It’s the end of the first day of Nanowrimo and with a word count of 3004 and a body count of 1, I’m quite satisfied. My story opens with Hilda McGeachin choking to death on one of her pumpkin scones, leaving the presidency of the Bilby Creek Show committee vacant. With the unfortunate death of two older committee members before the story opens, the committee needs some fresh blood very quickly. I had planned that Wally was also going to meet an unfortunate end, necessitating his niece Kirsty’s return to Bilby Creek but she’d already decided that she’s coming back before I had a chance to give him a heart attack. So I guess I should have killed him off in Book 1 when I had the chance.
All my words have been written with my new toy, the wonderful desktop version of ‘Write or Die’. The new features on the desktop version are fabulous with lots of adjustable settings in font, colour, sound files. It keeps track of your highest score, your average words per hour and there is a word war feature so you can challenge another person to a word war. No more lost words, which I occasionally encountered in the online version – the desktop version allows you to keep adding to a text file and timestamps each new entry. I have Write or Die set up on my netbook so tomorrow at lunchtime if I stop writing, my colleagues will be in for a surprise when ‘Peanut Butter Jelly’ or screaming babies burst out of my speakers. I love Write or Die – it makes me focus on the story and switches off the internal editor. Though, I did try it with the disable backspace feature and that sent me insane. I have to have the ability to backspace because I sometimes change my mind mid sentence or type the wrong name.
My characters are on Twitter are very excited that they will be in a new story – Kirsty has been tweeting most of the day. With the new Twitter ability to create lists, I have a list of my characters and you can follow them here: http://twitter.com/chickollage/my-characters . Of course, their tweets will also still appear on the sidebar of this blog.
My Nano report card tells me that if I continue at this rate, I’ll hit the 50k target on November 17. That’s a big ‘if’. It’s a nice day one but I’m not sure I can do that pace on the days that I’m working. But the great news is I won’t be going to the day job every day of November. I’ll have two whole weeks off, so maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to complete this story…wherever it’s going.
It’s Monday of the holiday weekend. Daylight savings has kicked in and I’m feeling jet lagged and hazy without going anywhere. Too much sleep? Perhaps.
My absenteeism from the blog has seen it plummet on the list of Top 50 Australian Writing Blogs by 44 places. I’m no longer in the Top 50 but instead the We Love YA blog has shot up 55 places to no. 30 so I’m proud of that. Now to get the Romance Writers of Australia blog on the next listing.
I’ve been busy editing and polishing and agonising, submitting to contests. Getting feedback from contests, both motivational,constructive, and sometimes debilitating. And polarising – 132/135 & 82/135 for the same entry? What do you mean a story has to start at the beginning? Guess she’s never never read a non-linear story before. 2nd judge just did not get it. It has really proven to me how subjective judging is.
But in all this editing and polishing and submitting, I have hit a writing dilemma – well it’s more a deadline dilemma. The dilemma of the hypothetical deadline.
What’s a hypothetical deadline? It’s one of these: If your manuscript is selected, you will have 72 hours to provide the full manuscript. That was part of a recent writing opportunity I entered — submit the partial, and if selected, the time bomb would start to tick. So theoretically, the date of the announcement of the selections was the deadline for the full manuscript to be polished. But the ‘if’ made it a hypothetical, ‘pie-in-the-sky’, an ‘I can only dream’ that this will happen.
It did not make it real.
Despite my self-talk of ‘when they call me’ and working out a time-line of how many pages I needed to edit each day to make the deadline, my confidence in the project vacillated so much with varied feedback from contest judges (see above) and critique partners that in the end, I did not make the hypothetical deadline. Other pressures of having to reapply for my job (and that application went through 4 drafts) along with building the Social Media function for Romance Writers of Australia (as part of my new role as Social Media Manager) ate up a lot of potential editing time. And then the deadline withered up and disappeared as if it had never even existed, with the email that began “Dear Writer”.
I was both disappointed and relieved. But I haven’t looked at Beyond Happily Ever After since — it will go on the backburner for a while. I’ve returned to Making the Cut, preparing it for another contest and submission to publishers. It feels good to be back in Bilby Creek – the town is so familiar to me that it’s like a homecoming, and the characters of Bilby Creek are my friends. The full manuscript of Making the Cut will go into this competition (and the deadline is real and unmoveable). The first 3 chapters of the sequel, Reality Check, have been submitted to another comp, and I plan to write the next in the series during Nanowrimo. Yep, it’s good to be home.
