Witchway

So: What do I want to do when I grow up?

2012-02-18T17:18:00.002Z

Despite spending most of my adult life writing short stories, novels, poetry, plays etc. I only seriously started the journey towards publication four years ago. Now I'm certain publication is within my grasp, I wonder if I want it. I realised I have fallen into that ridiculously common trap that I saw other people fall into. I'm OK with failure, I'm unsure about success.

All around me, people are shouting at me to push on and capitalise on my present position. Yes, the Mslexia competition result was encouraging and maybe now is the time to send stuff off to agents. Actually, my long and shortlisted poetry looks like it would make a nice collection, perhaps I ought to polish it up and submit it to a chapbook publisher.

Yet I'm sitting here, thinking about it. I feel like I need to pace things. I can't control anything, I can't make an agent take me on, I can't force a publisher to offer me publication. I'm just gently letting the Mslexia thing happen for a few weeks, working towards another competition - the prize is publication, after all. When I was on the MA one author said you've got to be 100% focused on selling your book and not let go. Another one said when you're ready - when you've written enough drafts and novels - your stuff just floats to the top. Most people, he pointed out, don't write enough, don't get to that point.

So I'm sitting here, enjoying the moment, dealing with other stuff like one daughter moving out (literally, today), one son applying to university, another son at university, one daughter about to hit teenage and random other happenings. My aim, always, was teaching. Now I know it was always, under the surface, getting published, but I can let it happen rather than try to force it to happen.

Bottom line is I know Borrowed Time is a stonkingly good book. A lot of reassurance comes from that. I want to be a novelist.

Mslexia loser announced

2012-02-15T11:20:00.000Z

By the time I opened an email from Mslexia this morning, I was a) nervous as hell and b) terrified in case I had won. That sounds silly, after all, I did enter the competition at some personal cost in time, effort and twenty-five quid. As an agoraphobic recluse, the idea of the publicity and the expectations now placed on the mystery winner would be a huge hassle for me in my hillside retreat. All I want to do is be allowed to write books, preferably for an audience, and preferably for some money (last bit optional).

So, I am informed I was in the last three, and my book was debated 'with passion by everyone in the room!' (A part of me wonders if they said this to everyone to soften the blow). Anyway, they also said: '...we are able to introduce you to an agent...' which, it has to be said, is magic even though part of me still wants to go for the Good Housekeeping competition with book 2 (the Novel With No Name).

I feel strange - not elated but sort of justified. When I first wrote Borrowed Time I knew it had something special, that I needed to develop, because at its heart, it's a story about people that I have grown to care about. Well done, Jack, Sadie and Felix, you should take as much credit as me for getting your story this far.

And this is something else to put in the rationale for my MA! So, well done and congratulations to the winner and all the other shortlisted novelists, who have stressed and waited and stressed some more over what has proved to be a terrific competition. I look forward to seeing some of those novels in print!

New novel

2012-02-13T16:30:00.000Z

I'm working on a name for the novel, I really am, but it still seems to end up being called '2nd book' or the new novel. I'm working my way through Mslexia's 'Choosing a Title' exercise, mostly because I think a title helps me narrow down what it is I'm writing. I've heard arguments that titles don't matter but actually, when I'm selecting a book, the title is the thing that helps a book stand out for me. Then the blurb has to intrigue, then the first few pages not disappoint...

Talking about the first few pages, the Good Housekeeping competition has simple rules:

A synopsis of the whole book, of 2 pages or less.
A single chapter of the novel of under 5000 words OR no more than 10000 if the chapter is more than that.
A 100 word bio of the author.
The entry form, accessible here.

My problem is that the first chapter of my book is under 3000 words, and although it does promise the intrigues to come, it is limited since it's less than 3% of the book. So, ideally, I would construct a first chapter of maybe 8-9000 words that really sells the story. It's a chance to show off my writing - so I'm trying to cobble together something that does the job. It has to lead the reader deep into the mystery, into the characters and their conflicts, and show off the actual writing. I can't do that in less than 3000 words (there's no guarantee I can do it in 10000 either!) So I'm looking at the structure of the book to produce the best competition entry, rather than necessarily the best opening to a book, without losing the fact that it does still work as the beginning of a book. Phew.

I still have to have a title for the book... watch this space.

Counting down to the Mslexia final

2012-02-10T19:28:00.001Z

I'm trying not to be stressed out by the Mslexia deadline for judging. I know I'm in the last 12 of 1800 women. That is the level of success I'm up for at the moment. Being placed or commended or whatever would feel a lot like I need to do something about it. To be honest, being in that last 12 means I could at least send out to agents, but I'm holding fire because I want to enter the Good Housekeeping competition, and you can't if you are published or agented. So I'm trying to stay calm.

Life, of course, doesn't understand this at all. The kids have been applying for jobs and my daughter and boyfriend are moving out, I've had a minor medical procedure which freaked me out completely, the cat spent the day at the vet having most of her teeth out, no.1 son is driving home tomorrow through snow and ice, the house is in chaos and we have a house guest coming that I've never met.

Out of nervous tension, and the the need to keep the sedated cat quiet, I've been stuck in the study writing - 2000 words today - and trying to relax. I could do with being put out of my misery. I can't win - Borrowed Time is a commercial genre non-literary novel, and fantasy to boot. But I still can't settle to anything.

For something to do (as I don't spend enough time at the computer) I'm working on familiarising myself with Scrivener for Windows. I totally understand that this is a miracle product and should make holding a large piece of text like a novel in convenient chunks much easier. The problem is, learning the new Word took me months, and Scrivener is like starting again. I can't see me using it for book 2 any time soon. Has anyone else tried it?

Knuckling down to the rationale.

2012-02-07T16:49:00.002Z

It may seem silly, but I've got a terror of this part of my MA. I confessed this to my tutor, who was sympathetic enough, but clearly didn't understand why it should bother me. Other students on my course, apparently, have written spectacular commentaries on their creative work.

While I was talking to her, one thing did occur to me. I really don't read that much modern fantasy. And here I am, writing it. That leaves me at a bit of a disadvantage when I come to write it, so I'm trying (again) to read Kate Mosse's Labyrinth. It's hard going, which doesn't make any sense, because it's well written (I think) and I love historical fiction. I've begun to realise if I can unpack what she's doing, I will have an insight into how I have written my book.

Another thing I realised is the idea that you can do a spell, or conjure a being or magically heal someone is irresistible to someone who has had to watch a loved one die. It was irresistible to me, as a parent, watching my daughter Léonie, at the end of her life. Borrowed Time, the concept of the book, leads to terrible consequences - breaking the natural order is dangerous. Part of me felt like that when Léonie was four years old, and only heroic surgery gave her any chance at all. I felt a huge tug towards letting her go, instead of the horrible surgery they were offering. In the end, my decision with my husband, was to try everything we could, and we lost. Worse, I think, Léonie lost. Now that idea has found itself - couched in fantasy terms - into my fiction.

Maybe that idea is relevant for my rationale - who knows? I still haven't really worked out what a rationale is.

New Blog at 300 posts

2012-02-06T11:01:00.002Z

In July 2009, I started this blog. I had just started A215 with the Open University and was finishing a course with the OCA. It was the first step on a journey towards the distant city of 'Published', and it has become a place where I try things out, wrestle with new ideas, rejection, success, my learning, my writing and occasionally my family. While this will still be my main blog, because I still am stumbling along that path, I feel I need to have a second internet presence that actually expresses what I have produced.
This is my wayside stall, put up along that Publication road, as I camp outside the walls.

It's actually got my name on it (which I think is important) and is a reflection of the fact that I am more serious about my writing and (eek!) more serious about getting published.
So feel free to visit at Rebecca Alexander, and please, if you don't mind, follow it. Apparently publishers like to see a bit of internet presence, and it would help me to be able to sell my wares if I can say that people have at least looked at them. Thank you!
Meanwhile, I am astonished that I have written 300 posts, had 418 comments and about 600 emails from it. I have had fantastic support, been given great ideas and inspiration, enjoyed loads of other people's blogs and made cyberfriends. I look forward to the next 300 posts here on Witchway!

Submissions

2012-02-03T15:54:00.000Z

On the back of my nearly success in a poetry competition, I decided to send off the same three poems to a poetry magazine. This is a reasonable thing to do, I thought, how long can it take to print off three poems, add a query letter and sling them in an envelope?

Two hours and forty-three minutes.

First, each of the poems needed tweaking, and if you mess with one word in a poem, you're going to have to move around, assess the impact of and question every other word. I only changed a couple of words but boy! That took up most of the time. I printed them off, only to find one had a huge smudge of ink down it and one had the word 'teazle' with a capital T. Screw up the wrong ones, print off new pages. Out of paper, filled printer up.
Then I looked at the submissions page of the magazine's website. Every magazine has its own preference: name in header or footer, no name, just title, nothing at all. This one wanted everything - name, address, email etc. in the footer.
Then you find an envelope and address it by hand (easy). Back to the website: they need a stamped addressed envelope. Do I mention the Plough in my query letter? Whoops - back to the letter and print it off. Wrong email address, so print off another one. Sign it. I then debated for some time whether it would all go on a first class stamp? Write out own address on nice light envelope, worrying about weight of stamp.

Fine. That led onto the recommendation on Poems Please website (thank you, Tony) of the RSPB/Rialto competition for a nature poem. Easy. It's only two poems and they don't need tweaking, do they...? Oh, they do. Find the rules on presentation - take off any name or address - fill in form, add entry fee, address envelope, worry about weight, add heavy stamp... Fifty-three minutes. I'm exhausted, and I haven't done any writing today.

I then had a lovely email from a fellow novelist asking about the Good Housekeeping competition and it gave me pause for thought. GH only allows submissions from unagented authors, so I can hold fire on that pesky synopsis/query letter of Borrowed Time for the moment. I can concentrate on the competition submission instead - oh, wait, it's the first chapter of book 2 and the synopsis of the whole book. Crap.

Approaching agents: synopses

2012-02-02T20:18:00.001Z

Helpful daughter sat down with me as we looked at literary agents. We thought they would all want similar things - which they generally do. Three chapters, a query letter with information about the book and the author, and a synopsis.

I don't like synopses. I find them much more difficult to write than books.
I don't like saying the words synopsis, it sounds like a snake did a somersault.
Every agent wants something different from the synopsis.

One wants an outline. Another wants a punchy summary that would make them want to read the book. One wants three closely typed pages, one wants no more than 1000 words, one wants no more than 3000, one wants 300 words (eek!) and the worse one wants - wait for it - three sentences. Ninety-three thousand words, two strands, four hundred years and nine important characters in three sentences? Will these be the hundred word sentences Thomas Hardy used to excel at?

It turns out, sending stuff to agents will be way harder than writing another book. Maybe I should write book 2's synopsis first. So, I turned to Nicola Morgan's excellent little book on writing synopses (there he goes again, tumbling serpent) and she warns of this phenomenon. So I sat down and wrote 1, one thousand word synopsis. At a squeeze, and in Times New Roman 11 and single spaced - one closely typed page. Three sentence lady is out the window.

Then I noticed something odd. The book is front heavy, I wrote the final chapters less well and in less detail than the front chapters. So is the synopsis. When I realise how to balance up the synopsis...ideas about how to fit the book just pop into my head. Maybe these synopsisy thingies (look at them go! Cirque du Soleil for reptiles!) have extra uses?

The theme for this week is Boasting.

2012-02-01T09:59:00.000Z

We're British in this house, we don't really do boasting very well. But I've got a lot to boast about at the moment, which is highly unusual, so I've made a boasting folder. I entered three poems into the Plough Prize this year: Ghost Walk and Swimming with my Sister were longlisted and Crime Scene was shortlisted. Better than that, a previous winner, Patricia Ace, was long- and shortlisted alphabetically above me in the lists. As in, Patricia Ace, published by Happenstance. I love her stuff. And CJ Allen also published, also shortlisted (OK, twice). I'm sandwiched between published poets. In fact, loads of people on the lists are published in magazines or chapbooks or even their own collections. Why not me?

When I was doing the MA, one very talented student used to rant on how difficult it is to get a novel published. So I asked them (humbly) how many had they written? How many rejections from agents and publishers had they had? Answer - zero. They weren't even going to bother to write because what's the point? You only get rejected anyway. That's what I'm doing about poetry. I'm so convinced my work will get rejected I don't put it out there. So I'm giving myself the same advice I tried to give this writer - write and you get better. The more work you put out there, the more likely you are to get noticed. I read somewhere, committed writers are most likely to get their fourth book published - that means they had the commitment to write three duds first, all the way through.

So I need to send my poetry out - where's the harm? Most of them are the price of a stamp or an email. I'm declaring Wednesday 'send poetry out' day. Then I can put something new in my boasting book.

Blimey. Shortlisted.

2012-01-31T15:03:00.001Z

Having lost all confidence in Borrowed Time (compared to the shiny new chapters of the next book) I was gobsmacked to receive an email saying I was shortlisted for the Mslexia novel writing competition. It's clearly a mistake. There are probably two Rebecca Alexanders. On the plus side, I suppose when the idea sinks in I shall be filled with new enthusiasm for writing and anxious to try amd get myself an agent. Now, that's a terrifying idea. But the idea of coming twelfth out of 1800 entries - that, I can get my teeth into! Now I'm invited to London to meet the other writers and a few people from the publishing world. Wow. I need more chocolate.

