I am back from the meeting with my advisor. University is crawling with students ... it's the first week of lectures. They all look so young and tiny. There are banners hung up all over the College of Arts protesting the universities decision to scrap two Arts departments. There was even a chalk sign scrawled on the bus stop - "Arts Students are not welcome here." On a side-note, I saw a little black cat running across the lawn with a big juicy rat hanging from its mouth. All the students who saw it applauded. That cat must be feeling pretty good about itself right now.
I haven't written any more since yesterday. I spent the morning thrashing the plot into some kind of shape.
It was really nice to hear my advisor say that he enjoyed the chapters. (Nice? Terrible word). He said he sat down intending to read a few pages and then get on to his other work, but he ended up reading all sixty A4, single-spaced pages at a sitting. I'm only giving him the chapters as and when I'm moderately happy with them ... that is, happy that they make sense and are coherent and have the basic rudiments of structure. As I left he gave me a wink and said "It's almost like reading a real book."
He is very confident that it will be published. That is encouraging. I am confident too, when I'm not rocking back and forth in a corner chewing the ends of my hair and freaking out. I am so looking forward to it being published that I am superstitious about it ... I won't let myself look too hard at the possibility in case my attention somehow jinxes it. So I'll carry on the way I have been. Just moving forwards, pushing up the word count, without thinking too far ahead or looking at it too closely. Plenty of time for that later.
(A side note - my advisor told me that there is a man in the Zoology department whose area of specialty is rabbit legs. Rabbit legs? So there are other people out there who are world experts on, I don't know, rabbit spleens? Also, is he a world expert on all the rabbit's legs, or just one of them - say, the front left? Just shows you can become a renowned expert on just about anything.)
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
A sense of style
I have tried to write regular reviews of the books I read from time to time - or even just lists of what I'm reading - but it never works. It feels like drudgery, and I always abandon it after a while. Also, reading a book, or sometimes two, a day meant that I would have to be constantly updating. As I mentioned before, I'm taking an accidental break from reading.
I did want to upload a list of books that I have found particularly inspiring, though, in terms of their writing style. I feel an affinity with writers whose style is lyrical, vivid and quite spare ... I admire Tolkien's decision to use strong, Anglo-Saxon words that have more punch than the more flowery French ones that came into the language with the Norman invasion.
Anyway, here they are (the ones I can think of at this moment, anyway):
The Bone People - Keri Hulme
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt
Ladder of Years - Anne Tyler
If I think of any more, I'll add them ... the sun has cooked my brain somewhat today.
Oh, and worth mentioning for fantastic first-person narration:
Tamsin - Peter S. Beagle
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
Mukiwa - Peter Godwin
And as you can see, the word count has climbed to 61,000! Hurrah.
I have just been looking at the information in my right-hand sidebar. It's a little misleading. I have published one novel, yes, and I am working on a new one, but in-between those two points there are all kinds of finished and half-finished projects. There's the sequel to the published book, and the half-finished third one (it was intended to be a trilogy, though each book stands alone), which will never get published now as: a) publishing books in Zim, where the first one came out, is no longer viable; and b) I wrote the sequels when I was sixteen, and if I read them now I would probably cringe and bury them in the garden. Since then I have also written two young adult fantasy novels: The Story Spinners (which I always mean to go back and revise); and Destiny, which I sent off to a few publishers a couple of years ago. Destiny generated some interest, and Macmillan was vacillating a bit, but nothing came of it. I'm glad now, because I really want the current book to be the first one I publish here.
There is also a half-finished one about an exchange student coming to live with a New Zealand family which is languishing in a drawer ... and one that I really want to pursue when this one is well and truly done, which I won't expand on because of my superstition that that would jinx it somehow.
(I won't go too deeply into the hideously embarrassing historical romance I wrote when I was fourteen ... that one will never see the light of day. Oh, and the fantasy novel I wrote when I was eleven. Actually, the one I wrote when I was six might be worth printing. I think it was about ten pages long and boasted the gripping plot of me finding a unicorn in the garden. One of the characters was a fairy called Angel. Or possibly an angel called Fairy. I forget.)
I did want to upload a list of books that I have found particularly inspiring, though, in terms of their writing style. I feel an affinity with writers whose style is lyrical, vivid and quite spare ... I admire Tolkien's decision to use strong, Anglo-Saxon words that have more punch than the more flowery French ones that came into the language with the Norman invasion.
Anyway, here they are (the ones I can think of at this moment, anyway):
The Bone People - Keri Hulme
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt
Ladder of Years - Anne Tyler
If I think of any more, I'll add them ... the sun has cooked my brain somewhat today.
Oh, and worth mentioning for fantastic first-person narration:
Tamsin - Peter S. Beagle
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
Mukiwa - Peter Godwin
And as you can see, the word count has climbed to 61,000! Hurrah.
