writing

‘Twas NaNoWriMo Eve, And All Through The House…

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…there was the smell of panic. And the sound of slightly hysterical laughter. (Oh no – I used an adverb! Flagellate me now!)

Status report follows:

car smells lovely. Rightly so. Just cost nearly £600 to fix and needs another £150 spending shortly.

  • boiler has broken. Boiler man said to husband: ‘Blimey! One of them that’s still working!’ when he saw the model of the boiler. This is Not a Good Sign. He is searching for a part and ringing tomorrow.
  • there is a lot of paperwork for work that I should be doing. And should have done. Gulp.
  • today daughter had 2 appointments, 2 of which I had to take her to.
  • between these appointments (nos. 1 & 3) I had to
  1. have lunch
  2. go to work no. 2 and do an hour
  3. go home to clear a path through study that’s undergoing major move, in case boiler man needed to look at tank and control panel too
  4. write 2 lengthy notes to family members in case timing of everything went pear shaped, timing wise, as children were not expecting boiler man
  5. prepare dinner (which burnt whilst out at appointment 3 and Asda, because the foil was ripped)
  6. Mop floor because washing machine is misbehaving
  7. Dress up and be on the door of a huge Halloween party & disco at the village hall (for work no.1), taking money from dozens of underfives, overfives and their suffering parents/grandparents (whilst boiling alive, constantly running out of change, struggling to rip off stubborn ‘you are owed a hotdog’ raffle tickets,and being assailed by smell of aforementioned hotdogs – which I wasn’t allowed to eat)
Since then I have put the shopping away and demanded that the children cook pizza and baked beans.

My feet are cold (no heating) and I request permission to lay down in a darkened room.

NaNoNONO.

NaNoWriMo Wisdom to Soothe Your Soul

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Depending on your viewpoint, either:

“Aargh! Behold, the Dark Day descendeth upon me apace! I am undone! The storm clouds gathereth into a mighty maeslstrom above my head, from under which I canst not dare hope to emergeth unscathed! All that I hold dear shall be wrested away(eth) from my grasp, I will face the Doors I Cannot Pass and smash myself upon them as powerlessly as a low tide does smasheth itself upon some really quite sturdy rocks”

or

“Hooray! It’s nearly here! I’ve been champing at the bit to start my novel! I can’t wait to enjoy the inspirational companionship of fellow writers all working towards the same marvellous goal !I’m brimming with ideas and scenes! My notebook is full of character sketches and I have the entire novel outlined chapter by chapter in my MyNovel/Scrivener/TheNewNovelist programme!  NaNoWriMo will let me get that first draft finished without fussing about perfection – then I can revise it and this time next year, I’m BOUND to have a book deal – and be writing my next novel in NaNoWriMo 2012!). Bounce, bounce, cheesy grin that makes you want to punch my lights out, BOUNCE!”

Which ever of these is closest to your current mindset – with just 36 hours to go (for those of us in the UK, anyway, who have just swapped back to GMT!), there might be a frisson of panic. What will you eat? How many days sick leave can you really take before your boss turns up at your door bearing an ominous sheaf of papers? What if you forget to feed your parrot (it’ll be like Beth and Pip in Little Women all over again…)?  Say you get stuck in the middle, realise your novel’s rubbish, get the flu, are called away to a remote part of Borneo…

What you need – apart from a few deep breaths, a frothy coffee/stiff drink/insert beverage of your choice, and another week to prepare – is a) an alternative challenge – see the last link below OR b)some tips. Not from me, because I’ve never done it before. It’s the blind leading the blind, down here in cliche canyon.
So instead feast your eyes (see? told you where we were) on the links below, which will lead you to the NaNoWriMo Wisdom of better women than me (although possibly not better at making cheese sauce. I make a wicked cheese sauce).

Jodi Cleghorn’s Tips for Keeping Your Sanity During NaNoWriMo

Writer’s Digest How To Prepare For National Novel Writing Month

Martha Alderson How To Plot Your Writing Time in the Month of November

Alison Wells NaNoWriMo: Write 50000 Words in 30 Days when you don’t have 5 minutes Part 1

or catch up on Larry Brooks NaNoWriMo October Planning Tips – a whole month’s worth of motivation and preparation

If you want to challenge yourself in November but don’t feel NaNoWriMo is for you, take a look here at some alternative challenges from the Harlequin community.

