I Did It

I finished my Nano “novel” today at just over 50,000 words and typed THE END.

50,000 words of science fiction poured from my fingers onto my screen this month.
The quality is... indescribable but don't mind that, just look at the number of words! So many words!

I have a purple bar and access to a lot of “prizes” that are mostly money off writing tools that I don’t want to use. I suppose I also have bragging rights.

I just feel tired.

Other years I’ve been so happy to make it past the finish line. This year, I’m glad I wrote the story and found out what it was about and how it ended but I’m not sure what to do with it now.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so flat at the end of NaNoWriMo.

And now I've got no excuse for avoiding anything I don't want to do. Maybe I need to do another challenge in December.

NaNoWriMo in All Its Glory

I was asked on Quora about previous Nano novels, and looking back I realised I've had a very chequered Nano career. I’ve got a lot of finished (but mostly unedited) stories and a couple of unfinished ones and the quality really varies.

2004 The Coven.

A group of would-be witches get in over their heads and need help to get one of their own back from an alternate reality.

Mostly very bad, but with odd flashes of “where did that come from?”

2006 Another Way

A quantum computer becomes sentient.

Probably one of my favourites of all my books. It has a lesbian couple as the main protagonists, and two bedroom scenes. Mind you, one is a quarrel and one is a pillow fight, but still.

2007 Missing

A young child goes missing and his sister tries to rescue him with the help of her professor.

Very badly written and unresearched on police procedure. A few nice moments with the kid from his point of view.

2008 Magic Time

Three children go back through a portal into an earlier time.

Unfinished and probably just as well. I think I got 24k words before I ran out of steam.

2009 Space Escape

Something about rescuing sentient animals.

Even looking at the draft I can’t make sense of it. Not one of my better efforts.

2010 The Silver Flute

Claire falls through into an alternate universe where science is masquerading as “magic” and she finds a flute that is the key to opening the doors to other worlds. Will she fall in love and stay in the new world or return to her own? And how?

A very messy book but it’s my favourite because I loved the characters of Claire, the journalist with the temperament of a librarian, and Rhea, the innkeeper she falls in love with. Although it’s technically finished, Claire ends up with the wrong person and I want to rewrite it to the ending I really want.

2011 Timeless

A Mary-Sue character gets abducted by time travellers and after adventures in the future sets up her own rival time travel agency. With a cast including a clapped-out AI, blue and grey humans and an annoying cousin.

An OK story. As usual some fun parts and some less so.

2012 Saving Space Through Tessellation

When Sylvie's father is kidnapped from a secure science lab, her life is in danger as much as his. Can she escape from the confines of her school with the help of her two friends and rescue her father, who is being held on another planet in another galaxy?

Includes a man in a crocheted chicken suit and a random penguin. (It was just after Random House and Penguin merged. I really thought they should have chosen the name “Random Penguin”.)

It’s a bit of a schoolgirl romp and I had fun with it. It's also my favourite of all my titles.

2014 Marked

When Amy inherits a country cottage from her Gran she also inherits a mysterious book which turns out to be cursed. In trying to remove the curse, Amy sets free a demon who places his mark on her. Can she get rid of the mark before she succumbs to its power and becomes possessed by the demon?

Unfinished at 28k because I took the book in a direction that didn’t work. Not one I want to go back to.

2015 Twisted

Em's difficult home life makes her an obvious target for anyone looking for disaffected youngsters. A shady group who claim to be exploring a distant planet recognise her potential and enlist her for her science background. But what is really going in with the Asimov Foundation?

I don’t remember much about this one which is a bad sign!

One year I tried editing instead of writing. That didn’t go well. Some years I just didn’t write at all.

This year I won't know how well it's gone until afterwards. At the moment I'm putting off writing my story by blogging instead. At least I've written every day so far, except for a pre-arranged day off. Tomorrow is another day off. I ought to get onto my story now and stop playing online.

Day three of Nano

I've had three reminders to donate to Nano so far, so that averages one a day.

It was the constant demands for money that made me give up after 2015 and not write at all last year. This year I don't know if I'll donate because my main support is on Quora and Ravelry and not on the Nano forums which are well-nigh unusable.