I have just been looking at the information in my right-hand sidebar. It's a little misleading. I have published one novel, yes, and I am working on a new one, but in-between those two points there are all kinds of finished and half-finished projects. There's the sequel to the published book, and the half-finished third one (it was intended to be a trilogy, though each book stands alone), which will never get published now as: a) publishing books in Zim, where the first one came out, is no longer viable; and b) I wrote the sequels when I was sixteen, and if I read them now I would probably cringe and bury them in the garden. Since then I have also written two young adult fantasy novels: The Story Spinners (which I always mean to go back and revise); and Destiny, which I sent off to a few publishers a couple of years ago. Destiny generated some interest, and Macmillan was vacillating a bit, but nothing came of it. I'm glad now, because I really want the current book to be the first one I publish here.
There is also a half-finished one about an exchange student coming to live with a New Zealand family which is languishing in a drawer ... and one that I really want to pursue when this one is well and truly done, which I won't expand on because of my superstition that that would jinx it somehow.
(I won't go too deeply into the hideously embarrassing historical romance I wrote when I was fourteen ... that one will never see the light of day. Oh, and the fantasy novel I wrote when I was eleven. Actually, the one I wrote when I was six might be worth printing. I think it was about ten pages long and boasted the gripping plot of me finding a unicorn in the garden. One of the characters was a fairy called Angel. Or possibly an angel called Fairy. I forget.)
Conversation with LOML while gardening
Me: You know, gardening makes me think profound thoughts.
LOML (busily engaged with trying to cut out an old, dead root): Really? Like what?
Me: Just ... profound things. About Life.
LOML: Okay.
Me: For example, I was just thinking about my wedding ring.
LOML: Okay ...
Me: I could have taken it off before gardening, but I didn't. Now it's all covered in dirt.
LOML: Right ...
Me: So it's symbolic. We'll go through rough times in our marriage when the shine goes off things, but instead of taking the rings off altogether we'll just work through them.
LOML: And then we'll rinse them off.
Me: Well ... yes.
LOML: And maybe get them professionally cleaned.
Me: I think we're stretching this analogy a little too far.
LOML: You started it.
Silence.
LOML: And it's all worth it, because at the end we'll have made a beautiful garden together.
Me: Now you're getting the idea. See? I told you. Profound thoughts.
LOML (busily engaged with trying to cut out an old, dead root): Really? Like what?
Me: Just ... profound things. About Life.
LOML: Okay.
Me: For example, I was just thinking about my wedding ring.
LOML: Okay ...
Me: I could have taken it off before gardening, but I didn't. Now it's all covered in dirt.
LOML: Right ...
Me: So it's symbolic. We'll go through rough times in our marriage when the shine goes off things, but instead of taking the rings off altogether we'll just work through them.
LOML: And then we'll rinse them off.
Me: Well ... yes.
LOML: And maybe get them professionally cleaned.
Me: I think we're stretching this analogy a little too far.
LOML: You started it.
Silence.
LOML: And it's all worth it, because at the end we'll have made a beautiful garden together.
Me: Now you're getting the idea. See? I told you. Profound thoughts.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Stats and self-sabotage
Total word count: a notch over 56,000
Today's word count: a little difficult to judge because there was a lot of splicing and moving things around, but probably only about 500. LOML and I are taking a long weekend.
Cups of coffee: four, and one cup of tea
What's playing: currently, a Gilmore Girls DVD
I have been thinking about self-sabotage lately. Because, well, it's something I do. It's not deliberate, but it seems that whenever I'm on the brink of success I do something to negate it. For example:
1) I start writing articles for a magazine. It's going well. I start putting ideas forward for features, and even have the opportunity to establish a reviews page. Then I suddenly lose interest, decide that I don't want to pursue it, and drop out.
2) I send a synopsis and query letter to an agent. She says she might be interested, but it needs to go through her manuscript assessor first. This will cost a fairly large amount of money which, however (and rarely for me), I have. I say I'll think about it, then never get in touch with either of them again.
There are many more examples, and they're not all in the realm of writing, but it is something I tend to do. Something else I tend to do is hand in work with only a cursory edit and rewrite (the Kamikaze approach), when I know that if I only put some time aside to look through it properly I could raise my grade. I'm one of those annoying people who get good grades anyway, but it's still not a good habit. I got better at it last year during the publishing course, because I was more aware of it.
I really hope I can do this successfully. I feel like the book is going well, and I feel like it's going to be really good when it's finished, and that it has a good chance of getting published. I really don't want to screw it up.
Okay, enough over-thinking. I've got into a good habit of switching off the neurotic and self-critical parts of myself while working. It's good to switch them back on occasionally ... clear the crazy pipes, as it were ... but it's time for them to go off again.
(ping).
(that was meant to be the sound of them going off).
Monday, February 18, 2008
Halfway through first draft!
