NaNoWriMo Day 0 (Counting down the hours)

I typed in all the edits to the Swimming competition entry (titled "The Day Jessica Jumped") and got it posted this morning -- I want to clear the decks before NaNoWriMo hits.

I've also jotted down a plan for the first few scenes, just to help me get going tomorrow.

There's definitely a strong sense of anticipation. I got a NaNoWriMo email from Chris Baty today, with lots of good advice for getting going, and I'm definitely feeling more motivated to write than I have done for a while. I'm actually looking forward to bouncing out of bed at 6am tomorrow...

My hopes for a NaNoWriMoing November are:
- I'll get better at structuring novels
- I'll learn to write in a new genre for me, Chick Lit
- I'll produce a completed first draft of a novel
- I'll get back into the swing of novel-length rather than short-story-length writing
- My focus will be on the writing, rather than the day job
- I'll push myself, become more disciplined in my writing, and will have fun!

NaNoWriMo Day -1 (Finishing Off)

(Should have been posted yesterday...)

I spent today's writing time getting things finished off. I jotted down the names of a few minor characters who are necessary to the story for the NaNoWriMo novel, and gave all the main characters surnames (which took a surprisingly long time -- I find it hard to pick fitting surnames).

I also took the Swimming competition entry to the East Dulwich Writers' Group meeting (which was excellent, both for practical advice and motivational purposes), and the feedback on the story was surprisingly positive.

So, I think I've planned as much character and plot as I usefully can, and am impatient to get going!

Swimming short story

On Saturday, I decided to Tidy My Desk. I have a very small desk, so this is a task that must be undertaken with monotonous regularity -- especially as I tend to heap things on top of my printer, thus rendering it eventually near-inaccessible.

I found my Swimming short story draft, which I had conveniently forgotten about, beneath the debris. So I took advantage of an extra hour yesterday to bash out a second draft, having re-read it and decided that the characters and plot were just about salvagable.

It also now scrapes in at just under 1,700 words, after I lopped off the first (rambly) scene of the sisters chatting in the changing rooms, and slashed a red pen through a few meandering bits unnecessary to the story.

The Boyfriend has read it and "could only find two things wrong with it" but is a tad disconcerted by the man-hating... He also deems it suitable for Take a Break, which would be fine if I had written it for the woman's magazine market rather than a competition. I still haven't got quite the knack of competition writing: every time I try something more experimental, it doesn't work.

I'm taking the Swimming one to East Dulwich Writers' Group tomorrow, in the hopes they'll tear it apart and help build it again more strongly!

NaNoWriMo Day -2 (Spider Diagram)

I drew a spider-diagram of characters this morning, with Katie at the centre. It's ended up very lopsided, but at least reassured me that there's enough connections between the main characters:


Also wrote a brief bio on Katie's brother -- he doesn't really fit into the main plot, but I thought it would be good to have some family-angst going on in a sub-plot. Though I'm not sure how much I can cram into 50,000 words.

NaNoWriMo Day -3 (The Plot Chart)

I had fun with cardboard and post-it notes this evening:
I now have something resembling a plot. I was despairing of it ever coming together, a couple of hours ago (there was no plot and my "good guy" character just didn't fit in) ... but then I washed my hair, and promptly got some ideas!

For some reason, I always think best in the shower...

NaNoWriMo Day -4 (Chick-Lit Catch-up)

I've spent the past couple of weeks reading some chick-lit, to get a feel for what works (for me) and what doesn't. A few train journeys for work-purposes helped, and it was great to have something easy to stop-and-start, and easy to lose myself in, while travelling.

Thanks to Dulwich Library (must take books back after church tomorrow!) and Peckham library, I've read:

Two books by Jane Wenham-Jones:
Raising the Roof and Perfect Alibis -- both were good fun, entertaining, though struck me (from having read Jane's Wannabe A Writer?) as being more than a tad autobiographical. Maybe that's no bad thing. They had endings which worked well and tied things together convincingly, something I struggle with. I did feel that the characterisation was a bit "obvious" at times, and they lacked the individual characters who stuck with me from Kate Harrison's excellent Brown Owl's Guide to Life -- but good light reads.

One book by Sophie Kinsella:
The Undomestic Goddess -- similar in style, though without so much humour. A gripping read, though the ending didn't quite work for me, and some of the characters were, again, a bit "obvious".

I need to sit down with my notebook and go into more detail on what I found makes for "good" chick-lit. Strong, interesting, characters definitely work for me, and plots which involve more than just finding the right man ... though it seems mandatory for chick-lit to have some sort of love interest (often a brief fling with an unsuitable chap, with the heroine returning to the "nice guy" at the end.)

NaNoWriMo Day -5, Plotting

(Oops, should have posted this yesterday.)

