h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OK, I've written my novel and self-published it. Now what?

I feel a bit sad, as if I've lost something that mattered in my life. A writing project. I've written a couple of short stories and a few poems but that's all. I need an idea for a new novel but what?

I drew up an outline plot for a story in which two brothers fall out over a Jewish girl in wartime France. It seemed promising - the themes would be love and loyalty and there was plenty of room for drama with the French resistance struggling against the Germans and French collaborators.Then I did some research and found the fate of many resistance members was grim. If they were caught, they were tortured and either shot or sent to concentration camps. Do I want to write about that? No, I'd rather not.

So I looked for other ideas. They either needed masses of research, or they were very dark, or they were dull. So I'm stuck.

>> the fate of many resistance members was grim. If they were caught, they were tortured and either shot or sent to concentration camps<<

You said many, not all. You might write about three who managed to slip between the cracks. There could be several points where capture seems inevitable and a lucky chance saves them.

The few survivors are more likely to write their stories than the lost (Anne Frank is an exception to this rule)

Just a thought.

F S

I'm enjoying "Dreaming in Stone." Is a sequel possible?

"Charlotte Grey" treated the French resistance without gratuitous violence, though my memory may not be totally clear given the time since I read it.

Lots of people manage to write about France without touching on dark issues. The latest France-related book I read was "They Eat Horses, Don't They?"

Peter Mayle has written several charming books about Provence, where he bought an old farmhouse. Some of his observations are laugh-out-loud funny -- the annual marathon that goes through wine country and usually involves costume-wearing runners who stop at various vineyards to taste the local wines before continuing with the race.

Then there's the example of Colette, whose most famous story ["Gigi"] was suffused with the glamor of living in the City of Light."

Can you write humor? Whenever I listen to Maurice Chevalier or Jacques Brel, I always imagine them winking at me. It wasn't for nothing that Paris waso ne of th stops on my ongoing "Around the world in 30 ways" najopomo....

But dark issues aren't just in the past. There are quite a lot of people in Paris right now whose lives are anything but tranquil...

Many thanks Florida Sailor, Paulh.

I'll go on thinking and reading for a bit longer before I start writing in earnest. I've just finished reading Kate Mosse's Citadel, which gets pretty brutal.

It would be good to do humour, as life in a little village does lend itself to petty disputes. There was the story about the floodlights, and the problem with dog mess...

Many writers will tell you that you will do best if you write about things you know, though obviously it's important to fictionalize everything. If you become successful, for decades, even centuries, scholars will try to figure out what real persons were the basis for the fictional characters you so carefully invented. You can steal their thunder the way Samuel Clemens did: in his autobiography, which he didn't want published until 100 years after his death, he revealed who was the real person behind Huckleberry Finn. As if anyone would care by that point! Of course, it would be just like him to say that to stir things up.

But writers like Rose Tremain say 'write what you know' is too limiting and it's better to write a story that interests you, doing the research as necessary.

I tend to taken the view that my own life has been too boring to form the basis of a story, but places I know might have stories I can plunder.

Being a keen observer of human nature can be an asset. Your own life doesn't need to be colorful, but maybe there are some colorful people around you.

There is nothing 'that's all' about what you write MVP,

What if the girl and the brothers ended up in the same camp? Many ways this idea could be a touching novel.

Thanks for your suggestions! I've got a book about the Resistance by Robert Gildea 'Fighters in the Shadows', which I'll read. Then I'll decide if I can use this theme.
If not, it will make at least one Edited Guide article!

Reading with interest and considerable awe, 'cos I've been following mvp's writing career.

Nothing intelligent to offer (hence considerable awe), but just to let you know I'm reading.

Sequel to Dreaming In Stone!! Yes please!!

And a book of poems. Yes please!

And whatever you choose to write. mvp, because I think your muse will beckon when you are creating one of your culinary masterpieces, or walking on the Downs, or just being content at home. I don't think your life is boring at all. You're a poet and writer! You bring to life even the small details of life! You could turn a wait at the bus stop in the rain into the start of a novel, or a bike ride, or anything.

That's what I reckon.



Interesting though. I knew this other lady who was a poet and writer and she lived quite a wild bohemian life because it gave her inspiration. I couldn't keep up with her lifestyle for even half an hour.

However, she told me once that she was afraid of contentment and not being wild, in case she lost her muse and inspiration for her next story.

And we used to have these talks about it, which usually ended up with me going on about momentary realisations in supermarkets, light effects on leaves, etc. I said that I thought contentment and poetic observations of small details were marvellous, what about Zen haiku and Buddhist poetry and things like that, and William Blake seeing a heaven in a grain of sand.



I suppose that poems and novels are different. Are they? Does a novel need dramatic tension and plot, wheareas a poem doesn't, necessarily?

Erm. Right. Think I might shut up now.



Watch this space for news of mvp's next work!!!

haiku?

I sit in silence
listen to each breath I take,
feel an inner calm.

When dreaming in stone,
Take souvenir pebbles with you,
So waking hours glow.

These are so lovely! Ye poets! You create beautiful illuminated haiku gems!!They light my heart.

I like that. Ye Poets!!

I could walk out into the street and proclaim the words Ye Wondrous Poets!! to passing peoples and small dogs. Or is it declaim. What's the difference between proclaim and declaim?