Total word count: 50,000! Hooray. I would like to do some sort of celebratory thing to reward myself, but I can't think of anything that doesn't involve money.
I'm going to the optician this morning to pick up my contact lenses and have an 'after care' appointment. This means that I try to read one of those big charts of letters and get down to the second line (if I'm lucky) before they all turn into black blobs. I really have appalling eyesight. I'm going to wear my glasses to the appointment because the disposable contacts I have at the moment are nearly three months old and I don't want the optician to tell me off. I turn into such a child when it comes to my eyes.
I'm going to the optician this morning to pick up my contact lenses and have an 'after care' appointment. This means that I try to read one of those big charts of letters and get down to the second line (if I'm lucky) before they all turn into black blobs. I really have appalling eyesight. I'm going to wear my glasses to the appointment because the disposable contacts I have at the moment are nearly three months old and I don't want the optician to tell me off. I turn into such a child when it comes to my eyes.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Some thoughts on inadequacy
The books, blogs, films and magazines that I love are not those that fill me with dissatisfaction - the ones that are filled with beautiful, unattainable images and the message that I need something more before I am good enough. Whenever I'm in a waiting room and leaf through a fashion magazine or one of those trashy weeklies, I always feel worse for the experience. The media I really enjoy are those that show me a new way to appreciate or enhance what I already have, and connect in some way to the life I live. Notebook Magazineis a great example of this. The women it portrays are real women in real communities. They don't look perfect or have perfect lives, but they are strong, intelligent, resourceful and talented. There's a great article in this month's issue about a woman who runs a boutique store where she sells her own one-off creations and homewares sourced from all over the world. I love stuff like that. It makes me feel good about my life - like I'm leading a life that is useful and beautiful in some way - and it gives me role models.
I don't want to be told what clothes are must-haves this season, even though I love clothes. I don't want to look at pages and pages of products to improve my life. What I want is to find out how to wear the clothes I've got in the best way I can, and how to make the most of the life and things I already have.
I don't want to be told what clothes are must-haves this season, even though I love clothes. I don't want to look at pages and pages of products to improve my life. What I want is to find out how to wear the clothes I've got in the best way I can, and how to make the most of the life and things I already have.
The incidental things
Bleh. Am trying to get to 50,000 words by the end of the day, and it's like trying to get the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube. Just one of those days. I was sitting downstairs a little while ago thinking "I have achieved nothing today. Just wasted a whole lot of time." I was just snuggling down into a nice comfy bed of self-pity when I realised that was ridiculous. I achieve a lot of things every day - I just like to concentrate on what I haven't done, because that seems so much bigger and more impressive. The things I do in a day I tend to think of as givens ... of course I do them. I always do. But it's all those 'givens' that add up to a life.
So, if I'm thinking about it from this more positive viewpoint, I can see that today I have:
1) Written 1,500 words
2) Cut a couple of scenes more effectively
3) Finished a piece in my art journal
4) Made breakfast and dinner for my husband
5) Unstacked and restacked the dishwasher
6) Made the bed
7) Vacuumed
8) Cleaned the upstairs bathroom
9) Done two loads of laundry
10) Practised the piano
11) Tidied up downstairs
They're all small, regular things, but doing them is important. So even though I feel low, tired and overwhelmed today, I have achieved something.
So, if I'm thinking about it from this more positive viewpoint, I can see that today I have:
1) Written 1,500 words
2) Cut a couple of scenes more effectively
3) Finished a piece in my art journal
4) Made breakfast and dinner for my husband
5) Unstacked and restacked the dishwasher
6) Made the bed
7) Vacuumed
8) Cleaned the upstairs bathroom
9) Done two loads of laundry
10) Practised the piano
11) Tidied up downstairs
They're all small, regular things, but doing them is important. So even though I feel low, tired and overwhelmed today, I have achieved something.
Frequent offenders
These are words, or collections of words, that I over-use when writing:
Quite
A bit
Not really
A little
A couple
A few
A while
Notice that they are all pretty vapid, colourless things ... qualifiers. They're unnecessary and weaken writing.
"I am a bit cold."
"I am cold."
So much stronger just to cut them out. I'm doing a search-and-destroy to expunge them from the book. I think I use them in my writing (unconsciously) because I use them a lot in my speech. I've got a very British accent (like a newsreader), and I use typical British understatement a lot. "Not bad" when something is good. "I'm a bit down" when I'm depressed. It annoys me sometimes, and I'm trying to be aware of it and say what I mean, but it's hard. Luckily there is an Edit - Find - Replace command in Word. Would be nice if there was one in my head.
Total word count: 49,000 (I didn't quite make it to 50,000 over the weekend)
Today's word count: 1,000 so far
Cups of coffee: four
What's playing: Moby
Quite
A bit
Not really
A little
A couple
A few
A while
Notice that they are all pretty vapid, colourless things ... qualifiers. They're unnecessary and weaken writing.
