Inspired by Kate Forsyth
I am a member of Allison Tait’s facebook group called Write with Alison Tait (WWAT). Allison is a best selling children’s author along with many other talents. The group has the opportunity of meeting with an Industry Insider each month. There is a limited membership so the meetings are small and intimate and we have the opportunity to ask questions. In September the Industry Insider was Kate Forsyth. And just WOW. She was fantastic. She blew away some old myths one of which was “Write what you know.” Imagine how boring it would be if we all only wrote what we know. After all, we don’t know that much. The other myth was that stories are either plot driven or character driven. Kate subscribes to the notion that plot and character drive each other.
I struggle to keep track of my research and she had some wonderful hints to share on that subject. She is a big fan of physical notebooks and uses colour coded highlighters and matching paper clips so that she can find a particular fact when she needs it. She divides things into topics and adds the date that she has read or researched that particular fact. Then she adds very specific details like the book title and the page number or the website URL and also keywords she used to find that information in case the URL changes. Any ideas that randomly enter her mind are also copied into her notebooks in the same way. I am very much an electronic notetaker but similar ideas could be used.
But the crux of her advice was to always keep meticulous records and split the research information into topics or people. Taking all these notes has the added benefit of cementing the information in your brain. To write freely you need to have learnt the topic thorougly so that the story flows easily without having to constantly refer back to research.
Kate always likes to have three strong ideas before she even decides that a project has enough content to commence work on. This made me think much more deeply about my own work in progress. All of a sudden I knew that I didn’t have enough ideas to write an 80,000 word novel. This must have been subconsciously occupying my mind because this morning, upon waking, the next idea came to me. I immediately grabbed my phone and started taking some notes before I was even really awake. Once I had the notes down, I opened my laptop and wrote the first scene for this new idea, a total of 1100 words, in less than an hour. I wish all the words came so easily.