Niggles

To write this post, I'm going to have to share a smidge more of Novel Number Two's plot than I have before. Eek! You see, I've learned not to talk too much about the Work in Progress (WiP) for several reasons: 

1. Even though I'm a born chatterbox, I'm rubbish at speaking about any WiP, making what I know is well-written (not meaning to be being arrogant, here) sound dreadful; 
2. People seem interested, so you talk, draining yourself of detail as you try to do the WiP justice - only to discover your details have actually drained the people, who are now not so interested (!); 
3. Telling too much makes you vulnerable - to people's good and bad reactions, and to yourself, because at some point you'll realise things need to change, and now don't you look daft?; 
4. You could be giving away your idea - ideas aren't copyrighted, so someone could turn that idea into an actual story, submitting it to an actual agent while you're still playing about with punctuation, therefore beating you to your publishing and readership dream; and 
5. It is mine - at least until it's yours (i.e. my book in your hand - always dreaming of being published, me!), which, for now, will be when I'm distanced enough from it to allow you to read it by email. 

Anyhoo. Deep breath. With these points clung closer to my body than armour, what I need to tell you is this:

• My main character gets herself onto an apprenticeship. 
• At the end of each week, the apprentices are rated. 
• And as the writer, it's bloody hard to remember who gets ranked where when (which is just as hard to say, isn't it?!)

Today, I finished the narrative draft of the second chapter-on-the-go (as per my goal this week; with the first chapter-on-the-go finished on Thursday). While the story was done, the niggles [details that I put in square brackets and bold type, to come back to later - these might be the placings on the apprenticeship, for example, or how long it's been since such-and-such happened] remained. Thing was, I wanted to sort them out now so that I'd feel the chapter was completely complete (at least in its First Draft form. Which will get rewritten. I know, I know, we writers are complex beings.)

So, with my pen poised over my notebook page, I skim-read the previous seven or so chapters...and realised how much I'd forgotten. Forgotten! How could I do such a thing when I've got a really good, really detailed memory? But there I was, discovering that I'd forgotten: which chapter came after which (I've named not numbered them, you see); character developments; actual events; and dialogue revelations. Oops!

I'd also forgotten how many words I'd actually got onto the page (even though I counted them all up and bragged about them in my New Year's post!). I'd forgotten quite how much story this amounts to. And it's a lot. It's a big chunk of book. And it makes me proud.

Of course, I'm sure you linear-minded, number-loving types are wondering why I didn't start the book with a spreadsheet set up for such things. But, you see, I'm a writer, and writers aren't linear-minded types; we love everything free and flowing, ebbing backwards and forwards, allowing for change and invention...even if it does mean we forget things.

But now my notebook is updated with who was ranked where when; what my main character did at these particular points; and with a few more niggles I'll need to sort out in the Redraft! I am determined to keep it updated as I write on...wish me luck!

~ ttfn ~

Reflect and Redirect

(Picture found on Pinterest - credit unknown)

Here we are, four days into January, and all that Christmas fuss is out of the way for another year (I know, I know, I'm such a bah humbug - but that's just how I roll) - and while I do hate to follow the crowd (as one of my besties rightly says, 'Be a goat not a sheep' - thanks, Zoe!), it really does feel like the time to reflect and redirect. (Oh, my bah humbug-self does hope you had a good Christmas and New Year, by the way!)

Reflection: 2014 Pats-on-the-Back

• Craft continued - shared over making cards and scrapbook pages, and sewing a footstool, toaster cover and a phone charger bag.
• Cupcake baking begun and, if I do say so myself (!), aced:

• Ebony welcomed home and settled in:

• 44 books read - while writing...
• 70, 295 words of Novel Number Two (that's 70,295 words everybody - whoop, whoop!) - which equates to 15 chapters (and, when added to 2013's chapters, makes 32 completed ones...)

Redirection: 2015 Get-Goings

• Admit I need to rest and relax when I get in from work, BUT don't slump in front of the TV all evening...
• ...so, at 9 p.m., used my second-wind (I'm a definite owl, you see, not a lark) to get an hour or two of writing/planning/crafting done.
• Continue crafting, sewing and baking.
• Finish the two chapters-on-the-go by the end of this week (Sunday 11th). Achieved by Sat 10th!
• Write the (estimated) remaining 5 chapters by the end of February, which will complete the entire first draft.
• Leave Novel Number Two ALONE for 3 months...
• ...and do other things!
• Begin editing NNT after these 3 months, so (hopefully!) from 1st June.
• Research agents to submit to.
• Write covering letter and synopsis.
• Submit by the end of summer/beginning autumn.
• Start the next book...!

I could (probably should!) add in 'Go for a walk every day', 'Lose the million of stones you're overweight by' and 'Actually get your hair trimmed every three months' - but I know I won't do any of these, and pressuring myself will only make me dour and doubtful. Much better, instead, to focus on making the most of what I can do, and leave room for a little spontaneity (which may turn in to walking, dieting or hair consideration...well, I can try for optimism too, right?!)

Whatever reflections and redirections you have, I wish you all the best with them.

