Lost momentum (400)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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...