1 - Evolution, of a sort

I’m failing to get any further with redrafting my novel at the moment and yet I’m somehow alive with a huge compulsion to write. I think it’s simply that I want to be writing new things. That’s why I’ve joined One A Day. I won’t go into the details, suffice it to say the aim is to write one blog a day for a year. It seems fitting to kick start the process by writing about writing itself.

What I love about writing most is that it’s an organic process, constantly evolving and transforming until it becomes something so very different from what you started out with that you forget how you got there. I can generally remember where a single idea for a story originated from, but most of the finer points are lost in the annals of my mind.

I know that when I was writing a piece I made conscious decisions. I know when I was writing a piece I was influenced by what I was reading, watching and listening to at the time. I know that when I was writing a piece I did some things by accident and they just stuck.

Sometimes I wish I could tear apart every little detail of a story and see why this is this, even if it’s for the most banal reasons – such as the time I made a character obsequious simply because I came across the word and liked it.

I started writing a piece yesterday. It’s a truncated form of a novella idea I’ve been toying with for some months and for some reason that I have already forgotten, I have started writing it in a garbled, semi-phonetic version of English.

I’ve clearly taken direction from A Clockwork Orange, Riddley Walker and 1984’s Newspeak but I’m sure I wasn’t consciously paying homage to/ripping off these pieces when I started. Now I’ve got to such an involved level with this language that I can’t stop.

I know I’m alienating any audience by making the piece tougher to read. I know it adds little if anything to the story. Worst of all, I’m finding it hard letting go. The language is evolving every time I return to the piece. I’m deciding on specific spellings and new rules, but I guess that’s the basis for an entire other blog. I just wish I could remember why I thought it was a good idea.