Wooing words…

I spent a few hours today working on a new chapter…

The images are there already.  Those have been swirling about in that whirlpool known as my mind for some time now.  The ideas are all there too–all present and correct.   I can see the characters, hear them.  As well as smell the sea and the harbour about them. 

Yet when it came to it, today, the words were playing hard to get.  And obviously are in want of wooing. 

Because it’s not just a matter of plonking the easiest down on the page.  It’s finding the words that convey the poetry of the language too and the poetry of the images as well, the rhythms of the land and wind and sea, so that a visual music is created for the reader, one that will play inside their head.  And which will take him or her not just directly into that place (so crisply outlined in my mind), but with a closing of the eyes, it all will be perfectly vivid, but also which will take them into the hearts of the characters…

I should mention that I’ve also been having this trouble with my sonnets as well.  I’ve got a couple of fine opening quatrains on the go, but then nothing, zip, zilch…

So I’m thinking at this point that perhaps I ought to change my methods.  Hence, does anyone know what words prefer–Dinner with champagne?  Roses?  Chocolates?  A day out to the seaside?–in order that they will again fall onto the page for me and seduce you?

A new sonnet

Recently a friend of mine, Greta Thain, asked me to write a sonnet for a character in her novel, Die a Dry Death–which tells the story of the wreck of the Batavia in 1629. 

Perhaps I should add, I glibly said yes.  Glibly, because it turned out to be more of a thing than I had anticipated.

Certainly I am accustomed to thinking inside my own characters’ heads in order to write them.  But to write from inside the head of another writer’s character?  That, I have now discovered, is an entirely different thing.  Especially as the character in question is a psychopath.  Ha ha. 

It took me a while, I’m, er, happy to say–psychotic behaviour not being my norm.  And the sonnet itself is derivative–some will recognise Wyatt’s influence, and Shakespeare’s–and not what I would hope is my best effort. 

But it is perfect for the character in question as it turns out.  I invite you to take a gander over on her website and see what you think:  www.gretathain.net 

Cheers.