The strangest thing happened at work the other day. I have been mulling over a way to keep this blog going without it turning into a whole lot of self help posts about me falling in and out of love or being afraid to live life.
After thinking about it for a while I realised that this is an excercise in love for me - blogging- as it's entails writing which at the end of the day is my first love.
For years I have had this idea for a novel floating around in my head. It's called African Dust and the framework is as familiar to me as the storyline for Braveheart - my favourite film of all time.
Anyway it was then that I decided that I would use this blog as a platform. A place where I could put my writing out there for it to be scrutinised by the exact audience I want to see it - you.
(Yes both of you)
My idea is to post passages from my novel as they come. I am still not sure if this will be chronological or simply post things as I am inspired. These posts will of course be punctuated by my usual rantings on life, love and the women who constantly break my heart.
So I have this idea and then Bam - a woman at work who is writing her first novel sits down next to me and tells my boss how she wants to blog and wants to use our blogging platform to put her novel out there.
It will be an interactive thing where she will put up chapters as she writes but also blogs about the frustrations of actually trying to write your first novel. Genius. Poor Genius and I can guarantee you that if she is af good enough writer she is going to gain huge recognition publishing her work on a platform as big as ours.
So I am now wrestling with this. One the one hand I could simply give up and continue to use this place as somewhere to vent my frustrations and do what I always do when I write something I actually want people to read - which is email it to everybody.
Or I can look at it as a challenge and hope that my writing would be better than hers, my book more compelling.
And then on the third hand (I know I know) I could just forget about her and do what I love - write. Write what I think is a beautiful, simple story about a girl who becomes a woman by destroying a man.
Footnote: I actually wrote the first hundred pages of African Dust two years ago but the laptop crashed.
2 comments:
I would not classify myself as a writer , not just yet, i don't think i have the life experience to be one, ( i read that somewhere , and i agree- "writers have lived") but if u been blogging for a while, you'll l notice that a majority of bloggers just like yourself has some sort of root or basis in wanting to publish, be it a novel or whatever.
Personally i think its an ideal platform, and u a great writer, so by all means , go for it! would love to read it...
Just a thought..
G
Write the damn stuff and put it out there.
If there's one thing I've learnt, the last thing you should do is NOT do something because someone else is.... I've stopped myself from growing because of it.
The second thing you should NOT do is feel intimidated, deflated or compare yourself to someone else and what they do, unless it's to inspire you. I'm still working on this one, but step one has been to decide I'm fierce about both these points.
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