I didn't get much further with the "sketchy" characters, but I now have a series of possible plot points. As yet, I feel I'm lacking an actual plot beyond the main characters all progressing in their lives ... there's no conspiracies, no shocking secrets to be unearthed, no puzzles to be solved. My work tends to be character-driven, but I feel there's still something missing for this novel.

The structure is in place, mostly because it's dictated by the situation ("Four women meet during an University self-development group.") I'm modelling the group on one I attended at Uni, because I am lazy, and that had four sessions, so the novel will fit around a similar pattern.

Self-Development Session 1: The opening of the novel, possibly with characters answering questions about themselves, their ambitions, their lives. (A bit cliched, but from the chick-lit I've read, starting off with a character filling in some sort of questionaire seems a tried-and-tested method.) First encounter and argument between Katie (heroine) and Melissa (baddie).

Self-Development Session 2: After events at Melissa's 21st, and after the Christmas break. Looks like the group might be about to fall apart. The "Group Sheet" ends up being ripped by Katie and Melissa fighting over it. (Again, cliched, I will try to think of a better image.)

Self-Development Session 3: The end of term, and plans for the Easter break -- and for the future. Melissa sets out her career plan; she's going to be Union president next term. (Possibly there's allegations of vote-fixing, from Elizabeth... I've not decided whether to go with this yet or not.)

Self-Development Session 4: Elizabeth finally speaks up, and yells at Melissa -- who is furious that she lost her presidency through Elizabeth finding some emails. A big, nasty, row ends up with Melissa storming off.

There's lots of stuff going on around the sessions (indeed, the things happening in between are the main parts of the novel), but the sessions provide a structure where the 4 main characters are guarenteed to be in the same place.

I'm considering jotting plot points onto index cards and shuffling them around/blue-tacking them to a big sheet. Neither of my previous novels had much planning before I jumped in, but both would have benefited from it, and I'd have saved time in the long run.

Three Rejections

Three self-addressed envelopes in the post today was not a good sign.

Take a Break must be having a clear-out, having sent back two stories, and Woman's Weekly finally rejected the one I sent them at the start of June.

Still, the Boyfriend has made lasagna for dinner, and we have wine...

NaNoWriMo Day -6 (More Characters)

The four main characters now all have mini-bios, as well as a main problem each, and a personal goal. I distinguish between these -- the main problem is the one I think the character has ("Is an insufferable arrogant twat", for example), the main goal is what they think they need to achieve ("Become top lawyer by age of 21", type thing).

I also have a few other characters roughly sketched out ... most of them now have names at least, though I'm not yet sure how one ("Good guy", provisionally called Michael) is going to come into the story. Plus I was surreptitiously scribbling during a dull section of a meeting this afternoon, so had to keep looking up at power-point slides and pretend I was listening.

Tomorrow, I'm going to flesh out those flimsy characters, and do a bit more work on my main gal (Katie, or possibly Katy). Then I need to pin down the nebulous plot ideas that are beginning to bubble...

NaNoWriMo Day -7 (Let the planning begin)

I cannot, hand-on-heart, say that I actually leapt out of bed this morning to begin NaNoWriMo planning. I managed to lurch to my desk at 6.15am, though, and wrote the two lists favoured by Chris Baty.

With the necessary provisos that I wrote these while it was still dark outside, and I make no apology for my (lack of) political/cultural and/or literary tastes:

Things I Like In Novels

• Believable, sympathetic characters who I cheer on
• Vivid larger-than-life characters
• Humour, but in a light way
• Witty or profound asides about life
• Intelligent, geeky, shy characters who make good
• Bar/pub scenes, alcohol in general
• Complex and charismatic villains
• Tension between characters, especially antagonistic male-female relationships
• Playful, zany or weird ideas
• People coming to terms with/moving beyond their past
• One character rescuing another
• English settings (or completely fantasy ones)
• Scenes of social awkwardness/strife
• Happy endings, which the characters have earned

Things I Don't Like In Novels

• Unwarrented sex (tagged on to sell book)
• Focus on the workplace if it's an office
• Boring, obvious, cliched, one-dimensional charactesr
• Too many charactesr who aren't sufficiently different from one another
• Foreign settings (sometimes)
• Dense, thick, literary prose
• Downbeat, depressing themes where good guys lose
• Author being twee or clever
• Novels promoting themes like:
• Woman's main aim is to find true love
• Career is more important than anything else
• Must be thin/beautiful to be successful
• Casual and rampant sex is not only OK, it's praiseworthy
• First person, present tense, narration
• Complicated plots
• Deux ex machina plot devices

Bloated draft

My first draft of the Swimming competition entry ended up at 2,900 words -- getting on for twice the word limit for the competition!