Not to mention that I had just sent a revised three chapters off to Hookline. Now what?

Hookline Competition

2012-01-28T09:46:00.001Z

I'm torn about this competition. It's very expensive to enter, but it's judged by actual readers. You know, the kind of people who actually buy books. It's also only open to MA students past and present, so narrows the pool down BUT to a very educated pool. The prize is publication, simple. Since Mslexia still haven't dashed my hoped but are taking more time to judge Borrowed Time, I'm in two minds as to whether put it in. Basically, they send round your fist bit and a short synopsis, then if the readers shortlist it, you provide the rest of the book. In theory. The best thing about it is that it's made me look at Borrowed Time again, put the scenes on pretty coloured cards in truly gruesome handwriting (we don't get many reasons to write with a pen, do we? I'm glad I haven't got any exams coming up). Now I'm moving them all around.

My supervisor on the MA questioned having the opening scene led by a basically secondary character. It's not the strongest, most compelling scene in the book but I had a real problem with timeline. I'm putting the stronger scene back at the beginning and I'm just going to have to radically revise the timeline to fit. The very essence of the Hookline comp is the idea of a compelling beginning - a brilliant first line that you just have to follow up. Since the deadline is...(checks calendar, has internal conversation of WTF, where did January go?)...Tuesday, I'd better get on with it.

14,000 words (phew) and Helpful Bloggers

2012-01-22T17:29:00.002Z

It's a lovely day, here. Bulbs are pushing out of the tops of pots. Birds are strutting their stuff in front of females, and the squirrel has dismantled the bird feeder. It's too good to be writing, really, but my back isn't up to much more.

I was reading my fellow writing bloggers latest posts this morning, when I strayed onto this, A Novice Novelist. I followed the link to Nicola Morgan's blog, which I follow anyway (Help! I Need a Publisher!) and she's written a book on writing synopses, which is £1 from Amazon Kindle (for the PC) which I downloaded. How helpful! Better than that, how timely. I have to write a synopsis for this competition, and aren't they always different speeds? This one needs a punchy, short, 300 word one, the other one needs a single page of single spaced text. Two completely different animals.

So, I read the advice in the e-book. I had a go with the Method Two with the Crappy Memory Tool, and came up with a single 25 word line encapsulating the absolute kernel of the book. It took me a couple of hours, but I feel happy with it. Now I'm working it up to a paragraph - and it's working. Actually, it's creating questions in my own head about what goes where and when, and what is essential for the story, and what is added to make it a readable novel. I can recommend the book, and it's on special offer during January, from Amazon. Thank you, fellow bloggers.

Up to 12,000 words

2012-01-21T23:03:00.000Z

Having cobbled together some of the scenes I wrote to get into the story, I've got a nice start. Eight chapters, four contemporary and four short chapters from the historical strand. It's hard to balance family stuff with writing, but I got up before the kids and husband so I got a start. Then we spent the rest of the time moving bedrooms around, pulling up old carpets etc. Changing the rooms around shifts the energy around, but it freaks the cats out. This is one of them in my daughter's new room. I would have loved an attic bedroom as a kid! The cat appears to be a bit possessed, which is less funny if you actually know her.

I'm enjoying my research, looking into ledgers and legal papers from 1550-1590. Just trying to get an idea of the value of things, and the money. For example, what is an angel, a groat or a mark? They are all monetary units, a groat is four pence. (Old money, which I am old enough to remember. Pounds, shillings and pence, not groats). For example, clothing was astronomically expensive. Even a yard of cheap linen was pricey, and an Elizabethan ruff could take 6 yards of the finest. People used to leave clothes in their wills. 'To my brother Richard, my second best shirt with Venetian lace', an item which could cost several moths wages for a skilled craftsman like a smith or carpenter. One man, whose estate was valued at seven hundred pounds had a wardrobe valued at twice that - he was deep in debt because he had invested in clothes to impress the lower levels of the court.

Much has been said about the difficulties of giving birth and raising healthy children - one fifth of estates didn't pass to a direct heir. It's such an interesting motive which we don't have so much in our culture today. Producing a healthy child gave a woman much status and advantage. If her husband died, she could stay in her home and administer her son's estate, but if she was childless or had daughters, she might not be so lucky. I'm finding Alison Sim's books very helpful, and where would be be without Wikipedia? (answer - probably further on with the book!)

First six chapters (1500, 1340)

2012-01-20T23:58:00.000Z

I've cobbled together the first six chapters, alternating the contemporary strand with the historical story. I've got a new respect for historical writers - one of my scenes is only 500 words long but it took hours of research just to work out the details of the lives of Elizabethan women. My narrator, Vincent, is a crabby old guy with a soft spot for the girl I'm using as a distraction, hoping my readers will have several candidates for the body in the well. I've more or less got the Good Housekeeping chapters sorted (in first draft), and if anyone is interested in entering the competition, the entry form is on the website: http://www.allaboutyou.com/goodhousekeeping/goodhousekeeping-events/get-your-novel-published-competition Now all I have to do (Ha!) is write the synopsis. That will take me months.

I'm also working on AA100, reading Dr. Faustus, and coincidentally, Marlowe was around at the same time as my characters and was also interested in sixteenth century beliefs in sorcery. Very helpful! The OU have included an excellent radio version of the play, it's mesmerising, though I'm glad I have the words in front of me as well. I hate radio, it's so slow, but when decoding iambic pentameter from 400 years ago, it helps if it goes slower. I'm enjoying the course but with kids and home and life, plus four hours a day working on the book, it's getting slipped into odd moments!

Chapters one and two (2490, 1669, 1100)

2012-01-18T17:46:00.000Z

I've written chapter one, which introduces my main character (Sage) and her potential love interest (Nick). Boring though this will probably be for any readers, I feel I need to celebrate the slow growth of a new (and planned) book.

Looking over the first chapter, it has to deliver an engaging lead because otherwise you won't care enough to read on (I'm thinking). The mystery of the body of a baby down a well would keep my interest for a few pages, but I need more. I've tried to introduce hints that Sage's personal life is entangled but I don't want the main focus to be on the possible relationship, but on the mystery. I've tried to introduce the creepy, ghostly feeling at page 1 as well (I've read that it's good to establish genre in the first five pages). I've tried to suggest Sage is an archaeologist, but not the stereotypical, middle aged, Time Team sort. The third character I've introduced, I suppose is the house and its creepy, distressed owner, Judith. Lots of opportunity to put people in a bit of emotional terror.

One thing that bothers me a bit though...when I was working as a psychologist about twelve years ago, I did go to this incredibly creepy house and work with a lady who looked, to me, completely haunted by the place. I suppose the description of the house is very much that one. I suppose we all introduce ideas, characters and places we actually know (usually unconsciously) but this lady's story has 'haunted' me for so long, it's flavoured a story. I feel like I'm writing this unfinished business into the book. I can't work out if that's perfectly healthy or rather sleazy exploitation.

And we're off... (2700)

2012-01-15T22:23:00.000Z

I wrote 2700 words today, some of them quite good. I found three scenes, and apart from being mostly conversation, less action or description, I think they ask a question that the reader might get involved with. I think I was at the computer anyway (trying and failing to get my son's UCAS application off before the deadline) so diverted myself with 'just one more paragraph'. Once the story starts to write itself, it's a bit of a compulsion. I could probably diagnose myself with something (but I won't, I'm not that kind of psychologist. Labels, schmabels). Sage is turning out to be an emotional bomb site, and the whole novel is less about 16th century magical beliefs as it is a vengeful, deranged ghost. I love ghost stories, so that's OK, but they freak me out. I'm scaring myself with my own story. So, not only am I finding it difficult to sleep with the story running through my head but I have to have a nightlight on like a three year old. Very romantic.

In between, I've just read A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I enjoyed it, I thought it was a good retelling of the old witch meets vampire, falls in love etc. story with mortal danger and great historical references. It wasn't completely new to me, let's say that! But a great deal better written than a lot in the genre. It was a bit annoying that one of the main characters is called Ysabeau, I trawled through Medieval genealogy sites (in French) for hours to find Isabeau as a character name, and D.H. got there first. Rats. Back to work...I've got two hours to pay for no. 1 son's UCAS application, so a few more paragraphs...

PS Thank you for the anonymous comment, it's lovely to know that people out there read these efforts! Presently Blogger won't let me reply.

Research, research (0, 500, 400, 900, 0, 400)

2012-01-14T23:04:00.000Z

We've been away on the first holiday we've had in 2 years. I missed the Internet. Questions about archaeology, listed building consents and Bembridge kept cropping up. So, when I can't easily write, I want to. Now I'm back, not so much, though I did find the opening scene of the book (at last). I'm drowning in Tudor history and excavation methods.

Hookline have a first novel competition running, and since Mslexia are now going to take an extra month to judge, I'm preparing Borrowed Time for that one, while I work on novel 2. I know I'm moaning about it, but I do have some sort of plan and have about ten thousand words. It's writing itself, I'm trying to slow the process to allow the ideas to develop. I have an idea - like a baby's body in an archaeological dig. Then it became an old well, then finally, the bodies of a woman and a baby (unrelated) and more questions are asked. That's the point my planning has reached now - who is the woman in the well? How did she get there? Why is someone else's baby with her? I know who the baby is, anyway, and her parents. Now my modern day heroine has to work it all out, as I do. I'm trying to reduce the rewriting and pace problems I normally end up with. My plan is to refine book 2 for the Good Housekeeping competition so am trying to get a gripping start to the novel. The difficult bit, for me, is trying to find a really good first line.

Oh, I'm also realising I can't read my own blog easily, so am increasing the font size!

Waiting for Mslexia

2012-01-10T12:48:00.001Z

Having just re-read Borrowed Time - sad how many mistakes are in it - I am not expecting anything from Mslexia, but the promised shortlist did not appear on the 9th as promised. This means I am on holiday, not beginning the recovery from disappointment, but checking my emails every 30 minutes.

I should be thinking through the next book - or playing or swimming with the kids. Apparently, other people are in the same boat. It would be nice just to have an email explaining the delay - or saying the shortlisted people have been contacted, or something. Anything. Are they all on holiday, too? Maybe I'll see them in the pool...

Titles

2012-01-07T22:56:00.001Z

I have really got into research this time, hoping it will spark off ideas that I can order onto a book plan (in theory). All this is fine, and I have character names (which are SO important) but I can't think of a name for the book. The first draft of Borrowed Time literally sprang from the title but I can't get behind anything at the moment. How does anyone come up with titles, anyway? You see some really clever plays on words but most books have 2-3 word titles, and I'm lost. It's my weakest skill in poetry too, the title can be the key to unlock a poem, or a wonderful scene or mood setting device. Unfortunately, I wrestle through the whole process or writing a poem, rewriting, thinking about it...my poems often accumulate different names as they go through drafts. This makes them difficult to track down in the folder on my hard drive!

I'm presently toying with ideas, but as I'm taking this book as a 'new' first book than following on from Borrowed Time, which I'm seeing as a good starting exercise, I'm not tied to linking them into a series. Using the BT world, I'm trying to write a better story to start with - more of a ghost/detective story. So I don't have to link the title in any way to Borrowed Time, thank goodness, as it's hard enough to come up with a name anyway. I may have to do a random trawl through the internet, looking for interesting phrases or names. Any ideas? By the way, this is the book with my favourite title of all time...

A question about multiple points of view

2012-01-04T16:46:00.000Z

A question for my writer friends out there.

Points of view (POV) - is it better to stick with one or introduce a few more characters to see/experience the action? With Borrowed Time, most of the chapters were from two characters' POV, in one strand. Occasionally, I had to give a chapter over to the teenage character, because she was there alone.

Meanwhile, I have just read several books. One, an unpublished novel, is so solidly in the lead's POV it's an intense rollercoaster. Lisa Gardner's Love You More has two main POVs, the two lead investigators in a crime novel and the implied victim.Kelley Armstrong's Haunted is solidly in first person and Eve's POV. What are the benefits/disadvantages of using multiple POV? The novel I wrote in 2009 suffered from too many, I know. I tend (like all of the above authors) to write very close to the POV, going through the story as the character does. When I wrote the historical strand, I wrote the whole thing from Kelley's viewpoint, and it was a relief, just a first person (sometimes puzzled, sometimes biased) account. The novel I wrote in 2010 did have a strong central character, but was housebound, so a lot of the action happened away from home with another of the characters. I'm confused. How distracting is it for a reader to have to let go of one strand and take up another?

Nancy Kress in Characters, Emotion and Viewpoint offers this: "...have as few points of view as you can get away with and still tell the story."