Right. I’m off to finish my mad-coursework-housework and-paperwork(for work)-athon. Tomorrow evening is reserved for the shop-then-cook-four-weeks-worth-of-meals-in-advance-athon. See you in’Mo Madness!

A Pocketful of Good Advice (and Peak District)!

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Last weekend I threw caution, preplanning and all the things I should have been doing to the wind, and uprooted us all to the Peak District for a long weekend.

It’s not the kind of a place you need an excuse to visit, chock-full of natural beauty as it is, but we all had several  – visiting The Marketplace Restaurant and Scarthin Books in Cromford again, visiting Peveril Castle – but I had a just-for-me excuse in the form of a workshop on writing Pocket Novels, run by the lovely Sally Quilford and handily located in Chesterfield.

It was great to finally meet Sally in the flesh and I spent a useful, funny and hugely enjoyable few hours in the company of Sally and my fellow workshoppers. I had worried that it might be brimming with multi-published authors who just wanted some pointers on the Pocket Novel format. Eeek! Intimidating!

As it turned out, I had no need to worry. They were a friendly bunch with a great sense of humour and ranged from writing novices to people like me who have had the odd success here and there but are still working hard at it and trying to have more. Everyone was full of enthusiasm and great ideas, whilst Sally’s advice, exercises and handouts were incredibly useful, really making me feel well-informed and a great deal more confident about writing for that format.

So much so, that I’ll be giving my first pocket novel a go for NaNoWriMo! But more on that later. For now, here’s a rundown of the topics Sally covered

  • Basic requirements: format, word length, characters, structure, narrative, dialogue etc
  • Writing a traditional romance – the conventions
  • The Morality of Pocket Novel World
  • Approachable Heroines
  • Rewarding Heroes
  • Conflict – what it is and how it works in romances
  • The First of a Million Kisses
  • Compelling secondary characters
  • How to come up with plots and sub-plots
  • Quick tips for writing a pocket novel (focusing on structure)
  • Writing for My Weekly/People’s Friend – what the editors want; similarities and differences
  • Tips for writing your synopsis
  •  After your pocket novel is published: Going into Large Print and Kindle
Hopefully I haven’t forgotten any. If you get the chance to go to one of Sally’s workshops, GO! You’ll have fun and learn a lot. 
Afterwards I caught up with the family, who had been exploring the town and museum, and were having a tour around the church with its famous twisted spire. A fascinating church – lots of inspiration there!

Santa Silliness!

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Yes! I bring you news of a major literary prize win!

Well OK. Not a major literary prize, BUT the lovely Wendy Soliman, who causes me constant pangs of envy because she spends most of her time in Andorra or Florida (wibble!), had a birthday recently. And in a fit of birthday-inspired madness  generosity she offered a prize for the most  ‘off the wall’ suggestion as to what Father Christmas gets up to for the rest of his year. Read her post to see what started her on this train of thought!

Since off-the-wall is my middle name (yes I know, mine was a difficult childhood. And signing the cheques…), I gave it a go.

And in return for my minutes hours of painstaking effort, I won the prize! Now I just have to sit back and wait for one of Wendy’s books – A Class Apart – to wing its way to me. Hooray!

I know you’re dying to know what wondrous & profoundly life-transforming gem won me my prize.  And it would be mean of me to deny you, oh gracious readers who find me by searching for Belushi Tea, Caron Freeborn and Christopher Somerville.

So here it is. You may want a tissue to wipe away the tears.

Downtime for Father Christmas

Father Christmas is, of course, a kindly soul. So he spends much of his year caring for the other supernatural creatures that don’t get out much – you know, ghouls,the Easter Bunny,the occasional Tooth Fairy whose patch is just a tiny hamlet in the Hebrides. And of course when Mrs Christmas demands her sunshine break (well wouldn’t YOU, if you lived at the North Pole?), they have to invite Jack Frost to their Barbados villa too. “He’s at a loose end,” Father Christmas explains to his wife. She wraps her beach kimono around herself and pouts.”It’s intolerable, Crimbo!” she cries, batting her eyelashes at her twinkle-eyed hubby. “He drips all over the floor!” “He can’t help it, dear” says Father Christmas gently. “It’s in his nature.” Mrs C sniffs. “You wouldn’t say that if YOU were the one who spent the rest of the year scooping up Easter Bunny’s pellets. Easter Bummy, that’s what I’d call him.”
The conversation always ends the same way. She stalks out and Father C sighs, knowing once again his generosity will cost him a brand new ‘Mary Christmas by Chanel’ suit for Mrs C…

