Penelope's Loom

[Katie-Ellen]

Isn't this the way of writing, and maybe also the doom? That like Penelope, you weave at your loom, and unravel your work in the night, and do it again next day - one difference being, she was besieged by suitors where we - I- ain't exactly under siege from desirous .... editors.
(But who wants besieging, or is that a rhetorical question?)

Your writing is threads on a loom - or maybe it could be seen as a maturing cheese. As soon as you think it is ready, you decide it's not yet extra mature. You've moved on even as you have written it.

Hold the suitors. Hold the biscuits.

Whatever has been so far committed to print, you have since outgrown it, no pleasure in looking back. Maybe even a few cringes.

What must it be like for the 'greats'? Do they sneak about in shame?

I suppose you just accept that's the way it will feel one day after your work have gone to the Elysium of print, and you must tell yourself, f**k it, here goes nothing.

Whoever reads that work, meets you at the point you were at, not where you are now.

A bit of an inner Odyssey, innit?

 

[Paul Whybrow]

One thing that's unpredictable about how our story will be appreciated by readers is what they get out of it. I might think that I've cleverly woven a subtext about how we all inadvertently use people for our own ends into my murder story, but a reader could be more focused on the dynamic between older characters and youngsters...which I hadn't noticed at all.

The same thing happens with songs and poetry, which are even more open to interpretation. It can be a mistake in any form of writing to over-explain. Leave them wondering!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

That's it; plant meeting points...and the reader that will find them is your reader. I'm just reading Apple Tree Yard, Louise Doughty. The sex itself doesn't interest me - the idea of the genie that can't be put back into the bottle does, very much.