Falling in Love

I don't mean the, ahem, mundane kind of love that connects women and men. No, I am talking about falling in love with a character you've created.
The feelings I have for all of my characters are very very strong, but different. I have extremely strong maternal feelings towards my main character Wanja, I admire Galfrid and would love to spend at least a day or two just with him (technically, I could, because he lives in my head. But he 'only' exists in my story, and I don't. Yet I do for 100%. Ugh. Weird) and the relationship I have with the cat Karolus Magnus again is very very special and highly comparable with affinity.
And then there is this one character...I have planned him, or rather thought about him for quite some time. He actually came to me once in a dream and had such an amazing charisma that I immediately knew that he is a major part of the story but until now there was no real place for him in the story (which sounds weird, but it _does_ make sense). Until now. Yay.  I have sort of fallen in love with him, because i think that he's a great character.
I've rarely rejoiced during writing as I did when I introduced him into the story. My first thoughts were: 'Thank god, he's finally _here_. FINALLY!' It felt like realising that the person you fancy fancies you back, but different, as relationships with fictional characters are (and should be) different to the relationships with real people. Fine. I just felt the need to quickly blog about that....now I _have_ to get back and continue writing...

Names

Names can  be a hard one. Some just come easily with a character, some I have to make up/research and some things are just a pain in the arse to name.

The first ones are easy. Some Characters like my main character Wanja already 'come' with their names, if that makes sense. I just immediately know what to call them - and any attempts at trying to change the name or even the spelling are in vain. I tried to change the spelling of Wanja's name to 'Vanya', just because it's the English aquivalent to 'Wanja'. It wouldn't have made that much of a difference - they sound similar. But I absolutely hate the look of  'Vanya'. It just doesn't fit the character. It looks harsh, cold and arrogant, and Wanja isn't any of that. He is a warm and lovely person and for some reason only 'Wanja' visually represents that for me. So I had to discard my tutors proposition to change the spelling in order to keep my character the way he is.

Other characters don't come with a name exclusively ;) And because I really love dickensian telling names I usually note down a few main character traits of the nameless character and search for names that sort of have a similar meaning. For Example, I have a character who is the epitome of benignity and loves to help socially disadvantaged people. So I research old English names with an appropiate meaning and fitting sound and finally named the character Galfrid, short for Galfridus, which means sth like 'friend of men'.
Unfortunately I am a perfectionist when it comes to names. I can get really frustrated when a name sounds off or doesn't quite fit the character like it wnat it to. So it _can_ take me some time to find proper names that I like.

Other characters I just name after people I know, beacuse they share certain character traits and I like to have little bits and bobs of my own life in the novel.

Naming characters though is by far not as hard as naming places, especially if your setting is fictional and some places need fantastical names b/c they are, sort of, magical. So they have to be different to tell them apart.
But even the mundane town in which Wanja arrives was so so hard to name. First off, I didn't want to choose a name that already exists, because that would have been weird. So research like I did with character names was not an option and I had no idea how to go about it. For quite some time the town didn't have a name at all, I just called it 'ABC'. Not knowing though annoyed me more and more as the story continued and it was really frustrating because I couldn't think of anything. At all. I mean, where do you start. It was just a blank for too long.
So finally I thought, let's do it like you did with the character names and note down 'traits' of the town. In the end I had words like 'welcoming' or 'gripping'.  So I thought that the word 'hug' applies. Then I went from 'hug' to 'hugging' and made it sound town-ey with 'huggington'. But because it is a very very small town, actually on the verge to being a village, I called it 'Little'. 'Little Huggington'. And I like that. It sounds cute but also has some sort of meaning if you like.

It is even harder to name the 'fantasy places'. They have to sound different to distinguish them from the normal ones like 'Little Huggington' but I don't want them to be too fancy because I hate that. I haven't yet come up with a way to create these sort of name, because, like with all the other names, I want them to _mean_ something and not just be a funny sounding composition of letters. So, to be honest, there is a place that is only called 'MW' and it's really eating me up, because I am struggling to find something that satisfies me.

