I'll write a proper post later, but just wanted to show you how LOML and I looked for the party. There are better pictures of us on a friend's camera but it will be a while before I get hold of them.
It was a fantastic night! Our friends went completely over the top with the decorations and costumes, which is always the best way to go, I think. My favourite was the creepy killer clown they put in the hallway - life-size, and rigged up to a mechanism that made it turn its head when you walked past.
In other news, I have gone slightly mad. After all my careful planning and outlining of my Nanowrimo novel, I threw it all out the window today and started work on something from scratch. An idea gripped me yesterday, and the voice of a character started speaking in my head so clearly that I felt I had to write her story. Damn ideas, spoiling my plans. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a boxing ring being punched by ideas from all sides (in my head the ideas are enormous scary men wearing boxing gloves and tiny satin shorts). That simile is a little strange, but you have to remember I had a very late night and am still in my pyjamas, which makes my brain feel like chewed nougat. (See? Another weird simile. I think I should have some more coffee).
Of course, I might panic and go back to my original plan tomorrow, but at the moment I'm very excited about this book. And flying by the seat of your pants is very much in the spirit of the event, of course!
Friday, October 31, 2008
Halloween party!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Happy Halloween!
Simple and casual today - I have a million chores to do. Including getting my Sarah Palin costume ready for tonight's Halloween party (well, the invitation did say 'dress scary'). LOML is going as John McCain. He's coming home from work early so I can make him all wrinkly. I find it fascinating that the elections in the US have eclipsed our own elections so completely, and I am terrified at the possibility of Obama losing.
I got an email from my publisher in Zimbabwe this morning saying that my book is going to Taiwan for the Taiwan International Book Exhibition 2009, as part of a collective exhibit of the African Publishers' Network. This kind of thing always makes me smile, because my book is so un-African in character. When I was a child, I would have loved to live in England. So many times when Mum was reading me Winnie the Pooh or Thomas the Tank Engine or Enid Blyton books about rosy-cheeked children living on Apple-Tree Farm, I longed for an English childhood. Not an insect in sight. Clean, crisp air and green grass, tidy streets and English wherever you go. Africa was foreign and mundane, all at once. I couldn’t fit zebras and witch-doctors into any of the books I read. I felt that my childhood was somehow wrong, that I was cheated. The only book that came close to my own experience was The Jungle Book, and I remember how excited I was when I discovered it. Finally, a children's book where there were animals and landscapes I recognised! Of course, when I got older I realised how lucky I was to have an African childhood, and my writing now is almost exclusively African ... but my first published book was set in a fantasy world that had more to do with Narnia than it did with Zimbabwe.
Nanowrimo begins tomorrow! I feel excited and apprehensive. To complete the 50,000 words in 30 days I need to write 1,667 words per day. I'm going to shoot for 2,000, and see how it goes. Of course, I also need to be working on the Masters essay this month, but Nanowrimo wouldn't be Nanowrimo without some huge distraction, so that's all right.
Things I am researching for the Nanowrimo book:
Asian students in New Zealand
'Cyberathletes' - people who participate in competitive video gaming
Collage artists
Rabbit anatomy
Computer animation
Programming
Wine
Wow, you could put together a really bizarre plot from those elements, couldn't you? More will emerge as I go on, I'm sure. I'm looking forward to seeing how well writing from a vague plot outline will work for this, too.
Speaking of bizarre plots, if you haven't looked at the 'dares' forum on the Nanowrimo website, you definitely should. It's hilarious. I haven't decided if I'm going to do any of these dares yet, but I'll keep you posted.
One last thing - I haven't updated my links in a couple of weeks, and I'm so sorry if I haven't added your link yet. I'm getting onto it this weekend. Thanks for all your comments, and thank you for introducing me to your lovely blogs, I do appreciate it.
I got an email from my publisher in Zimbabwe this morning saying that my book is going to Taiwan for the Taiwan International Book Exhibition 2009, as part of a collective exhibit of the African Publishers' Network. This kind of thing always makes me smile, because my book is so un-African in character. When I was a child, I would have loved to live in England. So many times when Mum was reading me Winnie the Pooh or Thomas the Tank Engine or Enid Blyton books about rosy-cheeked children living on Apple-Tree Farm, I longed for an English childhood. Not an insect in sight. Clean, crisp air and green grass, tidy streets and English wherever you go. Africa was foreign and mundane, all at once. I couldn’t fit zebras and witch-doctors into any of the books I read. I felt that my childhood was somehow wrong, that I was cheated. The only book that came close to my own experience was The Jungle Book, and I remember how excited I was when I discovered it. Finally, a children's book where there were animals and landscapes I recognised! Of course, when I got older I realised how lucky I was to have an African childhood, and my writing now is almost exclusively African ... but my first published book was set in a fantasy world that had more to do with Narnia than it did with Zimbabwe.
