On an unseasonably warm day...

(picture found on Pinterest - I am unaware of the photographer but would be glad to credit them)

...I paused while eating lunch outside, listening to the sounds I heard overhead, then wrote:

Seagulls squabble

as they order noisily 

from a lunchtime menu

I haven't yet seen.

~ ttfn ~

Catch Up

It's been a while since I've been in blog-land, so I thought it was time for us to have a catch up. What have I been up to these last few months? Well...

*I coped with my second rejection from the WoMentoring Project - and though I was disappointed, the calm realisation came quicker this time: it isn't just about me - it's about what the mentor believes they can help with. And that made me consider once again (I do need a bit of revision every now and then!) that the help I need is when Novel Number Two is finished. And it still isn't. Oops. (It is on track to be finished by the end of this year - but more on this in a mo!). So, I've decided that I will reapply for the WoMentoring Project in the New Year (it is open till April 2015), when I have indeed finished the book. That way I'll be asking for help when I really need it, and hopefully a mentor will believe they can give me that help.

*I have continued to write up a storm...though I've discovered I'm not very good at keeping to writing 350 words every day! I have still achieved over 7, 000 each month (which is what my calculator told me that the 350 every day would total) - it's just that I'm better doing it on my days off when I'm not tired and drained and needing to just zone out after a day's work.

*Being on track to finish Novel Number Two by the end of December means that I need to reset my original target of approaching agents in January - I need to leave the First Draft for a couple of months at least, and then begin redrafting the book as a whole. I am (perhaps stupidly?!) quite confident that the redrafting will only need one or two passes, as I write clean copy and edit each scene as I go - however, I am slapping a disclaimer in place right now: who knows what the book'll need till I get there, so who knows what I'll have to do or how long it'll take me! A realistic agent-target, then, is to submit in spring/summer - so watch this space!

*I finally got round to visiting the Sand Sculpture Festival at Weston-super-Mare - it had been on my to-do list for most of this year - and loved it! I could go on for ages about how artistic and astounding it is and how I want to see it in-the-making as well as the-finished-festival next year - but I'll just say this: the theme was 'Once Upon a Time' and featured fairytale and story characters - and when we got to the Aladdin sculpture, I was touched:

To me (though I don't know for sure), this is an artist's tribute to Robin Williams - the Genie sketched in beside the boy he helped, just as Robin Williams helped many of us to smile and laugh.

*After sadly losing our beloved cat Gizmo in January, we warmly welcomed our new cat Ebony in April...only it took her a while to settle in! She was a farm kitten, you see, completely un-socialised and brought in to the animal shelter at 3 months old; they worked with her for another 7 months, and tried to find her a home, but each time she was overlooked. It could have been that she was nervous and shy, or it could have been that she is black (yes, people don't want black cats, apparently) - or it could have been that she was waiting for me :0) When I first met her, she was 10 months old and had never played with a toy before (not through want of trying from the shelter staff, mind!). It took half an hour of encouragement, but eventually Ebony made her first ever paw-swipe at a wand-toy, and that was it. She was mine, and I was hers. Yet when we brought her home, she hid for the first couple of weeks...oh dear!

However, we are now just over five months on, and she has well and truly settled down and settled in. She does not hide any more, though she will always be a run-scared not a stand-your-ground kind of cat. She comes when I call her, loves to be smoothed and fussed, and has the loudest, yummiest purr. Now that she has made our house her home, I felt it was time to introduce her properly:

 Ebony waiting for her Sunday lunch - yes, really! This was taken on a Sunday, 

while my step-mum was cooking...

She sat down and the after-eating snooze took her by surprise...

"Are you lookin' at me?"

Life is so much nicer with a pet to come home to, don't you think? :0)

*And after so many years of just eating cakes rather than baking them (!), I'm finally getting this cupcake thing down (thanks to Mary Berry's simple, anyone-can-do-it recipe!):

~ ttfn ~ 

Listen Up...

...Listen up, me - better get your 350-words-a-weeknight groove on!