First scenes (300,0,1200 words)

2012-01-03T18:32:00.000Z

I have met my two main POV characters, and written two scenes for one of them, Sage. They only add up to 2000 words or so, but it's a start, and I have a strong first scene. Vincent, my historical narrator, won't get as much words as Kelley did, the 16th century narrator in Borrowed Time. He's a dry, caustic old man, I love him, bright as a button and with a huge chip on his shoulder (cliches coming at you, one after the other! Duck!) He seems to describe everything through what he notes in the manor's ledgers. He carefully notes the price of two yards of linen for a winding sheet for my Lady's baby - before it is born - because she hasn't brought a baby to term yet. I plan to annoy him by giving this baby a chance of survival. No doubt the linen will be recycled into something else, and valuable pennies saved. I am having to research the period, even though it's the same time as Dee, the action takes place in England.
It is strange how some characters speak so loudly and distinctly, from day one. I now have to plot a whole book just to give him a forum. Other characters only reveal themselves very slowly, coming out of the shadows now and then, often proving to be quite different from my first impressions. Jack, in Borrowed Time, did that, as elusive to the reader as to me. In fact, useful feedback on the MA was that she was the least developed, least likeable character. Hopefully, I was able to warm her up a bit! Sage is a bit easier, already stronger and more lively (also younger). I'm looking forward to spending time with them both.
AA100 is proving a distraction, but I have written half my first assignment, about the way Cleopatra has been represented in film. Loving it so far, and getting ready to start work on Dr Faustus. There's another 500 words to be written there.
What I haven't done is continue with the rewrite of Borrowed Time, which I really really need to do!

Slow progress, but actual planning.

2011-12-30T00:07:00.000Z

Book 2 has started to come together. In a very small way, you understand, but my main character now has a name, there is a bit of a history of a village falling into place, and I understand the motivation of my main characters. Unfortunately, as usual, my 'bad guy' is working his charm on me and my narrator has a sly, nasty side. He might surprise me yet and prove to be the villain.
My tally so far of work: 805 words on Tuesday,406 on Wednesday,Thursday 706 words, but several hours of planning, card writing, family tree writing and charts as well. I don't know if I can bash it into shape enough by the end of March for Good Housekeeping, but I'll give it a go.
Normally, I come up with a name and the tiniest bit of plot, and I start writing. That leads to new ideas and they get written, too. The problem is, if the first ideas are rubbish, the whole thing has to be totally rewritten many many times. I'm trying to approach it from a different direction this time, by developing the story until I just have to write. So the snippets I have managed are scenes, or bits of scenes that might be useful and help me get into my characters. This way (hopefully) my characters will be consistently written and not evolve, change age, ethnicity and possibly gender, as they have before.

New resolution

2011-12-27T23:55:00.000Z

I don't do New Year's resolutions. What's the point of starting the year with a failure? And I always fail. So, instead, I've had a good look at what motivates me to stay on track.

Deadlines. I'm deadline girl, give me the merest hint of a date and I set goals, over achieve and get the words done ahead of time. Easy peasy. So I've been through the Mslexia diary (lovely lovely diary, I recommend it) and selected a few deadlines, added in the MA and the AA100 assignment dates, thrown in a few competitions for variety, and marked them on my super duper new year planner. The only place I had room for said planner was in the cloakroom, on the wall, but at least I get to sit down in there a few times a day and will notice the colour coded stars marked on it.

The diary is £12.99 direct from Mslexia, by the way.

So, I have deadlines. the other thing I benefit from is publicly declaring my progress, either to family or by word counter. So, I'm pledging (for myself) to humiliate myself by declaring my word count (or lack of) everyday, either here, on Facebook or on the wall of shame in the cloakroom. I masterfully wrote 41 words today, before being stalled on my next book by a lack of story. It's all there in my head, but it's still forming from brainstorming sessions with the family, research, and ideas buzzing around in my brain. This might explain why I couldn't get to sleep until 4am and have a migraine.

Too much to do to write!

2011-12-17T00:32:00.000Z

I'm taking an unscheduled and, I think, reasonable break from writing for a few days. Tomorrow the boys and husband come home (the latter no doubt the worse for wear after the firm's pub crawl) and then we have 13 for dinner on Sunday. I'm reading a fellow student's novel and am deep into that, am tired from filling the freezer with industrial quantities of Xmas snacks (none of which I like!). I have to get three bedrooms moved tomorrow, furniture and all, to accommodate all the kids and their partners... and we celebrate the winter solstice so everything has to be sorted and ready by Monday evening. Most of my army of helpers are away (the younger ones are at their grandparents to see a panto) so I'm busy busy!

What I really want to do is start my next novel...

Starting AA100

2011-12-13T20:15:00.000Z

I'm officially terrified. I've got the AA100 coursebooks from the Open University, along with the *gulp* assignment book. It seems strange to go back to level 1 but honestly, I have no arts training at all. I feel like I blagged my way entirely through the MA so far by working hard on my writing, but feel completely lost as far as my dissertation's rationale is concerned. I hope that the course will help me gain the language with which to describe how literature works. I always felt I was at a disadvantage compared to the English Literature graduates in the group.

The first book looks fascinating, but the assignments look scary! Because the OU has become infected with fee changes (more than trebled) I realised if I didn't sign up now I wouldn't get the old prices for my courses. Since I already the two writing modules at distinction, I would be able to get a lit degree in 3 years for less that the future cost of just one module! Crazy. So, despite some time limitations because I do have a book to edit...I'm looking forward to giving it my best shot. And I don't have to get distinctions, so I can concentrate on getting the most out of the courses instead of focusing entirely on assignments and scores.

Talking about time limitations - apart from being distracted by AA100 and PD James's Death Comes to Pemberley (I can't work out if this is heresy or actually very good), I am reading a fellow student's novel. It's scary - because it's very, very good, and a lot more polished than my novel. I'm enthralled already, and I'm only half a dozen chapters in. I can see that I won't be working on my novel for a few days...

At home, the new book-room has an actual functioning door, and so does the dining room, finally squashing most of the draughts that rattle through the house. When people think a house is haunted because suddenly the temperature drops and a room has mysterious cold spots - that's our house. We either have a thousand draughts or a regiment of ghosts. And another bedroom has a new carpet, functioning door and paint job. No. 1 son will be pleased!

Back to the dissertation

2011-12-09T16:03:00.000Z

With all the excitement of competitions and the fourth edit of the book, I began to forget I'm supposed to hand in a 15-20k creative piece and a 4k rationale for my dissertation. I was going to hand it in at the end of September, but I reluctantly decided to defer for a year while my back got better. I feel confident, now, about the creative piece but the rationale has me stymied. I've only done two rationales before with mixed results (both, at least, passed). I wrestled with writing the two strands and interweaving them to make the book - maybe I could write about that? I don't know... I wish I was more clued up about literature and books and all the theory of writing rather than just the craft of writing. To this end, I've decided to take AA100, the arts foundation course, with the Open University. Maybe it will give me more idea of how to analyse books, even my own writing. So often I do something but couldn't tell you why, exactly, although I do consider the psychology and process of reading.

Meanwhile, the new study has just got a big book case for all my research and textbooks. Thank you, boys!

Good Housekeeping Competition

2011-12-05T21:23:00.000Z

Good Housekeeping magazine, Jan 2012 issue (out now) is offering a £25000 prize for a first novel, as an advance, and an introduction to an agent. Now, I know a whole group of people who are wrestling with or planning to write a novel. This competition has a number of major advantages for all of us.

It's deadline is 31st March so we have some time to polish or rewrite or, if you're very organised, even write a novel
It's free to enter except for buying the magazine
It's for any genre except children's
It starts with a 5000-10000 word submission, allowing more time to complete the rest of the novel.

Now, what's not to love about such a big prize for so little outlay and a do-able deadline? Anyone else going to give it a go? http://www.thebookseller.com/news/good-housekeeping-launches-%C2%A325k-novel-competition.html

Back to work after a week off

2011-12-03T21:38:00.000Z

I've had a great week organising Solstice/Christmas; travelling to the Isle of Wight where we used to live and catching up with friends and family; and enjoying reading. I can see the logic of treating reading as a part of the writing process, and prioritising it, but in practice I can only do one well, or the other! So, having enjoyed a few books for old times sake, and a couple of new ones for fun, I've really got to sit down and get back to editing. Since we had a plan to scale back Solstice and just have one tree, not go mad on presents and food etc. I can say we seem to have failed. Badly. The artificial tree wouldn't fit in our newly decorated living room so we went shopping for a new, more sensible sized one. The old one ended up in the dining room (because it's such a nice, if nine foot high, tree) and the old dining room one squeaked into my newly decorated, insulated and fixed up study. The kids wanted their little tree in the kitchen - we have four trees. We seemed to have missed downsizing the holidays by a mile.

Meanwhile, I have been thinking about the sequel and how close I am to finishing (well, abandoning really) the first book. “Poems are never finished - just abandoned”, Paul Valéry said, and he described how I see novels, too. There just comes a point when you can't polish any more, so you send it off, and the second you do you find a million mistakes. I think it's part of the process. The plan is to finish draft 4 by the end of December and start the new year with a round of submissions.

Changed gear

2011-11-17T22:45:00.001Z

I've finally changed gear from writing fresh stuff to editing and honing the draft. It's hard to look at words you have read dozens of times before and to see them - or hear them - afresh. I'm listening, reading and reworking the lines and paragraphs and looking out for trite phrases (clichés, it turns out, are my speciality) and especially, repetitive use of favourite words. For example, I had a scene where my male character was trying to unlock his door. How many times did I manage to use the word 'lock' in three sentences? Four. And an 'unlock'. I cut the stupid lines in the end anyway!
I have a few confusing names - a Charley and a Carly, for example. I have some very long-winded chapters of the historical strand that need to be cut into chunks and threaded better through the contemporary strand. then, at some point, it will be done, finished, finito. In theory. Then, thank goodness, it can go off into the world like a five year old you hope and pray will remember his toilet training, and I can get on with the next book. I'm getting bored with this one, now.
Another thing I have neglected big time, is my poetry. Poetry makes me use my words better, and I would really like to get a few poems published. It's a whole new writing muscle, though, and there's a course at the Open College of the Arts which would be very useful. Something to work on once the book is out there.
Oh, and a very big thank you to Beth, who has read the book and fed back some useful stuff. More description of my characters - how many times have I heard that these last few weeks!

Where do you write?

2011-11-12T23:06:00.001Z

I keep getting moved with the building work, and I seem to write differently in each location. Rewriting (not my favourite activity) needs a lot of concentration, somewhere quiet like the room I used to have as a study, but that's a bit of a building site at the moment. My desk is stuck in a sunny bay window at the moment, which makes seeing the screen very difficult, not to mention the noise from the team hammering and sawing next door. It's a good environment for new ideas - I seem to have half a dozen next novel ideas going around my head. Not to mention ideas for poetry.

Meanwhile, the study is finally warm, the draughts have been patched up and a proper floor laid, and the ceiling has been insulated. The smell of sewage seems to be a thing of the past, and the cloakroom is getting a paint job. Now I just have to find places to put everything that normally lives piled up in heaps and old boxes in the old room. Hopefully, getting back to a quiet corner of the house will help with the tidying and rewriting!

So, where do you write?

Editing

2011-11-09T13:36:00.000Z

Editing is painfully boring - going over each sentence and word, reading it aloud until you are cross-eyes, looking for better ways of saying things. I find it difficult, mostly because I start to question whether I need a particular word - sentence- paragraph - actually, what the hell is this chapter for, anyway? If I'm not careful, the chapter can be whittled away to nothing. Somewhere along the whittling process is an improved draft, but it's tricky knowing when to stop.

I'm reading my Revision and Self-Editing book, but it doesn't make the process any easier! I've done chapter 27, and am working on chapter 28. That just leaves chapters 1-26 and 29-end to do. Sigh. Distractions beckon - I have wiped out legions of zombies this morning, and eaten too many cookies.

House in chaos and me with it.

2011-11-07T12:14:00.000Z

I know people say if your room is in a mess your head is too - this may be true at the moment. The whole house has been in a crazy mess for months, as we completely redecorate and sort out rooms. Getting the deadline for the Mslexia submission made me work, but now I'm a bit lost.

A friend said (closer to Halloween) that our house is a bit Gothic and it's true, no happy little moppets toil up the long, dark drive past the black end wall, towering three stories over the cliff, in the hope of Halloween candy. Jehovah's witnesses rarely make the trip either. It always sounds like we're millionaires, with eighteen rooms, and more than an acre of garden. Hah! You have to be a mountain goat to get up the garden, even if you could get through the brambles. Most of the rooms were terrible when we moved in and the reassuring munch of woodworm helped drown out the scamper of ratty feet in the loft...We liked the bats streaming out from the eaves (and riound the house, at first), fortunately, but I get what she means. From inside it's a modest little house because all the rooms are small and so crooked you can't put furniture in without it sagging against the corners or running downhill to the south-east. I believe I could afford a two bedroomed house in Winchester with what we paid for this house...

I did send out four poems for the Plough Prize (no harm trying) and I have a number of magazines to submit work to, but I'm feeling a bit lost and unfocused, which exactly describes my house! I know I have to go through the book and make sure all the 'setups' match with 'reveals'and invest in some description. Not my strong point. Back to work.

Worked it out

2011-11-02T09:47:00.000Z

It turns out I have discovered the way I have to write a book. It's the least sensible, structured way I could think of, but there, I get there in the end.

First I start a story with huge enthusiasm, and write for weeks in a creative fever. Then all the loose end and impossibilities that creep in slow me down, I fill with doubt and I slow, the stop.
Then I start again, rewrite. The old draft is a springboard for the new but here's the trick. All the problems are embedded in the first draft so I need to really write all over again. Most of my problem scenes have been a result of just editing old prose. The second draft powers on another 20k then falters.
Start another rewrite. This time the first 40k just needs extensive editing, the last 20k needs a complete rewrite and that propels me into the next 20k.