~ ttfn ~ 

Lifted from the Day Job

Working with the general public (especially in a clothes shop where opinions are sought, and life stories told) is fuel for writing - with names and identifying characteristics changed, of course! This week, an almost-request shocked me so much it HAS to go into a book (!) somewhere, sometime - and it'll do just fine to amp up the tension in the scene I'm about to work on...

We'd just opened the shop and I answered the phone to a distressed lady, who explained that she'd lost, though wasn't sure where, a very special ring the day before, and wondered if it had been handed in. The ring had been designed by her husband for a particular wedding anniversary and it meant so very much to her... I looked around the tills and the desk drawers, and checked the Lost Property box - and found nothing. Having been working the night before, I told her that I'd not heard of anything that had been handed in.

This set her off on another round of explaining how important the ring was, how upset she was (and rightly so: we all have possessions that mean a lot to us), and which particular fitting room she'd been in. Double-checking, I scoured all of the cubicles, looking under the stools and in the corners, but with no success.

I said I'd take her name and number just in case, later in the day when tidying and cleaning, we came across it...and then she said, "Do you clean every night?" I replied that we do, but that my colleague hadn't mentioned finding anything (I'd been working on the other floor and so hadn't been there when the fitting rooms were vacuumed, but, trust me, my colleague-in-question is a thorough cleaner...!). And then it came...

"What if it went up the vacuum?"

You can hear the unsaid question just as loudly as I could, can't you?!

Now, I must be clear and fair: the lady did NOT ask me to go through the vacuum bag.

But I sensed that she was about to... (Or is this just the writer in me, filling in the blanks in the most imaginative, most conflict-ridden way?!)

I don't know about you, but searching by hand through a filthy vacuum bag in the hope of finding something you cannot be sure was lost in that very place borders on the unreasonable... Or maybe it doesn't, if you're that person; maybe you'd be happy to trawl through it, maybe the dirt and dust of hundreds of customers passing through one shop during all the days since we last changed the bag would be nothing if you could just grasp the certainty that the item was there...or not? And if this is true, maybe it should be you, not me, doing the going-through?

But how can I, the sales assistant who knows the customer is always right, suggest that?

And this sense of unreasonableness countered by it being inappropriate to refuse is EXACTLY what my writer's mind loves...and is going to put in my scene!

Back to real life now: I managed to steer the conversation away from the vacuum, assuring the customer that we'd notice something like a ring on the floor before the vacuum got to it (which is true - especially as we're always picking size cubes off the floor so they don't clog up the vacuum...!). I took the lady's name and number...

...and, during shift-change later in the day, was glad to discover that the ring had indeed been found by a colleague, and that the message had simply missed me. Phew! Once I'd collected it from the manager's desk and ascertained it was the same as the description the lady had given me, I was able to call her back and, a few hours later, reunite her with her ring. She was so pleased it had been picked up and not pocketed, she brought my colleague a bottle of wine and box of chocolates as a thank you - which was lovely of her.

So, all's well that ends well - and that gives me inspiration to increase the tension in my scene, with the not-nice character making life hard, horrible and mucky for the main character...

~ ttfn ~

Storyboard

I'm loving my new light-bulb lamp, just ready to shine with bright ideas!

I'm probably a lot luckier than most writers, because I have got a dedicated writing room (okay, so it used to be the cupboard-under-the-stairs, but beggars can't be choosers, can they?) - except I haven't been using it recently. Most of this is to do with our new cat (I know, I know, but bear with me!), because, having been a farm kitten and therefore not socialised, she is the definition of a scaredy-cat: she's only been able to make her territory the lounge and kitchen, and hasn't shown any interest in what lies behind the doorways... Suffice to say, she is an indoor cat until she can get up the courage to explore the rest of the house, let alone our garden...and that's why I've not been writing in my writing room: because I haven't wanted to leave her on her own. There, I've said it: I'm a soppy softie!

So, for the last 6 months (yes, really!), I've been bringing my laptop into the lounge and trying to write while ignoring the noise box (a.k.a. the TV) playing its nonsense...with mixed results! After a difficult month where I wrote very little, I've now started my week off work and I'm determined to WRITE. So, soppiness has to take a back seat...and that's where my storyboard comes in.

As you can see in the photo, my desk faces the wall and the wall is covered with pictures... You see, I love art and photography and the way they spark my imagination (which is why I lose hours of my life on Pinterest!) - and I have used image-upon-image to inspire the writing and development of Novel Number Two. While covering the small wall of a small room in pictures might be a clutter-chuck-up for some, it's not for me - because each image is a trigger; a scene-in-waiting. They're my storyboard. Obviously, I don't have walls enough to have the book storyboarded from beginning to end...plus I get bored easily! So, I change the pics every few months or so, and this particular storyboard charts the...wait for it!...final sections of the book...

There's probably 7, maybe 8 scenes represented here - and I've begun work on 3 of them, but need to get my words on... So that's what I'm going to be doing this week, in my dedicated space with my dedicated time. Let's see how far across the storyboard I get...

~ ttfn ~ 

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 ~