Beyond 1984 – Ian Rivedon’s Blog

If you’re going to start a blog, then I suppose you need to take the plunge and start the process off at some point, so here goes:

I’m Ian Rivedon, and ‘Beyond 1984’ is my blog.

That’s not an inspiring start, I agree. But, it’s a start.

I’m almost at the end of the first draft of my first novel, and though I agree with most other writers who maintain that writing is largely an enjoyable occupation, I have concluded that writing a first novel is analogous to painting a garden wall, as follows:

You take your paint and paintbrush and you paint the wall, but there’s far too much paint. So, you have to build a bit more wall. Then, upon finishing you step back and admire the end result, only to find that the paint has been applied much too sparingly and another coat is needed. So, you go back to the beginning and apply another coat of paint, taking care to apply lots of paint where uneven brickwork shows through. When you step back to admire it once more, you realise that the colour’s totally wrong, so dejectedly, you start painting all over again.

When a literary agent gets involved, the analogy can be extended. She (for it will inevitably be so) suggests that the wall is too long, and the single colour is boring. So, reluctantly, you demolish a third of the wall and repaint the remainder in black and white.

The final analogy is where in due course, to your utmost delight, a publishing house offers you a deal. You receive an advance, in return for which you agree to a nationwide publicity tour, plus a commitment to paint four more walls in an unfeasibly short timeframe. Also, each new wall must be substantially better built than its predecessor, and painted in impossible shades of black and white, avoiding at all costs the occasional grey bit.

Some might ask, ‘Is it worth the effort?’ Well, of course it is, it’s certainly more rewarding than my previous job as a builder and decorator!

That was obviously written as a bit of a joke, but jokes apart, writing can be a frustrating occupation. However, frustration is usually quickly forgotten in the overwhelming euphoria when creativity and inspiration begin to erupt, and you can’t type quick enough to get the deluge of ideas down ‘on paper’. Nothing can prepare you for the almost ‘out of body’ feeling when a character seems to burst into life and seizes control of the writing. It’s almost like you’re just a conduit for the character’s own flow of prose onto the page, and it takes real will power and determination to maintain control. When the euphoria subsides, and you read through what you’ve written, it is often of dubious quality. Occasionally though, you’ll find that you have created something original and worthwhile, that reads well no matter how critical you are of it, and which others also enjoy reading. That’s when you realise that it most definitely is worth the effort.

This is the start of a record of my literary (and educational) experiences. If my successes and failures help other new writers, then I’ll have achieved what I set out to do. I also hope to provide a little occasional humour along the way.

Ian