My reading list has gone down a lot; although I will be adding time on three books I’ve borrowed from the library because I haven’t finished them yet.
I finished “Testament of a witch” by Douglas Watt, it was a very good read but I found it a little too predictable. The plot to me seemed to have been given away very early on in the book. I enjoyed the prose like scenes and the descriptions very much, I was also impressed by the writer’s ability to understand and know what went on during those times.
The Rudolph Steiner school book I was reading helped me to determine that perhaps Steiner isn’t the best sort of school for my children as well as I used to think, but I am thinking about further research on the schools; I hoped they’d be good for my children because of their encouragement for spiritual and individual development matches what we believe a childhood should be like, so I was disappointed when I found perhaps it wasn’t suitable after all.
I liked “The Dork Diaries” but I am a little unsure where to go now, whether I should read the whole series or whether or I am best to leave them on the shelves of the library; because again, the plot in the first book seemed too predictable and also found it a little too cruel for a teen book.
“Cult Fiction” never actually told me what cult fiction was in so many words, but it did give me insight to popular writers I’ve never heard of before and gave a name to many art forms I was familiar with but never knew the names of. This book was definitely mind broadening and I recommend it to people who aren’t too adept at art and literary terminologies.
“Pam Ayres, the works” was also a good read, very comical but I wouldn’t have expected anything less; I found her work to be very good, but not good enough to go out and add to my personal collection unfortunately.
“My dad is ten years old” by Mark O’Sullivan, was frustrating and I threw the book across the room, how many times does a writer need to empathize in the first three pages of a book that a person was running?
Along with all these books I added some more to the pile in the past three weeks and didn’t announce them on here, those books were; “Bible proven and 666 solved” by Erik Lee Giles, “101 corporate haiku” by William Warriner and “Miss Abernathy’s concise slave training manual” by Christina Abernathy.
The first book “Bible proven and 666 solved” by Erik Lee Giles was very good, very informative and shockingly accurate to my own beliefs. I would love to engage in further studies of this subject, everything about the biblical revelations and doomsday attracts me. I have many planned novels for various dystopian tales, apocalyptic landscapes and lifestyles caused by an array of disasters both religiously oriented and naturally oriented. I rated this particularly book a five star on goodreads.com
The second book “101 corporate haiku” gave me insight to what I can personally do with my own haiku’s, it didn’t teach me how to create haiku’s it merely showed me by the writers own art form of his own work. I read this book in less than ten minutes because it’s so small and quick to read.
Thirdly, I read “Miss Abernathy’s concise slave training manual” this book is about consensual slavery for those interested in a long-term, live in BDSM situations. I find this book interesting for two reasons; one I am personally involved in this kind of lifestyle and secondly I also write erotic fiction based in and around BDSM.
The last book was very interesting; it opened my mind to a gentler approach and helped to advise me on how to socialise in the scene outside of the internet, albeit in America.
I’ve been to the library today and collected two pre-ordered books called “The Lady’s Maid” by Rosina Harrison and “Cuckoo” by Julia Crouch.
I have also added the first three books of DragonLance to my reading pile “DragonLance chronicles 1-3 written by a team of fantasy writers, notably Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman; it’s a large anthology of the collection of which I’ve actually bought from Amazon and I am collecting them alongside the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett.
Needless to say, the last few mentioned books are the type of books I am planning on getting noticed for, alongside dystopian stories and erotica; despite this blog portraying me mostly as a poet.
I am also reading “The Gothic” by David Punter and I am still reading “The revolting peasant” by Robin Page and a few other books I’ve mentioned since three weeks ago.
But I’ve read eight out of the eleven library books I’ve mentioned last month and my deadline was to read half of the eleven books by the 30th June which isn’t at all bad is it?
Writing style and narratives
Many new writers write in a first person narrative; this is very limiting and produces problems if they want to include other characters opinions and viewpoints. The main character of a story isn’t psychic, so wouldn’t know the real reasons behind their nemesis or co-inhabitants reactions to various events.
When I first started writing my vampire dark fantasy series, I was also to blame for writing in a first person narrative; this made it very complicated for me to introduce new characters with their personalities effectively. My aim was to write the series as a series of biographies of individual characters from the same story, but this wouldn’t work well as it had already more or less been done by Anne Rice and I wanted to be different. I found it much easier moving onto the third person narrative, which is what’s happening in my rewrites.
Writing in a third person narrative gives me more flexibility for my story’s direction. I can skip viewpoints and characters at will, I can write about how everyone feels simultaneously and without too much effort. Since writing in this style I have been able to write more words to my story daily, much more than before, alongside another technique I will tell you about shortly.
As a writer you must see yourself as a god, you are creating a world and these are your people; you’ve made them, you control them, you control events; you should be as dedicated to your creations as you are to your own god, you should be motivated by the sheer fact that your characters are waiting in limbo for how you are going to progress their lives. But gods have two sides to them, good and bad, cruel and kind and so you should not feel too emotional about wrecking their lives, otherwise you’ll have a happy, clappy, crappy story.
Thinking about how I structure my novels, I am not the usual can of beans; I’ll share with you why; It seems to me that most writers write a book from beginning to end, I’ve noticed I can’t dedicated myself to surprises.
I write down my ideas in my ideas book, then I put up bullet point of events on my computer that I’d like to see happen in my story; then as scenes come to mind I write them, whilst trying to write from beginning to end, then I sew it altogether and sometimes I revise but mostly I don’t – in fact, everything that’s posted on this blog is never revised, I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I don’t have faith that what I write up here is my best work?
I do have massive flaws grammatically, punctuation wise and possibly prattle on too much needlessly, this is mainly down to the fact that I’ve had limited formal education. My mother home educated me mostly and had a problem with me studying in college and university so I was put under pressure to become a drop out on seven occasions.
I must remind you too, that my main tutor at home was my mother who is dyslexic; yet I still managed to do a distance learning course when I was nineteen and got my only qualification in the world of a B grade GCSE for English Literature.
So, if I am not fine-tuned or polished, those are my excuses and I learn through tenderness. This is why I beg for criticism and comments; I need help fine tuning my art of writing.
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