I love the creativity of Nano but it's a pity that it's being turned into a mostly fund-raising event.

Nevertheless, I now have over 7,000 words written. It's been a tough one today. I wrote before checking any social media using mostly ideas I'd planned out over the last month and some I came up with on my bike ride yesterday.

Then I went out for a cycle ride hoping to come up with some more ideas but today that just didn't happen.

I'm going to be running out of preplanned ideas soon. I wonder what I'll do then.

Am I even a writer?

I usually call myself an “amateur writer” because otherwise I think people will assume that I plan to make money by writing. Nope. It’s a hobby.

Strange, because I don’t call myself an “amateur crocheter” even though I don’t plan to make money from it. I’m pretty good at crocheting - clearly not an amateur!

I’m not an amateur pedestrian, driver, or cyclist either; I’m just any one of those three at any time.

I wonder when “writer” got to mean “someone who makes a living at writing”. Or maybe it didn’t and it’s just me.

It's that time again

The clocks went back today and the evenings will be dark now. We're getting into firework season and the cats will have to be kept in early. Xmas approaches and I've already missed overseas posting dates.

Only three days left to NaNoWriMo

Last year I ignored it and the year before I tried editing instead of writing. I didn't feel I gained much by either strategy. So this year I will again attempt to write a 50k word story in a month. Go me!

I have characters, a world, and some sort of shambolic plot. I also have aliens, lots of lovely aliens. I mean what's not to like?

I've looked back over past efforts and I liked bits of what I'd written. I have a particular fondness for the scene with the chicken suit and the random penguin.

I will never be a professional author because I'm not willing to put in the time and discipline needed but writing is my hobby and it's the chance to really get into it once a year.

I haven't made it to 50k every year I've tried so it remains a real challenge, and this month I'm starting a new volunteer job with Beanstalk, as well as having a lot of family commitments.

No one ever said it would be easy. Wish me luck!

So far so good

I'm up to 4000 words on my Nanonovel. It's not great literature. It may not even be readable. But I'm having fun with it!

The door opened and Jenny took in Em's face and gave her a huge hug. Em had the familiar feeling of coming home she always had in Jenny's presence and she felt the tears start at her eyes again.

"Oh look at you," Jenny said. "What have you been up to now?"

"I got myself thrown out over a boy and we didn't even do it," Em said.

Jenny laughed. "Trust you. Come on in. Mum's out but she said you can stay as long as you need to. Alfie won't be using his room till he comes back in the summer, so you can have his bed if we change the sheets."

Em let out a huge breath she hadn't realised she was holding. "So I won't be needing to put on my fishnet tights and hang around outside King's Cross Station," she said.

"What?" Jenny did a double take and then laughed. "You and your old-fashioned ideas. I don't know where they come from."

"They're not old-fashioned. It might be the oldest profession but I'm sure it's still around."

Jenny shook her head but she was smiling. "Let's get this bed made up and you can tell me how you managed to get thrown out of your house for not having sex with a boy."

"I didn't say that. We didn't do IT but.. it's complicated."

"So you can fill me in on all the gory details."

It was a mixed blessing having a friend that you could say anything to except the one thing you really wanted to say.

Story Competition

Can you write a story about time travel in less than two weeks? Would you like an amazon gift voucher? Then you need to go to Indie Writers Monthly Blogspot for details of their competition.

The competition closes on 15th June. Good luck if you go in for it!

Are you ready?

Nanowrimo starts tomorrow. Are your pencils all sharpened, your notebooks at the ready, your laptop battery charged, your wordcount spreadsheets updated? Do you have snacks and coffee and chocolate to hand? Most importantly of all, do you have an outline?

Actually, skip that last one. You don't need to know where your story is going when you start writing; some of us only find out what the story is by writing it.

If you get stuck, Brian Klems has some suggestions for what to write next:

If you find yourself at a loss for what to write next, come up with a way to make things worse, let the characters respond naturally to what’s happening, write a scene that fulfills a promise you made earlier in the book, or work on a scene you know readers will expect based on your genre and the story you’ve told so far. 