~ ttfn ~

4 a.m. Scribbles

They say the real writing is in the re-writing, and I'd agree - but I'd add that it's also in the pre-writing: the thinking about things; asking what if this happened, what if they did this...and - omg! - then this could happen next...

I daydream. A. Lot. I'm in each scene with my characters, seeing what they see and reacting to it, speaking dialogue that sometimes makes it to the page - it's a proper little film going on in my mind!

Sometimes this daydreaming happens at night (like normal people, I hear you cry!). For me, it's less that I dream something and then transcribe it, it's that in the transition from deep to light sleep, I have a good think and start imagining. Often slumber sneaks in, but sometimes I'm aware enough to realise I need to write these thoughts down. Now.

However, I'm not a quick-drop-off-er; it takes me ages to drift off to sleep (and takes me equally as long to come to in the mornings!) - so what to do when you don't want to turn on the lamp and 40 watt yourself into wakefulness?

Write in the dark, that's what (writers keep notebooks everywhere. Yes, they do - so watch out next time you're in their house!). And that's what I did at 4 a.m. this morning:

Surprisingly, the top of both pages is legible (at least to me; I know my writing is large and loopy in both senses of the word for the uninitiated!) - but ten hours later and I'm still trying to translate what's at the bottom...!

~ ttfn ~ 

Novel Update

So, how has Novel Number Two been coming on, I hear you ask?

Well, I’ve written 43, 188 words so far this year, compared to 48, 267 for the whole of 2013 – so I’ve been more productive and driven the story further on...

...but these words are all First Draft (or thereabouts – I can’t deny myself a tweak or two as I go! Once the current scene is finished, I print it out, leave it for several days/a week while getting on with the next one, then edit the paper copy and transcribe this into a new draft on the computer...so I guess you could technically say each that scene is actually either Second or Third Draft.) The novel as a whole, with scenes integrated as chapters, the chapters having cliffhangers, and the hooks and pace controlled throughout the breadth of the book so that the Reader stays intrigued and rewarded and intrigued again...all of that is most definitely still First Draft.

The scenes are still separate, the cliffhangers not constructed. The mother’s POV scenes (deliberately fewer than the daughter’s) have not been placed, tested and placed again so that they’re just right as they appear throughout the narrative.

And most of these 43, 188 words will inevitably be deleted and rewritten or cut completely as redrafting takes place... And, though it might sound a mess or an annoying fiddle-about to some, I’m really looking forward to putting the whole thing together – it’ll satisfy my puzzle-solving brain (!) and it’ll be great to see the book taking shape as a whole.

Yet this has been the hiccup of the last month: I’ve had a redrafting itch. I’ve wanted to go back and start knitting the scenes together, moving the beginning of the book up and slotting in some later-written but earlier-needed paragraphs, rather than writing through a bit of a stall to the following scene and the one after that...

...BUT I have resisted scratching! Instead, I did indeed keep on writing, so that the next scene was done and the narrative nudged forward one more step. This method – of writing the First Draft straight through without going back to fiddle or redraft in any way – is the opposite to how I wrote Book One, and it is a good method for me; it stops me scribing away at the unnecessary details/events that the Reader can be relied upon to fill in.

Okay, okay, so I have dithered a bit. I had to stop writing and plan out the arc of upcoming scenes, and I needed to redraft a previous scene which would have caused characterisation issues and much more redrafting later if I didn’t put a stop to it now (!) – but I have continued to think about the next scene and the one after that, and made a start on the writing...

Now, there’s still eight or ten scenes still to come, but the end of the First Draft is in sight...so I’d better get back to it!

~ ttfn ~

It's Paperback Book Day :0)

Storytelling is blood to people like me - but it requires a teller and a listener, a reader. The way we live our lives is changing due to technology, but the vital thing is that people read - whether this is a continuation of established habits, or converting to new ones via e-readers (especially if it recruits reluctant readers and gets them turning pages, even if they are virtual ones...).

