Saturday 26 October 2013

The Island Seduced Her...

So, when I was at Petra Tou Romiou a week or so ago, (better known as Aphrodite's Rock) in Cyprus, I was photographing the sunset when I noticed this girl, simply standing, half submerged in the sea. She looked how I'd imagined the Goddess of Love looked, all those thousands of years ago.

This is the beach Aphrodite was born on.  It just seemed so perfect.  I took this shot and now I'm back home in the UK wondering...

I love the myth of Aphrodite.  She rose, a beautiful fully-formed woman from the sea.  Her birth and life dominates Cyprus.  Her influence is forever there, beckoning lovers to her beach, her birthplace.  She has come to symbolise Love, with her Roman equivalent, Venus, shining down from the sky, looking down on us all.

Emily, my protagonist, begins to feel that Aphrodite's influence is affecting her life.  She arrives on Cyprus, a normal everyday woman and over the course of a few months, she changes dramatically and her life will never be the same again.

Will she find happiness or will her transformation bring her sorrow?

You need to read the book to find out what happens.  All I will say is

...the Island Seduced her.

See you next time.


Tuesday 15 October 2013

The Goddess of Love changed everything...

My protagonist, Emily builds pebble hearts in the sand...

So...I'm writing this blog in Cyprus...soaking up the October sun and visiting the places Emily, my protagonist, haunts.

Last night, we went to Aphrodite's Rock at sunset.  It is the birthplace of Aphrodite, where she rose from the sea, fully formed.  As it is associated with the Goddess of Love, people often leave love tokens hanging from trees, initials scraped in rock and pebble hearts in the sand.  Wherever you look, there are hearts of all sizes and shapes.  People go there with hope...for eternal love and happiness.

The sunset last night was stunning.  We were expecting to be the only ones on the beach but there were quite a few people there, just standing and staring at the sun as it dipped beneath the surface of the sea.  It fell so quickly, but the colours were stunning.  It really was a magical moment.

In my book, Emily builds hearts there... I won't give too much away – I want you to read the book! But like Aphrodite, she is 'reborn' on the island with a hope for happiness.  You'll have to read the novel to see if her dreams come true.

I'd love this photo to be on the book cover as for me it sums the book up.  I know publishers have their own ideas – so if I ever get a deal, I'm sure I won't get my choice...but in my mind, this is it.  I already see it now in my head with the tagline – The Goddess of Love changed everything.

Who knows...it might happen?

See you next time?




Tuesday 24 September 2013

Simple things...

I haven't blogged for a while – the reason being my submission for my MA.  We have to give in 40,000 words on 30th September and although I've had it ready for weeks now, I've been reading and re-reading it for the past two weeks, driving myself slightly round the bend.  I began to know the words off by heart almost, which is a danger in itself, as you then miss blindingly obvious mistakes, typos, etc.  But...I've now printed it out and I feel I've done all I can to it.

I've also printed out the entire novel.  I was very impressed with my printer, which just seemed to churn it out without making an issue out of it.  I'd convinced myself that it would run out of ink, chew up the paper and do everything possible to annoy me, but everything went smoothly and I now have a huge pile of printed sheets sitting in front of me.  I can't believe that I've written so much – I know it's quality not quantity, but I'm still impressed with myself!  Whether I will be, when I've read it all through, is another matter.  It seems to take on a different substance when you read something on the page, rather than on the screen.  It's much easier to see mistakes for a start, but it's more than that – it becomes something separate, something tangible; on the screen, it's just an extension of your fingers.

I'm planning to go through the entire novel now looking for typos and other simple mistakes, but also trying to make sure that my protagonist's emotional landscape has some sort of coherence.  This is so easy to talk about, but so difficult to do.  I thought that I'd done it, but my tutor at Bath Spa has told me I haven't achieved it yet – I'm using the close third person narrative but I've got to get inside her head more – otherwise the reader won't be able to identify with her and empathise with her.  I think, and hope that it's just a question of tweaking rather than re-writing.  Time will tell...

So, thank you for reading my blog.  I hope it finds you well and if you are writing, like me, I hope you have achieved something today!

Just printing the novel out seems like an achievement to me today.  Simple things...













Tuesday 3 September 2013

Every word counts....

Aphrodite's Rock from a new perspective

Well, I haven't written a blog for a while – time seems to be passing far too quickly.  At the end of this month, 30th September to be precise, I have to produce 40,000 words for my MA.  This isn't a problem really as I have 130,000 words to choose from, but it feels like a like a lot of words to have absolutely perfect.  

I've re-read this 40,000 piece and edited it four times now.  Is there a time when you can be a hundred per cent satisfied with a piece of writing?  I don't think so – the more you look, the more you think you could improve it.  It's the same with photography when you edit a picture.  The more you stare at it on the computer screen, the worse it gets.  So, you have to simply say at some point, "Right – that's enough.  I can't do any more," and let it go.

We have to print the piece out twice – that's a hell of a lot of paper and ink – so I've got to be pretty certain that it's perfect.

But then, something I've learnt on this MA is that EVERY word in a novel has to be perfect – not just this 40,000 words, or the first page, or the first three chapters. 

 EVERY word counts.  That's something I found hard to get my head round when I started.  Surely that's not true for a novel, I thought?  But the more you write, the more you realise that each word has an impact.  The choice you make changes the sentence – and where it is in the sentence makes a difference.  How it relates to the other words alters the sense.  

So, you see, when it comes down to it, 40,000 words isn't the problem – every word is the problem. 

 It puts the MA into perspective.











