Writing Chronicles – 30th May 2016
My name is GreenGoalie1. That is what writers call a pseudo-name, or something sounding like that. It is not my real name. No one is sure what that is.
I was called GreenGoalie1 (GG1 for short) when I first appeared as a character in one of Ted Dunphy’s books; not the best step into life. Some will ask how I can write this blog when I started as a character in a book. Adults start as helpless babies but look where they end up.
Authors will tell you that characters, once created, are real and take on a life of their own as a book develops. Any decent reader will tell you how characters leap off the pages and are real. End of!
Ted Dunphy (he is the bloke who owns this site) invited me to post my writing here once a week. The deal cuts both ways. I step out into the limelight, he gets to have some quality writing on his website. You can see for yourself how much he needs that sort of boost.
I enrolled on a Creative Writing for Internationally Renowned Authors (CrewIRA) correspondence course last September. Being on the course did not make me a great writer person because I was that before I signed up. But the course has helped me to polish one or two minor details that I would have got round to anyway.
The course leaders (aka, tutors) were, I suspect, overawed by my high level of intelligence, great writing skills, my acute ear and an eye for detail, as well as my natural ability and know-how in story telling.
Having been a character in one of Dunphy’s books has given me insider knowledge that is hard to come by and makes me unique among students on the course.
In the coming weeks I will share some of my immense ability with you and help you aspire to be a fantastic writer. Do not feel bad when you fail. Writing is not for everyone, even though most people say they have a book inside them waiting for the right moment to come out. People with constipation say the same thing and the results are not dissimilar in both cases.
I will use some technical terms because writing about writing is quite technical. Writing is like that; full of words. Some words don't do what you want them to do. Others are hard to understand. That’s one of the reasons why not many people write as well as what I do.
I will use words you will find confusing until I tell you what they mean. You will read about words like ‘plot’, ‘story’, ‘character’, ‘pace’, ‘genres’. Knowing those words won’t make you a writer. I was a great writer before I used these words. However, I found that these words are useful when people ask me what makes my books so fantastically brilliant. Talking about the ‘quintessential essence’ of a book (that is one of the phrases we learned on the correspondence course) leaves your ordinary reader flummoxed, whereas they will cope with something simple like ‘the story’, or ‘the main character’ or ‘the end’.
Knowing proper words about writing doesn’t make you a writer. It is like being a really good natural thief before you find out the name for it is a kleptomaniac. The word is useful at parties to explain why you are nicking knives and forks, but just knowing it does not make you a great thief. I found that using kleptomaniac when picked up for shoplifting eased the tension when plod (aka, arresting officers) interrogated me. ‘Interrogate’ is the talking bit they do before the truncheons come out.
A key element in learning to be a fantastic writer is the ability to read lots of stuff. Each week I will give you the chance to read great writing stuff what I will write. While you are admiring the silk-like surface of the writing, the content of the pieces will guide some of you to a higher level of understanding and performance.
One of my tutors, the one originally from Wigan but she is mostly over that part of her life, says I have a real gift for “fusing the content and form so that my writing scintillates with imagery and creates an unanticipated impact on the unsuspecting reader”. The other students did not know what she meant; many of them are quite limited. I stared at her statement for a long time while I worked out if she had read that somewhere and was copying it or taking advantage by using so many hard words in one sentence. Ethelred thinks she meant I have a gift for fusing things. Gertrude Hutchinson in the end cottage in the row said the same about me when I replaced her blown fuse last Christmas and lit up the house before her visitors arrived.
Judge for yourself the truth of what my tutor said when you read the things I am about to write for you over the next few weeks, or however long Dunphy lets me lodge here.
GreenGoalie1
