Oh no!

I just found out I missed this year's Helsinki book fair (Kirjamessut 2008).

It's not as much of a problem as it could be, as it is mainly a place for bookshops to sell stuff. At least, that was the impression I got last year. Sure, there were talks scheduled in open presentation areas, but they are in Finnish and my comprehension is not good enough to get much value from them.

Still, I would like to have been there, for the love all all things bookish. It also wouldn't have hurt to see how much better I understood the speakers this year than last, but I think the poetry reading I attended at Night of the Arts a month or so back already did that; I'm still a bit rubbish.

I looked at the website for the book fair briefly, and cringed. You can see for yourself how ugly and, well, 1998 it is. There are some pretty good graphic designers in Finland, so I don't think they have any excuse. I can immediately think of at least one local designer who could have done a better job, JDV Design, and that's without even trying. Someone tell them, please.

This blog's title is given new meaning

I mentioned that I was going to talk about writing in my original post on this blog, and I am.

Here is a picture of a plot plotting plot, or in other words a chart on my wall showing the plot lines of a story that I am working on at the moment:


If any of my colleagues think those post it notes look familiar, they do not need to worry. This project is work inspired and hopefully can be tied into the company.

I have three colleagues at work helping me out with this. If I don't produce a chapter a fortnight, I owe them each one Euro. I got some really nice feedback on the preface today, and while talking I mentioned the above wall chart. My colleague was surprised that I was taking such an engineering approach to it. It's true that my work experiences (scrum, agile, and user centred design processes) have an effect on the way I tackle problems, but what I forgot to mention is that experience plays a factor in it too.

I'm already halfway through a novel, one which I was given the original idea for several years ago. I knew that my writing would improve as I aged and practised so I left the original plot of this story brewing for a while, came back to it, paused while moving to Finland, and then reviewed it again. The review brought about some serious editing and I learned a lot from it. I put into practise rules about starting in the middle of the action and cutting out passages that are not exciting enough. I even replaced one character with someone very different, which lead to a reassessment of where the plot would need to go later on according to the personality and subsequrnt decisions of the replacement character.

Now, on my chart, I am putting what I learned into practise, so that I can produce a draught worthy of showing my colleagues. In order from top to bottom: Yellow notes mark the start and end of chapters; Red notes mark general world events (e.g. stock markets crash in Asia); Blue notes mark events based around one organisation; Green notes mark events based around another organisation; The brightly coloured notes underneath are for specific character storylines.

Here's a straight-on picture:


Straight away by doing this I can get an idea of which events occur first for specific characters; for example, travelling may take some time. I can see where there a big gaps with no character activity in them (see that gap in the character notes centre-right?). I can mark the post it notes that contain juicy enough events to write about. I can mark out points where chapters start and end, and this one is really valuable because you can see my whole story, exciting though it is, will probably only come to five chapters.

So straight away I know what to work on. Oh, and now it's a two-part story, and the wall is only showing the first part.


As for the 'original' book, the one that has taught me so much and will still teach me more, I am publishing it on the sister blog to this one:

I Want More

You can read the about section or you can go straight to the preface.


Melody.

Careers in Writing

I'm linking up a worthwhile article for anyone who reads this that has recently come to the realisation that they like to write, have some talent, and may actually try to do something with it:

So you wanna be a writer?

There's more than one way to be a writer, and to practise your trade whilst getting paid for it.

How I started to write

I started writing by accident, when I was seventeen.

I'd been placed by a course that was designed to help the government reduce unemployment figures for the under eighteens. I had dropped out of my media studies course at college with depression, I was living alone and I had to work out what I actually wanted to do. I know know that many people go through life not knowing what the hell they want to do and I even embrace that approach to some extent, but at the time I was happily taking what the system offered me to set me up on the path to a suitable career.

However, the British government kind of assumed that people from a working class background who have managed to misplace their parents before they are through college are, well, somewhat illiterate. They were mostly right, and so I was placed on a course that was not suitable to someone who had completed a scholarship-funded public school education. No big deal, I enjoyed it and they did help me to get the long term work placement that led to my first paid job.

Before I reached that blissful point of employment, however, I had to be kept busy on the government course by doing all the activities they had to offer:
Driving theory, so that people can become delivery personnel;
Food hygene, so that you could work in MacDonalds;
First aid, so you could become a home care helper;
Health and safety... well, I expect it is good for supermarket jobs;
Basic IT, so that you could become an office monkey.

The longest course was IT, but I was already proficient enough to whiz through the levels and become rather bored. That is when I started writing. I started to enjoy writing, too. I'd had no interest in English in school and I completed assignments with little thought or effort. I didn't think about the way the books I loved reading had been formed, what made them so good, and what could have been better. Once I started writing, it all changed. I payed attention, practised and learned and I realised that I was never as bad at it as I had thought. I realised that I was capable of getting better. Best of all, I realised that the process of getting better, of learning, was enjoyable.

So at seventeen, without quite realising it, I learned to write. Meanwhile, I spent my days in the belief that I was working my way towards a long career in electronics.


I'll write more on this topic, I'm sure.
So if you want more, read on.

Melody-Jane.