Carried away

Yesterday, I forgot to do the reading for my course, which was okay because we didn't look at that passage anyway. Instead, my very awesome tutor decided to get us in small groups to re-write the opening to Little Red Riding Hood. We were looking at genre and how it can change aspects of text, and had to make Little Red Riding Hood into a romance, a detective story and a Gothic story.

Needless to say, I was in my element.

The other two people in my group seemed to have a fear of writing so it was left to me. Using their input, I was able to come up with something in less than ten minutes for each genre and though it wasn't my best work, I don't think it was too shabby. The others in my group seemed to like it at any rate.

The first one I did was the Gothic version. It was only two lines and included the heavily clichéd phrase "ominously dark", which another group used for their Gothic take on Little Red Riding Hood. So obviously I realised how very unoriginal it was of me. The detective story was second, and this was actually pretty decent, considering I've never written a detective story or indeed, read much of them in my time. I had to read it out and the general feedback was "I'd read that!" which is always encouraging.

The final one we wrote was the romance. I say "we" but this is probably where I got a bit carried away. One person in my group told me to make it a bit of a saucy romance novel so we had Little Red a young woman, having just got out the bath and standing at her bedroom window in a towel, spying on the shirtless axe cutter. I didn't just write an introduction. I wrote a huge paragraph.

I'm not sure if I got carried away, or if I was simply showing off...

Shakespearean inspiration

A good writer is able to inspire their readers even after they've stopped writing. Their work is so timeless that it ceases to have a limit on how much an impact it leaves on someone reading it for the first, second, or millionth time. Their work is so timeless that years later, the emotions are still relevant to the generation of the future. Their work is so timeless, they are Shakespeare.

I know I should be sick of Shakespeare right about now. He's always cropped up in my education: from primary school trips (I remember seeing a golden statue of him at some museum or other), to secondary school homework (an embarrassing leaflet springs to mind, featuring the endearing nickname 'Willy' my friend and I thought was appropriate) to sixth form coursework (naturally, I got an A). Now I'm studying English at university, looking at Shakespeare is probably mandatory. So why don't I hate him yet?

That's a good question, actually. I suppose I don't hate him because he's like the god of writing. Even though a lot of his plays were said to be unoriginal, they are what have persisted throughout time. His plays are what we recognise growing up, even to some extent his poems, and if you haven't seen at least one version of a Shakespearean play on stage, then your school isn't doing education the right way.

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo. If I'm honest, I've heard about this in previous years but never took the time to find out what it is. This year was different. I looked up what it was, checked out the website and decided within two minutes that there was no way I was taking part in such an event. Sure, it's a good way to get people to write a story but I've already made the decision to do so, and have done more than once.

I can certainly see the appeal for NaNoWriMo, don't get me wrong. If you've been bugged down by second thoughts and procrastination and half-formed excuses that prevent you from actually sitting down to write a story, then NaNoWriMo is perfect for you. But I don't have that problem. Although I might put off writing I know I will eventually get it done, it's only a matter of time and this is where my young age comes in to play. Since I'm only eighteen and still in education, I feel like I've got all the time in the world to write my many stories.

I guess that's just an idealised youthful dream, but it works for me.

From what I understand about NaNoWriMo, the main objective is to write something - anything - that passes as a complete story. The key point that put me off it is that it won't make much sense. There will be next to no planning, characters will be all over the place and the end is more like a mad dash to get to the finish line rather than a slow easing into something magical which is how it is for me, when I do eventually get there. The pure random nature of anything produced through NaNoWriMo scared me away.

I like my stories to have substance, and a basis in something deeper than "I really wanted to write a story but lacked the courage". I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that if I wanted to write like I was six years old again, I'd join the NaNoWriMo movement and this would be an entirely different blog post.