Just a quick update to say I’m still alive, but I’m not only taking part in NaNoWriMo, but homework for two other writing classes as well. As you might imagine, this is keeping me jolly busy.
With 33% of the time elapsed, I had reached half of my target of 50,000 words. I think be able to match the target, but not beat it, so I’ve been taking it slightly easier. At a day over the halfway mark, I now have around 33,000 words.
But I’ve also had time to visit the cinema. Last week, I saw Gravity, although I felt that because Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are such famous faces, it distracted somewhat from the story. Yet it remains an excellent film, with the action of Apollo 13 set to the backdrop of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
And today, I attended a free screening of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in Swedish with English subtitles. I enjoyed this for its captivating story, even if it becomes a little muddy towards the end, and I hear it’s much better than the English-language remake. I’ve no current plans to read the book but if I have a chance, I’ll give it a look.
So hope you reach the end of NaNo in one piece, and any other writing projects you may have on the go. I’ll update again when I have the chance, which I hope will be the day I hit the target.
If Bridget Jones had inhabited me in a Quantum Leap style. I’d say I was typing out a v. v. quick update on my National Novel Writing Month process.
I have a very organised Municipal Liaison, or ML, who gives us writing space in a friary. While I’m not religious by any measure, the calm, quiet sanctity of the place is very conducive to writing.
But equally, so is a certain coffee shop in the town centre, where I tried writing on Sunday. A friend happened to be in the area, and she forced me to go to the pub across the road and drink red wine – forced, no less – leaving me 2,000 short of my intended target.
Despite this small setback, I still bagged a mammoth weekend total. The daily target is an average of 1,667 words, which equates to 11,669 on the seventh day. As of last night, I’ve banged out 12,539. I’m just about to start hacking away at today’s total.
If you should like to follow me on the NaNo website, please do so. It’s helpful if you can also send me a message saying you saw it here so I know where you’ve found my profile.
I’m just taking a few minutes out of my writing schedule to wish the best of luck to every National Novel Writing Month participant. Thus far, I have a little over 600 words to sling on the pile.
Don’t forget, there are likely to be people in your local area to help you stay inspired, and look out for the periodical motivational e-mails.
I admitted in my first entry that I have only been writing for fiction three years. Today marks that third year.
On 29th October 2010, I joined National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) on a whim. A lot of online friends seemed to be doing it. Until then, I had written only non-fiction blog entries, so I can’t explain why I’d already had a book idea kicking around for months before this.
I didn’t initially tell anyone what I was doing,except for the active NaNoWriMo chapter I discovered in Dundee. At their meetings, and any moments I could grab, I bashed out my first novel Chris The Girl, set in the year 2525 when only women exist, and reproduce by the use of technology. I reached 50,042 words; just over the punishing target. I’ve successfully tackled it every year since, and will be starting again in a few days’ time.
Then in March 2011, I heard of a new local writing group. At school, I was forever being marked down for not writing long enough pieces, but after a few weeks, I started to think, “Chuffing Nora. I’m finding this easy.” I don’t know what changed in that ten-year gap but perhaps it was because our focus here was how to make the story flow, not on refining the grammar or making it fit an exam question.
Now I’ve written dozens of stories, and had a couple of them published, my first being with The Fiction Desk, while I haven’t really talked about my second, with FourW. My story The Almost Man will be published in their latest anthology. If you live in Australia, you can go along to one of their launch dates:
Wagga Wagga on Saturday 23rd November 2013 at Wagga Wagga City Library commencing at 2.00pm.
Melbourne on Sunday 24th November 2013 at the Robata Bar in St. Kilda commencing at 2.30 pm.
Sydney on Saturday 30th November 2013 at Gleebooks, Glebe Road, Glebe commencing at 3.30pm.
The one good element of starting late is that I’m not embarrassed by my earlier attempts. There are many people who go through their teenage notebooks and cringe at the clumsy metaphors or purple verse, whereas the worst I experience is spotting rough corners that could do with tidying up.
On the other hand, I’m very competitive and find it difficult to accept that I haven’t written nearly as much as I might have by this age. And that means I’ll forever be playing catch-up.
If you’re a writer, feedback is a great thing, although less so if you’re a sound engineer. But the quality can vary considerably. Let’s consider two of my recent rejection slips, or the e-mail equivalent thereof. I think I’ll trademark the term e-rejection™.
We’ll endure the bad one first.
An anthology publisher sent me an e-rejection™ to my short story The Strange Case of Mr Brown, with the opinions of three readers.
Two of them commented that the story was bland, but neither of them offered up any specifics about why they thought so. With that information, I could have refined the weak parts. The third one pointed out that the eponymous Mr Brown had an eidetic memory, and that this case wasn’t strange, but I believe the reviewer missed the point that the, “case,” also referred to an unusual court hearing.
And now for something a lot better.
Some time ago, I sent a synopsis of my novel Fifty Million Nicker to an publisher. Less than two weeks later, they asked for the whole shebang.
