Book Swap –The Return

I went to my second book swap at the Fire Station Arts Centre last night. There was a good turnout which meant lots of cake (I love Mrs. Scott’s macaroons!). The guest authors were Bronia Kita (The Swansong of Wilbur McCrum) and Aliya Whiteley (Light Reading). It is such a wonderful concept – the atmosphere is so friendly and the fact that most of the questions are not about writing means that you get to know more about the authors themselves. They both came across really well. I was interested in Bronia’s book and hope to get to read it once my dissertation is done and I can read non-MA related books again. It was good to know that Bronia had done an MA (Goldsmiths) so there may be hope for me yet and also that Aliya was published via the MacMillan New Writing.
http://broniakita.com
http://www.aliyawhiteley.com

Exposition

I had my tutorial this week, which covered the next 12,000 or so words. These were written from another characters pov and therefore totally separate to the diary entries previously submitted. It was a first draft and for me was about getting the skeleton of the story down, with the next stage being to add the narrative; a little like completing a preliminary sketch prior to a painting. Unsurprisingly, the main issue that my tutor raised was that of the need for less exposition. I was comforted by the fact that this is mainly structural (because the focus was on the action) and that it is something that can be remedied. I have also decided that now I am past the minimum word count for my dissertation, I will stop and concentrate on quality rather than quantity. I am in a very good place now as I can spend time working with the material that I have and stop worrying about word counts! Am really enjoying it.