Write On Redux – This is Hardcore

So, Michelle is leading me in to trouble again this year.

Two weeks, twenty pages a day, one book at the end of it. Absolutely no excuses.

We’ll be partaking of this insanity from March 19th to April 1st, so I’ve got a bit of time to prep. And finish off the current novel in progress. Oh, and continue revising last year’s Write On Novel.

Still, I’m optimistic. I have a plan.

1 Get into training
2 Work out my timescale
3 Find the time
4 Outline
5 Write

I’ve even made a start. I’ve upped the daily word count on my current novel, Black Cat Hollow. It’s a children’s book, so shorter than the average, which helps. I figure that if I’m making 2,000 words a day on this, which I am, then it won’t be such a huge step up to twenty pages a day come March 19th. Hopefully.

The timing actually works very well for me. The two weeks chosen are completely empty in my calendar, for a change. Apart from work and family, I’m clear. And my husband has agreed to entertain himself and do the cooking for a fortnight.

I know what I need to finish before I start the challenge, and I know what I need to do daily to reach that.

20 pages a day is a lot. It’s suggested in Candace Haven's notes on the Fast Draft process that most people take around three, three and a half hours to produce that. So I figured that’s what I needed to find in my day to make this work.

It wasn’t that hard. With my current word count I’m getting back into the habit of getting up early and writing first thing, before I’m even really awake. I find it easier to get into the flow at that time, and even just a little in the morning makes it easier to get the words throughout the rest of the day.

So, that’s one hour.

With my new job, I tend to get home around an hour before my husband. If I sit right down and get to it, which I try to, that’s another sixty minutes. Knock out cooking time, and that’s another half an hour.

Two and half hours – nearly there.

After tea, I tend to have an hour to read, watch telly, or generally lounge around, before I start clearing up and getting ready for the morning. Simon will help out with all that stuff anyway, especially over that fortnight, so there’s another hour there, easy.

Three and a half hours. Add in thirty minutes at lunchtime, or extra time at the weekends, and this suddenly becomes eminently doable. At least, for a two week burst, anyway – I don’t think it’s something you can keep up all the time!

So, that’s steps 1-3 done. Now I just need to get outlining…

Wish me luck!

Words and Curry

All is very busy at the moment. We've got a conference in London next week, running for three days, and generally being difficult. Still, somehow I managed to write 2,500 words today. I know!

I do get annoyed with myself sometimes. I mean, I know how I work. I know that if I write a little every day, then it's much easier to keep momentum, to keep going, and to go over my word goals more often. Conversely, I know that if I leave a story for more than a day, I lose any speed I've built up and tend to languish in 25-words-a-day hell. I know this. Hell, if you've read this blog more than once, you know this.

And yet, time and time again, I don't put the writing first and I lose days, weeks, sometimes months worth of words.

So I've spent a lot of this month pushing back slowly against the drag of the tide, and trying to get the words, any words, down. I finally pushed through today, I think.

The book I'm working on at the moment is another kids novel, about 40k, 10 chapters, fantastic fun. I set my goals very low - 500 words a day - partly because it's nice to exceed expectations, partly because it adds up nicely to finish just before my birthday (27. God.) and partly because I've got a lot on over the next month or two, including revising my Write-On novel.

Still, I have very good feelings about this book. And now I've ploughed through Chapter Two, exciting things are happening. Or will do, if only I remember to write every single day.

In other news, we booked train tickets up to Scotland in early March to visit some friends and their daughter (our Goddaughter). That's six or seven hours each way in which I can read, write and revise. I am very, very excited.

Anyway, off out for curry with friends for tea. Suppose I'd better go make myself look presentable...

Writing On Again

I mentioned to Bonnie that I was reading through my Write-On novel from last year, with an eye to (finally) starting the revisions. She asked me if I still liked it.

It’s funny, but until I actually started the read through, it never occurred to me to wonder if I would. I assumed, if I thought about it at all, that since I would be walking through my own words, since I’d already know everything that was going to happen, that it would be more of an academic exercise than an enjoyable one. It was work, after all.

But I was surprised. There were scenes I don’t remember writing. Characters were much more themselves than I thought they would be. And after six months of not looking at it at all, I really enjoyed reading it.

It’s full of problems, of course. There’s lots of stuff still to fix, but I definitely feel that it’s worth fixing.

So I’m going right back to the beginning, reminding myself why these characters are where they are, what they want, how they’re going to get it, and who is trying to stop them and why.

