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Re: ccbc-net digest: April 18, 2014
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From: Sherryl Clark <sherrylc1_at_optusnet.com.au>
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 16:46:58 +1000
Thank you, Helen, for all of your thoughtful responses. I love the idea of notes that send the reader back to delve deeper into the poems. You said:
>I want to say that I meant that as a genuine question for other
>authors about the themes of our books.
>I never know if it's just me, or if that's a hard thing for others,
>too--to identify a (or "the") theme either before, during, or after
>the writing of a book.
>
>This seems like a good opportunity to ask.
I've written four verse novels and I agree - I tend to focus more on plot and character first, along with finding what the poetry will do, how it will enrich the story, how I can create voice and place and tension with the poems. It's not until I get close to the end of the first draft, or sometimes even well into second or third drafts, that I get a stronger sense of what the theme is, what I might be trying to say. In "Runaways" it was about the physicality of the story, the two characters running, where they went and why. But in the second draft, I began to see how much it was about betrayal in families, about children without power to change their lives, and what happens when they try. I don't believe in happy endings, but I struggled with the bleakness of the ending I had, and in the end realized that the potential to change and grow must lie within the mother, too. That became part of the theme.
Sherryl Clark www.sherrylclark.com
"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust
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Received on Sat 19 Apr 2014 01:47:28 AM CDT
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 16:46:58 +1000
Thank you, Helen, for all of your thoughtful responses. I love the idea of notes that send the reader back to delve deeper into the poems. You said:
>I want to say that I meant that as a genuine question for other
>authors about the themes of our books.
>I never know if it's just me, or if that's a hard thing for others,
>too--to identify a (or "the") theme either before, during, or after
>the writing of a book.
>
>This seems like a good opportunity to ask.
I've written four verse novels and I agree - I tend to focus more on plot and character first, along with finding what the poetry will do, how it will enrich the story, how I can create voice and place and tension with the poems. It's not until I get close to the end of the first draft, or sometimes even well into second or third drafts, that I get a stronger sense of what the theme is, what I might be trying to say. In "Runaways" it was about the physicality of the story, the two characters running, where they went and why. But in the second draft, I began to see how much it was about betrayal in families, about children without power to change their lives, and what happens when they try. I don't believe in happy endings, but I struggled with the bleakness of the ending I had, and in the end realized that the potential to change and grow must lie within the mother, too. That became part of the theme.
Sherryl Clark www.sherrylclark.com
"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust
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Received on Sat 19 Apr 2014 01:47:28 AM CDT
