This is how I sometimes feel....

although less furtive, I'd have to say. I was a little more focused on the wide-eyed panic!

I have just completed the novel. In between the revision of that novel, I started revising last year's NaNoWriMo novel. I really enjoyed that revision - the pressure was off, the material's there and there aren't any nasty nitty gritty problems. Yet.

Of course, I have to break from that revision to for this year's NaNoWriMo - but because I so loved doing it last year, I'm doing it again.

I'm also having a brand new website created by the very talented Min Dean. Watch this space!

Summer is beginning to excite me.

I am not normally excited by summer. I don't enjoy it when it gets over 24 (that's Celsius). But this winter has seemed long, accompanied by illness and colder than last winter. It's has rained. A lot. I like rain, but not constant rain. It feels as though there's been fairly constant rain since I first got sick. I'm sure that can't be true, or The Accountant would have started making an Ark, rather than a Catty Shack. So, I find myself excited about summer. I'm anticipating the opening of the Belgrave swimming pool even as I sit here typing this in front or the fire and wearing fingerless mittens. I'm anticipating trips to the beach, wearing cotton shirts and loose trousers and sandals.

I'm also anticipating some new writing.

It occurred to me the other day that I really want to do an MFA. However, I don't want to go to America to do one. So, what I thought I might do over summer is create a creative writing course for myself, using books in my vast library of books about writing. I'm still going to do NaNoWriMo, but when November finishes, I'll launch into two months of expanding my writing horizons, trying some short pieces, working on some poems, or even a poem sequence. I'll do this in a disciplined way.

That is my plan and I'm quite proud of it.

I must be recovering - I can't make good plans and get enthusiastic about then when I'm sick - I just linger in bed, reading. Or whinging. Or both.

Or I do a little judicious online shopping.

I confess I did this - and bought an Ultimate Sweater Machine - about which I'm unreasonably excited. It's a way of using up stash, is my feeling. I do have a lot of stash - and much of my knitting takes place on public transport. This means I knit a lot of socks which are very transportable, and not so many sweaters or cardigans which are very useful. Particularly in winters such as this one. I'm anticipating more cardigans in my future. As soon as the Catty Shack is completed. Begone rain!

Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone, particularly my friends and family, readers and writers,  the Tuesday Poets, fellow fibre enthusiasts and sewers, a very big Happy New Year. May your celebrations fizz with excitement - stay safe and greet 2015 with renewed energy and enthusiasm.

Highlights for my year include (in no particular order) attending the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show with dear friends, having a piece of work published here:

completing NaNoWriMo, completing some inspiring MOOCs, rediscovering my spinning wheel, doing a sour dough breadmaking course at the Red Beard in Trentham, making some clothes I wear a lot and doing a Christmas linoprint - not that it looks particularly Christmas-y. I was delighted to go to Canberra and do a poetry reading there and also loved my time in Bright with the Accountant.

Me and my 600 page excel spreadsheet guide to Health and Happiness, 2015 are looking forward to the new year. Such a good time to reflect, learn and move forward. I absolutely love it! So fizz away, my lovelies, and welcome in 2015 with style.

NaNoWriMo Wrap-up

50,000 words in a month works out to 1667 words a day. I think. That is relevant information only if you can start on November 1 and can work every weekend. We had a wedding to attend on the first weekend, which was also Nov. 1st. I did 500 words that whole weekend, I think, but I enjoyed seeing two young people commit to each other in a ceremony that never ceases to move me.

Then there was Melbourne Cup - and we stop for that, even if the whole nation doesn't, quite. I made a (free-range) chicken terrine and took it up to the Mothership's and everyone except The Knitting Girlfriend lost money. It was a sad Melbourne Cup day - not because we lost - but because two horses in the race were put down which made me wonder if we'd ever bother again.

I caught up on some marking and then we had interstate visitors and a business strategy meeting,  some more marking and some French homework. I had an afternoon TAFE meeting which took up another day because I had to drive to Warragul and back and then I had some good teaching ideas for 2015 which led to a flurry of emails. I'd also signed up to a MOOC, which I wanted to finish just because it was so interesting.

However, I'm not, as Mademoiselle Rouge pointed out, working full-time and people working full-time complete their 50,000 words. She was right. I am, however, writing a historical novel which required research. There is nothing that stops me in my tracks so much as a question of authenticity. If my protagonist gets her hair cut, was there hairspray in 1942? Oh my goodness! Google! (The answer is no. Hairspray in aerosol cans was a by-product of World War II. Aerosol cans were invented for insecticides. It's pretty damned clever to look at an insecticide and imagine it spraying an up-do, but there you are. That's what makes people rich.)

Research took extra time, but I realised just how much I love it, which was a NaNoWriMo bonus. Doing much of it on the fly irritated me, and I really disliked not being able to edit as I went along. Actually, I did edit, at first, and then I realised how much time that was taking and simply steeled myself to resist it. That was probably the most difficult thing of all.