It’s actually a lot of fun…

Kite Flying

We went down to London at the weekend, to visit some friends who have just moved to Black Heath. It was a wonderful, lazy time, incorporating roast lamb, pub lunches, good wine and kite flying - as you can see (just about) from the photo.

My husband keeps a kite in our car at all times, just in case the perfect kite-flying opportunity should occur, as it did on Sunday. It's a great kite for such a thing - you just toss it up there, and it flies. No fancy string work, no running starts, no hassle. It's like taking a bird for a walk on a lead. And it has a very pretty tail.

I, on the other hand, keep a notebook on standby at all times, in case the perfect idea arises, or I see something interesting, or I want to look busy so that the woman sitting next to me on the train doesn't try to start a conversation. It comes in handy a little more often than the kite.

The only problem, really, is that it's not just one notebook. It's dozens. And many of them have a few pages of scrawled notes, then lots and lots of blank pages. Or shopping lists.

I am currently spring cleaning the study. This includes emptying the filing cabinet of the piles and files of paper that have been dumped in there, randomly, over the last year, and sorting them all out into a coherent system. I'm almost done with the household stuff, but there's still a vast pile of paper on the sofa.

That's right. Writing notes. Reams of them.

Notecards, pads, paper scraps, receipts, notebooks, pages torn from notebooks, pages of diaries, things torn from magazines, photocopies, folders, envelopes (backs of), files, printouts, charts, family trees, and pages and pages of A4.

I have hanging folders. I have square cut folders. I have plastic wallets. I am (normally) very good at organising things.

I will find a way to make sense of the madness.



And then I'll start on the computer files.

Winteriness

We had our first snow of the winter here today; all gone by lunchtime, sadly. I had an email from a delegate for a conference in February asking if it would be cold - it's 25 degrees Celsius where he is.

I don't think I'd like a warm winter. Much as I may complain about the cold, it still seems the designated order of things, to me, and I'd be absolutely bamboozled by warm sunny days in December. I like my seasons, and I like them at the correct times, thanks.

For anybody counting, I've now gathered four rejection letters for my novel. It's not actually surprising, and I can't really be upset by it. More a feeling that this is the process, and it's a learning one. I like the idea that I'm still taking steps forward, however small they may be. Actually submitting anything at all was quite a reasonable one, in fact, and I'm still a little bit proud of myself for it.

Anyway, I have new and better things to work on. So Far and Out of Sight was proving particularly stubborn with regards to POV. After a few attempts at the opening, I stepped back, and am now scribbling away in long hand. Somehow I've found the tone I want much easier to reach if it's handwritten. Perhaps it's something about the story. Or perhaps it's something about my beautiful fountain pen and new ink...

While I was trying to fix whatever it was that had gone 'bang, crunch' with that story, I started absently writing another one that was hovering in the background, and that's chugging along at a reasonable clip. Also a couple of articles, and a short story. Sometimes I forget that I get much further, overall, if I can shift my focus when something isn't coming together, rather than just staring at the screen and waiting for it to right itself. Often, when I come back to the problematic piece after working on something else, everything is miraculously resolved. I think it must be pixies, or aliens, or something.

Thanks, guys. New hats with bells on for you for Christmas.

Tagged

Bonnie tagged me, so….

5 Little Known Facts About Me

1. I was born in the United Arab Emirates. My Dad was working out in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah, and my parents moved over there for a couple of years. The day they flew out, they discovered that Mum was pregnant with me. My Mum’s parents flew out for my birth and stayed for about a month. In 2001, I went back out there with my Dad, on my way to Singapore and Australia, and we found their old flat, and the hotel where my Grandma would drink triple gin and tonics at lunchtime (that she thought were singles) and wonder why she felt tipsy.
2. I have a weird obsession with spreadsheets. Whenever I’m faced with a problem, I usually decide that the best way to deal with it is by making a spreadsheet. Every story I’ve written has a spreadsheet. As does every story I’m ever going to write. I find it impossible to keep going if I don’t know where I am, where I’m going next, and what else needs to be done. Admittedly, they do change hugely once I’ve started writing.
3. When I was twelve, I read Tamora Pierce’s In the Hand of the Goddess fourteen and a half times in two weeks. Then it had to go back to the library. Some time later I bought my own copy, and have read it many more times since then, along with most of the others in the series. When I was younger, I really thought that Alanna and Jon belonged together. Now I see that she made the right choice. Being old and sensible is boring.
4. One day I’m going to learn to speak Welsh. When we moved to Wales, I was almost nine, and all the other kids had already been learning for years. No one really bothered trying to teach me any Welsh until I hit secondary school. I’d just started to get into it when I had to choose my options. Welsh clashed with Drama, so it got cut. Now I can only speak half-remembered phrases and mistranslations. My Mum teaches junior school Welsh, so I can understand it at around that level. My Grandfather was a Welsh speaker, and so is my Uncle. And one day I’ll learn too, even if only a little bit. On the other hand, I did do my Paleography and Codicology coursework at university in Welsh; we had to make a book and then fill it with text of our choosing, written in a certain script. I chose a Welsh text; it was harder to see the errors that way.
5. This morning I went to the Post Office and sent my query and sample pages for Saving the Unicorns to a selection of ideal agents. I feel very courageous about it, too.