When I woke up Wednesday morning, I was surprised to see the colour of the sky out the window. It was a murky brown colour, like we were in a soup. At first, I thought there was bushfire in the hills, but then I heard the radio reports: Coffs was disappearing from view from the lofty windows of the radio station.
This is what the sun looked like when I left home:
At work, we watched the sky stay brown all day. It was eerie – we’d landed in some strange universe or a post-apocalyptic world. And yet on the inside, everything was functioning as normal. But the building wasn’t sealed, and the dust started seeping in gradually during the day. By the afternoon, my throat was dry and my eyes were starting to water.
Driving home, I was amazed by the sun. It was a big white orb, glimpsed through the trees. When I reached the valley, I stopped to take another sun picture – looking like a full moon.
Apparently my cat spent the whole day hiding under the bed. He knew better than to try to go out in a dust storm.
Thursday morning – the sky was blue again. But everything is still dusty. And they predict more to come.
This is what I want for my birthday…
A Book Tree
Though I hope that my book tree would produce better books than this one. This was the discount book tree with such wonderful titles as How to Sell on Ebay and other non-fiction books which had been remaindered a long time ago.
Perhaps the Book Trees produce their fruit in different genres depending on what type of tree you startwith.
If that’s the case, I would like a Young Adult Book Tree, a Women’s Fiction with Attitude Book Tree and a surprise Book Tree.
A money tree would be good too. Though having a Book Tree would mean more money anyway.
But the tree I really want in my backyard is The Magic Faraway Tree. I loved Enid Blyton’s story when I was growing up and always wanted to climb that tree to find out which cool land was at the top.
Well, that’s enough whimsy from Bryon Bay Writers Festival. I will return with a more serious post during the week.
Perhaps.
I’m off to Byron Bay Writers Festival 6.30 tomorrow morning. Can you hear my brain already screaming in protest? I am so not a morning person. Let’s hope I can function when I get there for the fab-sounding Nuts & Bolts seminar.
But first I found a poem today in one of my notebooks, aptly wedged between grocery lists:
dreams of youth
drifted away
squashed by the reality
of mundane
domestic unbliss
housework
telephone bills
grocery lists
time to dream again
in between
the coffee
and
the cornflakes
Yes, life has been rather mundane lately but going to Byron Bay (and taking my bat wings) is sure to cure that. Besides, I have a week and a half off work, I’m spending the next four days with my NVWG writing buddies, and then I have another week off. While many other lucky RWA members are heading to Brisvegas for this year’s conference, I’ll be doing the Clayton’s Conference, assisting Sandie Hudson and Rhian Cahill with the organisation and (shudder) giving a workshop on Writing Sex Scenes. In between all that, I’ll be editing both Beyond Happily Ever After (the 12 inch version – I mean, the 65k version) and also polishing up the first 3 chapters of Reality Check for the STALI contest.
I had hoped to post a blog each night from Bryon Bay and twitter frequently, but unless I hook into free wi-fi, that’s not going to happen. I made enquiries about getting mobile broadband with my ISP but that required a credit check despite the fact I’ve been a loyal customer for three years. To me, that just isn’t good customer service – it might be their customer policy but stuff that, the universe is telling me that I don’t need mobile broadband. Besides, it will only distract me from the writing and the editing. I will aim to write up a blog post each day regardless & post them to the blog when I get back. Maybe next year I will have prepaid mobile broadband. It’s just not going to happen this year.
So see you in five days, unless I see you in Byron Bay.
…until we hit the road and head up to Byron Bay Writers Festival.
The cabin is booked…the tickets are in my hot little hand…
The netbook is ready.
We drive up early Thursday morning so that Sue & I can attend the Nuts & Bolts workshop while Jen goes off to the Performance Poetry workshop.