I did learn that a bit of planning really does help. I had a lot of this story percolating in my head for a year, but it was a story made up of anecdotes and it lacked a clear trajectory. The anecdotes are all family stories that had to be harnessed in some kind of way. I could start with them, but the final product needed a lot of fictional shaping. It was great to have so much material to work with and that allowed me to find the shaping quite quickly, I think. I have my fingers crossed here, because I know I have to do a radical editing job further down the track to get that working properly.

What really surprised me most, I think, was the amount of joy I took each day in sitting down to write. It's been a very focused writing experience and yet nothing else seemed to really suffer from my lack of attention. The Accountant will tell you he had to cook a couple of times - but we didn't come down with salmonella. There was a little more angst than normal at the start - but that has been more than made up for by sheer bounciness in the last half of the month. The Mothership will tell you there have been less movies seen - but a surprising amount of gardening was accomplished.

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat!

Now, what on earth will I do tomorrow?

Tuesday Poem - in honour of the Melbourne Cup

I offer you a link to some Australian horse poems. And then gallop over to the Tuesday Poem blog to read the guest edited poem there, 'Here We Give Thanks (after Gregory O'Brien' by Mary-Jane Duffy, brought to you this week by Claire Mabey.

I can't stop and chat - I'm already approximately 6,000 words behind NaNoWriMo - arrrgghhh!

Eleven more sleeps

until NaNoWriMo. Who is going to be on my cheer squad? I really want to do this. I feel as though I've been stuck in a bit of a writing/not writing/writing/not writing rut and the impetus to finish NaNoWriMo would be good for me. But, as my daughter points out - rather too often - I need gold stars....

Recruiting my cheer squad now. No dancing required!

Fast Food/Slow Cooking

NaNoWriMo is coming up - are you in? I'm in - I'm going to use the month to write something quite new and I'm already excited. Here are some thoughts on fast writing - look out for my thoughts on slow writing coming soon!

“There's an old folk saying that goes: whenever you delete a

sentence from your NaNoWriMo novel, a NaNoWriMo angel

loses its wings and plummets, screaming, to the ground.

Where it will likely require medical attention.”
― Chris Baty

It’s October – the month where some writers thoughts turn to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo was started by Chris Baty in 1999. Participants of NaNoWriMo (now an international internet-based programme) set out to write 50,000 words between 1^st and the 30^th November. You may, and many do, begin at midnight on the 1^st and end just before midnight on the 30^th. Although when it was started, there were only 21 participants, over 200,000 people sign up for now, a website is dedicated to it, and there are hundreds of NaNoWriMo events around the world.

These can include pre-NaNoWriMo picnics and parties, ‘plot-ins’, all-nighters and café writing. NaNoWriMo merchandise is available through the website and there’s a special programme for young writers. Municipal Liaisons help organise events in different regions.

What are the rules? Only that you submit 50,000 words by the 30^th November – this can be done through the NaNoWriMo website – and the words can be scrambled or encrypted if you’re worried someone might steal your ideas/novel/novella. Everyone who submits that number of words is a ‘winner’. Winner of what, you might ask? The winners of NaNoWriMo receive a printable certificate, an icon they can display on their webpage and inclusion on the list of NaNoWriMo winners. Since 2011, CreateSpace, a self-publishing production company has offered winners 5 free paperback proof copies of their manuscripts.

This is all hardly the point, of course. The point is that NaNoWriMo offers established, new and emerging writers the opportunity to sign a contract with themselves that over the month of November they will work put their writing before all else, work to a tight deadline and produce. NaNoWriMo gives a writer the opportunity to say it’s all about the quantity, never mind the quality. It offers liberation from perfection. It also offers writers a sense of community – you are participating in a world-wide writing event. You can, if you wish, meet other writers in real life or in cyber-life. You can participate in forums, whinge to writing buddies at the various writing events or you can stay at home, emerging in December, rough draft in hand. Or at least the beginning of a rough draft.

You can scoff at NaNoWriMo. You can ask what novels are only 50,000 words anyway? (The Great Gatsby is one and many novels for younger readers rock in at under that count…but you can still ask!) However, many writers find that they work well under the kind of perceived peer pressure or personal contract that is NaNoWriMo. And, despite the emphasis on quantity, not quality, publishable books emerge.

“It worked I think because misery loves company, and I knew that thousands and thousands of other people were out there beating their heads on their desks at the same time,” Sara Gruen interviewed by Lindsey Rivait.

Gruen is the author of Water for Elephants which she began as a NaNoWriMo novel. She wrote only 40,000 words and was not, therefore a NaNoWriMo winner. However, the book hit number 1 on the New York bestseller list, has sold over 3 million copies worldwide and is now a movie.