Snowdrops

The snowdrops aren't actually out here yet, lest you be all excited. But I am patiently waiting for the bulbs to sprout. The picture is to keep me going in the meantime.

As usual, we've planted bulbs all over the flower beds, and no longer have any idea where they're going to come up. It'll be a nice surprise, I think, and at least I won't notice if any don't make it.

With the New Year comes the New Novel. I'm patiently polishing the synopsis and first three chapters for Saving the Unicorns, and will be sending them out to prospective agents over this month. But I promised myself that come January 2007 I would start writing So Far and Out of Sight, and so I have.

Over the festive period, in the hour or so I had to myself during the week and a half spent at my parents' house, I set out my vague outline, splitting the major events of the novel into the relevant time frames. And when I say 'vague', I mean 'smoke-like in its ability to slip through my fingers'. But, it's there, and I've worked with less. I know that once I get into it, things will start firming up, and becoming clear.

I'm aiming for 1,000 words a day, averaged out, and am on target so far. I like my beginning. I'm becoming interested in my characters. I'm unsure as to why Saskia is staying in the Yellow Room, but at least it's over the Rose Garden, even if the colour is going to give her a headache for the next 100,000 words. And Edward's looking pretty cute already.

I've been thinking about this story for about the last year, so even if I don't know exactly how I'm getting from A to B, I do know the heart of it, which helps. I put together a sparse storyboard of pictures for it last month, a triptych of images that define the three parts of the story, and it's hanging over my desk. If I remember, I'll take a picture tomorrow to post here.

This story is my snowdrop; a sprouting idea of a thing, and I'm unsure where it will emerge, bright green against the backdrop of the everyday, and growing, growing, growing. But soon it's going to start to flower.

2007

It's only just 2007, and I already appear to be having posting issues. I had this fab, new year, new start post all done, and now it's missing.

Anyway, the decorations are down, the tree dismembered, the holiday spirit abandoned. In their place, a fresh, cool new year, full of opportunity and wonderment. Lots to do, see, achieve in 2007, which I'm sure I'll discuss as the year progresses.

In the meantime, this is Dinas Bran in North Wales, where I got engaged, just over a year ago. This photo was actually taken by a friend of my father on that very day, just a few hours after the momentous event.

25,051

And that seems to be where it wants to stop. Little bit more fiddling, but no more big chunks to add in. Still seems to fit within the usually given guidelines for children's (9-12) novels in Britain.

Query letter, incidentally, is also substantially written. I keep messing around with it, but I think it's time to stop.

Synopsis still to do. Blergh.

Most Christmas presents wrapped, now, and laundry for going home mostly done.

Today was the first day it's been really cold here (minus 2 - 5 depending on who you ask) and I had to scrape ice off my windscreen this morning, before I left for work, and this afternoon, when I was trying to get home.

Tomorrow night we're going to a friend's for mulled wine and minced pies, and to Hitchin town centre for some carol singing!

It's all so festive.

24,342

I've finished typing in everything I had. Now I just need to go back and fill in a few bits I identified on my trip through.

Not until we've been back to John Lewis to argue some more about the gift list.

Parcel, incidentally, still hasn't arrived.

Printer is finally working though, so I'm feeling a little calmer.

15,694

That's over 10k today, and over half way there.

Actually, I think it will run a little short, even when I add in the scenes I know it needs, but that's okay.

Still no parcel. Still can't leave house. It's pretty dark outside, already.

Think I might take a little break now.

12,045

But still no parcel.

Damn Parcelforce. I can't go anywhere until the bloody thing arrives - its my Mum's birthday present, and this is the only day I'll be here to sign for it!

7640

And cheese toasties for lunch

Revision Timetable

So I'm home alone, with the next twelve hours stretching ahead of me.