The Nuts & Bolts workshop looks bumper-filled with information on the publishing process:
Action: mark Thursday 6 August all-day seminar Nuts and bolts for special attention. This brings together top industry professional bodies such as the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian Society of Authors, Varuna the Writers House, plus editors, agents and publishers to give the plain unadulterated truth about how the business side of writing operates, what opportunities exist and how a manuscript progresses from agent to publisher to bookstore. You’ll also learn how creative writing courses assist emerging writers and we’ve included a weighty session on the pros and cons of self- publishing. This is an enormous amount of expertise and knowledge in one room, on one day, and to add even more value, attendees will receive three months’ total access to The Australian Writer’s Marketplace online.
Doesn’t that sound great?
That will more than make up for missing out on this year’s Romance Writers of Australia conference. I’ll be doing the Clayton’s Conference instead. Though, I do not plan on missing next year’s RomAus conference.
And when I return home, I have a whole week off work to make use of the writing mojo and finish the editing of Beyond Happily Ever After.
And there’s the opening night party, and the fabulous company of my writer friends.
Speaking of Romaus…we have a brand spanking new blog & I am the blogmistess with a fabulous team of bloggers. Should be fun.
And I got to see my sister & brother-in-law and their two gorgeous boys on the weekend. I even have photographic evidence right here:
Aren’t they so cute?
And as promised in my First Line Meme, here are the last lines of the same stories.
It’s up to you to decide what happens between the first line & the last line, though you can always read the book when it comes out or become one of my treasured beta readers.
Beyond Happily Ever After
And if just a glimpse of a happy ever after came, then that would be enough.
Diary of the Future
And that’s the way I like it.
Hold the Anchovies
And I’m going to continue moving on.
I’m with the Band
As the plane takes off, I can hear my heart singing.
Kissing Toads
A kiss with the promise of the future.
Making the Cut
Elizabeth liked being right.
Reality Check
“Just as long as you keep it real.”
Steph Bowe has already accepted my challenge and posted her Last Line meme here.
Meanwhile, I’ve been sick over the last four days with an URTI. Annoying bloody thing, can’t make up it’s mind whether it wants to be a head cold or something else so it has made anything but sleeping or vegging in front of the TV quite impossible. Went to the doctor today and got some antibiotics but also foolishly agreed to his suggestion of having a test for swine flu and whooping cough. Now, I don’ t know which test was which, but if you hear that suggestion, run the other way. You do not want foreign objects stuck up your nose.
The deadline for this competition is approaching and I have 20 pages plus to knock into shape. My paper manuscript is all kinds of colourful with so much splattering of red pen that Dexter would be proud.
My character Kirsty McInnes is getting upset that I’ve been spending all my editing focus on Cinderella, so she’s lured her hero Dylan Harrison onto Twitter, so they can both gang up on me. But it’s not going to work. I will meet this deadline. She insisted that Dylan needed a nice avatar, so that was another time suck:
Do you think they’ll make a cute couple?
They’re very quick to deny that they’re a couple, but that’s because they’re trying to keep it a secret.
Anyway, enough about Dylan & Kirsty, this is the couple I need to focus on for Friday’s deadline:
Cinderella:
and Prince Henry:
And, no, they will not be getting on Twitter. I’ve run out of email addresses.
Well, Steph Bowe, you did the unimaginable. You lifted up the blanket of lethargy that is currently smothering me, and got me to open a new blog post.
The First Line Meme: Post the first line of your finished works or WIPS!
Okay, here goes, in no particular order:
Current first draft, working title The 12 Step Fairy Program
The room was already spinning and still the pain continued to throb.
Beyond Happily Ever After
And they all lived happily ever after.
Diary of the Future
Bloody slave labor! That’s what it is.
Hold the Anchovies
‘The usual for Cynthia,’ Suzy, the phone girl, shouted across the bustle of the pizza shop.
I’m with the Band
If only I’d married Ben, everything would have been different.
Kissing Toads
Jessica arranged Daniel’s tie into a bow and stepped back to assess her handiwork.
Making the Cut
“So who the hell got the job?”
Reality Check
“You’re needed in the boardroom. Now!”
Now back to my lethargy. Hey I didn’t say it was going to last long!
Next week, I will post the last line meme. I don’t even know if it exists, but it should, so I will do it. Which means that between then and now, maybe I need to come up with a last line for 12 Step Fairy Program.