Every Picture Tells A Story (or a novel – or a poem…)

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copyright Craig Sellars

The wonderfully evocative picture above is by the very talented Craig Sellars. A name I probably wouldn’t have come across but for the lucky circumstances that result, every so often, in a copy of ImagineFX magazine being abandoned on the dining table. (Lucky Circumstances being a pseudonym for Arty Daughter).  And of course I’m compelled to have a look while eating my breakfast because – well, I’m me and it’s reading material. On my last visual meander I saw this picture, amongst others, in a feature about Craig.

For the uninititated ImagineFX  is a monthly magazine on fantasy and sci-fi digital art, although the term fantasy is loosely interpreted. But then I suppose everything that is designed from the imagination and not copied directly from a real scene is fantasy, really; and all writing that’s truly fiction could be termed fantasy in the same way.

Craig works on commissions for all kinds of projects, but left to his own devices he favours futuristic images or characters juxtaposed with retro 40’s scenes. The scene above just screams to be written about – or it does to me, anyway.But on his website I discovered other beautiful scenes he’s created, like this one below.

copyright Craig Sellars

I challenge anyone with even the smallest creative bone in their body not to look at these and feel a story brewing.

In the first image, who is the man on the phone talking to? Why is there a monkey in the phone box – does he belong to either of these characters or neither? Obviously the figure with a gun is portrayed here as a fantasy/alien character, but of course in your story he could be a man. Or a woman. Or a child…hmm.Or another monkey!

The second picture suggests a certain era because of the clothes, horse-drawn vehicles etc. Perhaps you’re not into creating period pieces.

No matter. The carriage could be a car. The woman could be wearing jeans and holding an umbrella, not a parasol. Is she standing there waiting for someone to arrive, or waving goodbye? Who are they? Is she happy, wistful, shocked?  Has she just arrived – is that her luggage they’re unpacking? And who is the mysterious figure, coat pulled tight around him, hat down, striding away off-stage?

Do go and take a look at Craig’s work. And next time you look at a picture – of any kind – don’t just look; listen to the story that it’s telling you. There’s bound to be one – or more, if you’re lucky.

Good luck! 🙂

Nagged By Your Notebook (it could have been a novel, you know…)

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Apologies if you’ve been deafened by my manic laughter. It’s the heady feeling of freedom, you know. That’s what’s to blame. Yes! My advanced creative writing course – and Diploma – are now over. Done. Ended. Finito. Now I just have to wait with fingers crossed to hear whether I’ve gained the right to be an incredibly sad muppet who puts Dip CW after my name.

I fear most people will think it means Care Work and try to drag me round to Auntie Rose’s house to change her colostomy bag because it’s come loose and it smells funny. Sigh…

Meanwhile, some things never end. And one of them is my love of stationery. ArtyDaughter came back from town the other week with a delectable little bit-smaller-than-A6-size project book in different shades of blue. This will be perfect for my handbag – small enough to fit in snugly, and with those lovely dividers so that my random thoughts can be organised for easy access later! Perfect.

And a few weeks earlier, ConstructoBoy got a box full of Waldo Pancake goodies for his birthday. (Be still, quivering heart; how can I not have known about these things before?) Amongst these treasures was a notebook:

Waldo Pancake Notebook - I could've been a novel.

 

Yes, I know. The front cover is enough to make your writing procrastination guilt come hotfooting it through your door. But the worst is yet to come. This quote is unfinished.
And when you turn it over, you see the end.

…instead of a stupid little notepad, which is what I am.’

You see? It really is a notebook that nags.
And they have other weapons in their arsenal too, these Pancake people.

There are others, but these were a few that I thought all the writers out there could relate to… 😉  In case you’re tempted, you can buy them – and lots of other funky bookmarks, coasters etc – here

ConstructoBoy, great writer though he is, has not taken the hint and started a novel (though he did consider it. Bless the boy.) Instead he is writing down the details (lined pages) and drawing relevant pictures (plain pages) of a computer game he is designing. It features a lot of tanks of different kinds, and he is determined to get every fact right…

Thank heavens for the internet and Usborne’s Second World War cards 🙂