That's where Borrowed Time is now. I really need to edit, prune, cut and tidy extensively, and possibly rewrite the last quarter of the book by starting another rewrite. Unfortunately, in the last few days I have written/edited 22000 words and my hand is so swollen and painful I'm down to one finger and have to use the mouse with my left hand.

In another bit of good news (they just keep coming!) I have a children's story being published in Vortex.

Wow, sleepless nights

2011-11-01T08:28:00.000Z

I feel dazed. Three nights staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning, working flat out. The book is done and dusted, ready to go off, and I have a clear view of how to improve it for publication. It's a bit flabby, I could trim 10% of the words and it would be better, but the main thing is saying - it's good enough. There's a plot, characters, and a story arc. Wow. I did it.
Last year I started an MA. Friends and family, on the whole, were on a continuum from 'Good for you' to 'What on earth are you doing? Are you mad/selfish/stupid?' My answer to the latter, and (a few of them were very critical), was I wanted to finish a book to a good standard. No matter how much I tried, I just couldn't hold the whole book in my head and I couldn't plot.
I'm not sure the MA helped with any of that, but it gave me a discipline about putting my writing high up my priority list, and showed me how to improve my writing. So here's a raspberry for those who told me I was wasting my time and neglecting my family. And a huge hug to the people who supported me, from belief in my writing to those who think that, good or bad, we should be allowed to spend time and money on our interests. And to Russell, who never wavered or doubted, my love and gratitude. Words finally fail...

Longlisted for the Mslexia novel competition!!!!

2011-10-30T01:28:00.000Z

I've just spent a few hours wandering around in a daze, occasionally saying 'Oh My God.'
I didn't get an email from Mslexia and I knew the longlist was out, so I (unsurprised) carried on pottering with the book. For some reason (baffling) they sent the email to my husband instead, presumably because he took out the subscription for me a few years ago.

This is to let you know that your novel has been longlisted for our inaugural novel competition. Congratulations! This means we now need to see the complete manuscript, plus a synopsis of up to 1,000 words. Can you please let us have these as soon as possible, preferably by 1 November. I’m sure you understand that it takes much more time to assess a complete novel than it does a 5,000 word extract, so the panel needs to start immediately.

If you are unable to let us have the novel for any reason – if it is unfinished, or has been accepted for publication in the meantime – please let us know as soon as possible.

Please send the novel, printed out onto one side of A4 paper, double spaced, point size 11 or 12, to our office at Mslexia Publications

Now, can you see the tiniest flaw with this delightful and flattering, and completely unbelievable email??? I was sent this on the 27th but I only got it this evening. Allowing for the donkey postal service across North Devon, if I post it first thing Monday it might (might being rather a strong word for a remote possibility) get there by the 1st. OK, there's the word 'preferably' but the problem for me is that I'm not sure I'm quite ready to send all 90k words off in the next (consults fingers) thirty-two hours. That doesn't even allow for checking grammar, spellings, repetitions, printing time, kissing every page, wrapping it up and walking down to the post office. I could send in the second draft with the few modifications from the third draft, but the latest draft is 8 million times better.
So instead of dawdling through the latest rewrite at a chapter a day, I have to do...more than one chapter an hour. So, if I sleep four hours each night...that's about one and a half chapters an hour with five minutes refreshment breaks per hour. Oh. My. God. Did you see the 1000 word synopsis? Now that - I could manage in 32 hours, no problem. Thank God for no.1 son, who is on cliche patrol.

At 87,000 words and all downhill from here!

2011-10-23T18:48:00.000Z

Having written my big dramatic scene, now I need reaction scenes and rounding the story off. While I'm happy with the main strand, I'm having to go back to look at the historical strand and seriously look at editing the first few chapters down. Otherwise the book is going to be too big, and I need to make sure the historical strand stays secondary throughout the book. I really feel like I know my main character much better now, and also know I have to toughen Felix up too.

I'm enjoying doing the house up again. We're halfway through renovating our old house, and we're finding the character in it. Our new wood-burner is warmer than the inadequate heating in the front room, and the kids now have their own shower in the loft, so we can take out the mould collection that is festering in the room next to our bedroom. My favourite 'rainy afternoon' book is Thornyhold by Mary Stewart, and the star of the book for me is the actual house. This one reminds me enough of it to enjoy the rambly corners and creaky stairs! Yet more decorating coming up, though, but at least my back is up to the job...

Last few chapters

2011-10-17T11:46:00.000Z

I'm at 78, 336 words. I'm pleased to finally be writing action I have actually planned and it (mostly) matches up with the middle chapters now. If there's one thing that I've been aware of it's the paucity of my descriptions and settings. having spent the entire book being asked 'but what does your main character (MC) look like?' I've finally worked out how to introduce her before I have to resort to her staring in a mirror. I allow my other MC see her right at the opening of the book. Of course, the last eight chapters are essentially in first draft, but I'm working at a good pace and just want to get the framework down. It's interesting to me that the more hours I spend writing, the better my first draft words are. I'm more conscious of my tendency to fall in love with a word and use it everywhere, for example. It's not unusual for me to squeeze one word into two places in the same sentence, for example. For example, I have a bit of a thing, for the word example.

I'm also into the action scenes (my no. 1 son insists in calling it 'the fight scene') which is a relief after all that dialogue. I don't think action scenes are going to be my superpower, though. I'm also very conscious that there is a line between drama and melodrama. I just wish I knew where it is. I do have a small scene where for a change, I step away from my very close character POV writing to a bit of omniscient narration. I hope it gives a breather for the reader between the (hopefully) very suspenseful 'fight scene' (which I am struggling with) and the suspense of the aftermath. Action scenes are a bit like car chases, I think, they often work better in pictures than words. I have a list of 'boy' books to read to get my head around the idea. I also have a book on how to write action, so I'm dipping into that, too.

Conflict, Action and Suspense by William Noble is from the Elements of Fiction Writing series and I recommend them all. I seem to be reading more books on writing as I go through, which I hope will just sink in and improve my writing, because I can't seem to remember much once I've put them down!

Jackdaws

2011-10-11T11:33:00.000Z

Every autumn, great groups of jackdaws collect on the ridge opposite our house and fly backwards and forwards, making an amazing racket. They are so beautiful, they are amazing flyers, often falling deliberately in pairs and just pulling out along the valley floor. I think they are lovely birds, so neat in black and grey, and they outwit my cats all the time. They are so entertaining, I named my heroine after them. Here a group broke away and flew overhead.

New ideas

2011-10-09T21:07:00.000Z

I was reading from my long list of new supernatural books, and was struck by the amazing locations people use to set their stories in. Mine seems painfully pedestrian, and my next rewrite/edit of the book must include some better settings and also a bit more creepy darkness. Jack seems to spend a lot of time cooking and shopping - not very Gothic or scary. I wanted to use Dartmoor or Exmoor, but then I run into trouble with the absence of trains. So I'm thinking about places like Eggesford and Morchard. Wooded, hilly and wild, with relatively few people.

Meanwhile, I'm up to 67,000 words which is very satisfying and I'm now having to write original scenes to connect the big dramatic ending to the re-animated middle. I just need to work on building the new scenes up. I still can't plan them out in any detail, I have to kind of hold the whole plot in my head and extend out a bit further each time.
I have planned out the Dee strand, though, and have five chapters still to write. The Dee chapters and Jack's chapters don't connect up any more, but hopefully once I've got to the end, I can weave them together a bit better. Sadie's voice is coming through loud and clear, though, and I feel like I know her better. I have a nasty feeling I'm going to be trimming the book down an awful lot, the new scenes are very first draft and very wordy.

Past 60 thousand

2011-10-07T20:00:00.001Z

Finally, I'm into the home straight with the book, because I've got about 15 thousand words written to add and another chunk planned out already. Now all I have to do is weld them together, so I should have all the new writing done by the end of October. This is at an average of 1000 words a day, do-able I think. Meanwhile, the theme for the family is definitely do up the bloody wreck we live in, since there isn't a nicer house anywhere near the price. It's coming on nicely, we now have three lovely rooms and have even worked on the garden a bit too. Next week, two helpful plumbers will install real heating on the top floor,and a new bathroom as well. Should be good, but I hate having people in doing work. Not to mention having to pack up and remove almost everything from three rooms two flights of stairs away. Well, obviously, I make the beleaguered kids and husband do that, I don't want to risk my back... We did mange to find two lovely offcuts of carpet for youngest daughter's room, and for my 'study'.
This grand apartment did have a slight sewage seeping through the floor issue...hopefully resolved. The remaining floor is full of dips and hollows and the most disgusting carpet known to man. It would be lovely to decorate that room, put down my new carpet. It will make my vague scribbling seem rather out of place!

Reading through my earlier drafts...some good stuff

2011-10-03T22:04:00.000Z

I'm enjoying writing the third draft but have found some lovely lines in previous drafts which are finding their way in. A scene where the cops knock on the door early one morning, while the house has been wrecked, and they try to explain it as extreme decorating was fun and has found its way back in. So the word count is sneaking up, probably past where it needs to be.

Our dining room has been finished, and now has the most beautiful of furniture items, a custom made row of bookcases. Not that I have had much time to read. but I have had been trying to read other supernaturally themed books. I started with this one: The Ninth Circle by Alex Bell. I enjoyed it enormously, but felt it was setting up to a sequel (which it may not be!) rather restricting the ending. It's a thought to remember for my own book, since the first book I wrote about these characters would make the bones of a sequel. Hugely imaginative, I felt drawn into the world of the characters. My one thought about the characters is that the character of Mephisto, for example, was rich, interesting and compelling, perhaps more than the central character, Gabriel. Well worth a read!

The other book that has been keeping me awake at night is called Angelology by Danielle Trussoni. Present day action is inter-cut with a big dose of historical back-story, the two narratives being woven together at the end. I could see the 'twist' very early on, which was disappointing, but otherwise the book grabbed my attention early on and kept going until the end. The prologue was an absolute attention grabber, really drags you in, although you don't return to the mysterious find until the middle of the book. I think the historical chunk is very big, very detailed and perhaps I lost interest a bit in the main story when it ended. Perhaps spreading my historical chapters through the my book is better? For me, anyway! Recommended, and they are making a film!

Both these books were début novels, and the vampires are out, angels are in trend seems confirmed. Good background for me.

Enjoying the journey again

2011-09-30T14:39:00.000Z

Having slumped through the middle chapters tying up loose ends and travelling with my heroes through the story, we're back on familiar ground, and I am able to re-use (although still rewrite) scenes and chapters. Which is exciting, and has pushed the book on to 52k words, which is more than halfway (I hope).

I'm also reflecting on the last four weeks, when I haven't blogged much because I was in a strange place. I have had a painful back since last December, which I expected to follow its normal healing course. It improved, then got worse again, twice. Finally, it just got stuck, and before my GP could send me off to see a surgeon, she had to run some tests to rule out serious illnesses, like, say myeloma. The tests came back positive.

Well, that's just a few blood tests, and they had to be repeated, and new tests added before ... well, before. So having had the 'hopefully it isn't myeloma' talk from the GP, I was sent home to wait for the weeks it takes for the tests to come back.

My first impulse was to call a friend, brother, daughter, someone, just to talk it over. But ... talk over what, exactly? In the end, my husband and I sat down and talked and thought and talked some more. Myeloma isn't curable, although there are some treatments to delay death. So I looked at the possibility, from the comfortable position of uncertainty, and we found some peace with it. Two years ago, I went to a workshop run by another psychologist called Gill Edwards. She, and other people, have been diagnosed with cancer and chosen not to get on the chemotherapy rollercoaster, and most of them had done better than expected. I would never suggest that anyone refuse treatment, but I wouldn't condemn someone for wanting to control their own destiny.

Anyway, much to my relief, the tests all came back normal. In fact, it's a puzzle for my GP, and the errant test (when it comes back) is almost certain to be normal too. She's very relieved (it must be horrible to deal out bad news) and even more surprised to find that the bad back of nine months started to clear up when I got the first set of tests. Four days later, it was fragile but pain-free and I was walking upright. Maybe the threat of myeloma kick-started my self-healing, self-preservation instincts!

While I was considering mortality, I realised something very important. Yes, I love my children, but they will survive without me. I adore my husband, and would hate to leave him, but he would move on in time. But no-one else can write my book.

Mslexia Competition

2011-09-25T20:25:00.000Z

I've been tarting up - sorry, polishing - my first 5000 words for the Mslexia novel writing competition. It has made me focus on what makes a good scene. I'm a great fan of Noah Lukeman's 'The First Five Pages' which makes you look very critically at each scene. It has made me realise how weak the beginnings and endings of some of my scenes are. So I'm looking at each scene as if it were a mini story and trying to make each first and last line intriguing enough to make a reader (hopefully) want to read on.

It's a depressing job, when I realise just how bad some of my last lines have been. But it is coming together. After a week of almost no real pain, having even a small amount over the weekend has been a bit depressing. I need to go back to some sort of writing routine, it seems to help!

