“I learned that the richness of life is found in adventure. . . "

"It develops self-reliance and independence. Life then teems with excitement. There is stagnation only in security.”

Yes, whoever you are, William Orville Douglas. Oh - Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

To show what a shallow-minded individual I am, I can't see the word Orville without seeing THIS:

 ...and it STILL makes me cringe.

Back to adventure and excitement.

I sent off Of Night And Light this morning.

Last night, I was sent a draft copy of the poster for the film, Filth, for which I wrote the screenplay!

Whooo hooo! AND they spelled my name correctly! TWICE!

My screenplay for the NY director, working title, Creep like a rat, is coming along very well.

I am excited...

I am not stagnating...

The upside of putting my work out there FAR outweighs the downside of possible disappointment.
 

“You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you."

"If you don't have that kind of feeling for what it is you are doing, you'll stop at the first giant hurdle.”

Absolutely, George Lucas.

(smart bodyguards!)

I can't count the number of hurdles I've been stopped by, for it felt like forever, then jumped over...hours, weeks or months later in the writing of Of Night And Light. Too, too many of them.

Another few scrambled over yesterday.

• Finished yet another revision
• Arranged for it to be sent out for a report...to a commissioning editor, it turns out
• Lost my nerve and read through it 'just one more time.'
• Printed it out.
• Packed it up

And today, off to the Post Office 

I can't decide whether the hurdles are getting bigger or smaller.

And will this be the last one?

Who knows?

Just call me Gail Devers.

How much rewriting do you do?

Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.

 
Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?

Hemingway: Getting the words right.

(From "The Art of Fiction," The Paris Review Interview, 1956)

So - I'm into my third rewrite of Of Night And Light...only thirty six to go. Actually, if I'm honest, it's not so much of a rewrite but a checking through of the previous rewrite before I send it off again.

It's scary how much I like what I've written. That is NOT, by the way, arrogance. Other writers will understand, I'm sure.

However...

by Banksie

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”

Elmore Leonard. I need some of his...whatever it is...determination, pragmatism, perseverance, striving for perfection...today.

For over a month now I've been in possession of really valuable, constructive notes from a published author who definitely knows what she's talking about. She's reviewed Of Night And Light (the novel) for me and I think I agree with every single one of her suggestions - and that's not just me being biddable. It was, at the same time, hugely heartening to sense her genuine enjoyment of my work.

In fairness to me, since I received those notes I've been inordinately busy...but now I'm not. For the past three or four days I've been finding lots of different things that needed doing before I started the rewrite.

Urgently.

I've run out of those as well.

Farrah Penn

Here are my excuses:

I do have the feeling, when I've put my heart and soul into a long piece of writing, that I've given my all. I do worry that a rewrite may make it lose its passion and freshness. I am concerned that I'll begin to hate it, every bit of the story and the characters I've so lovingly created.

But most of all, it seems like a...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                lonely slog.

But hey, I have the choice. I could NOT rewrite and it will never get published!

 OR...

You will be judged (or you will be ignored)

Those are pretty much the only two choices.

Being judged is uncomfortable. Snap judgments, prejudices, misinformation... all of these, combined with not enough time (how could there be) to truly know you, means that you will inevitably be misjudged, underestimated (or overestimated) and unfairly rejected.
The alternative, of course, is much safer.

To be ignored.

Up to you.

This was Seth Godin's post, yesterday

What's that spooky music? Okay, it'll have to be Psycho, but that's not the one I meant.

Anyway - that post came exactly at the right moment yesterday to spur me on, to swallow the fear of being 'misjudged, underestimated (or overestimated) and unfairly rejected,' and send the first ten pages of my YA novel, Of Night And Light, to a literary agent, and send the screenplay of The Melting to a film producer.

Now, all I have to do is wait...for something...

I'm mean, seriously...what IS the point of me writing all this stuff, pouring my heart and soul into it, and then NOT DOING ANYTHING WITH IT?

Sometimes, I could get quite cross with myself.

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

I'll tell you something. If I were to be cast away on a desert island and had to choose a book (apart from the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible) - it would be everything W.B.Yeats ever wrote in one volume, if such a work exists.

One very fat volume...quite difficult to turn the pages...useful, also, to stand on when reaching for tropical fruit high up in the trees.

If ever I could say I had just one influence, W. B.Yeats would be it. More and more, in finding my own voice, my own style...oh dear, as I'm writing that, it sounds as though the very thing I'm NOT doing is finding my own voice, my own style, but simply stealing someone else's...someone who shares my Anglo-Irish heritage too.

"The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write," Yeats said and the pieces that I write, that are my truth, that I'm most comfortable with, of which I'm most proud are in that realm, full of myth and legend and lyricism. The Melting, Of Night And Light, When The Trees Fall Silent...

(Dear God, now she's comparing herself to Yeats.)

I shall stop it at once.

But the world IS full of magic things. Here's my discovery of the day. An artist called Anne-Julie Aubry

The End Draws Nigh

W.B.Yeats for my soul, Anne-Julie Aubry for my mind's eye.

Counting Ants

 NOW I feel inspired to write.