Journal Entries
Writer's Block Again
Posted Feb 24, 2018
To recap. I came up with an idea for a novel, called Brothers at War. It was to be set in France during the Second World War and centre round two brothers who fall out over their love for a Jewish girl. I did a NaNoWriMo dash in November 2016 and wrote 50,000 words. Since then, I've been rewriting it.
It's my experience that writing is a bit like creating a garden . You can draw up plots and character sketches, but when you start to write, your ideas grow and flourish, or wither and die. So, as weeding, cutting back bushes and replanting are important in gardening, rewriting is essential to writing.
So my second draft is proving quite different from my first draft. It starts in a different place at a different time:the isolated farmhouse that belongs to the Lacombe family in June 1940, instead of the pharmacy where Ferdinand Schneider lives with his daughter Danielle in summer 1939.
Michel Lacombe returns from the French army to find Danielle Schneider and her father living as refugees in the family farmhouse. He falls in love and marries her, despite the resentment of his older brother Henri, who also fancies Danielle. Michel, Danielle and Ferdinand go and live and work in a garage. It is Ferdinand who first gets in contact with the beginnings of the Resistance, but Michel and Danielle get involved. They hide refugees in their house.
Danielle has a son, Jean-Jacques (Jeannot) by the time their activities are betrayed. They have to flee. They ask Henri to shelter them in his farmhouse, but he will only let them stay one night. As they face life as refugees, Michel convinces Danielle that she would be safer without him, as he is more likely to be suspect. Reluctantly, they part. Michel goes and joins a small maquis group, while Danielle
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Latest reply: Feb 24, 2018
Writer's Block - Where Next?
Posted Nov 22, 2015
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. 
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Latest reply: Nov 22, 2015
I'm a published author too!
Posted Sep 5, 2015
My novel 'Dreaming in Stone' is now officially published. I've published it under my maiden name - Sylvia Hansford, and it's available from Amazon.
This represents the result of over four years work so I really want to shout about it!
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Latest reply: Sep 5, 2015
Writer's Block -getting close
Posted Jul 28, 2015
I've just got my proof copy of Dreaming in Stone from Amazon and it looks quite good. 
The olive green of the cover matches the colour of the pine trees in the picture. The text is nicely laid out with plenty of white space. I need to check it but so far haven't found much to complain about.
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Latest reply: Jul 28, 2015
Writer's Block - again
Posted Jun 19, 2015
I've finally taken a bold step - I've loaded the latest draft of my novel - Dreaming in Stone - onto Amazon's Createspace. 
Was it difficult? Probably not as hard as coping with GuideML!
The first hurdle was filling in tax form, stating that I'm not a citizen of the United States . Then I had to change the size of my document to fit their recommended size. And their size is a convenient number of inches, but not centimetres. Open Office, which is what I use to write, only gives you a limited choice of sizes in centimetres. Once I'd got the size as close as I could, and turned the document into a pdf file, Createspace announced there were no document issues. Hurray!
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Latest reply: Jun 19, 2015
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