"I am a bit cold."
"I am cold."
So much stronger just to cut them out. I'm doing a search-and-destroy to expunge them from the book. I think I use them in my writing (unconsciously) because I use them a lot in my speech. I've got a very British accent (like a newsreader), and I use typical British understatement a lot. "Not bad" when something is good. "I'm a bit down" when I'm depressed. It annoys me sometimes, and I'm trying to be aware of it and say what I mean, but it's hard. Luckily there is an Edit - Find - Replace command in Word. Would be nice if there was one in my head.
Total word count: 49,000 (I didn't quite make it to 50,000 over the weekend)
Today's word count: 1,000 so far
Cups of coffee: four
What's playing: Moby
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Making stuff
Total word count: 46,000
Today's word count: 1,500
Cups of coffee: six!
What's playing: Nothing. I spent most of the day watching Audrey Hepburn films, as predicted earlier, and all the work I've done has been in the last hour.
I really admire people who make things. Anything, from art to glass to furniture to fantastic meals to little carved wooden bears (to choose a very random example). Our culture is so focused on the acquisition of stuff. We go to any shop and there are shelves and shelves of Stuff just sitting there ready to be bought. We don't see the work that goes into them, and most of them are mass-produced and made by machine anyway. There is satisfaction in owning something handmade by a real, flesh-and-blood person, perhaps even someone you can meet or talk to.
One of my resolutions for this year was to learn dress-making. There is a freedom in being able to make your own clothes. What you wear isn't dictated just by what's fashionable and what's in the shops - you can create your own style and wear one-off things that no one else has. And if you see beautiful fabric, you can actually make it into something rather than just staring at it with vague longing.
It would be great to be self-sufficient, too. When we lived in Zimbabwe, we had a vegetable garden, egg-laying chickens, herbs, fruit trees and nut trees. We could grow a lot of our own food. I would love to live like that again one day. Planting a small herb garden in our tiny back yard would be a good start, and I'd like to do that this year.
Anyway, here are some awesomely creative people whose blogs I have been following for inspiration (and don't get put off by the word 'craft' - it doesn't have to be all tea cosies shaped like cats):
Posy Gets Cozy - various cool crafts and a beautiful site.
Art Junk Girl - an artist who does collage work that I really love.
Dress a Day - this is a dressmaking blog I've been reading for years.
Today's word count: 1,500
Cups of coffee: six!
What's playing: Nothing. I spent most of the day watching Audrey Hepburn films, as predicted earlier, and all the work I've done has been in the last hour.
I really admire people who make things. Anything, from art to glass to furniture to fantastic meals to little carved wooden bears (to choose a very random example). Our culture is so focused on the acquisition of stuff. We go to any shop and there are shelves and shelves of Stuff just sitting there ready to be bought. We don't see the work that goes into them, and most of them are mass-produced and made by machine anyway. There is satisfaction in owning something handmade by a real, flesh-and-blood person, perhaps even someone you can meet or talk to.
One of my resolutions for this year was to learn dress-making. There is a freedom in being able to make your own clothes. What you wear isn't dictated just by what's fashionable and what's in the shops - you can create your own style and wear one-off things that no one else has. And if you see beautiful fabric, you can actually make it into something rather than just staring at it with vague longing.
It would be great to be self-sufficient, too. When we lived in Zimbabwe, we had a vegetable garden, egg-laying chickens, herbs, fruit trees and nut trees. We could grow a lot of our own food. I would love to live like that again one day. Planting a small herb garden in our tiny back yard would be a good start, and I'd like to do that this year.
Anyway, here are some awesomely creative people whose blogs I have been following for inspiration (and don't get put off by the word 'craft' - it doesn't have to be all tea cosies shaped like cats):
Posy Gets Cozy - various cool crafts and a beautiful site.
Art Junk Girl - an artist who does collage work that I really love.
Dress a Day - this is a dressmaking blog I've been reading for years.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Middle march
I've done a proper count-up of all the words of the novel I've written so far, and it comes to just a notch over 45,000. (Today's word count: not much, cups of coffee: too many, what's playing: a chorus of 'woo-hoo's in my head). I spent a happy morning quilting all my patches of story together, and I'm feeling optimistic. I would like to do some work on Saturday, though - it's unlikely that I'll write more than 3,000 words tomorrow (at a generous estimate), and I would love to hit 50,000 by the end of the week. For morale's sake.
