12th November, 2015

Another busy week finished! It is full on at school with reports due shortly, an intensive swim scheme beginning next week and transitions to plan for new enrolments!

The weekend was taken up with a Neil Diamond concert we had booked earlier this year at the Hunter Valley, one of my favourite places, but involved an over night stay. The concert was outdoors and of course it rained, we were completely drenched. Neil waited for the rain to stop before he hit the stage. He didn’t sing Crunchy Granola Suite, which was sad but he sang most of the other hits from the Hot August Night album. I guess I’m not much of a Neil Diamond fan but for a 74 year old he really can move and sing!

Despite being so busy I have finished reading one of Lee Childs earlier Jack Reacher novels. His writing style in this book is repetitive, I’m not sure if that is because Lee Childs is using this stylistic strategy to reinforce Reacher’s methodical style or due to the fact it is an early novel? Initially I found it annoying with the repeated, ‘he said’, ‘she said’, however I am now reading a second Jack Reacher novel, so perhaps it’s growing on me.

I adopted a similar style in a piece I had to write for my reading at The Year of The Novel this week. It was a section from the Family Saga where I was attempting to convey a rhythm similar to that of cross-country skiing. The others at the reading felt the language was too repetitive and that having two points of view repeating similar language (as the two characters were viewing the storm coming toward them) was over writing! Hmmm. So where does a writing strategy become overwriting or annoying and when is it a stylistic device?

I hope you don’t find too much overwriting in the next chapter, enjoy!

die trying