Meanwhile, I finally got my last assignment from the taught part of the MA back at distinction - I was so pleased. It was a series of poems, all of which are now free to go off to the Plough Prize in Torrington. I even did well on the rationale, which was a huge relief. All I have to think about now is the dissertation.

Life on hold

2011-09-22T21:16:00.000Z

I'm in the eye of an emotional storm, which is quite a nice place to be. I had a load of tests and treatment for my back, and then the whole thing stalled why I wait for more results. It's probably a degenerating disc kind of deal, but you have to rule out all sorts of exotic illnesses before you can be sent off for treatment. Thinking of more serious illnesses, even if very unlikely, makes you clear on what's you want to achieve, and finishing this book is very important to me. But I also have had a quiet week with my back which has gone from staggering around holding onto the furniture to being able to stand upright and even have periods of being pain-free. So I've walked around in the amazing autumn weather with my husband, who has taken the week off, worked on turning our house into our home, and nailed three more chapters of the book. I'm up to 37,000 and am tackling the saggy middle of the story. I'm trying to stick to an hour minimum a day of writing, no matter what's going on, but sometimes am working all morning. For the first time in a year, I'm not blogging much, because I'm waiting for these results, and then I shall have an idea what to do to fix my back. But the book makes sense, the characters are doing all the things I need them to do, and the house looks great and feels like home. I hope to prune a few fruit trees very gently tomorrow, with some caution because the site slopes uphill. Oh, and we celebrated the equinox by making twenty-two pots of blackberry and plum jelly.

Third draft

2011-09-12T21:49:00.002Z

I'm 27k into the third draft. Having come to a nasty impasse three quarters of the way through the book, I realised it is just easier to rewrite than find all the blind ends, name changes and dodgy information. I'm also completely distracted by my back, which will need specialised treatment and is undergoing all sorts of exotic tests. Despite this, I'm pottering on with the book, most days.

I like to get into a rhythm when I'm writing, same time, every day and set myself a word target, but at the moment with builders in and out, the stupid spine and kids going off to college/uni/WWoofing my life isn't that organised! I shall just have to write when I can.

One odd symptom of my back problem - or more likely, the painkillers - is a problem finding words. The last few weeks I've had real problems sorting out my vocabulary and it's hard to keep my concentration going. So I'm quite pleased with 27k but I have a deadline for the end of September for the whole book, so I shall keep going. Even if my words get a bit stuck on occasion!

First September

2011-09-01T19:52:00.000Z

There's something renewing about this time of year. New term, through all those years of school and university. The end of summer and the beginning of the autumn and all its gifts. I love September, it's my favourite month.

So, new start. I've got a solid start to the third draft. I found I ground to a halt on the second draft when the inconsistencies built up too unworkable and now the new draft is smoother and works better - this is the Stephen King approach and it seems to work for me. I want a good start for the Myslexia novel competition and then I just have to rewrite the rest of the book. I still have a few chapters to write but I have 70k of the beginning and 13k of the end. I think I need a bit of work on the last few chapters to write but I really feel I'm writing the characters better and they are more sympathetic as well. They will work much better as my dissertation, as well.

In the meantime, I'm loading up my new bookcases with books and having a big clear out. Very therapeutic.

Writing again

2011-08-23T16:29:00.001Z

I'm back to writing, this time from the plan. It's been a difficult week. The anniversary of my daughter's death was this weekend, made more dreary even than usual by the relentless pain in my back, which is getting slowly worse, if anything. My niece was born the same year as

Léonie, and I've just found out she's expecting her first baby. I haven't just missed all of

Léonie's life, but my potential grandchildren as well. Ouch. Bereavement just keeps stinging.

Anyway, whinge over. I'm very attached to my old words, even though I know they aren't good enough. So I'm rewriting from the plan, to iron out some of the plot tangles I've got into. It takes a while to detach from the old words (so many of them!) but it doesn't take that long to rewrite, now I'm actually doing it, and I know who everyone is and what really happens. Then I can write the missing ten or so chapters to complete the book. That will be a relief, as much as anything.

Planned!

2011-08-16T22:20:00.002Z

I worked very hard today on planning, with a large bit of paper and actual pens. And (finally) I plotted the whole thing! Interestingly, a couple of scenes I loved have found there way back in having been excluded before. And the missing middle scenes, all 12 of them, make sense now. I've just got a bit of historical plot to do and I'm sorted! This all came from a post by Glynis Smy (thanks, Glynis!) and the frustration of watching my kids decorate because I can't with a bad back.

This is my rambling plot. 39 chapters and 97 scenes that make sense, have some sort of logical sequence.

And this is a gratuitous fish shot. Sorry about that.

Unplanned (600)

2011-08-15T19:08:00.000Z

Back to my old hassle of having no plan to work to. I've taken advice and I'm analysing what I have written and am looking at how to get from the beginning to the end. It's slow work, mostly because I hate doing it and I'm not really sure what I'm doing. Throw in a bad back and a house covered with dust sheets, and the distractions outweigh the motivation. There are 6 more weeks to the deadline for the Mslexia competition which I really want to go in for, and you have to have a whole novel to go in for it. I have turned up a lot of dead ends and also opportunities to develop the characters.

I still have a perennial problem - who am I writing for? If it's an adult audience, great, but it's got a strong magical element and perhaps that's more suited to a younger or crossover audience. In which case, making the teenage protagonist more prominent might be a better idea. I don't know, I read crossover fiction all the time! I'll just keep writing and see what happens...

Chaos at our house! (600)

2011-08-13T11:17:00.000Z

I didn't manage to write yesterday at all - but I had a good excuse because all the floors were up and I couldn't get to the computer! Having mostly sorted out the front room, we've spread our anti-woodworm zeal into the hall and dining room.

This is our crazy cat searching for rodents - she could get right under all the ground floor boards, hopefully her scent will put the rats off. We did have rats when we moved in four years ago but we discouraged them and haven't had any since, but we do occasionally get mice. It doesn't help that the cats occasionally catch them outside, brings them in and let them go, so we have a net increase in pests. Great going, ladies.

We took up wormy boards and replaced them with less wormy boards from the dining room, most of which were in good shape.

This is Matt painting woodworm killer all over the joists. I think both he and Kez were a bit silly on the fumes, personally. they kept breaking into song, mostly a song called 'I believe I can fly' by R Kelly but also 'I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts'. I had no idea my future son-in-law can sing so loud. In fact, I had no idea anyone could sing louder than Kez, and the two of them were deafening. I literally laughed until I cried. Well done, lads.

Then they started patching the dining room floor, so we'll be able to decorate and hopefully, get the carpet fitted.

Meanwhile, back at the literary coal face - my heroine is wrestling with the revelation of what she is. And trying to hang on to her humanity. Heavy stuff, when you're trying to choose paint colours.

(Farrow and Ball Breakfast Room Green and Dix Blue, are front runners, for the interested. Green in the front room, blue in the dining room.)

Writing endings (1000)

2011-08-11T20:46:00.000Z

Despite the distraction of hydrotherapy and the visit from a builder to mend some joists under our wormy, tatty old hall floor, I managed to write some words. It's strange that writing the ending is throwing up all sorts of ideas about what seeds need to be planted in the middle of the book. As Candy Gourlay said when she visited the university, a book is made up of set-ups and reveals. I'm finding the reveals, and need to make sure the set-ups are robust enough to carry the story.

It seemed that somewhere in the big final battle my hero turned into a force which might be dangerous! Now I have to work out how that happened...

On the home front, I am playing with paint samples and lining paper while boys sweat and swear and relocate floorboards from the dining room to the hall, and patch the donor floor with new boards or recycled hall floors. I love having five men in the family - occasionally. Although, I am sad to report that in pursuit of the ultimate toilet humour, they have installed a journal and pen in the upstairs bathroom, to keep a log - pun intended - of toilet events.

Found my horse! (the one I fell off...) (1300)

2011-08-10T21:14:00.000Z

Being a bit blocked (a bit - ha!) I gave up on the point at which I had faltered and went back to write a 2-3 sentence summary for each scene. That spurred on a violent scene for the big finale and then the fall out. I can connect this to the final chapters which are already drafted in very loose form. It was really good fun to be back writing and feel that satisfying compulsion. The urge to write comes and goes, sometimes I have to do lots of exercises to engage back with the writing, other times it drags me to the computer no matter how painful my back and my fingers take on a life of their own as the story runs through my head. I literally hear voices...you can probably get tablets for that.

Distractions (0,0,0,0,0,0)

2011-08-09T20:37:00.000Z

I'm presently using doing up the house and family visits as a distraction from my back and the actual writing of the book! I have to get back to it tomorrow, having looked at the first draft of the contemporary strand. There, I've said it. I will write at least 500 words tomorrow on the book, even if my back is bad, even if we move more stuff around. My back was so bad I had to miss hydrotherapy which was a nuisance. I suppose I'm just scared to take up the book again and not know what to do next.

Meanwhile, the dining room is next to get a makeover and most of the floorboards need to come up again to patch up the floor in the hall. That means moving more books - millions of them... it's fun to put into practice plans we've been talking about for four years but the chaos is a bit stressful after the first few days!

Writing through the pain but A363 triumph. (0)

2011-08-03T10:08:00.001Z

I've come back to writing though the pain is much worse, I literally couldn't sit still long enough to type yesterday. But my A363 result (87% for EMA and distinction overall) gives me a fantastic boost so I'm encouraged to keep writing. My tutor cheered me on this morning, thanks Morgaine!

Back to Jack. I've been reading again (I seem to either write or read but I should do both - reading improves my writing). The Legacy by Katherine Webb. I have no idea if this is a 'good' book in literary terms but I'm enjoying it and it's held my interest from the get-go. It was developed on the Arts Council Website You Write On and this is what Webb wrote:

“It's taken ten years and seven completed novels, but, thanks to YouWriteOn, I have just signed a two book deal with Orion!” Katherine Webb, The Legacy, YouWriteOn Book of the Year Award Winner, published in 2010

It handles the past story and a contemporary strand, which seem related, just like Borrowed Time, so I thought I would give it a go. You Write On is free to use and although you have to be discriminating about the feedback - some critiques are much more knowledgeable than others - you are showing excerpts of your work to readers and hearing what they got off the page. Helpful stuff.

It's also time to back my files up - I always forget when I lose momentum in my writing. At the very least I need to email it to myself.

Meanwhile, the decorating proceeds without any input from me (except technical advice - mostly confined to pointing out that the black handled brushes shed badly and lots of praise). Sophie (BSc Hons Psychology - still very proud!) is varnishing like a professional and the floor looks great in the front room. This means the five million dispossessed books now residing in boxes all over the house can soon go back.

Lost momentum (400)

2011-07-30T16:57:00.000Z

I'm terrible if I lose momentum. I got a lousy mark for one of my modules (but a reasonable pass, I keep telling myself). So I concentrated on my physio and translated my exercises into moderate amounts of decorating (very moderate). Now I'm out of the habit of writing, and it's really hard to get back into it. So, despite the fact that there is a huge sander sailing around the front room trailing smoke, and a smaller edge sander melting the black tarry paint Victorians used to paint the edges of their floorboards with, I managed 400 words. I know I have to work through Jack's strand now, in order to pull it together continuity wise. It's really hard to keep tabs on all the plot strands, but a recent input from an editor has helped me, and inspired me to go back to work on it. So, I may be off my horse but I can at least see it in the meadow. (Hi there, horse!) I just need to get back to my habit.

In the meantime, I have A363 to worry about. The results are due out by the 5th August and I will be very disappointed if I don't make a distinction now I can't get one on the MA.

Knocking down the nails

The house is filling with smoke from the industrial sanders and I'm just glad they aren't too dusty. It's going to be a two day job.

Halfway!

The Writer's Journey (again)

2011-07-25T22:04:00.000Z

I'm back to Christopher Vogler to make sense of all the little characters and all the complexities of sub plots. It feels like I'm writing two novels, each following a similar hero's journey, so it seems helpful. I've got the first half of Dee's story in a good second draft - it's about 25k, I've trimmed a few thousands off. It's nice to feel most of the loose ends are tied up, at least, and I can move on. I especially like the scene when Dee manages to reanimate the corpse of his friend, and it gets out of hand. Words like 'putrefaction' and 'stench' are so powerful. Back to new words tomorrow.

Meanwhile I have managed to paint a load of bookshelves with the help of my daughter and no. 1 son, and they look good. We also painted the kitchen but I've had my doubts about the colour...and now I'm even more unsure. Oh, well.

Crisis time

2011-07-22T17:14:00.000Z

Having over-extended myself a bit this year, with the full-time MA and A363, I'm considering taking a break before doing the dissertation. I know I can probably knock out a piece to pass the MA, but I really want to learn as much as possible and I haven't had a chance to do any of the required reading or take enough of a step back from my writing, either, to see it clearly. So, against my nature, really, which is a bit 'full steam ahead, don't hold the horses and mix those damn metaphors' I am considering taking my time.

Meanwhile, I did my first bit of decorating, thanks to the improvements I am experiencing with hydrotherapy. I painted knotting solution over all the knots on the living room bookcases, which is more work than it sounds as there's 13 feet of them .

I also got no. 1 son (and occasional editor) to paint the skirting under the new tiles in the kitchen, not trusting myself to bend that far or get back up afterwards.