I'm noticing that the beginning and the end of the book are coming together far more easily in my head than the middle. The middle is hard. At the beginning of the book I can merrily romp around introducing all kinds of characters and themes, forgetting that I'll have to follow them through at some point. At the end of the book I can build the drama up to a climax, make everything exciting and fast-paced. The middle is where I need to actually slow down, develop characters and themes (while still moving the plot along at a steady clip) and make the book substantial. Therefore it is hard, and I am using my time-honoured technique for dealing with things that are hard. Actually, two of my time-honoured techniques. The first one is avoidance. Simple. The second one is to close my eyes, put my head down and run blindly and recklessly through it until the danger is past. They both have drawbacks. In the first scenario, the words simply don't get written and gaping holes are left in the story. In the second, I churn out words at a remarkable pace without giving them the time and attention they deserve.
Filling in the middle is tomorrow's job, and the weekend's job. Wish me luck. Please.
I'm noticing that the beginning and the end of the book are coming together far more easily in my head than the middle. The middle is hard. At the beginning of the book I can merrily romp around introducing all kinds of characters and themes, forgetting that I'll have to follow them through at some point. At the end of the book I can build the drama up to a climax, make everything exciting and fast-paced. The middle is where I need to actually slow down, develop characters and themes (while still moving the plot along at a steady clip) and make the book substantial. Therefore it is hard, and I am using my time-honoured technique for dealing with things that are hard. Actually, two of my time-honoured techniques. The first one is avoidance. Simple. The second one is to close my eyes, put my head down and run blindly and recklessly through it until the danger is past. They both have drawbacks. In the first scenario, the words simply don't get written and gaping holes are left in the story. In the second, I churn out words at a remarkable pace without giving them the time and attention they deserve.
Filling in the middle is tomorrow's job, and the weekend's job. Wish me luck. Please.
My work day
Total word count: still about 45,000 because although I have been writing, I have mostly been cutting and splicing scenes together.
Today's word count: probably about 500 new words
Cups of coffee: only two
What's playing: Mika
So far, today is shaping up to be a typical day (apart from exciting Valentine's evening ahead):
6:30am - wake up, make breakfast for self and hubby (if I'm feeling kind), watch the news, drink my first cup of coffee.
7:30am - head upstairs to the office with second cup of coffee, check feeds and email.
8am - go for a walk in Hagley Park.
9am - shower, then start work somewhere between quarter past and half past.
10am - have a short break to put washing on (if the weather's good and there is any)
10:15 - back to work
11:30 - stop for lunch, because by this time I am RAVENOUS. When fed, do chores like stacking the dishwasher, hanging out the washing, making the bed and so on.
12:30 - back to work
2pm - this is usually when I stop for a while and do other things ... housework, practise the piano or guitar, paint, go to the shops, meet someone, that kind of thing.
5pm - back to work for a while before LOML gets home
6:30pm - make dinner.
I get very cranky when this schedule is interrupted - like yesterday, when I had to take Mink to the vet at 9:45am - or when people assume that I'm available to run errands during my working time, or that I'm not "really" working. Drives me nuts. I don't work an eight or nine-hour day, true, but I put a lot of effort and energy into writing and I try to be very disciplined about it. So ... I don't know what the verbal equivalent of sticking my tongue out is, but that's what I'm doing now to all those people who think I'm just stuffing around and should get a "real" job.
Today's word count: probably about 500 new words
Cups of coffee: only two
What's playing: Mika
So far, today is shaping up to be a typical day (apart from exciting Valentine's evening ahead):
6:30am - wake up, make breakfast for self and hubby (if I'm feeling kind), watch the news, drink my first cup of coffee.
7:30am - head upstairs to the office with second cup of coffee, check feeds and email.
8am - go for a walk in Hagley Park.
9am - shower, then start work somewhere between quarter past and half past.
10am - have a short break to put washing on (if the weather's good and there is any)
10:15 - back to work
11:30 - stop for lunch, because by this time I am RAVENOUS. When fed, do chores like stacking the dishwasher, hanging out the washing, making the bed and so on.
12:30 - back to work
2pm - this is usually when I stop for a while and do other things ... housework, practise the piano or guitar, paint, go to the shops, meet someone, that kind of thing.
5pm - back to work for a while before LOML gets home
6:30pm - make dinner.
I get very cranky when this schedule is interrupted - like yesterday, when I had to take Mink to the vet at 9:45am - or when people assume that I'm available to run errands during my working time, or that I'm not "really" working. Drives me nuts. I don't work an eight or nine-hour day, true, but I put a lot of effort and energy into writing and I try to be very disciplined about it. So ... I don't know what the verbal equivalent of sticking my tongue out is, but that's what I'm doing now to all those people who think I'm just stuffing around and should get a "real" job.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The end is in sight ... sort of
Sometimes when I hit a bit of a low point, like today, I need to think about how good the end is going to be. I can't wait until I've finished the first draft - it will be so satisfying to have the book there, complete, in black and white, all ready to be painstakingly picked over (and probably significantly changed, but still).I'm also looking forward to seeing it published. I try not to think about it too much - again, my superstitious fear of jinxing - but I am excited about seeing it in proper book form, out in the world.