Also, disappointingly, the characters who had me initially keen to set fingers-to-keyboard somehow seemed to turn to mushy cardboard during the writing. My heroine is waffly and insipid, her sister (playing the role of the confidant) didn't come across right, and the arrogant Significant Other of heroine comes across as a cliche.

The whole piece has developed more of a Women's Magazine tone than a Competition Entry one: "mousy woman finds inner courage needed to get out of bad relationship." That's not to knock women's mags at all (I read and enjoy several), but I wanted something a bit grittier for the competition.

NaNoWriMo is almost upon us, so I'm undecided whether it's worth trying to salvage any of Swimming before the competition deadline or whether to stick it in a drawer until I want to redo it for a magazine. I'm hoping it won't seem so bad when I read it through.

Arts Council decline the generous offer to give me £4000...

The Arts Council wrote to me today to say they'd not be funding me to write a novel.

Apparently I "did not clearly show that the activity you applied for would involve a broad enough range of people" (next time I'll plan a multi-authored novel...) and "did not clearly show the public benefit of the activity" (what, getting to read my novel ain't benefit enough? ;-))

So, looks like I'll be stuck in the 9-5.30 grind for a while longer. There are rumours of January pay rises wafting around the office, but I'm not getting my hopes up too much. Plus I'm not sure that the most tactful response to a pay rise would be "Great! Can I work less too?"

Falconwood and Eltham Park (north)

We spent most of yesterday rambling around Falconwood, Eltham Common and the northern part of Eltham Park, loosely following the Green Chain route signs. It was impressively quiet (once I'd tuned out the background noise of nearby roads and, at one point, a construction site). Not quite Shropshire, but a very peaceful break from city life!

We were heartened by nostalgic sites of:
- Small child with large stick
- Children jumping from a low wall on a rope swing ("Catch me, dad!")
- Child hiding behind tree from siblings
- Cheery dog-walkers ("Morning!")

All great staples of weekend country walks!

We had a well-earned picnic lunch of ham sandwiches and fruit salad; Garrett Living hasn't quite reached starvation levels yet, but money-saving measures are firmly in place. We're off to see Stardust this afternoon at the Peckham Multiplex, which still has all tickets at £2.99. Might even stop off in the Gowlett to share a pizza en-route...

First scene cut, rest revised

Losing the first scene of my The Return story definitely helped; I managed to put the couple of lines which mattered into the rest of the piece, and the overall structure is definitely better. I managed to get all of it redrafted before work this morning, by somehow getting out of bed promptly at six... and by cutting corners from my normal redrafting process. (I added/deleted bits on screen, rather than printing out and typing a whole new draft.)

The Boyfriend read it, and spotted that a character's surname changes halfway through. Oops.

I also got the edits for my Forbidden Friends story typed in, so that one's pretty much there. I may show it to a couple more people, but hoping it can go off to the competition without much more work needed.

I'm keen to work on the Swimming short story, though also think I need to take the weekend "off" from writing. I'm feeling increasingly knackered, and while I'm enjoying the time I spend working on my short stories, I know a break will leave me refreshed enough to start the NaNoWriMo planning.

Editing day

I went through the whole of my The Return entry this morning, on paper, scribbling notes. I think the whole first scene will have to go -- it doesn't fit with the rest of the story, and I need to lose 800+ words somehow. I'm going to try to extract the good bits and slot them into the rest of the story as one-line memories/flashbacks for the main character.

I read a short story for a friend and emailed back some comments on that; really enjoyed reading the piece, which was a bonus! Not the sort of style/genre I'd usually bumble across, so it was a refreshing change.

And the Boyfriend has provided some useful feedback on the Forbidden Friends entry, which I've gone through on paper. I was going to type in corrections tonight, but am zonked, so going to get to bed early and do it tomorrow.

The whole six-am thing has been a struggle this week...

Stacking up words

I managed 1,200+ words in 40 minutes this morning (largely due to being very groggy when my alarm went off, and thus not getting to the fingers-on-keyboard position until almost 6.30). The last scene of my entry for The Return competition is now drafted, though it descends into rather sketchy fill-in-the-actions-later dialogue, towards the end.

This evening, I sorted out a couple of short stories to send in for The New Writer's annual competition, for which the deadline is Nov 30th. (As a subscriber, I get 2-for-1 entry.) I'm thinking about entering their article writing competition too, but only have one idea for a literary/writing article: something with tips and advice about writing around a day job. I figure I've had a year's experience at that! Need a second article, though, if I'm going to get my money's worth from the entry fee.

I've decided that a week will be ample time for planning my NaNoWriMo novel, following the excellent advice of Chris Baty's No Plot, No Problem! This gives me another clear week to finish off stuff in advance of November, so I'm thinking of doing a new short story: Writers' News have a competition on the theme "swimming", and I have some nebulous thoughts jostling together for that.