If I don't kill myself doing the dissertation, I can finish the book, work on it, then hand in the best bit for next year. That sounds better to me, anyway! Then my focus can be the Mslexia novel comp. which looks excellent and I would love to have a crack at. This means I can have a single focus for the summer, that will fit in better with the demands of woodwork eradication, plumbing repairs and spinal bothers.

So why do I feel like a slacker and a failure?

Finding my way back from chaos (200)

2011-07-20T21:58:00.000Z

Every time I write a novel - and this is no. 5 - I get to 50k as if I were weaving something by hand. Each new plot twist or character is a new thread, and the trick is to not drop any and make sure you use them all from time to time. The problem is, if you get so far into a novel the danger is that you have so many threads they lose track of them. Worse, you have a slow day or two, and you drop the lot. I just can't hold that many threads at one time.

So, here I am, a few words short of 60,000 words, and I realise it's happening again. So today, I took advice and started writing out cards for each scene. I decided to start with all the Dee scenes, and soon found each scene had things I needed to tie up. For example, I introduced a lovely character from the Inquisition - and then somehow, he disappears, wasted. So he needs to be woven back in, which mirrors the present day thread, which is fun. So I ended up printing off ten chapters of that strand and read through, found and tied up loose ends, came up with more plausible bits, and examined the first and last sentences of each scene. I tend to end scenes well on high tension, but start scenes very weakly. Kelley wakes up, mostly, hardly high tension.

So, having worked over about 25k words, I feel positive about the sequence, and have lots more to write. One concern, though - the story is growing more and more, and I think I'm going to end up with over a hundred thousand words - probably quite a few more than that.

Hopefully, cutting it down will produce a cleaner draft, but that's in the future. Meanwhile, I am still very thrilled at my daughter's graduation and engagement.

Crappy day (800 and 800)

2011-07-19T22:18:00.000Z

Today was my actual birthday, which was a bit crap because my husband was in hospital having minor surgery. I'm sure I wouldn't have found it so stressful if husband no. 1 hadn't gone into hospital with a 'minor chest infection' and died 10 days later of undiagnosed leukaemia. So I don't have as much faith in hospitals as perhaps I should have. Anyway, he was fine, and apart from looking a bit battered and sore, he seems OK. Hopefully I will get some sleep without nightmares tonight, because the last week has been rubbish.
On the plus side, I am just a shade under 60k words and am looking to write the rest of the book before 1st September. I'm wondering whether I could do the last chapters of the book rather than the first for my dissertation! I do have a reasonable draft of about 6000 words for the end of the book (though it has a schmaltzy bit I don't like) already and I like the idea of not handing in chapters 5-17 or something - because the first and last chapters have to be the strongest anyway.

Guest blogger - please give a warm welcome to Boz! (0)

2011-07-18T09:39:00.001Z

My fellow MA student Boz is my first guest blogger - we seem to have a similar distraction technique for not actually writing words! And I am sad to report that I took an actual day off writing, not even writing this blog.

How absolutely fabulous that my friend and MA compadre, Reb, has allowed me to write a little post for her blog. Thanks, Reb!

It seems Reb and I are suffering from the same affliction, namely eruditioperlegomania , in other words, we’ve got the ‘waste time on endless research’ bug. And the thing is - I love it, love it, love it, but to quote my heroine, Edith Piaf, “A quoi ca sert?” My dissertation is set in 1960s Manchester and is vaguely about a bunch of children, kids born in the UK to immigrant parents of different nationalities. And that’s all you need really know because that’s where the research has exploded like a cotton wool puffball the size of K2.

All I was looking for originally was an idea of how these immigrant parents got to be where they were. In a limited way, it’s my era and my story, so I should, I think, have known more. But it’s led me into history, literature, anthropology, social science and wait for it – taraa! – something I’d never heard of as a discipline – Cultural Studies. I’m telling you my mouth is awash with saliva when I think of Cultural Studies. Yum.

And boy, am I hooked! The more academic papers I read, the more references I find to others which, naturally, I must also read. In the meantime, time is zapping by and my dissertation is not looking remotely written. However, I’m still counting it as work in the hope that I’ve absorbed some of it and it will sneak into my story one way or another – kind of the Rosetta Stone Immersion Method. http://www.rosettastone.co.uk/?ref=http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&redir=http://www.rosettastone.com/homeschool/overview/dynamic-immersion

Anyway, I was reading a brilliant little book I ordered via Bookfinder.com http://www.bookfinder.com/called Between Two Cultures: Migrants and Minorities in Britain by James L. Watsonhttp://www.amazon.com/Between-Two-Cultures-Migrants-Minorities/dp/0631187103, when I realized that I don’t have enough hours left in my life to read everything I need to read, and I started reading more quickly. I know, I know…

My next thought was ‘Yes, but why do you need to read them? You don’t, you plonker!’ But, Reb’s readers, I do, honest I do. It’s a relentless itch – the more I scratch, the more I need to get three inch acrylic nail extensions.

My next thought was ‘Well, there’s only one thing for it. You have to get a brilliant mark for your MA dissertation (tricky when you haven’t actually got anything but notes and index cards so far and a mere two months left!), and then do a PhD because that will give you permission to research. That must be the way forward.’ Oh, but I can’t afford to do a PhD. Bugger. Oh yes, and let’s face it, even if I could do a PhD, finance and grade permitting, I am seriously old (54) and I’ll probably be 60 by the time I finish it, by which time (I know me…) I’ll be living in squalor, my garden will be a jungle, my car will be a rat-infested wheelie bin, and I’ll look like a bag lady who’s totally lost touch with soap and washing detergent in the intervening six years. Or I’ll have become Alan Bennett’s Mrs Shepherd. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lady-Van-Alan-Bennett/dp/1861971222

So what I want to know is why can’t somebody just give me a position that’ll pay vast amounts and will just let me trip into on one research paper after another, like a bee sipping juicy globs of nectar from every tempting flower in the meadow. The other part of this contract would be that I could write, but only when I felt like it and on any topic I fancied. ;)

Oh, go on someone… gi’us a job! Is it really too much to ask?

Thank you, Boz. Good luck with that job!

Assignment (850)

2011-07-16T22:42:00.000Z

I'm waiting for my assignment score, which is being posted on Monday. I loved doing the Fantastic Fiction module - in which I wrote the beginning of a novel for children - and hope I get a good mark. But at this point, a pass would be reassuring! My main excitement was that my kitchen is tiled, and looks wonderful, and although the house is a tip and really getting me down, we're celebrating my birthday two days early so I don't miss out. I will have to cook though...

Chunk of dissertation off (1300)

2011-07-15T21:13:00.000Z

Malteasers

I'm up to 56,000 words, which is great, and the first four chapters are edited and off, and I'm working on the book again. It's nice to be cruising through an action packed sequence but I've had a miserable day just the same. Sometimes the universe just runs sideways and helps everyone else, anyway, but leaves me a bit short. My husband got a last minute cancellation for day surgery, which he's been anxiously waiting for - but it's on my birthday next week, which I made plans for. I got really nervous about having acupuncture, which was cancelled, our no. 2 son deigned to visit, but just to pick up airbeds, and my husband was snappy with me all day because I asked him to do some tiling. I would have done it (I'm strangely good at tiling) but my back isn't up to it. On the plus side, the tiling looks lovely. But really, the worse thing is we've run out of chocolate...

Past the halfway mark (3000)

2011-07-13T22:23:00.000Z

A great word count, I know, but misleading. I found a great scene I wrote last year, and it fits in with chapter 20 so I rewrote it and in it goes. Tomorrow's is a recycled scene from the original book, so an easy day and it adds up to 55 k. So I took some time this afternoon to do a bit more research, and it's fascinating stuff. Hungary was so interesting four hundred years ago (and probably still is, though the bit I'm writing about isn't in Hungary any more, the borders have moved many times). Now I have to knuckle down and put a decent draft together for my supervisor, and then I can move on with the book. I've had a few ideas about the rationale too, though I haven't had any feedback on the rationales I have written as I haven't had my assignments back. And the date for the results of A363 roll ever closer...

Taking a day off (1500)

2011-07-12T22:02:00.000Z

I sat down this morning and felt so tired and lost. I suddenly realised it must have been a few days since I had a day off - actually, it was sixteen days since I didn't work at least for a couple of hours. While I'm completely proud of my work ethic, I could also call it creepy obsession. I hung around this morning and wrote in my journal, then I realised what I actually needed to do - spend some time thinking about the story. So I jotted down the rest of the Dee strand, and sat down to my new research book. It's fascinating, but all the time I was reading I was also writing in my head, so sat down and actually did a bit of typing to go with it. A strange day off, but it was nice not to feel I had to write.

Pushing on (1500)

2011-07-11T20:20:00.000Z

I did the scary edit thing on chapter 3. Isn't it hard to go back to work you've moved on from? But it's OK and no. 1 son didn't find much to work on. I also started chapter 17 even though I was itching to rewrite chapter 16 from Jack's POV. Having fun with research, but did splash out for another couple of research books. Oops! Amazon should be rationed...

Now I need to do chapter 4 tomorrow. Busy days. I also managed a very short walk up Hillsborough (well, to base camp - the information board, anyway). It was nice to get the heart pumping a little bit from actual exercise, I've spent months stuck indoors. Good for the soul, seeing birds and beetles and wild flowers, especially from so high up.

Try again tomorrow (3000)

2011-07-10T22:18:00.001Z

I had the best intention - I was going to sit down with real persistence and edit chapter 3. But I just had a peak at what I wrote yesterday and started playing around with it - and the next chapter just shouted out to be written. I have written it entirely in the wrong character's point of view, of course, it really should be in my main character's voice. I will resist rewriting tomorrow if I can, it should be easier as there's less distractions while my husband is working.

When I first wrote a draft, I put a high tension encounter in very early, and then the middle of the book sagged like an old mattress. Now we build up to said scene, which is even more scary, and it works ten times better. I think the pacing thing which I am so bad at will be OK for the contemporary strand, but the historical strand has the squeak of rusty springs about it... but I'm NOT going to work on that tomorrow, because I shall be editing in an orderly manner! Oh, and did you notice I wrote three thousand words in one go? I have the flat arse to prove it...Up to nearly forty-four thousand now.

New plan - edit first, then write. (1800)

2011-07-09T22:50:00.001Z

I'm going to try to edit first - since I hate it - and write the new stuff in the afternoons. On the plus side, I've written buckets today. All very badly, but the flow of the story is down. I'm at about 43000 words now, and I've got 6000+ to go to my supervisor. Feels like halfway-ish.
I've also spent the day walking around carpet warehouses and finding bargains. I haven't enjoyed doing a house up this much for many years, my husband hates all these decisions so he resists change as passionately as the cats. But he's having a go at moving into the house we technically inhabited for the first time four years ago. More wormy floors to find tomorrow, and my deposit came through from Winchester to help fund it! Lovely stuff.

Attempting an edit of chapter 2 (1500)

2011-07-08T14:07:00.000Z

Having put it off (and off, and off) I can't ignore the fact that I now have conflicting goals. I want to have Borrowed Time finished for Mslexia's novel writing competition, of course. I also want to turn in a dissertation, beautifully polished and edited and re-edited, so I need a good draft of half of it to send off. the problem is, I want to carry on writing (just under 41 thousand words today!) so I'm forcing myself to work on the rewrite of Chapter 2 today, and Chapter 3 tomorrow. This inevitably leads on to displacement activities like making bread, and pie for the boys.

Meanwhile, we have ripped up a load of disgusting old nylon carpet to reveal the floors.

We have also revealed the odd munchy board with resident woodworm, but not too much so far. Not to mention my decorating dynamo who is off tomorrow to go volunteering on an organic farm - a bit of a rest, really.

Now I really have to print off chapter 2 and work on it - red pen moment. I hate this bit!

Finding it difficult to edit (850)

2011-07-07T22:11:00.000Z

As I get up to 40k words, I'm finding it difficult to go back and edit. It's like they are two such different processes, I can't easily swap from one to the other. Am I the only one who finds this? Plus, a lovely book full of yummy research came in and I was distracted by having to go into hydrotherapy this morning. Add pulling up the living room carpet and scoping out new floors in town, and you can understand I found it hard to focus! I did write 850 words but I think they will end up as much reduced since they don't move the story on much. Dee and Kelley are at the castle where all the murders took place, though. Fun times.

Therapied out (1500)

2011-07-06T22:27:00.000Z

I'm up to 38,500 words, which is good. After physio, I'm shattered and I have hydrotherapy in the morning. Exciting times! I just wish I didn't have to eat standing up... finding it difficult to make Felix and Jack sound distinct. Back to the drawing board. Number of chapter two words edited: 0. Whoops.

Frustrating day (500)

2011-07-05T21:02:00.001Z

My back is so painful it's distracting. Back to the physio, as it's getting worse again. That's seven months of various levels of ouch.

Looking at the book, it seems to be time for rewriting the early chapters to get them out to my supervisor and get some useful feedback. That's the plan, anyway, but I really want to keep going on the book proper. Since I can't easily do either, it's frustrating! Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.