So, I'm going to go away and try and visualise some of these things (and not eat Creme Eggs, which is how I dealt with feeling overwhelmed the other day). Even on the days when it feels like I'm wading through a swamp, I'm making progress. I know I am. And when it's finished, it's going to be great.
Let them eat cake
Today I have done very little actual writing. Perhaps five hundred words. I have, however, done a lot more plotting out of future chapters. It feels like a big tangly mess at the moment, but I know it will get better (that's what I'm telling myself). I feel like I need to take a bit of time to look at where I am, read over what I have so far and smooth it out. I made a cake this afternoon (which turned out burnt, but that's another story), and while I was creaming the sugar and flour and eggs together I was thinking about how I need to do the same thing with the novel - smooth all the bits and pieces and different chapters together so I have a good, even mixture before I (metaphorically speaking) pop it into the oven and turn it into a proper cake. This is where the metaphor falls apart a bit, because the real cake was great in the middle but charred around the outside, and I really don't want my novel to be like that. If it's even possible for a novel to be charred around the edges. I can't see how that would be a good metaphor for anything.
Monday, February 11, 2008
On jinxing
I don't talk much about the actual content of the book I'm writing, because I'm highly superstitious and feel that to give away any details would be to jinx the whole project. I don't even talk about it to my husband in any detail. The only person who has read any of it and knows what it's about is my advisor, and I'd like to keep it that way.
There are a few things that I'd like to elaborate on, though. It is a novel based on my childhood in Zimbabwe. It's not autobiographical exactly, but a lot of autobiographical stuff does creep in because, well, I grew up there and the protagonist's path is very similar to my own. It is by no means a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (woman) though. The narrator almost disappears into the story, and I haven't even given her a name. It is more important to me to record the country I grew up in at the time I grew up in it. It is a place that does not exist any longer, sadly ... as you will know if you follow the Zimbabwean news at all.
So there you go.
I have published one book before - a fantasy novel for children. I intended it to be a trilogy, and completed the second book (and a significant portion of the third) before the political troubles got dramatically worse and the dollar devalued. This was horrible for everyone in Zimbabwe, but one side effect was that the cost of producing books skyrocketed, as did their price. I don't know how well the book would have done if the situation had remained stable, but as it was book sales dropped hugely and the publisher wasn't really able to put a lot of energy and money into promoting it. Last time I checked, copies of the book were selling for Z$80,000, but that was quite a while ago. A frozen chicken costs almost three million dollars at the moment, I think, so I'm assuming the book price will be even more ridiculous now. Hey, at least I'm a millionaire somewhere.
Anyway, after that I finished a couple of fantasy novels. There was one that teetered on the brink of publication for a while, and got some good comments, but in the end that didn't come to anything. I'm glad it didn't, now, because I've improved a lot since then and I would really like the book I'm working on to be the first one published under my name (in the first world!).
Speaking of which, I'd like to squeeze in a few more minutes of work before making dinner.
There are a few things that I'd like to elaborate on, though. It is a novel based on my childhood in Zimbabwe. It's not autobiographical exactly, but a lot of autobiographical stuff does creep in because, well, I grew up there and the protagonist's path is very similar to my own. It is by no means a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (woman) though. The narrator almost disappears into the story, and I haven't even given her a name. It is more important to me to record the country I grew up in at the time I grew up in it. It is a place that does not exist any longer, sadly ... as you will know if you follow the Zimbabwean news at all.
So there you go.
I have published one book before - a fantasy novel for children. I intended it to be a trilogy, and completed the second book (and a significant portion of the third) before the political troubles got dramatically worse and the dollar devalued. This was horrible for everyone in Zimbabwe, but one side effect was that the cost of producing books skyrocketed, as did their price. I don't know how well the book would have done if the situation had remained stable, but as it was book sales dropped hugely and the publisher wasn't really able to put a lot of energy and money into promoting it. Last time I checked, copies of the book were selling for Z$80,000, but that was quite a while ago. A frozen chicken costs almost three million dollars at the moment, I think, so I'm assuming the book price will be even more ridiculous now. Hey, at least I'm a millionaire somewhere.
Anyway, after that I finished a couple of fantasy novels. There was one that teetered on the brink of publication for a while, and got some good comments, but in the end that didn't come to anything. I'm glad it didn't, now, because I've improved a lot since then and I would really like the book I'm working on to be the first one published under my name (in the first world!).
Speaking of which, I'd like to squeeze in a few more minutes of work before making dinner.
I'm hearing those voices again
Total word count: about 45,000
Today's word count: about 2,000 words. This is a little misleading because I've also been reworking a lot of stuff, which means that I've been cutting as much as I've been writing.