Inspiration and Motivation

Yes, I know what this must look like. No Blog entries for several months. Lazy little writer-wannabe.
Actually, I am not. I _have_ continued writing my novel, but sort of neglected/forgot about this Blog. When I tried to get back into it I couldn't work out for  the Love of God how to post a blogpost, which resulted in a few more weeks of not posting anything. Being too impatient with these internet things, I procrastinated and told myself  'I'll find out again how this works later.' Well. Now I've found out how to work this and am back for Good. Hopefully. If I wont forget about it again.


Rather fitting with what I wrote above I thought I'd write about what inspires and motivates me to write my novel.
To be honest, it _is_ quite hard at times to sit down and write if I'm not in the proper mood for it. But if you want to finish a novel, you just _have_ to do it and force yourself at times. Writing fiction is by far not like you might think: You don't just write one sentence after another, tiping away all day. There are days which I spend on one single paragraph, trying to make it look and sound as good as possible (which includes grammer, esp syntax, vocabulary, esp prevention of reiteration etc) and that is this kind of work that can be highly frustrating while doing it, but equally highly satisfying when you've finally completed a paragraph which meets all your standarts of a good paragraph.

So how do I motivate myself when I'm not really 'feeling it'? Well. First, there is tea. Tea and food. And I don't just take a tea-bag, put it into any old cup and fill it with hot water. I celebrate the tea, take my most beautiful teapot and fill it with the tea I like (usually chai, nice and spicy ;) ) , put it onto my beautiful silver tea tray and take the matching tea-glass ( I love drinking tea out of special tea glasses) and prepare sth to eat with it (sandwich, cake, chocolate etc). This has become a routine which is actually more of a ceremonial than a routine. And this ceremonial helps me to get into 'the mood', helps me to focus and relax.
Also, prepaing tea properly has sth magical about it, and that certainly helps me.

The next thing that not only motivates but also inspires me is music. Obviously, music touches your heart, mind and emotions like nothing else, it basically stirrs your emotions - which is what need for writing. I need my emotions and feelings to be in 'full motion' because it stimulates all of my brain cells that are responsible and in charge of creative writing.
I tend to listen to the kind of music that would fit as a soundtrack to my novel - sth like Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone, Narnia (The lion, the witch and the wardrobe), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Game of Thrones, Schindler's List, The Hobbit, Pride and Prejudice and lots of classical music from Tchaikovsky to Rimsky-Korsakov or Shostakovitch. So in general magical and dramatic music. I can't possibly listen to music with lyrics when I'm writing - too distracting.

A big motivator and inspirer is nature. One of the most inspiring situations would be me sitting in my parents lovely garden, it's sunday and the sun is shining (but not too hot). The cat's are playing with each other or sleeping under the huge elder bush and my hand is holding a glass with berry wine (preferably blueberry). This is pure heaven, relaxation and peace and that usually always makes me want to write.
Another inspiring situation involving nature are train rides. I do that quite a lot, twice a week actually. Some of my best ideas came to me on the train and I generally like to write there. I guess this is a, because I see a lot of nature and the constantly changing sky from the train and b, because my brain has to process a lot of images in a short amount of time, which is again very stimulating.

So there you go, lots of stimulation, inspiration and motivation. My motivation will now have to carry me to my writing file on my computer - lots of paragraph's need my attention now.

Creating Characters...and living with them

There are three ways to create a character. For me at least.

 #1:There are those characters who just come to you and who already live a life of their own.
Example:  My main character is called Wanja. From the beginning I knew pretty much everything about him without having to think about him or artificially creating him. He was just 'there'. I knew exactly what he looks like, where he came from and where he is going, his virtues and his flaws. He was like a friend you have known for a very long time.
Another character ,a police officer, presented himself to me with a very distinctive accent (Cockney). I hadn't planned him to talk with a Cockney accent, it just happened as I wrote. At that point I wasn't confident wether I was able to keep up his accent and wanted to change his dialogues into standard English. I wasn't even able to change 2 sentences into s.E.. The character rebelled, in my head. It felt bad and it just didn't work. It didn't look good and it sounded even worse so I had to give up (to a fictional character
_I _ created, mind) and let him talk in his precious Cockney accent. Basically it's his fault that I had to change the whole setting of the story (I had planned to set everything somewhere in Russia, hence the name Wanja, but then came along this officer and literally made me set the novel in south England).