In the e-rejection™, they told me that they felt the story didn’t take off and lacked a sense of drama or excitement. But they planted a useful nugget halfway through that summed up the areas for improvement: “You needed to surprise us with unexpected twists, and real obstacles, and genuine peril for the protagonist to overcome.”
Essentially, they were telling me to up my game, and I agreed with 90% of the criticism. I’d spent so long honing and polishing it that I’d never stepped back and considered if I could improve the actual story. And I’m now halfway through rewriting the some of the sections.
The common thread.
Both publishers commented that they liked my writing style, the latter even stated they would be happy to consider future work. When I write, I work to the principle that a sentence is only successful when you understand it after one reading. So it annoys me when I read a headache like this: “He knew that she wanted him to think that she had failed to call his bluff.” That’s not from a real book, thank goodness.
If you’re a publisher and want to slate consider the aforementioned works, I’m happy to send them on.
Every Tuesday, the Should Be Reading blog runs a Teaser Tuesday. You choose two sentences at random from your current book and post them. The only rule is that spoilers are banned.
So I grabbed Chris Brookmyre’s Flesh Wounds. I’ve seen him twice at live events, and the last time, he signed my copy of this book. I resisted asking him if anyone ever mistakes him for Irvine Welsh.
Here’s a quote from page 245.
‘The autopsy hasn’t been completed yet, but I think she was murdered. She hadn’t touched a drop in years, but her house was staged to make it look like she was back on the drink with a vengeance.”
I was introduced to him via All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye. In fact, most of his titles are as humorous as his prose, although it helps if you understand the Glasgow dialect, as I do. He’s described as a comedy crime writer, and while Flesh Wounds is an altogether darker story, there’s still a laugh on nearly every page.
I’m open to suggestions for which of his books I should read next.
Ye gods! I knew I was living under a rock with LiveJournal, yet I didn’t realise the exact extent until other users started hitting the Like button. I’m unaccustomed to such a response, and I much appreciate it.
I chose WordPress over sites such as Blogger because I have a couple of friends here already. Even the range of basic features are bewildering; when I typed Like button in the previous paragraph, it gave me a Wikipedia link to the Like button page. After a little more kicking the tyres, I’m sure I’ll soon crawl into the 21st century.
Today I’m talking about endings. I recently read two short story anthologies by the same publisher: one from 2011, the other from this year. It struck me that a high number of the pieces in both of these did not have a proper ending, in fact the editor seemed to prefer this style. In some cases, the author would conclude with a limp or vague paragraph. In other cases, it would simply stop, leaving me checking for a missing page and in a couple of cases, asking, “And?” out loud.
It was disappointing rather than annoying because a lot of the stories in the anthology contained great ideas that were let down by their execution.
I try to give my stories a twist ending, or at least a clear marker the reader has reached the end. I don’t always manage, however. I recently received a rejection from a publisher looking for funny stories because, “… the ending lacked a good punch line.” To me, a rounded ending is important in a short story. Even if the reader is meant to be left in some doubt, there ought to be enough clues or information in the body of the story to narrow it down to two or three possible options about what might happen next.
One important exception, however, is autobiographical writing. I’m going to come back to this in more detail on Monday. For purely fictional writing, however, an ending is king.
Not The Booker Prize, nor The Nine O’Clock News.
I was going to leave it until Monday to post about the Not the Booker Prize run by The Guardian, but the deadline is midnight on Sunday.
In my last entry, I mentioned my writing sensei Zöe Venditozzi. Her novel has been shortlisted, and I encourage you to click on the photo above and vote for it before the deadline of midnight on Sunday.
That’s not just because I know her, but because it’s a cracking character-driven piece from a début novelist, featuring alongside established authors Neil Gaiman and Kate Atkinson. It also happens to feature a chap with my very initials who happens to volunteer at hospital radio, just as I do.
To cast your nomination, you’ll need to create a Guardian account and write a short review in the comments. As the paper says, Comment is free, and so is your vote.
When you speak to a lot of authors, it’s common to hear that they were always writing stories as children or experimenting with poetry as teens. However, I’ve only been writing for three years, since 29 October 2010, in fact. That was the day I signed up to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) on a whim, since everyone else was doing it.
From high school until that point, I’d written hardly any fiction. Since then, I’ve entered NaNoWriMo every year and written dozens of short stories, many of them under the tutorship of Zöe Venditozzi, whom I’m sure would like you to buy her book. I’m also pleased to report that I’ve had a flash fiction piece published in The Fiction Desk, while FourW will publish one of my short stories next month. More on the latter when it happens.
Although I didn’t write fiction until three years ago, I have kept a blog for a long time, and it’s still a powerful way of spreading your message, even in these days of Twitter and Facebook. I don’t plan to give up my with ageing LiveJournal for my day-to-day activities, but I did want to start afresh with WordPress for discussing my writing.
I’m viewing this as an experiment, and it might not last. After all, the more you write about writing, the less time you have to write. But I hope I can whip myself enough to keep this place updated, and more importantly, to make sure you want to read it.
One final thought: I’ve used the tag-line Carry on for a long time, before that Keep Calm poster ever came out. I’m debating whether to have a tag-line at all, and if so, what should it be?