FanGirl by Rainbow Powell, declared ‘absolutely capitivating’ in Kirkus Review, is another novel that started life during NaNoWriMo. Powell is the author of the bestselling young adult novel, Eleanor & Park, also headed towards the movies. In a NaNoWriMoPep Talk, Powell says this:

I was very skeptical about NaNoWriMo at first.

It seemed like something that amateur writers would do. Or young writers. People who needed to be tricked into finishing their books. I’d already written two books by October 2011, and sold them to publishers, and I couldn’t imagine writing either of them—or anything good—in a month.

That’s not writing, I thought, that’s just piling up words.

But then I thought about how wonderful it would be to have a pile of 50,000 words…

Maybe some writers enjoy the first draft—the part of the writing process when anything is possible, and you’re out there forging your own path. I hate that part. All I can think about when I’m starting a book are all the words I haven’t written yet. I actually feel them, hanging around my neck, tugging at me. First drafts always make me feel anxious and a little desperate—like, “Oh God, I just need to get all of this out and on paper, so that I have something to work with.”

I like having something to work with.

You can join NaNoWriMo simply by registering on their website (linked to this Session). It’s free – although donations are welcome and there is merchandise if you feel you’d participate more fully wearing a NaNoWriMo t-shirt or drinking from a special coffee cup. There are events happening already around Melbourne, including plot-ins at Knox Library and Melbourne Central. There is also a new region – Gippsland and Baw Baw Shire, so if anyone is interested and from around Gippsland – you have a Municipal Liaison of your very own.

Monday

Despite breakfast out yesterday, a game of tennis with Keith (I won - even with a sprained calf muscle! Those lessons are paying off - now if only my improvement impresses the Wednesday evening social comp..., finishing the latest Simone Kirsch novel by Leigh Redhead, having a nap and generally futzing around, I still wrote 2952 words of Zelda last night.

Other things I'm thinking about is Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project. I'm really sceptical about self-help feel-good books - however some of the things Rubin is on about are things I've been thinking over the past few years. My attempts at putting into play my own happiness project have been largely defeated by - well, myself, I suppose! A failure of focus? A sense of being over-stretched? The whole life/work/writing balance that is ongoing and, often, as much a question of attitude as time.

So I've been delighted to discover Rubin, have found a beautifully huge blank book in my blank book collection and, during my spare time while I'm away on my country writing & marking retreat, I'm going to plan my own twelve months of happiness. I won't wait for the New Year - I'll start in December - which I think is pretty fitting considering it's one of the most stressful months according to popular wisdom, suicide numbers and other important statistics.

I doubt that I'll meet the NaNoWriMo 50,000 words - writing & marking season & a bad cold/hayfever don't mix, but I'm still happy I signed up for it - it has certainly made me more conscious of striving for a daily writing time, even when I haven't been able to put it into practise. I'll probably make it an annual event.

My first day of NaNoWriMo

produced 3058 words - words which I was pretty happy with, too. I gave it to the Queen of Cupcakes to read and she liked, as did the Nanoson. It's a story I've been dreaming about for a while and writing in my head and my index card system - though certainly not up to Robert Olen Butler's standard - he has at least 200 index cards written on before he starts the novel - is a good way of jotting down ideas without labouring the point in a notebook. So, I'm pretty happy so far though I think the Melbourne Cup and our pizza oven firing might interfere with today's word count.

Still haven't found a good title for the new novel - I liked F. Scott and Me but someone's written a book, F. Scott, Ernest and Me - about going to Paris and writing, so that's out - probably why I thought of it in the first place. Never mind. Then I had the Summer of Gatsby - but my climax happens at the wrong time of the year for that title. Looks like it's just going to be one of those books where the title comes later. That hasn't happened to be for a few books.

Good luck or the Cup, everyone! Start typing and pass the champagne!

ideas to writing

For the NaNoWriMo, I'll be using the index card system Robert Olen Butler talks about in his book, From Where You Dream. Butler - whose writing process seems to be quite similar to me - ie. pretty organic - advocates writing a phrase or even a word on an index card to indicate to you the progress of scenes throughout the novel. So, for example, my index cards for the first bit of Summer of Gatsby (or whatever the damn title is going to be!) might read something like this:
heartbreak
reading
meeting Arachne, the Wizard, Edge and Nick
the couch scene
The Great Gatsby

Meaningless to anyone but me, really. But what the index cards do is to remind you where you're potentially going. It's easy to shuffle the order around. It's not as prescriptive as an outline - and anyway, if I write an outline I feel as though I've written the actual novel and don't bother.

I'll also keep a notebook - hopefully more rigorously than last time, because I want to keep a record of characters and snippets of dialogue etc. Also tarot readings as Arachne is into the tarot. Plus phrases that come to mind, because I'm interested in trying, despite the word count pressure, to create a lyrical piece of writing.

Tonight in preparation for NaNoWriMo I'll be
a) finding the spare index cards
b) writing out character notes in the special notebook
c) filling in some of the index cards
e) spinning some fleece - oops, how did that sneak in there?