#2: Other characters need to be carefully constructed.These are the ones who don't come to me like Wanja or the Cockney police officer but are essential for the story.
With those characters I usually start with the name (which can be a pain in the arse to begin with; I might write a blog post about names, now that I think about it). The connection between character traits and the name (either/and the meaning and the sound of the name) is very important to me. So for one of the more nasty characters I chose the name Clayton Barrett. Clayton, because it sounds very hard when you say it (and because it reminds me of a horrible disney character  ;) ) and Barrett, because it again sounds very hard and means something like dispute/argument.
Next thing would be his looks. While I could see my characters of category #1 very clearly in my head, Clayton Barrett was more of a blur. I kind of knew what he looks like, but for the facial details I imagined a person I know so it was easier to describe him. His character traits were quite clear to me though because they are quite important for the story, so I didn't have to work on them that much.

#3: Real life inspired characters. They are slightly similar to #2's although they tend to come to me like #1's.
Example: I was writing about a group of children coming towards main character Wanja. One of those children immediatley highly resembled my cousin when he was five, so I decided to go with it and use my cousin as an inspiration for that character. Giving names to those characters obviously isn't hard ;) .


Once I had established my characters and had been writing about them they became part of my everyday life more and more. One day I decided to take a short 3-day break from writing to recap everything.
In the night of the second day without writing though I had a very vivid dream.
I was standing outside a building where I had left Wanja before I took the break. The door opened and out came Wanja and walked up to me, through the snow. He stopped in front of me, looked me in the eyes and said:

'Why have you stopped writing? This is my story and my life, you know. You can't just stop writing and leave me hanging like this. I want to know how the story and my life continue. I HAVE to know. So would you please go back to your computer and write?'
He then turned around and walked back, into the building. And I obeyed and started writing again. I had a really bad conscience, even though he's 'only' fictional. He is alive now. Alive in my mind, but alive (and obviously self-determined) nonetheless.

The beginning and Status Quo.

It all started in November of 2012. I had taken a class called 'Creative Writing' and soon found out that I could do my 'praxis studie' ( sth like a practical experience) for my studies in this class. Since I am studying The English Language, Lingustics and Literature (with focus on British culture and history) but don't want to work as a teacher later (in which case my 'Praxis studie' would have been in a school - No, thanks!) I was quite happy about the opportunity. My lecturer gave me a few choices from which I chose to write a novel of 50 000 words. I had always wanted to write a novel and thought, "I might as well do it now and earn a few credit points with it".
Very early on I realized that I couldn't just write 50 000 words. In our class we were advised to leave our inner editor at home and just write whatever comes to mind. I can't do that. "If I do this, I am going to do it properly, maybe I can even get it published when I'm done," I said to myself. Luckily I don't have a deadline, so I decided to take my time about it and write the best novel I can at this point.
It wasn't hard to think of a plot - I chose to make a very vivid dream I once had into the novel. This was a dream which very well might have been a children's film: There were children, a roller coaster and Santa Claus. But I didn't necessarily want to write about Santa Claus, so I thought about ways to digress from the 'plot' without changing it too much. So I made a few alterations, created characters and strands of plots on the basis of the dream and soon I had a very promising outline.
As I wrote earlier, I can't leave my inner editor at home. I have to check every sentence, every pragraph thousands of times for the right choice of words, the right use of grammar, spelling and coherance. I am not a native speaker of the English language so it was quite hard at first to form good sounding sentences without repeating the same words over and over again (Oh, how I hate reiteration of words).
Therefore it took me much longer to write and finish a chapter compared to my classmates.

Until now I have written about 12 000 words. I might be quite slow, but I don't have a deadline and so I cherish the freedom I've got. I always go back to previous chapters I wrote, to check, correct or add things and am quite proud of what I have accomplished so far.
My lecturer has complimented me several times on my writing style and other people who have read parts of my writing gave me raving reviews as well. So I might be on to something. I just might. And this keeps me going.

You need to start at some point...

I am writing a novel . So I've decided to start a blog. You might wonder, why start a blog when you are completely occupied with writing a novel?
I hope this will turn out as a diary and a way for me to keep up with my progress, write about my inspirations and what it feels like to create characters and live with them.
 I _could_ do this in private, I know, but I have the feeling if it is written down online there might be some little extra pressure to keep up writing the novel and actually finish it.
So feel free to follow me on my journey of hopefully becoming a published author :)