It won't surprise you to know that I am unashamedly a Paper Girl, with hundreds and hundreds (I now feel the need to count them!) of actual, real books and an aversion to technology in many of its forms (!!)...and as it is Paperback Book Day, I wanted to share this quote:

"One paperback is better than a dozen Kindles. Two paperbacks are better still."
~ Dame Stephanie Shirley

Right on, Dame Shirley! Now, please excuse me while I go and count my books and get lost in the wonderful world of paper...!

~ ttfn ~

It's All About the (Healthy) Sevens

This past week has legged it, leaving me to bring up the rear – and as I thought about what to post on this seventh day of this seventh month, I realised that it is seven years since I graduated in 2007. (Gosh. Where have those years gone?! I’m starting to feel old now...) I’d been in retail management for several years before going back to university to read English Literature with Creative Writing, and so I was twenty-seven when I graduated from Bath Spa University.

I have many good memories of university (as well as some not-so good ones...crit lit, anyone?!) and can honestly say that the Creative Writing half of my degree helped me find my Voice as a writer. One of the highlights was earning my place on a group exchange to Columbia College Chicago, where we studied, devised an anthology of student writings and solicited submissions from both universities, and eventually published it.

Inspired by a guest speaker in a poetry seminar, I’d already written Healthy, the poem that I submitted for the anthology, which was then critiqued and decided upon by the...yep, you’ve guessed it...seven other editors in our exchange group. I felt then and still feel now that Healthy is one of my best pieces; I’m proud of it and wish to share it with as many people as would like to read it.

So, being brave...er, okay, kicked-up-the-bum...I performed Healthy to an audience of about seventy people at an open-mic session during Columbia College’s Story Week (this was a big thing for me – and still would be! – as I’m not a lime-light seeker and am shy about reading to a large group, worrying that my West Country accent sounds way too Zummerzet!).

Well-chuffed was I that my poem had a good reception from this reading and then earned its place in the anthology; and well-chuffed were we with the final printed edition*...but, ironically, it is this that stops me seeing how much further this poem can go, because pretty much every competition or submission guidelines I’ve seen state that work must be unpublished...

However, on this anniversary of sevens, I can share the poem here on my blog, because I still own the copyright (and being posted on a blog also counts as being published...so in for a penny, in for a pound!).

So, here’s to Bath Spa University’s graduating class of 2007, the experience of Columbia College, Chicago, and actually creating our very own anthology: I hope we are all still as healthy as we can be.

Healthy

You –

you mass-media, advertising-junkie, money-making

rat-race culture, with your skinny white women and your

products to make beautiful more beautiful, and the rest-

of-us well, maybe, pretty. Your cosmetic surgery

creates a plastic reality. Your fashions change each

season, mid-season; if I have that look, that image, I will

be beautiful – how dare you, you image-addicted fallacy.

You –

you demand, you desire, you pimp; more more

more we prostitute style, our beauty sold. You will kill

us with the gloss of your magazines, acid that corrodes

what is truly beautiful about all of us. I want

to throw my blood at you, to make you see, make you

think; make you taste me and know what you have

created. I will be cleansed. You will be taught.

You –

you dare to presume to possess me with your

conformity. I possess me, my choices, my life, my beauty.

Take it all, take it in and know we are all beautiful,

know beauty has many faces. Yet you need to reduce

it to one – why?  Beauty is genuine, innate. Who do you

think you are – God?  Is this healthy, are you healthy?

Tell me you are and I will tell you, you are beautiful.

You –

you disgust me. I will not make it easy for you.

I will breathe, shout, love, dance, naked around

the fire under a bright full moon; my freckled skin

will glisten with sweat, and you will watch and want me,

you fucked-up 21st Century Western World. I wanted

what you want once – but now I am beautiful. 

Healthy.

*eds Corboy, Crentsil, Frogley, Henley, Hyatt, Melling, Morrison, Young; Open to Interpretation (Gateshead: Bath Spa University Press, 2008)

[There isn’t an ISBN number, and who knows if it’s even still for sale at our alumni?! Though there might be a box or two propping up a desk in an office somewhere...]

~ ttfn ~