Hi guys,
So I’ve decided to start re-blogging again, after a two-year hiatus. It’s surreal how much things have changed in the last two years: where to begin?
I read through some of my earlier posts and cringed at some (🙈 yet was amazed to see how much my writing has improved over the years, so that’s a plus), and reflected on others that highlighted how trends in books has taken shape. For example, in one of my A Little Life posts I bemoaned how books about male friendship is given literary status, however books about female friendship is termed as ‘chick lit’ or ‘women’s fiction’, and then lo and behold the phenomenon that is Elena Ferrante takes the world by storm the following year.
What else has changed for me? Well, this October it will be exactly two years ago I started the Writing a Novel course at the Faber Academy. It’s also two years ago now that I did a summer course at Pembroke College with the National Academy of Writing, which sadly has closed. Turns out the year (2015) that I attended would be the last time the course would run, and that’s significantly fortuitous for me because that month I learned so much about writing that I can’t condense it into a post and without it probably wouldn’t have gotten a place at Faber.
Since I’ve started writing I’ve found it’s informed the way I read. I’m much more critical and observant of how novels work. Like a mechanic doing an apprentice (an anology I heard Peter James use in the Noirwich Podcast), I’ve been breaking apart the components of a story and putting it back together to see how it works. How, for example, suspense is created by withholding key information and revealing it a particular point to surprise the reader and turn the plot, yet still keep the reader hooked from the beginning chapter after chapter through sub-plots with the promise to be resolved in an exciting climax or dangling questions (or sometimes alluding to past secrets) with the promise to be answered if you keep reading. So many more ways! And I haven’t even gotten to how to write compelling characters, creating tension and conflict, importance of setting, a strong voice, etc. And I’m still learning!! Perhaps later on I may even do blog posts on writing. Nevertheless there’s one thing though that hasn’t changed: my passion for books. My undying love for reading hasn’t withered in the slightest, if anything I’m reading more, especially books in the genre that I’m writing: crime and thrillers. My goal is to do weekly posts reviewing books I’ve loved and connecting with other bookworms like me 😉 📚.
addiction2fiction 