Thursday 9 June 2011

MP Update

First supervision session was successful: no bug-eyed carpet gazing for me, no sirree, plans and strategies for completion. Likelihood of these plans being implemented: a five in seven chance.

Main hurdle: research. So far the non-fiction content is battling an ongoing narrative about an exaggerated mother and her parental neglect. Said narrative is a good framing device, but it’s tempting to spindle plot yarns and sandpaper the factual content down.

So: flinging self into the research cockpit. Involves: checking out relevant books and reading with intuition scanners set to turbo. Add content to existing content to make content more stimulating as content-as-entertainment. I use ‘content’ here since the non-fiction moments are a re-arrangement of facts, grafted onto one particular worldview and madcap narrative action, so don’t comprise ‘art’ on their own terms.

Important: research chapters must engage and amuse me, or zero motivation to do any research work. So framing device and narrative necessary, healthy balance of fact and debate crucial for harmonious marriage of ‘narrative’ to ‘non-fiction.’

Difficulty: fact filtering. Too simple to Google the topic being discussed and draw material from the first relevant source found. How do you discriminate against facts when so many are relevant? This is the trouble. Too eager to write the bastard and not research the bastard.

Also important: fresh air. Less chocolate and chocolate sandwiches. Less toggling between FB and Goodreads like some madman with a clicking disorder. Have more cold showers. And pakamacs (above) are awesome. Bye.

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