 (from 6 Secrets of Writing a Novel Without an Outline)

Brian Klems suggests an organic way of working that I feel comfortable with but the article also gives you a lot of things to think of all at once when trying to write and I'm not sure I can do that. While I'm thinking up stories what seems to work best for me is trying to come up with the story I most want to read. Mind you, sometimes the characters just won't co-operate (I'm going to be editing a novel this month where the main character refused to fall for the attractive woman I'd set up for her and insisted on falling for a character who was supposed to be a minor annoyance).

For anyone doing Nano this year: I'm here to cheer you on. The purple bar is calling your name, just make sure you've got enough chocolate in to fuel your writing. Oh, is it only me that runs on chocolate then?

Don't give up the day job?

From Bo's Cafe Life

I've just been reading You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing and it made me think about what it's like to be a professional writer.

Scalzi has an interesting history. He's known since he was around fourteen that he wanted to write for a living because it was easy for him compared to say, maths. He's making a good living at writing but not mainly based on writing novels (or not at the time he wrote You're Not Fooling...) He's written a lot of non-fiction including articles for various publications and he's willing to take on most commissions if they pay well enough.

It clarified for me why I don't want to be a professional writer. If you're a writer you have to write whether you want to or not. Now I've done my fair share of writing for a job and quite enjoyed it. I had five years in the Civil Service mostly drafting documents, and I had regular reports to write in my last job for The Place2Be. That was fine but it's not what comes easiest to me. If I had to choose a job based on making a living at things that I'd want to do anyway, I'd choose to work with children.

And I do! (And what's even better is that we'll soon be getting a cook at our after-school club so I won't have to do the one bit of the job that I don't really care for.)

You know you're doing a job you like when you don't keep having to remind yourself "Well, at least I'm getting paid for this."

According to Scalzi, most fiction writers earn their living at something else. For him it's non-fiction writing; for me it's working with children. I'm not ready to give up my day job and I'm not sure I ever will be. What about you?

I did it!

I thought I'd given up at one point but somehow I could never bring myself to abandon the challenge completely. I think this might be my worst story yet but I'm sure there will be salvageable ideas in it.

My poor main characters are currently exploring a distant future and I think I ought to bring them back home before I call it quits.

I grew to like some of my main characters, although the Dad (sorry, I mean Papa because he's French) was a bit of a grumpuss and I wish I knew why my very main character was shying away from any sort of relationship.

Anyway, it's done. Now I can do all those things that I've not been getting around to, like Spanish homework and Christmas shopping.

Oh, and if you want a book that is actually a good read, I'm still recommending Ice Diaries by Lexi because that book has stayed in my mind ever since I read it. I know it will be high on my re-read list when I get my Christmas present, which this year is going to be a Kindle. Yay, Kindle!

Random Penguin

Okay, now I've done it. I've included a random penguin and a crocheted chicken suit in my Nanomuddle.

I was doing so well the first eight days then I ran out of plot. It's been an uphill struggle since then and I'm getting desperate.

Oddly enough, I kind of expected this. I know that I always get to a stage where I have nothing left to write and have to pull ideas out of the air. I was hoping that inspiration would hit and that something good would arise out of the randomness, as happened to Erin Morganstern with The Night Circus.

I obviously thought about that too much because I ended up with a travelling circus in my story.

And although I'm not writing fanfiction, I'm sure my debt to Star Trek, Dr Who and Lexi Revellian is showing.

I'm also collecting characters as I go along. At this rate I'll have a cast of thousands which is not easy when you're trying to work out who should be talking in a scene.

Still, it beats worrying about what we're going to do for Christmas.

On the first day of Nano

I've written 2000 words.

It always surprises me how tired I feel afterwards! I need to write 1786 words a day if I want to get to 50k by the end of November, allowing for two days off. Because I do have a life, and I've got a brilliant day of skating and Christmas treats planned thanks to where my Beloved works.

The first day or so is usually the easiest as I use up all the story I've already worked out. I wonder how long it will be till I run out.

Chicken

A lot of Nanowrimoers have friends who don't understand why they would want to do such a strange thing as to try to write a novel in a month unless there's some big prize at the end of it.