Flying Visit

My parents came up to London for the day, to drop a friend off at Heathrow for a 5.30am flight, then across to our flat for a snooze before Church. I was being welcomed as a member of Christ Church today, which I think means I'm now a Methodist. As a member, I get to attend church meetings, vote, and have a * by my name in the list of addresses in the church handbook.

They did come bearing gifts, making arriving before 7.30am forgivable. We now have:
- A date loaf (mostly eaten)
- A jar of damson jam
- Assorted bread buns
- Something which I believe is intended to hold dips/crudites/crisps, three small plastic bowls sitting on a long plastic platter
- Two bottles of wine (one is red, one white and "slightly fizzy")
- A box of chocolates

There must be a short story in there somewhere...

They also took us out to lunch, along with my cousin & his girlfriend (who live in Deptford) and my aunt and uncle (who, coincidentally, were also doing the parental-visit thing this weekend). The Plough was, like two Sunday's ago, amazingly quiet, and the weather was so obligingly sunny that we sat outside -- great conditions for a lazy Sunday afternoon chatting and catching up with everyone.

More Early Mornings

Got a good 1,000 words on The Return piece this morning, before work, after a stroll to the bakery at 6.15am... There's something special about the clarity of the pre-dawn chill. It reminds me of camping at Porthpean, probably because that's the only time I've ever been up and outside so early.

Nunhead was amazingly quiet, most un-London-like!

This evening, I've been catching up on correspondance (work was rather brain-destroying today, so haven't done any fiction writing.) Planning to do a bit more of The Return first thing tomorrow, then take the evening off -- and hopefully not zonk out on the sofa like last Friday...

First Rejection Back

With impressive efficiency, Robin Wade emailed me tonight to pass on the novel -- well within their seven-day response time. I'd definitely recommend submitting to them, as it really helps to have a quick reply rather than sit around for months.

I wrote about 900 words yesterday morning on a story for Scribble's competition themed "The Return", and did another 1500 or so this morning. Not too happy with the direction it's going -- or, rather, with its lack of direction. At the moment, I've got a good situation but little story. I spent some time this evening on character development and plot/background notes, so hoping to restart it tomorrow.

Forbidden Friends story redrafted

With the switch of working hours (8.30-5.30 Mon/Weds/Fri and 9-5.30 Tues/Thurs), I've now got more time in the morning to write. I managed to completely redraft my Forbidden Friends competition entry this morning, about 1,100 words (it needs cutting down a bit.)

The drawback to getting up at 6 to write is that I spent most of the rest of the day feeling tired, and need to get an early night...

Sent out the synopsis-and-sample-chapters malarky to The Marsh Agency via their nifty online form, and packaged up another postal submission, this one for David Higham. I was also hoping to submit a short story to Futurismic, after reading a short article about them in a back-issue of Writers' News, but they're not currently taking fiction submissions. Nor are a couple of other markets I was thinking of targeting it at. So, back to the bottom drawer with that one.

Night of the Empty Moon - edits done!

I spent some time on Friday evening/Saturday morning doing the on-paper edits for the entire first three chapters (17,000 words!) of NotEM, then typed in all the corrections this morning before Church.

I've now emailed off sample material to Robin Wade and am in the middle of printing out and packaging a couple of other submissions, for Anubis (who specifically take SF/F/H) and the Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency. I don't plan on posting them while the strike is on, though; it's already prevented the Boyfriend from getting any birthday cards/gifts yesterday from anyone except me (living in the same flat) and my Granny (who posts very early...)

This week, I'm shifting my hours at the day job so that I'll be going in slightly later, thus giving me more time to write in the mornings when I'm feeling keen. I was up at 6.30 yesterday and today, trying to keep the early-waking momentum (and thus felt completely shattered for half of today). I'm trying to convince myself it's worth it...

Couple more submissions

Sent off a couple of stories (via email) to My Weekly, and posted one to Woman's Weekly Fiction Special. I'd really like to sell a short story to a magazine by the end of the year...

Drafted an entry for the Writers' News No Smoke without Fire competition (wrote it yesterday evening & this morning before work) which I then decided was more suited for People's Friend or somesuch. A bit tame, village/church setting amongst retired women. So I thought up another, much darker/grittier idea whilst cycling to work; I should really start paying more attention to the traffic... Scribbled a few notes at lunch time, and managed to draft the whole thing (1,700+ words) this evening. It's a bit rough, a bit experimental in terms of character, narration and style, but I'm quite happy with it.

Anyway, I've written 2,500+ words today, so pretty confident that NaNoWriMo is doable next month!