I started writing Downtown perhaps two years ago now, taking a fairly substantial break (and from writing in general) whilst completing my honours year at uni last year. There’s definitely a noticeable disjunct between the then and now writing styles, not necessarily in term of my general verbosity, because that’s a given, and to the chagrin of all, is unlikely to change, but more in terms of the sorts of stuff I would now add in, or would take out. I have a fat little ‘cuts’ folder, which contains a few massacred darlings, but mostly angsty soliloquies courtesy of the self-esteem issues of my main character. Plenty of that, plenty of shock value stuff, obscene amounts of woeful dialogue, and quite a bit of vituperation and the like.

I’m not sure whether much of this is to do with white page syndrome, where I forced myself to sit down and write something, anything, even if it devolved into my characters’ navel-gazing, or whether my idea of Stuff to Put in a Novel has shifted somewhat from the orientation of my writerly self at the novel’s outset..