Monday 19 August 2013

Hearts in the sky and on the beach


Well, here we have Blog number two.  It's a bit like a second album for a band – it's harder than the first!  There are so many expectations...OK, I'm exaggerating a little bit, I know, but you understand what I mean...

As you can see from the photos I've added so far, hearts have an important part to play in my novel, Aphrodite's Child.  Both pictures were taken by me last time I was in Cyprus.

This one above, is a heart made by the Red Arrows above RAF Akrotiri.  They come out every April to practise their routines and they feature in my story.  The heart in the sky becomes a symbol in the novel...you'll have to wait to find out why.

It was pure coincidence that they happened to be practising last time we were on holiday.  I grabbed my camera and quickly took this shot - as you can imagine, the heart dissipates almost as soon as it's formed, so I had to act quickly.

When I lived on the camp at Akrotiri, I got quite blasé about seeing the Red Arrows – they did three routines every day above the married quarters.  Emily, the main character in my novel is so excited the first time she sees them.  Two planes form the heart and then a third flies through it like an arrow.  She's standing in her garden and the heart is right above her head.  It makes her think.

The other photo, in my first blog, is of pebble hearts.  If you ever visit Cyprus, no doubt one of the places you'll visit is Aphrodite's Rock, perhaps the most famous view on the island, in the picture below.

 This is where the Goddess Aphrodite rose from the waves and came ashore.  She was born as a fully formed adult.  Cronus cut off Uranus' genitals and threw them in the sea and Aphrodite rose from the foam that was formed.  Her name means 'she who shines from the foam'.

She is known as the Goddess of Love, Beauty and Procreation – her Roman equivalent is Venus.

This place is known as Petra Tou Romiou and lovers go there to swim in the waters around the rock.  It is said you may get pregnant there and also you may look ten years younger.  When we visited in April this year, I noticed that there are literally hundreds of pebble hearts on the beach and in the scrub land – hearts of all shapes and sizes.  Some lovers have climbed the rock and engraved hearts and initials on its surface.  There is also a tree festooned with materials where lovers make wishes.

 I'd written about half the story when it dawned on me how appropriate the myth of Aphrodite was.  The Goddess is almost synonymous with Cyprus – it was too good an opportunity to miss.  The myth of Aphrodite gave my story a focus and a title.

In the blurb on the back of my book, if my publishers allows me to have my own words, I will say that my book is 'a modern take on the myth of Aphrodite...' – you'll have to read it to find out why.

See you next time.




Wednesday 14 August 2013

The musings of an unpublished novelist

Pebble hearts at Aphrodite's Rock, Petra Tou Romiou, Cyprus

I've been reading a lot about getting published and one thing everybody says is that you must have a blog.  So, here I am, blogging away...whether anyone will read this is unknown at the time of writing, but I'm going to do it anyway.

In my other life as a photographer, I have a blog on Wordpress - I'm not very good at posting new blogs on that.  What with my Facebook Page, my Twitter account, my photography website etc, there's a limit to how much time I've got - especially as I'm meant to be editing my novel.

I hope to be better at this one.

So - Welcome to my new blog - just to give you a little information about me and my novel.

My name is Sarah Knights - I've added the Catherine as it's my middle name - dur - but also as it distinguishes me from my other persona - Sarah Knights Photography.  This is the new me, the writer me.  I like this new me - it's the me I've wanted to be since I was young but never achieved.  So Sarah Catherine Knights is my Author name.  I'm just coming to the end of an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and it's because of this that I've written my first novel, Aphrodite's Child.  On September 30th, we hand in the final big piece of writing - 40,000 words.

To be honest, I'm happy just to have done the course - as long as I pass, I don't mind what mark I get.  I've got merits for everything so far, so I should be OK.  Anybody who says you can't learn to write, is wrong.  I was a bit sceptical before I started - I thought I could write well.  But the thing is, I didn't know anything about constructing a novel, how to write dialogue, how to describe people etc and that's what you learn on a course like that.  I would recommend it to anyone wanting to write.

I was nervous about people reading what I'd written - I'd never shown anyone my poor attempts at creative writing in the past so having to sit there while people discussed my work was torture at first -but it soon changed.  I got so much from the discussions, I began to look forward to them.  It was sometimes hard when they criticised a piece I thought was good or said something rude about one of my characters, but I had to develop a thicker skin and understand that you can't please everyone all the time.

So - what's the novel about?  It's set in Cyprus on a military camp and follows the life of Emily Blackwell.  She has to go and live there for three years as her husband, Luke, is posted there as an RAF Officer.

This also happened to me - I went to Cyprus in the nineties with my husband and three children.  I kept thinking that there was a story to be told and when we got back to the UK, I started writing, but only got a few chapters written.  Then - life got in the way and it was left mouldering in a drawer.

When I got onto the course at Bath Spa, I remembered those chapters and dragged them out.  They've now turned into 130,000 words and I've completed the first draft.  Those first few chapters have changed beyond recognition and the whole concept developed while I was writing.  I've always thought that when people say their characters take over the plot, they must be making it up - but it happened to me.  The plot kept changing and surprising me.  It started off all those years ago based on me - because that was the easiest thing to do, but I was taught to distance myself from Emily and now it's not about me at all.

Obviously, I've borrowed things from my own experience there, but the story is about someone searching for herself and encountering triumphs and tragedies - my life there was a lot less interesting!

I think I'll leave this first blog there, otherwise I won't have anything to say in the next...

If you've enjoyed my musings, please leave a comment - a nice one, hopefully.

See you next time.