Cups of coffee: four
What's playing: Tracy Chapman
It has been a good morning, for the most part, although I'm still working on a couple of different chapters in different documents and have a lot of gaps to fill in earlier on in the story. I also haven't formatted everything properly yet, which I need to do before I send the next lot of pages to my advisor. It's been a month since I last saw him. I can't believe how quickly those four weeks have gone.
I guess I'm almost half-way through the first draft of the book, if I'm aiming for a length between 80 and 100 thousand words. I started work properly in the second week of January, so it's been six weeks of working on this full-time. Ideally I would like to have the first draft completed (but not necessarily looked over or edited at all yet) by the end of March, just for peace of mind. That would give me almost a year to revise, edit and rewrite and get it up to a publishable standard. I hope I'm going in the right direction with it - it worries me when there are gaps, since I used to write so chronologically.
One thing I have really learned in the last few weeks is that things are achieved a little bit at a time. Sounds obvious, right? Sometimes a task can look so daunting that I don't start it at all - but with this project I've just kept on working steadily every day, and I'm nearly halfway through. In the past I also used to get really bogged down in self-judgement. My inner critic, who wanted everything to be done perfectly the first time, would berate me as I was writing ('this isn't any good, you might as well give up now, it'll never get published, blah blah'). I feel like I have kind of been writing this novel while looking the other way, kind of pretending that I'm not doing it, so as not to attract the attention of the inner critic. On the occasions he does notice what I'm doing and starts with his usual chorus of 'this is crap', I just reply (mentally, I'm not that bad yet), 'that's fine, I'll just keep going anyway.' And look what we have as a result - half a novel. Hurrah!
Yes, well, back to work.
Today's word count: about 2,000 words. This is a little misleading because I've also been reworking a lot of stuff, which means that I've been cutting as much as I've been writing.
Cups of coffee: four
What's playing: Tracy Chapman
It has been a good morning, for the most part, although I'm still working on a couple of different chapters in different documents and have a lot of gaps to fill in earlier on in the story. I also haven't formatted everything properly yet, which I need to do before I send the next lot of pages to my advisor. It's been a month since I last saw him. I can't believe how quickly those four weeks have gone.
I guess I'm almost half-way through the first draft of the book, if I'm aiming for a length between 80 and 100 thousand words. I started work properly in the second week of January, so it's been six weeks of working on this full-time. Ideally I would like to have the first draft completed (but not necessarily looked over or edited at all yet) by the end of March, just for peace of mind. That would give me almost a year to revise, edit and rewrite and get it up to a publishable standard. I hope I'm going in the right direction with it - it worries me when there are gaps, since I used to write so chronologically.
One thing I have really learned in the last few weeks is that things are achieved a little bit at a time. Sounds obvious, right? Sometimes a task can look so daunting that I don't start it at all - but with this project I've just kept on working steadily every day, and I'm nearly halfway through. In the past I also used to get really bogged down in self-judgement. My inner critic, who wanted everything to be done perfectly the first time, would berate me as I was writing ('this isn't any good, you might as well give up now, it'll never get published, blah blah'). I feel like I have kind of been writing this novel while looking the other way, kind of pretending that I'm not doing it, so as not to attract the attention of the inner critic. On the occasions he does notice what I'm doing and starts with his usual chorus of 'this is crap', I just reply (mentally, I'm not that bad yet), 'that's fine, I'll just keep going anyway.' And look what we have as a result - half a novel. Hurrah!
Yes, well, back to work.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Manic Monday
Total word count: about 43,000Today's word count: 2,000, but I'm happy with my progress. Need to get on to formatting it properly tonight.
Cups of coffee: four
What's playing: The Cranberries
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Progress rather than perfection
Hmm, that is something I struggle with. I want things to be brilliant right away. I don't enjoy being a beginner at anything.
My husband and I went rock-climbing yesterday. I haven't been for a couple of months, and my muscles were rebelling against me. Even in fairly low-rated climbs I was finding it hard to stay on the wall - my fingers just wouldn't grip and my body didn't have enough oomph to push me up to the holds. I got really frustrated with myself, and even a little tearful. I started kicking the wall when I was hanging in the harness, and snarling at my poor husband, who was belaying for me, when he offered suggestions. Eventually I managed to complete a couple and get some sort of sense of achievement, but I was berating myself the whole way through and really didn't enjoy the time there until it was over (and I spoiled it for LOML, too).
This is stupid. I can't expect to be perfect if I haven't been practising. And all that self-talk ... "You're so stupid, you're no good at this", blah blah blah. I wouldn't talk to anyone else the way I talk to myself inside my own head.
This carries over into my writing as well. I want it to be perfect right away and get hugely impatient and annoyed with myself when it isn't. Really, all it requires is practice and diligence, and gradual progress will be made.