We've decided to raise a small mortgage on the house to try and fix some of the big problems with it. I think an old house - especially one this big - is a bit of a project anyway, and for once, I'm not focused on selling it too soon. So I'm able to look at lovely wood floor samples and have chosen a woodburner. This is an updated version of my first woodburner, from 1994.
Wood is cheap and available in Devon, so it's a cheap, lovely looking option. It will certainly warm this room up a bit, anyway! I'm hoping to turn a shower room into an en-suite and create a big built in wardrobe, too. We've got structural work like a cracked drain and woodworm to deal with, too, and ideally, we would get the patched, cement render off and lime render the outside. But I can't see how they would get the scaffolding up the drive...other than by hand. Oh, my. Are there enough zeroes on that quote, do you think?

Marathon (2350)

2011-07-04T21:40:00.000Z

To avoid the painting and the smell of gloss I locked myself in the study, left the door to the garden open and, because I had nothing else to do, wrote a decent first draft of chapter 14. This is a bit dodgy, because I haven't written chapter 13 and I'm not sure what happens in it, but I did know what was going to happen to Dee in the sixteenth century, so I went with that. I did spook myself, as the two principal characters get kidnapped in the middle of the night and writing action scenes is hard for me. It's a bit like writing a car chase...doesn't really work. Well, not for me, anyway.

The study thing with the door to the garden overlooking the nature reserve blah blah is a lot less glamorous when you know the sewer runs right under the floor and smells like it is cracked. I moved out when the sewage stank worse than the gloss paint.

Busy day (1100)

2011-07-03T21:14:00.000Z

I had a window for some writing this morning, before I cooked a big family roast. It was really exhilarating, I started out knowing I had to get from A to B but it seemed as if there would be a really long (and dull) journey between them. Then I found a halfway point that was way more exciting, and will naturally lead on to the next chapter. What an (unplanned) gift! One for the fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants brigade, I think. Hopefully, I can put Stephen King back on my bookshelf, after I relegated him after listening to Marcus Sedgwick, who was so convincing about plotting. I agree with all his arguments, but I'm not a plotter and these little moments are so magical and creative, I couldn't bear to miss them. I'm up to 36k now and on a roll.

And only one month until the A363 result, which hopefully I get at distinction. If I don't I'll still trade in the points for the Open College of the Arts and study some poetry. Meanwhile, I want my assignments back from Winchester, I seemed to hand them in ages ago.

All change (1600)

2011-07-02T21:00:00.001Z

Some of the Chain Gang

It's chaos here at the House of Woodworm and Drafts. Lifting the elderly hall carpet revealed what we already knew - extensive woodworm in a few crucial places, though the rest looks OK. With the new paintwork and bare floors, it looks loads better already and we've taken out a mortgage to sort it all out. Going to Winchester was a chance to decide whether to go or stay here, and what to focus on in the next five years. The MA, more than anything, told me to get on and spend a year writing and see what happens, and that's been great for me. Leaving a job full of responsibility (and attendant paperwork) was difficult and left me floundering a bit, wondering what to do with my time. I can't do masses of housework because my back is so bad, and it would rapidly send me insane anyway, because I hate it. I feel too guilty to sit about and read or do hobbies, and I miss the discipline of work that sits you down at 9am and you have a target. having worked for a few hours, I feel justified in chilling out with a book or mucking around on the computer. 'Retiring' is hard work, and 'becoming a writer' sounds too poncy for words. So I'm 'working' on my novels and developing the teaching, and for the first time in four years, don't feel like a complete slacker. My back being very slightly less painful, I have cooked a lot today and advised the chain gang (cute name for the kids, don't you think?) what to do in the garden.

Past the thirty thousand mark! (1200)

2011-06-29T10:38:00.000Z

I can't believe it but I'm at 32, 603 second draft words on my novel! And 4467 of them are at the revamp stage. I went back to an old trick that I used to use - end your day's work in the middle of the action so you get started quickly the next day.I have also been working on my website. We had a lovely talk on the MA from Candy Gourlay about websites, and my husband had already bought my name as a co.uk domain. Having put together a leaflet for teaching, it occurred to me that a lot of the information could go on a website. I'm putting together three workshops - a fiction one to get story juices going, a poetry one to look at the importance of the right word, and life writing because that's where a lot of narrative therapy experience taught me the value of writing it all down in the first place. All of our imaginative writing is drawn from our life experiences to some extent, even if I'm writing a battle scene with two bad guys, I'm using my knowledge of movement and pain and being inside a body. I may even draw on my experience of my bad back!
I'm setting enough time aside to write but nowhere near enough time to read. Next job. Convince kids that reading and research is as important as writing.

The joys of editing? (800)

2011-06-28T22:02:00.000Z

Having started chapter 11 it's back to chapter 1 to tidy up and trim down. I hate this bit, mostly because I don't really know how to do it. I do have a book on editing and revision, snappily titled Revision and Self-Editing by James Scott Bell, who wrote my favourite book on plotting. Which I can't do either.

I don't mind faffing about with language, I'm OK at seeing the silly mistakes where you don't know who's talking etc. (I also know I'm terrible at seeing repetitions, but I do hear them when I read them out to no.1 son!) My problem is the big stuff, who knows what when, which order is everything in? Are characters consistent? I'm worried that chapter 1 will end up overwritten and the later chapters won't be written enough, so I'm just going to edit in order while I keep writing the main book.

Scared to death by my own writing (2800)

2011-06-27T14:35:00.000Z

Having plonked out 2800 words this morning, some adapted from a previous draft, I am suddenly nervous about holes and inconsistencies which start to creep in at this point. Do we already know Zsofia's name? Where did they get the vellum in chapter 6 and is it related to the one in chapter 10? This is the point at which I start to falter normally, then struggle on for another ten or twenty thousand words then panic completely. How does anyone write an entire book?
I've been advised to plot what I have written on cards and build the next few steps from there. After all, I know where the story is going, I know where it has to get to. A very helpful insight from Will, thank you! New research book came in the post this morning, so more reading to do. I could write a non-fiction book at this point, I'm learning so much about Lithuania and Poland's strange political history. I do have blisters on my nose from the grindstone...so I'll take a break now and cook dinner for the five thousand instead.

Rewriting (2000)

2011-06-26T20:17:00.000Z

Looking back at what I'd written yesterday, there was some good and some I just didn't need. I've found my way to the end of Chapter 9 and am ready to meet the big bad in sixteenth century Poland. I've already sketched out the scenes where Dee and Kelley meet her so that should take less time than normal, giving me time to work on second draft of the first 10k for my supervisor to look over.

Meanwhile, I'm surrounded by boxes and rubbish and furniture. We've shifted beds, dumped old mattresses (at the proper place, not random fly-tipping, I hasten to add!) sorted boxes and done oodles of laundry. At least the weather was gorgeous. Thank goodness for my hard-working family, who moved a three bedroomed house, drove the entire contents 166 miles, then dragged it all up the drive!

Back in Devon for good (500)

2011-06-25T20:44:00.003Z

The rental house in Winchester is empty, keys back to the estate agent, and all the stuff is in heaps all over the house. Books, kitchen stuff, furniture, bedding, books. The adventure that started here is finally over and it was a great experience for me, and my two fellow adventurers. One got best student award for his course, the other excelled and got a job next year as a senior resident for his final year at Sparsholt college. I have done the taught part of my masters and am well into doing the dissertation. It has been a very productive year.

Today I wrote 500 words and realise they were just rubbish. A year ago I would have tried to improve them convinced that I needed them, now I just know they are unnecessary, don't advance the plot, and can chuck them out again. But I have worked out what top do instead.

Slacking (0 and 800)

2011-06-24T15:24:00.000Z

Yesterday, I just sat about and wasted a whole day. I did cook up a load of Fearnley-Whittingstall's chorizo and Thai green curry sauce for the freezer, and chased the cats away from the bird feeders one million times before I lured the little grey baby bird assassin into the kitchen with dog biscuits (yes, she's that stupid) and shut the door. We've already loaded her collar with bells, it sounds like Christmas here when she scratches. It's not as if I used the spare time sensibly by going to bed early or doing my new back exercises either, I just tapped away at plants vs. zombies until 1a.m. and then didn't sleep.

So, today I resolved to work, work, work. The cat was secured (with more dog biscuits) and I sat down determined to plough on with the story. I managed 800 words before I ran out of steam, but my heart wasn't in it.

Fortunately, I'm going to be teaching creative writing workshops through the local library, so I have spent a very productive couple of hours writing a tri-fold leaflet all about it. So I don't feel quite so lazy today. The cleaning crew are down in Winchester, blitzing the rental house and packing up the big van. I shall look forward to having them back tomorrow at some point.

Moving angst (1600)

2011-06-22T16:52:00.001Z

Four years ago we moved house, and returned to our rented house in Beaford to clean up. While driving back, we were hit head on by an idiot, who overtook into a corner. Now my husband and children and cleaning up the rental house in Winchester and driving home on Saturday... I am unable to go with them because my back won't stand the journey, so already feel guilty about lumbering my husband (who is a bit phobic about the whole idea of moving house) with the job of filling a large Luton van and driving it 166 miles back home. Then everything will have to be carried or ferried by car up the ridiculously steep drive.
Meanwhile, I left my heroine stuck in a car when she realises someone is on the back seat (major creepy for me personally!) so chapter 9 is all about that confrontation. I have enough for the dissertation but am going to keep going even as I start revising chapters 1-8. Good words are thin on the ground, at the moment!

On a roll (3760)

2011-06-21T20:03:00.000Z

Yes, 3760 words! Admittedly it took me all day and 1400 words were mostly written and just needed to be chopped to fit. It was fun, writing a sort of legend or myth that just grows over time. I've been researching Elizabeth Bathory, who certainly killed a lot of young girls but almost certainly doesn't deserve the reputation she has now as a 'vampire' and monster who bathed in the blood of young girls. As if a serial killer and sexual sadist wasn't enough! Now I've invented more backstory about her origins. Great fun. Hopefully she won't haunt me, because I did make her clever and pretty. My back hurts from sitting at the computer for six hours though.
Meanwhile, the house gets painted by my flunkies, normally called the 'tiny spongers' but presently earning their keep. We move our stuff back on Saturday, Sophie Matt and Russell head out in the rented van on Thursday to clean up the house and pack it all into the van. Then I get my boys back and we'll be seven again. We would be eight, but no. 2 son is living with his girlfriend but not too far away, so we shall see him soon, too.

Progress! (750 and 1450)

2011-06-20T11:12:00.001Z

My wordometer has reached 17861! This is partly because I'm running into scenes I have already written, though I'm keeping very little. So I managed a whole chapter this morning, bringing in new threats to Jack and Felix now they have met. The same threat has just popped up in the Kelley strand - wow, I feel like a real writer, with a plot and everything (which reminds me, I should get me one!) The kids are decorating the hall stairs and landing(s) which is the biggest expanse of wall we have and doing a lovely job covering the mustard/beige/baby poo shade the previous owners liked. Although, they were heavy smokers, so it could have started out white. The skirting is now darker than the walls and I can't wait to get the terrible carpet up. I guess we're staying here after all...

Fourteen thousand words! (850)

2011-06-17T11:07:00.000Z

I'm chuffed to have logged fourteen thousand words on Borrowed Time since I got back from Winchester and it's a substantial chunk of the dissertation. Whether the words are any good remains to be seen! Daughter and betrothed are sanding and knotting the acre or so of tongue-and-groove panelling the previous owners covered up the hallway in (then didn't bother to use knotting solution so the whole thing is spotty). They took down the original Lincrusta...which people now pay to have restored...when they stripped out the fireplaces and modernised the ancient walls with cheap plasterboard and tacky skirting. At least the woodworm are original - and enjoying the old doors. We moved in here and immediately were hit by a driver, head on, and it soured our relationship with the place a bit, so it's good to reconnect and start decorating and improving it. We were measuring up for book cases yesterday, what a lovely bonding experience that always is. He's measuring up for a case for CD's so it's not just me and my insane book habit. In my defence, he does have a lot of guitars, drums, flutes and a violin.
As I write, I'm finding connections between different narrative strands. There has to be a reason to jump between time periods and I've made the account of Kelley written down in documents in the present day, although my character doesn't exactly sit down and read them, they are there. I think they might be archived and translated by the bad guys at the end of the book, come to think about it. Plot, just jumping out while I write, how cool and helpful is that?

Real Life (400)

2011-06-16T21:25:00.000Z

Today, real life got in the way of writing. The jackdaw we were helping died peacefully, but left a gap in my day, especially as he was doing so well. Russ and I went to the bank to discuss either taking out a small mortgage to do the structural and plumbing work the house needs, or whether we might just move. Mortgaging would save us money, and I love the location but my back doesn't really suit the steep drive and long walk into town. So we thought about moving and talked about mortgaging and came home with lots of plans. There was no room left for writing, although I managed to find a bit of Felix's chapter. I had one of those moments, when a new character walks in and you really like them. Shame he's getting divorced, the soon-to-be ex-wife is great! I shall have to find more interesting things for her to do. Tomorrow, I hope to finish his chapter and get back to Kelley's adventures in 1585.

Research, research (1100)

2011-06-15T22:31:00.000Z

The problem with research is that it's fascinating. I get sucked in with new directions like finding a 'natural philosopher' called Boldizsár Batthyány (another sub-plot) and spend time following the story instead of writing nice new words. Eventually, I fell into another character's story and managed to write some words. It's very satisfying while the words are coming but it's so easy to get distracted! I'm going to try headphones tomorrow...