For me, it's like running a marathon. You have the professional athletes who aim to do it in less than three hours as part of their training and other people who train for months or years just to be able to say that they've run it at all.

And me? I'm the one in the chicken suit. I don't take it seriously, I'm not aiming at turning professional, so I might as well have fun along the way; but boy what a major achievement if I get 50k words written in a month.

If you're doing Nano this year, what's your reason for doing it?

Getting ready for Nanowrimo

My word-count spreadsheet is all ready with this year's dates; the widget is up on the blog; and I've set up a folder in my Dropbox account. I've saved my link to Written? Kitten! and I've got plenty of chocolate to reward myself. Is there anything I've forgotten?

Oh yes. Plan my novel.

Well, I've got three whole weeks to do that in.

Eep!

By the way, the wordcount spreadsheet is available by email if anyone wants one. It may be my greatest success of Nano.

Too cute for words!

It's the run-up to Nanowrimo and I've discovered Written? Kitten!

Previously I'd seen Write or Die but Written? Kitten! is a far better incentive. For every 100 words you type you get a new picture of a cute kitten.

I think it could make me positively verbose! Who can resist the lure of a kitten?

Flash fiction competition

There's a new flash fiction contest starting in September, run by Stephen Parrish who wrote the Tavernier Stones. Word limit is 250 words; nice and short! The competition opens on 8th September and closes on 22nd September, and the picture above is the prompt.

Is anyone else thinking about going in for it?

Adding sex appeal

Given that sex in novels is currently selling so well (and if you haven't heard of  Fifty Shades of Grey  where have you been?) maybe we should all be adding sex scenes into our stories. That's assuming you write stories. It's hard to add sex to crochet although it has been done (NSFW); if your hobby is photography then the answer is obvious; if it's astronomy or quantum physics then I have no advice for you here.

It might be hard to find an angle that hasn't been tried yet. Indie Reader has an amusing (and NSFW) article on current erotic bestsellers, many of which apparently started life as Indie books.

So sex is clearly the way to go if you want to make money from writing. My problem? I just can't do it. I was going to write a spoof of Fifty Shades but when it came to it, I was cringing and laughing too much to get words on the page.

What about you?

How to increase your word count

The point of Nanowrimo is to write a lot, then come back and edit it later. Lots of people have trouble with this because they want to edit now. Editing as you go is fine if it doesn't stop you writing but as soon as I get into editing mode my productivity drops. I need to get the story out there first, then tidy it up later!

The secret is to deal with your inner editor. Some people send him or her on a virtual holiday but I've got a better plan: I pit my inner procrastinator against my inner editor. My inner procrastinator is strong and wins every time!

It looks like this:

Inner Editor (IE): That's terrible grammar.
Inner Procrastinator (IP): I'll deal with it later.
IE: This story isn't making sense.
IP: I'll deal with it later.
IE: Didn't she have green hair in the last section?
IP: I'll deal with it later.

You get the picture. The hardest part for me is going to be shutting up my inner procrastinator when November is over and I need to edit!

It's International Sh*tty First Draft Week

... over at The Intern's blog. The asterisk is hers not mine, apparently it represents

all the ways in which first drafts are the very opposite of shitty: they can hold flashes of inspiration, stretches of brilliant writing, and scenes that got cut not due to shittiness, but out of necessity

Other writers will be baring their shitty first drafts and there will be prizes! Let me know how if you share one of yours!

Delightful surprise

I had a delightful surprise in my letter box a couple of days ago: Wayne Pollard, the creator of Bo's Cafe Life, sent me an advance copy of his book I'm not out of work, I'm a writer which collects together many of his cartoons. It's great to have a physical copy, although I drew the line at taking it to the doctors with me. I thought it might be embarrassing to be laughing away in the waiting room.

I always smile at the jokes; sometimes I laugh out loud. It's a little luxury every day. And now Wayne has added in some interviews with people in the writing world who offer good advice to writers - still in the same amusing style.

Why not pop over there and have a look?

Oh and Wayne, if you're reading this, thank you!