still castaway

I may or may not be writing this in a vacuum, but I will persist nonetheless. If you find anything useful or interesting, or indeed if you find it trite and self indulgent, then please feel free to leave a comment. Some of you have already told me you have used the Darfur pictures as the basis for your story or have found some points interesting (which is not the same as agreeing with them!) Either way, you just click on the little "comments" word at the end of the "article" and the box for your comments will pop up- alternately send an email. I will soon also be posting some of Narayani's finds for day workshops and events at Foyles and other.
The Castaway piece is still dominating my inner landscape. I am still unclear on exactly how the narrative arc will resolve itself but I trying to include the few "tools" I have dug up as the preparatory archeology for the piece. Religiously I was raised with a Church of England reference point and so have used the bible (apparently the "greatest story every told") as one reference. I have taken Jesus' 40 days and 40 nights n the desert as the original castaway experience (although it occurs to me that The Passion/ Crusifiction was a much more spiritually isolating experience). During his time in the desert, Jesus was tempted at least twice by the devil, the first time forced him to question his faith and the second tempted him into sin. As such I am trying to incorporate into my story a moment during which the diarist's faith (spiritual or otherwise) is tempted to the utmost, and secondly, he/she is tempted to sin in order to survive (it could be murder, it could be stealing, it could be prostituting oneself for survival etc) I think the sin should be one of the "7 deadly sins" to keep the scope as epic and biblical as the spread "castaway" implies. Either way the castaways moral compass is thrown off course by the need to survive. I haven't decided yet if my protagonist can resist "sinning" or can maintain their faith.
The next device I am using to frame my story are the often-quoted (but till useful?) stages of grief- shock, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I am certain that anyone shipwrecked, or stranded anywhere would naturally go through a process of mourning their former self, their former life particularly as this piece covers a one year period, possibly three, depending on how it is written. the interesting point in the story will be when the protagonist reaches the point of acceptance/surrender. Is it right at the end? is it half way through? Or are they even a person for whom being lost in this way is a release and a freeing up from a burdensome history or life experience in which case there is no process of grieving.
Other than that my research on geography etc has been the utterly invaluable. PArtially this has been because my location exists which has made digging out information very satisfying but I suspect that even if you are writing a Sci-fi story research into the various gasses on mars and neptune and the colours of nebulae would be useful?!
On another note I would be really interested to hear what people are reading at the moment? I wonder if that will influence what direction their writing takes. I remember that like all good angst addled teenagers I read Jack Kerouac's On The Road and felt I would never see writing in the same way again. Less obviously stylised books have also had that effect on me (possibly the triumph of subdued old age) such as Roy's The God of Small Things. Not so much the story but the voice of the narrator completely changed how I thought about a narrative voice. Rushdi's Midnights Children had the same effect again only this time the ray of light fell more on actual story telling and how a written book could feel it came straight out of an oral tradition and lose none of the magical, fable like quality. So what is everyone reading right now?
I am currently reading an SAS survival and special ops training manual (yes i know, its an odd choice but i think good writers need to be open to everything if they are to write convincingly and the chapters on how to choose a good "safe house" and also infiltrate a enemy's desert hideout - very flat, hard to hide your approach - is really very useful!) I am also reading Gideons Spies , a book abour Mossad assassins and how they are trained etc (yes, there IS a theme here, but I decided to stop being myself and read things i would never normally read, stepping into a world as far removed from mine as possible- my writing tends to be very "interior monologue" : fairly languid and poetic but short on character, plot etc so I thought I would force the change by over correcting in the opposite direction- is this a sensible strategy?) The recent reports in the newspapers about Mossad assassinating a Hamas General in a Dubai Hotel was amazing! Hotel security camera footage of wigs and fake mustaches being applied etc proves that the truth is often stranger than fiction.