Of course 500 words a day challenge will help. Though it’s going to take more than 500 words in the next week to reach the end.
Look ma, I have a new toy writing implement.
Yes, I got myself a netbook, so now I can write anywhere.
Had been thinking about getting one and my Alphasmart’s bottom row of keys ceasing operation swayed me towards the decision sooner rather than later. A push from Flexirent about the fate of the old laptop and I decided to take the leap.
I’m blogging from my new toy writing implement. Right now.
Isn’t she a beauty?
Damn! I should have done this at the beginning of June, when the netbook would have been so handy during the 50ks in 30 days writing challenge. Instead I only made 62% of my goal. But that is still 31,000 words plus that I didn’t have at the beginning of the month. And the story continues. Apparently when a Prince kisses you as if waking you from a coma (a la Snow White, Sleeping Beauty), you have to marry him. I didn’t know that until Prince Liam told Olivia, after he’d given her the heart-jolting kiss. Who needs a fibrillator when you have a Prince Charming around?
July is editing month. I have a couple of competition deadlines. One towards the end of the month and a couple in September, and I want to get these manuscripts polished and submitted. Write Edit Submit – remember?
But I will continue writing. I have joined a challenge group – 500 words a day. I figure that’s a sizeable amount to achieve a couple of projects a year, but not too large wordcount, that I will think I can’t be bothered even trying today. I’ve already knocked off 583 words today at lunchtime on my new toy writing implement.
You’ll notice on the screen I have Write or Die – the first website to go into my favourites. Well, I had to try out the keyboard. Admittedly, I think it’s going to take a little getting used to, but so far it’s not too bad. I did have to rescue some words with Control-Z today. Hopefully, my hands will adapt.
so this is the gameplan. A minimum of 500 new words a day to keep up my challenge commitment and editing, synopsising, query writing in the evening.
My new toy writing implement is going to help me achieve my goals and my challenge groups are going to keep me accountable.
I try not to discard any writing ideas. Even old manuscripts. Because you never know when you may use the idea, recycle it, regenerate it.
This year, I finished a radio play I started to write 14 – 15 years ago. The original writing was so old that I only had a print-out of it – but I had kept a paper copy of every scene I’d written, every journal entry I’d composed that related to it, and all my research. 14 years ago, the time was not right for me to finish the play. The emotion was still so raw and I had no resolution to the piece. Now as time has passed, and my wounds have healed, I have resolution.
Each year Nambucca Valley Writers Group has a writing competition, and each year explores a different form of writing. The first year was poetry, and I came 1st and 2nd with a couple of collage poems. The second year was non-fiction writing. Third year was short stories. This year was performance writing, a broad title which covered monologues, plays, screenplays and radio plays. The restriction was that the piece needed to be no more than ten minutes, and was to be submitted in script form.
A week before the deadline, I pulled out the notes and rough scenes for my play Members Only. I decided to leave the political out — I think I’d been focusing on the big picture too much 14 years ago — and strip it right back to the personal, back to the raw emotion, and then focus on the resolution. The time constraint made it necessary to strip it right back, not to waffle in the politics.
Stripped back, the piece became very powerful and very confronting. And very personal.
One woman’s nightmare.
Every woman’s nightmare.
My nightmare.
I submitted the play, slightly fearful of having put so much of myself onto the paper. But it was also cathartic. A release. And a sign that I was finally healed.
Good things can come from bad things. Good things can come from being brave.
The competition results were announced at our AGM on Saturday. I won 2nd prize.
A certificate, bottle of champers and some choccies. And validation. And peace.
But it seemed that the presentation wasn’t over. Apparently in my absence at the last meeting due to the floods, they’d talked about me. And decided that as I was ‘the world’s best secretary’ (especially with the online stuff), I deserved another award.
This time, handmade choccies from Bowraville. It’s a good thing that I don’t live there, because these are truly decadent. The first one I ate was in the shape of a lolly and had sherbert inside it. Yummy.
There are still a few left. But only just.
So at the moment, I’m feeling very loved, validated as a writer, justified in being brave, and full of chocolate.
And panicked that the 50ks in 30 days deadline is less than 24 hours away, and I’m just shy of 30ks.