I can also sometimes be resentful of criticism, no matter how constructive, and think "well then, the whole thing is obviously terrible so I should just scrap it". A very extreme reaction which, I think, is self-preservation in disguise: it's easier to flounce off dramatically and abandon a project than it is to work through the blocks, trudge on, do the miles, work with criticism, endure the whole long process of making a piece of work better. I'm learning on this book that progress is what matters, not perfection. Even if I feel like every word I'm writing is rubbish, the most important thing is just to show up at the page and keep going. It's usually better than I think when I look back later. And by doing my little increments of a couple of thousand words a day, I am a third of the way through a 100,000 word novel.
"I don't know why it is that we fail to talk about art in terms of humble diligence. So much of making a career as an artist consists of the small strokes, the willingness to show up and try on a daily basis." - The Sound of Paper, Julia Cameron
Meanwhile, back at the laptop
Total word count: about 39,000
Today's word count: 2,000. I'm pleased with my progress today, though, because I've really managed to tidy up Chapters Five and Six. A lot of this week has been back-tracking, after I merrily jumped all over the place last week writing scenes from all parts of the book, and filling in some of the blanks. A couple of great characters have sprung up from nowhere to make the whole process more enjoyable.
I still feel like I need to do a late night sometime soon to push my progress forwards ... for some reason I can concentrate really well at night after LOML has gone to bed and everything is dark and quiet. Fewer distractions, maybe? Next week is going to have to be very intense work-wise. I need to get some more pages to my advisor, and I'd like them to be good. I might be working over the weekend.
Cups of coffee: Only three, but one was double-shot espresso. Am thinking of putting another pot on shortly (but really must do some cleaning first ... housework has been sadly neglected this week. Luckily, over the years I have perfected the ability to vacuum, do the dishes and polish with one hand, so I can read at the same time).
What's playing: still Jukebox by Cat Power. Love that album.
I also managed to do my morning pages today - hurrah! It's meant to be three pages of longhand free writing before you start your day, but my attention span only runs to two pages. I find longhand very frustrating, because I can't write as fast as I think. Which means it's probably a very good exercise for me, as I'm forced to slow down. I'm going to try and get into the habit of doing these daily ... we'll see how it goes.
Today's word count: 2,000. I'm pleased with my progress today, though, because I've really managed to tidy up Chapters Five and Six. A lot of this week has been back-tracking, after I merrily jumped all over the place last week writing scenes from all parts of the book, and filling in some of the blanks. A couple of great characters have sprung up from nowhere to make the whole process more enjoyable.
I still feel like I need to do a late night sometime soon to push my progress forwards ... for some reason I can concentrate really well at night after LOML has gone to bed and everything is dark and quiet. Fewer distractions, maybe? Next week is going to have to be very intense work-wise. I need to get some more pages to my advisor, and I'd like them to be good. I might be working over the weekend.
Cups of coffee: Only three, but one was double-shot espresso. Am thinking of putting another pot on shortly (but really must do some cleaning first ... housework has been sadly neglected this week. Luckily, over the years I have perfected the ability to vacuum, do the dishes and polish with one hand, so I can read at the same time).
What's playing: still Jukebox by Cat Power. Love that album.
I also managed to do my morning pages today - hurrah! It's meant to be three pages of longhand free writing before you start your day, but my attention span only runs to two pages. I find longhand very frustrating, because I can't write as fast as I think. Which means it's probably a very good exercise for me, as I'm forced to slow down. I'm going to try and get into the habit of doing these daily ... we'll see how it goes.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Field Trip
Total word count: 37,000Today's word count: 1,000. Slightly pathetic, I know, but I did spend a lot of time un-knotting the tangle that my latest chapters have become. Would like to see at least another thou by the end of the day, but have slipped into the usual lassitude that follows a productive day so I don't know how likely that is.
Cups of coffee: Only three so far!
What's playing: a brand new CD - Jukebox, by Cat Power. It's great ... the sort of soulful-bluesy-folksy-girlie thing that I love and my husband abhors. Better make the most of it before he comes home.
So today I packed up my bags and headed to a cafe to do some work. Got a bit cabin-fevery, especially after all the rain yesterday. I sat with a pile of print-outs and scrap paper and tried to get my head around how chapters five onwards are going to pan out, and remind myself to carry through some of the threads I had already started. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed (or a lot), so this was definitely helpful.
Am tired. Why am I so tired lately? It's not as if I'm scaling mountains or lifting cars with one hand. I'm just sitting at a computer for most of the day. But it seems like around this time of day a grey mist comes down in front of my eyes and my head fills up with feathers and all I want to do is snooze on the sofa. Weird.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Another update
Okay, well, I'm hoping to get some more done today, but as I am sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket and watching a DVD, it is not going to get done right this moment. So here are the stats as they stand.
Total word count: 36,000
Today's word count: 3,500
Cups of coffee: SEVEN. Good God.
Total word count: 36,000
Today's word count: 3,500
Cups of coffee: SEVEN. Good God.
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