Hey Deb - glad you're back. No worries at all. I think N hit the nail on the head that we will all just making our own points (I often do this and just blah on in a totally self-centred manner using the last post more as a jumping off point for discussion rather than a very close debate - if you know what I mean. ) And I do really enjoy our discussions as I said.

Anyhow, I am glad Naomi brought up blocks because I think it is a interesting thing and I have them, but i think it is tempting sometimes to read too much into them and in fact they can be just technical - you know, that the structure is problematic and has to be altered to allow it to continue or there is something that hasn't been worked out properly or you need to do more research or...whatever. I just think it might be comforting for some people to know there are things you can do and try to see if it helps get out of them and the end could be a better book.

Sorry - see nothing to do with comfort zones - I am just waffling again.

BTW, Naomi, thanks for not taking offence.

I think research is one key to conquoring ones comfort zone. I love going off on science or historical tangents, and if anything can be used as a jumping off point - to borrow snowbell's phrase - for a chapter then that's great. Maybe I should do some indepth research into sex, so I can write about it better.


- NaomiM

Maybe I should do some indepth research into sex, so I can write about it better.

LOL! sounds fun.

Luckily it's in character for my gay MC to be fairly reticent about his sex life, because I haven't been able to research it from personal experience...

Emma

Emma

Presumably in those days they just thumbed through the Greek Classics while galloping across Hampstead Heath

Emma

Anyone esle hear Sarah Hall (of Electric Michaelangelo fame) talking on Front Row yesterday tea-time? She was saying how her books aren't planned at all. A first scene just comes to her, a character or two, and she just sets off without even a road map. She called it being an 'intuitive' writer - 'in other words, I just amke it up as I go along'.

Hoorah for non-planners! Makes the rest of us lazy just-write-what-comes types feel better about our sloth!

Rosy

Yes, I heard that - she was interesting.

I'm a non-planner for short fiction, I just dive in with the roughest of rough ideas, or, yes, just a single image. Even a chapter within a novel might only have a few words or image to describe it on my plan, when I start writing. But the structure of the novel as a whole I do need, otherwise it's just toooooo much like jumping out of a submarine into the depths of the Atlantic - never mind East or West - which way is even up?

Emma