Nanowrimo begins tomorrow! I feel excited and apprehensive. To complete the 50,000 words in 30 days I need to write 1,667 words per day. I'm going to shoot for 2,000, and see how it goes. Of course, I also need to be working on the Masters essay this month, but Nanowrimo wouldn't be Nanowrimo without some huge distraction, so that's all right.
Things I am researching for the Nanowrimo book:
Asian students in New Zealand
'Cyberathletes' - people who participate in competitive video gaming
Collage artists
Rabbit anatomy
Computer animation
Programming
Wine
Wow, you could put together a really bizarre plot from those elements, couldn't you? More will emerge as I go on, I'm sure. I'm looking forward to seeing how well writing from a vague plot outline will work for this, too.
Speaking of bizarre plots, if you haven't looked at the 'dares' forum on the Nanowrimo website, you definitely should. It's hilarious. I haven't decided if I'm going to do any of these dares yet, but I'll keep you posted.
One last thing - I haven't updated my links in a couple of weeks, and I'm so sorry if I haven't added your link yet. I'm getting onto it this weekend. Thanks for all your comments, and thank you for introducing me to your lovely blogs, I do appreciate it.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Polka dots, awards and impatience
I am reading 'What is the What' by Dave Eggers (he of 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' fame). It is amazing so far, and well-deserving of all the accolades heaped on it. It tells the story of a Sudanese refugee, a man who really exists - but the story is a novel, not a biography, peopled with composite characters and imagined events as well as the real. A really brave project to undertake, I think. It reminds me that I also really want to read 'The Other Hand' by Chris Cleave, which is about a Nigerian asylum-seeker in London. Have any of you read it yet?
I so admire these writers and the subjects they tackle, and I want to be that kind of a writer too - Nanowrimo (well, cheating Nanowrimo that I have started already) book excepted, because that one is for fun. Although an interesting element has crept in unintentionally - the character who appeared in the text the other day is a Korean student, and the way Asian students are treated here in Christchurch has started to emerge as a strong theme in the book. I am starting to get gradually more and more excited about the book I'm writing when I finish the Masters, though - the points of view I'm using are going to be really interesting and challenging, I think.
Today is a significant day - eight weeks since I sent out the first batch of queries to agents. Generally you don't hear from agents until at least eight weeks have passed; a lot of the agencies ask authors not to nag - er, I mean, inquire - about their queries until eight weeks have elapsed. I'm not going to follow them up yet, though ... the Frankfurt Book Fair was last weekend, so they would all have been flat-out busy with that, and they may only just have had a chance to look at the manuscript. I'll wait a couple more weeks. Even though it is driving me insane. INSANE. Sorry.
Thank you for bearing with me through this long and rambling post. I hope all you Kiwis had a good first day back at work!
I so admire these writers and the subjects they tackle, and I want to be that kind of a writer too - Nanowrimo (well, cheating Nanowrimo that I have started already) book excepted, because that one is for fun. Although an interesting element has crept in unintentionally - the character who appeared in the text the other day is a Korean student, and the way Asian students are treated here in Christchurch has started to emerge as a strong theme in the book. I am starting to get gradually more and more excited about the book I'm writing when I finish the Masters, though - the points of view I'm using are going to be really interesting and challenging, I think.
Today is a significant day - eight weeks since I sent out the first batch of queries to agents. Generally you don't hear from agents until at least eight weeks have passed; a lot of the agencies ask authors not to nag - er, I mean, inquire - about their queries until eight weeks have elapsed. I'm not going to follow them up yet, though ... the Frankfurt Book Fair was last weekend, so they would all have been flat-out busy with that, and they may only just have had a chance to look at the manuscript. I'll wait a couple more weeks. Even though it is driving me insane. INSANE. Sorry.
Thank you for bearing with me through this long and rambling post. I hope all you Kiwis had a good first day back at work!
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