no idea how to write this novel and I was afraid of what was appearing on the page. The self doubt and hyper criticism became too much at times. And then there was the intensity of sharing head space with my characters and their lives. I wanted none of it, I wanted all of it. And yet. I kept going. Because what else would I do with my life if I stopped writing it? But now we’re here. The good people at Tinder Press (UK) have recently released their cover and blurb for BLUE HOUR which is released later this year. You can find out more here: https://www.tinderpress.co.uk/titles/sarah-schmidt/blue-hour/9781472250629/ She thinks of blue mountain, her favourite …

A week of tricking a new project into existence

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Monday: writing objects I made myself look around the lounge room, settle on the first object I saw, then write whatever came into my head for 2 minutes. I did several, all as terrible as I expected. It was satisfying. New project whispered but didn’t come forward. Here are two objects. Door handle A circle holds a button holds a turn/ clicks an opening into place/ widens the world All the hands that have held this exit/ wound: ghosts. White dining chair Small lighthouses bring you to table/ bring to food, bring to gather/ it hard underneath skin/ It holding the accumulation of sitting years/ it supporting your back so you can look your family in the eye Tuesday: writing food I tried to remember a meal from when I was under 8 years old. I wanted to pinpoint the most mundane meal I could remember and gave myself 10 minutes to find it. The new project said it was willing to speak with me but that’s as far as it went. Wrote about toast …

Clearing out the dead notes

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Found: forgotten phone notes for Blue Hour (once Blue Mountain) Found: photographs I took on small walks (things I told myself would be useful for the novel) Found: old ideas became new ideas became whole chapters became rejected edits became rewritten paragraphs Found: the smallest thoughts that completed a manuscript Found: my head, my dreams, things I don’t remember thinking Found: memories of notes I’m positive have been erased and aired and erased again but keep coming back every time I open archived digital folders. Found: this is a way you can write a novel when you think you have nothing inside you

Your Rejections Are Necessary

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In a wooden drawer in my bedroom is a small pile of notebooks full of half-formed ideas or near-complete short stories that got the better of me. I’m positive that each time I sat down with these ideas I promised them something beyond completion, promised redrafting until I could take them no further, and then there would have been a promise to submit to a journal or a competition or maybe collect them like small sticks and present them to my agent as a surprise starter for a bonfire. What a side project they could be. But it’s rare I see any of these to completion. I used to think my wandering mind was to blame, all that boredom that eventually came from sticking to a smaller world. I used to think it was laziness. Or maybe it was guilt for most often than not, when I write these short pieces, I am at the beginning, the middle, the endlessness, of a manuscript that should have the priority. And so the story is stopped, a …

A New Series: Dreams of #1… Mannerism

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Mannerism (Noun): 1 a: exaggerated or affected adherence to a particular style or manner B: often capitalised: an art style in late 16th century Europe characterised by spatial incongruity and excessive elongation go the human figures Merriam-Webster At the beginning of the year I was in London and trying to enjoy a short break from writing. By this stage I was completely over my novel-in-progress and couldn’t move myself away from the feeling that what I am writing is not only irrelevant and derivative but is already a complete creative and personal failure. Upon reflection I think it’s safe to say these overly wrought and self-loathing thoughts were partially a manifestation of creative exhaustion and so the decision to take some time away from characters and words and emotions was probably a correct thing to do for a little while: nothing helpful can be gained from telling yourself something you’re in the middle of creating is a steaming pile of dog shit. And so to London. A few weeks into my ‘I’m not physically writing …

Draft Season

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The transformative relief of drafting is what I look forward to the most when writing: taking small ideas, making raw words, rewriting them over and over until the project finds its true self. The beginning of things is daunting. Everything else that comes after that is hard work and the part of writing I enjoy the most. Because this is the moment you find out what you and the novel are really made of. I’m in the middle of typing up several notebooks and am amazed at how my (still unfinished) first draft has both managed to retain original structure and intent and yet has completely obliterated itself. I had no idea the project wanted to be the shape it is becoming. Recently I ran a writing workshop and afterward I was asked if I find my first drafts embarrassing. Yes, sometimes I do. But mostly I’m just glad it exists. First drafts are not publishable. Most likely the next couple aren’t either. I’ve mostly kept what I have of the first draft to myself …

Windows, Light, Memory #1

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Tonight I was supposed to be spending time with the third project but I could only think of the novel-in-progress, of one character in particular who keeps reinventing himself every time I want to write something new. All his ways of speaking, his voice the only thing I’m capable of writing at the moment. He never leaves me. Better to leave words before they get you down. There was only one thing to do: I went into the night, went to find the things the corner of my eye might hold onto the longest, hoped some pattern would emerge so I could find my way back to the project/task at hand, tune into a voice I hadn’t been able to find for a few weeks. After 30 minutes, a pattern: light and window, people living just beyond eyesight. The way dark leads you to memory and repetition. That’s when I heard the woman’s voice, the character that has evaded me for weeks. She was back. And she was thinking in memory, was living in them, …

The Dolphin: or how my tendency to procrastinate allowed me to distill random ideas and write a short story

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I was on a writing retreat at Varuna attempting to finish another draft of the manuscript that would go on to become See What I Have Done when day four arrived and I lost the will to write another word from Lizzie’s point of view. I still had three days left of the retreat ahead of me. I needed a way to procrastinate without feeling guilt. One of the writer’s at the house was working on a short story collection and had told me, ‘Short stories are like the easiest thing to write.’ Sounds perfect, I thought. That’s exactly how I’m going to spend the rest of my time here at the house. Here’s a tip I’d like to share with you about short stories: they’re not easy. They are their own art form and can take just as long to write as a novel. Sure, you could write a 3,000 word story in a single sitting but to get it right, to make it look like magic-ease takes drafting and time. They’re not for …

Walk With Me

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Another night of tracing paths for my characters: They walk, I walk. They live in shadows, I follow. And so. Here are the walks that are building a novel. Some are based in Melbourne, other scenes are character ‘memories’ of European cities. I don’t always like to give away too much of the interior of a work-in-progress but these are some of the images I’ve been staring at every day. Melbourne: 8:35 pm, Monday 19 February 2018 Prague: 3pm, 12 January 2018 Leipzig: 5 pm, January 2018 Berlin: close to 3:30 pm, January 2018 Berlin: the day before, 10 am. January 2018 Leipzig: 10 am, 2 January 2018 Melbourne: late afternoon, September 2017 Melbourne: mid morning, June 2017 Melbourne: late night, my house. Probably June, 2017 Melbourne: early morning, storm warning. My house, approx June 2017 On the way to Canberra, toward a mountain: probably noon, early January 2017. And this road. This road is Eleanor