26 July 2004
Expectations
My name is Kate Mosse, creator and writer in residence of www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk. I work with my husband, writer and educator Greg Mosse. We work together and apart. Sometimes we initiate our work separately, coming together to review and polish it. Sometimes the genesis of a piece comes from a shared task; then one of us produces the outline or the treatment or the sketchy first draft.
We work in very different ways. Greg tends to brew ideas for several days, then writes quickly. A good deal of the editorial process - especially in terms of plotting - has already gone on in his head. I prefer to work on paper and tend to accumulate more drafts.
Of course, Greg's pattern sometimes means that he only discovers an idea will not work when he has written it and has to bin it completely. But it means he can write shorter pieces well to short deadlines.
We are fortunate. Working together, our patterns complement one another because they are different. And, of course, other little things come into play: I prefer early mornings, he works well in the evenings, and so on.
I mentioned some of our teaching work last week to illustrate a way of playing at story writing using a question and answer technique. It created a rather gruesome story which, in the next session, went down even more disgusting byways, including an eel living inside the boy Hamish; Hamish building an underwater cave; and a corrupt police investigation.
It was a very free experiment. And it made me think: I wonder how many writers believe that everything is possible. I wonder how many of us find our best ideas stymied by precocious doubt ...
Does it feel like you are playing at being a writer or does writing feel like play?
And what did you expect?
Find out in the Labyrinth.
