One lifetime is not enough, for all my words – Koraly Dimitriadis

Where is Koraly?

October 18, 2009 at 10:01 am (Creative commentary, Cultural writing (migrants), Short stories)

Where is Koraly? Why hasn’t she blogged in weeks? Koraly is in another space, in a world she created just for you. She is trying to interpret Ella’s mind, fighting with Harry, laughing with Sandra, tormenting Anna.

Koraly is falling in love.

Koraly is analysing what it means to be a wog in Australia. She’s trying to understand why Ella longs for Cyprus like she was born there. Koraly is living and breathing the seventh draft of Xenos. And yes, she is re-writing the entire manuscript – that’s what a draft is. It isn’t polishing, or moving words around, it is re-writing. Each draft of a novel explores characters, story, plot. You start with a vague idea and the more drafts you do, the clearer it all becomes until your characters are ALIVE on the page, living, breathing, and the story writes itself. You don’t tell THEM what happened, they tell YOU. That’s where Koraly is. For the first time ever, her characters are ALIVE. Koraly’s sitting at her computer, typing away, channeling the story.

She doesn’t sleep much.

She’s shut out the world.

The only world she knows is Ella’s.

Don’t worry, she’s not alone – Dalaras and Hatzigiannis are keeping her company.

Koraly will be away until mid November, until the seventh draft of her manuscript is finished. It was once called Xenos, but now she’s thinking, ‘Broken Aphrodite’. Any thoughts on that title, Koraly asks, from somewhere deep within the pages?

When Koraly comes back from her trip, she’ll have a lot to talk about on this blog.