I've got some errands to run in town at some point, and I'm waiting for a parcel to be delivered. I want to wrap presents this evening, preferably while watching some bad tv. Same sort of schedule for the next couple of days. I need to go down to London, and I need to do some house sorting, but they're only half day errands.

The rest of the time? I'm revising.

It's midday, and I'm starting at 5132 words. It's a novel for 8-12 year olds, so it doesn't run long. Ideal length is 30k.

How far do you think I can get today?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Only ten more Christmas Cards to go! The last ten are for the people in my immedate department, and I need to make the cranberry shortbread to take in with them tonight.

I stayed up last night to finish writing the family and friends ones, while watching the Royal Variety Performance. They had the cast of Wicked! on doing a few songs from the show - it looks really good. Also they had Spamalot, so I suspect I'll have to take Simon soon.

I'm working on goals for next year. They're still nebulous, and keep being spoiled by certain items in the shiny new idea box being shiner than usual, when they're supposed to stay dull for the time being, while I do other stuff. So. Possibly a slight rejig of next year's schedule.

Of course, first I need to finish 2006's goals. For example, the Saving the Unicorns rewrite etc. I have Friday off work, as it's Simon's birthday, but as he's going to London for his work's Christmas do at lunchtime, I'll have all afternoon to work on it. And wrap some presents.

Right. Off to work!

The Close of the Year

We're heading into the dregs of 2006 now, and the Christmas rain is setting in here in the South East of England.

It's been a pretty huge year so far, what with the changing of jobs, doing up of house, oh, and the getting married. I finished the first drafts of two novels - one romantic/mystery fiction, one children's - and a few articles and bits here and there.

But I still have things to do before 2007, and the new progress bars will be going up very shortly:

1. Write Christmas cards
2. Buy and wrap Christmas presents
3. Finish type in edit of Saving the Unicorns, write synopsis and query letter and send out to selected agents

Not much, then, really. How many days do I have left?

Normal Service Will Resume Eventually

For the last few months, all I seem to have been saying is 'After the wedding, things will get back to normal, and we'll have time to actually do things again.'

Now the wedding is over? Not so much. Guess I forgot about Christmas.

I love Christmas - mostly because I have the most fantastic family to spend it with, and we always have such great fun.

As a rule, my Christmas preparations are ready by early December at the latest, allowing me to enjoy the last few weeks of anticipation without worrying.

This year, I've done nothing.

On the plus side, the thank you notes are finally finished, just in time to start on the Christmas cards.

And believe it or not, I've actually been getting some writing work done, too - mostly on a very long train trip to York this weekend, but it still counts!

More on this next post...

In the meantime, I expect Normal Service to resume for 2007.

Mrs Lydia Wickham

Or: The strangeness of being married, Part One

I’m still getting used to this marriage thing, it seems. Today I identified myself by my maiden name on the phone to a very confused gentleman that I had previously contacted under my married name.

But more that the surname, it’s the ‘Mrs’ that throws me. When people address me as Mrs, I start looking around for someone older and eminently more sensible than myself.

I feel a bit like a small girl playing at being a proper grown up.

In fact, I feel like Lydia Bennett, newly become Mrs Lydia Wickham, telling her eldest sisters that they must walk behind her now, because she is married and they are not.

Just as well that I always liked Lydia. 

Alternative Nano

Due to spending most of November in Wedding Frenzy, I've had to forgoe Nano this year.
Actually, I had to skip it last year too, although that was due to an entire month of conference frenzy, so a lot less fun.

I do, however, have my own, special, alternative Nano running.

83 thank you letters to write and post before the end of November, when it's time to start writing the Christmas cards instead.

It's not that I actually mind writing the letters; people were so very, very kind to us in all sorts of ways, and I really want to acknowledge that and show my gratitude in well written, personal notes with good handwriting.

It's just that it might take forever.

As we all know, progress tracking is always a good motivator for me, so there's a new progress bar on the right. Don't laugh. It's making me feel better.

Still Here

Okay, so I really, really meant to post before this. I just can't understand how the world can continue to be this crazy busy when the wedding is over, already.Part of the problem is that I wanted to write a nice long post telling you all about the wedding and Rome and everything, and because I haven't had time to write that, I haven't written anything.So, I'll get round to the proper thing eventually. In the meantime, I'm still here, and here are the photos to prove it:





Me and Dad outside the church


My new husband and I pretend to sign the register




















Me after the ceremony




















From left to right: My brother Kip, my Dad, my husband Simon, me, my Mum, my brother Mike