Chapter 4 (1200)

2011-06-14T19:30:00.000Z

I seem to be on a bit of a roll (just writing it has jinxed it) but the story is being stitched together. I can see what will need to happen in second draft now, find the little links and hooks and make sure they go somewhere, preferably towards one of the other strands. I'm missing the peace and quiet and sheer boredom of Winchester, though, there are so many distractions here! Baby bird to feed, cats to keep off the baby blue tits in the garden, children to see to, meals to cook, husband to entertain in his lunch hour, postman to deal with, phone ringing...that's without any housework or actual paid work. How does anybody actually write a whole book?
One thing I've been doing is strengthening the story by reducing the number of points-of-view, rewriting the teenager's scenes as much as possible through the eyes of Jack, the main character. It gives an insight, which feedback from class has suggested is missing, into the motivations and character of Jack, who is supposed to be at the centre of the story, after all. I often find that the peripheral characters seem stronger, partly because you can 'see' them through the lead's eyes which is harder to do through the central character. But they also seem quirkier and more interesting, so I'm going back to strengthen the main people and play down the visiting talent. It does make you think about the personality of the person more, and I'm playing around with the relationship from the other side, see which works best.

Monday mornings (1000)

2011-06-13T22:21:00.001Z

Strange how Monday morning always seems to have that back-to-school, or back-to-work feeling, even when I'm doing neither. So I actually sat down and worked. This threading the strands together thing is (sort of) working, I'm just playing with finding the links between them rather than forcing them with contrived connections. Meanwhile my baby bird is hanging on and gaining strength, very nice although the study stinks of cat food and worse and everything I own is covered in bird poo. It's suddenly a cold night with a clear sky and big moon and I'm freezing, although we managed a sunny evening. I feel like I ought to go howl at the moon or something, writing about the Carpathian mountains and packs of starving wolves...

I can't respond to comments on my blog - this is getting old and annoying, blogger - so in response to Downith...

I have, gorgeous book! I used the picture to visualise the dog in the book. Hope things are going well?

Another day without writing a word

2011-06-12T21:55:00.000Z

At least I have a good excuse - my husband's parents and our son and his girlfriend were all joining us for a Sunday lunch, and by the time I had cooked and eaten that I was so sleepy I couldn't concentrate. Any spare time was taken up with feeding the bird every hour and a half. But I did do some research into beliefs about blood around the world and the crimes of Richard Trenton Chase, who believed drinking blood would 'cure' him from what he believed was a disease and killed 6 people. The details will give me nightmares but it's a recognised delusion. I can get on and work tomorrow and hopefully, the bird won't take so long (if he's still here). He's a time waster, he's very cute. He is still very fragile but we're still trying. He managed to balance on two feet today, pretty good at his age, and has filled out a bit over 48 hours. He is easier to feed, too, but I'm looking forward to him being able to eat by himself!

Chapter 3 (800)

2011-06-11T18:06:00.000Z

I have to confess, I didn't write a single word yesterday, being entirely occupied by famly stuff and the rescue of a jackdaw. This one literally landed on our doorstep after falling prematurely from its nest. Desperately cold and starving in the shrubbery where it ended up, it came out to attract its parents' attention and the cat pounced. I brought it in to keep it quiet and warm (and die in peace) and four hours later it came round enough to take a little food and a lot of water and so I decided to give it a bit of TLC and see how it does. So far so good - its warm and dry and eating and very inquisitive, even if it's too young to stand yet. So I got up at 12, 3 and 5 a.m. to heat up the heatpad and feed it and I reckon it's got a chance.

So, I decided to try and write a bit more to catch up today. I managed 800 words of chapter 2 and rewrote chapter 3 from the first person POV. My historical strand seems so much more interesting from a different viewpoint, and he's an interesting rogue and conman. I'm enjoying the challenge now!

Chapter One and Chapter Two (600)

2011-06-09T21:08:00.000Z

I don't feel like I'm writing all that much but I'm reorganising previous writing so the word count overall is piling up. What I can't see is how to weave the strands together. Marcus Sedgwick wove three narrative POV together in White Crow, so it's back to the drawing board to work out how he did it. I'm missing the quiet days in Winchester, only for the fact that I literally had nothing else to do but work. Having come home to spend time with my husband, he had to go to Winchester to look after our youngest boy while the eldest was away - camping in Devon! I can't keep up, I'm going to tag them all with GPS trackers... I'm also missing my student colleagues, especially from the Fantastic Fiction module, who had such an interesting way of looking at writing. They pushed me to do better, at least with the kid's book. Back to work.

New distractions and hardware problems (700)

2011-06-08T23:02:00.000Z

I did write 700 words. I also have 4000 words of rewritten and tarted up beginning. I also made choc chip muffins! This was very satisfying but very very fattening. I also sorted out the airing cupboard and finally threw out all of my predecessor's duvet covers and throws. I loved Maya as a friend, but we still have a lot of her stuff. So I am getting rid of most of the stuff we had before and can use the stuff we have bought as a couple. Since my future son-in-law is working his socks off in my garden, I have promised white choc and lemon muffins on Friday, just to keep him motivated... not to mention that my husband will be back with many of my books.
I do have a better feeling for the beginning of the book now, and am bringing in sections of the old book. I have a feeling that there will be a big edit, and and the old stuff, which got me started, will go. Bookshelves beckon for tomorrow, that should take up the whole morning.
Meanwhile, I can't make my new printer work, both mouses (mice? mices?) have packed up so I've pinched my husband's barely functioning one. It's way better than a typewriter but it's frustrating (and another distraction) when the computer doesn't work smoothly. Not to mention not being able to answer comments on the blog - I don't know why, but I know other bloggers have the same problem.

Easily distracted (700 and 500)

2011-06-07T22:33:00.000Z

Moving back home has given me a load of extra excuses not to to write. While everyone has been fed perfectly well, I couldn't move for all the half opened Jacob's cracker packets in the cupboard and couldn't get anything out without getting everything out. So, one major sort out later (do we really need those black beans whose best before date was somewhere n the nineties?) and I have space to move! I'm also sorting out, finally, the results of two families with children moving in together, and keeping all of his stuff, and all of my stuff, and then getting stuff which is ours...

In between I'm horribly easily distracted by a computer game called plants vs. zombies - yes, it is that stupid - and the urge to use up the 4 bars of cooking chocolate and three tins of cocoa powder by making chocolate chip muffins. On my brief moments in front of the office computer (that's what we're calling the playroom/storeroom/laundry room now) I did manage to weld the first five chapters of Marley into something and played with the idea of changing the beginning of borrowed time to better accommodate the ending. But the airing cupboard needs sorting...

Lazy days (400)

2011-06-05T18:17:00.000Z

Not a good writing day but I got up so early it's a miracle I got any writing done at all. I'm trying to relax and be motivated to work at the same time, which doesn't really work. Back to work tomorrow - it feels more like a work day. I did manage to introduce the antagonist though, quite smartly, I think. A lot of research into the Holy Roman Empire took up the best part of an hour - something else I'm going to have to work on.

Making space (1100)

2011-06-04T19:29:00.001Z

A painful day, partly because I went into town to get trousers for no. 1 son and hurt my back, and partly because I have had to sort through and get rid of some more books. In between, even though in more pain that usual, I managed to write 1100 words on Borrowed Time. I found, in the back of my brain, stuff I didn't even know about 'Greek fire', a technology known to the Arabs in the Byzantine era. How did I know that? I had no idea - so I looked it up, and I did know the basic facts about it. That spooked me, like I was channeling some bloke who knows way more history than I!

Then I worked it out. Years and years ago, I fell in love with a series of racy romances by Sergeanne Golon (actually by two people) which are probably the opposite of literary fiction. But I loved them, and the racy bits went over my head until I was a teenager anyway. But in the middle of one of the books, is an incidence of Greek fire being used and explained. Ha! Crappy genre blockbuster fiction - with impeccable historical research! Not to mention a bit of sex education...

Sunny, sunny days (700)

2011-06-03T18:42:00.001Z

I've been watching manoeuvres as my daughter's boyfriend moves in temporarily, another son moves in with his girlfriend but his stuff has moved in, and the third one prepares to go back to college. Meanwhile, I have been trapped by my back typing while lying almost flat. I'm bored with the pain now.

On the plus side, I have edited 4000 words of the beginning of the book ready to fit in the other strand. This complicated structure may be too complex but I'm giving it my best shot for the next month, when I can get it to my supervisor before she goes off on holiday. More thoughts about the plot as well, but I must remember to write them down! I have an 'aha' moment when I'm writing, I'm six inches from a whiteboard and a dozen pens, and still don't do it. Ten minutes later I know I had a brilliant idea, but it's gone... I'm going to put a post-it to remind me to write it down.

Meanwhile, the sun is too hot but looks lovely, and the cat has worked out where the baby sparrows are... two down, four to go. I'm locking her in periodically to give them a chance, but they are a bit stupid, despite being able to fly.

Back on my horse - or possibly carrying it... (1150)

2011-06-02T14:22:00.002Z

I'm writing, though it feels very uphill because I'm being attacked by the demon of self-doubt. He looks like my geography teacher (gender uncertain) and insists on shouting 'this is all utter crap!' every time I attempt a full stop. He's out of the office at the moment (sadly, probably not sourcing a breath mint) so I can sneak a few words for fun.

I'm attempting a part of the novel that is set in the past, but despite my efforts my third person limited POV character keeps speaking to me directly. He's so opinionated. I love that as a trusted servant he sees everything - that really helps the story along. Right from the beginning I wondered if he could just be the first person narrator of his own strand - or even book. He's suspicious, a conman by trade, and doesn't even tell himself the truth (being locked in with his ego).

Meanwhile, I'm trying to settle back into a routine at home. It's not as easy as I hoped, though the cats are pleased to see me and my 12 year old daughter is great. My husband, on the other hand, has had a taste of freedom...

Oh, and I can't post a comment on my own blog, so sorry I haven't replied to Boz and Downith, it's not for want of trying. But having done some adding up and taking away I have worked out than 20000 words over 120 days is...166.66 recurring words a day - sounds more manageable.

This is so encouraging (950)

2011-06-01T17:21:00.000Z

I have just read a lovely post by a fellow blogger known as Caroline Green, at Strictly Writing and doesn't that give you a warm feeling of hope and that the work is worth it? I've listened to lots of people tell me recently, 'oh, it's pointless, there's no chance of actually being published...' but those same people have never actually done the work, written a whole novel and edited it into shape. This gives hope - how many times have we heard the suggestion that successful writing is more work than art? Great ideas, sure, but the difference between the published and unpublished is often sheer hard work. With that in mind, I can report that I have written 950 words of BT and another 1500 of MATC. Not to mention playing around with the plot. So, thank you Caroline.

Just get on with it (0)

2011-05-31T13:36:00.000Z

So, I have reorganised the study (don't all the pretty writing books look shiny...and so many of them unread). I have tidied and sorted paperclips, and am considering colour coding them. Stationary has been sorted and tidied and put in separate drawers and pots. Pens in pen pot. I am even faffing about with a second printer in case the first one is not sufficient for the dissertation. What I haven't done is write a single word for the actual dissertation.

All it is is 20k of reasonable words, frankly, two weeks work with fair weather and a following wind, with another month for editing, a few weeks away from it to develop some sort of distance and back for a good edit. Middle of August, at the latest. All of which would feel way more feasible if I had actually written one poxy word of it.

I have decided to humiliate myself into some sort of effort by recording my word count each day on this blog. Hopefully this will make me stop pratting about with my previous words (which won't count) and write shiny new ones. On the plus side, I've written 2000 words on my children's book in the last 24 hours - maybe the two are connected?

All assignments handed in!

2011-05-25T13:20:00.000Z

I have now done 5/9 of the MA, with just the dissertation to go by 30th September. Having thought I would need an extension, I have powered on and done the assignments, probably not to the highest level, but my back won't allow me to do much more. Tonight we read ten minutes of our children's story - which is such a nice idea, celebrating our work. Then I'm off home - thank goodness. I'm so tired of having to try and type while lying almost flat. I think this time, I may actually have to have surgery, which is a sobering thought.

I've read some cracking children's writing in the last twelve weeks, real talent expressed through drafts of stories and an inspirational bit of poetry/picture computer work. I have really enjoyed learning to write for children - the tutor is a published children's writer and an inspiration. She's also a fascinating lecturer, keeping my interest despite the pain of the last few weeks.I wonder if the writing for children MA would have suited me better! On the plus side, my other tutor this semester has helped me see the value of fiction for grown ups. And the toolkit module has made me research - and use that research as a starting point for fiction, rather than slavishly following the 'facts'. And poetry - I've so enjoyed writing poetry, which I used for three of my five assignments, even though it's definitely not my superpower.

I've also sent in an entry to Undiscovered Voices, the SCBWI competition. Having listened to two winners of previous competitions, who found it got them off the blocks into publishing their books, I thought it was a useful exercise, even if I realised I had left a glaring error - on page one- as soon as it had been sent. Oh, well. I'm not expecting much, it's been a bit last minute!