A New Challenge

My new project will be based on a travel-journal

An email landed in my inbox from WordPress last week, looking at the best daily and weekly blogs of 2012.

It got me thinking whether I could do something like that. I have struggled to even write a blog post every week since I started my WriterMummy blog back in March 2012. Maybe I need a challenge to keep me motivated next year. Something like NaNoWriMo, to force me to write and post daily.

Except I don’t blog unless I have something to say and some weeks nothing much happens, particularly when I’m writing a new novel. Then I thought, why not use a first draft of a novel for my blog?

I originally came up with the idea of 365-365 – writing a book in instalments with each daily entry being 365 words long. That would challenge my daily writing and my need to be more concise. But I suspect the second 365 might be more than I can manage so I’m going to stick with trying to post something every day, starting with a new project.

The story needs to lend itself to short episodes so I came up with the concept of travelling. Ten or twelve years ago I travelled around New Zealand and kept a diary. Recently I helped my sister self-publish her travel journals from America to New Zealand.

I don’t want to do New Zealand though, as that feels a bit close to home (and a bit like cheating, as I’d probably reuse chunks of my diary.) So then I thought what about someone travelling around the UK staying in hostels? The next thought was Why? And how would I integrate a story arc (or even a character arc)?

I came up with the idea of a main character who is a bit smug with her own life. Maybe she has a sister who is a single mother or a brother facing divorce and she’s happy with her middle-class existence, with her designer shoes and handbags and pristine flat. How would she cope staying in youth hostels? Then I had to figure why she would choose to visit youth hostels, which made me decide it would be part of her job. Maybe she’s an advertising executive and her client has asked her to visit the hostels to improve the advertising campaign. Maybe she will write some of her posts on Facebook and Twitter. I’m sure I’ll figure some more out before I write my first post tomorrow!

As you can see, I hope my posts will cover how my writing ideas develop (I’m a pantser mostly, so plot as I go) and how I go about research. As I haven’t visited many hostels in the UK I think the YHA site and Google Maps will be my friends.

Fingers crossed I’ll manage to keep up with my challenge, but if not at least I’ve given it a go! See you in 2013 for episode one.

Happy New Year!

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,400 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

The Long Silence Explained

It occurred to me after I posted my essay on guilt yesterday that I forgot entirely to explain the long silence, despite putting that in my title. Making it a separate post possibly gives it too much weight, as if anything more than normal life has been going on in the last four weeks. It hasn’t. That said, there has been a convergence of events since the beginning of November, creating something like a maelstrom in my life. Some I’ve mentioned already – my husband being made redundant for example – but others happened amidst the whirlwind of NaNoWriMo and beyond.

NaNoWriMo in itself was a struggle this year. I learned a lot about myself as a writer and about the life of a Writer (with the capital letter firmly in place.) I didn’t start NaNo until several days into November because my brain was frozen after weeks of editing. Ideas don’t exactly spill out from my tired mind on the best of days but I had truly exhausted my imagination writing and editing Dragon Wraiths in nine months (ready for the Mslexia competition – more on that later). So in the end I opted to write up a story idea I had for NaNo back in 2010 (abandoned for something easier due to having a tiny baby to care for).

The idea excited me because it combined my favourite things – love stories and Georgette Heyer. The basic concept is a girl auditions to be an extra in a Georgette Heyer movie (based on the book Sylvester) but ends up being cast as the lead role despite having no acting experience. Various plots and dramas ensue and it ends with a love story.

But oh the writing was hard. I know next to nothing about making movies – not something that would normally daunt me, that’s what Google is for. But researching during NaNo is difficult as it breaks the flow. Then I realised I had no story arc, only character arcs, so I was writing into the dark. Again not something that normally bothers me, but this time (whether due to sleep deprivation, mental depletion or just a rubbish story idea) I drove into the dark to find only more dark.

I managed to limp over the 50k mark with two hours to go, but it was the greatest struggle and I was happy to abandon my half-written novel for Christmas Shopping on 1st December. Will I pick it up again? Hopefully one day. I began to understand my characters and get interested in the intrigue, but it is a draft that requires a complete rewrite so it’s likely to languish for a while. What did I learn? That maybe I’m not a Pantser writer after all. Perhaps, now and then, I need a better idea of where my story is going, other than that it will end with a happy ever after. I learned, too, about sitting down and just getting the words out. I had a week of no writing towards the end, leaving myself a 20k target for the last couple of days. I know I can write that much, but only when the ideas are flowing. This time I dragged myself along, like someone finishing a marathon long after the wall has been hit. And it was good. Good to know that I can write even when the ideas aren’t flowing, when the sleeping isn’t coming, and when I’m praying every day for my last novel to fly. Maybe I could make a career out of writing if I ever find an agent.

That brings me on to another event – Mslexia. My novel didn’t get shortlisted for the Children’s Novel competition but I did receive a very encouraging (group) response to suggest why. I was told that there were many strong novels written in the first person (like mine), many covering contemporary issues such as climate change (like mine), many with strong individual voices (hopefully like mine) and where there were two books covering the same topics only one was shortlisted. So maybe mine was just nearly good enough, rather than way off mark. Either way I believe in it, which is a first, and happily started sending query letters to agents the next day. The month before Christmas is probably not the time to be querying but I shall start again in the new year after reading through my newly acquired Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook.

The other things that have been happening are that I have had some paintings accepted into the gallery Art in the Heart, despite my view that they would think them insufficiently arty (see earlier post). It was fun getting all my paintings out of the loft and choosing four to be displayed in January, alongside my miniatures and cards. It was nervewracking too, trying to narrow twenty paintings down to four, and writing an Artist’s Statement that was both interesting and honest. I still have much to do – getting new business cards and flyers and promoting the gallery through social media, as indicated in my contract, – but it was great to temper the disappointment of the Mslexia competition with a success.

I might have to expand my website – Author/Artist/Photographer/Mummy isn’t covering it all any more!

Finally I had a job interview last week for a Marketing Manager (although really a Marketing Director) role. I had to pull together a presentation with a day’s notice, and despite tears and tantrums (mine and the kids) I managed it. I was rather relieved not to get the job as it turned out I would be managing 8 staff – I find it hard enough managing two pre-schoolers – but it was wonderful to put my heels on again and remind myself that I used to be good once. It’s funny how, in this slash-slash generation, you can forget the lives you lived before. Funny, too, that Artist and Marketing Manager should both come back as Writer and Mummy were under pressure.

So, where next? I have decided I need to try harder to start my own business, to use those brain cells that have been long dormant. I rather-jokingly came up with 3AD Publishing when I prepared Pictures of Love for self-publishing, so that I would have a publisher’s logo on the spine.

My husband has started 3AD Solutions to promote some of his Product Management ideas. I think it might be time to combine forces.

The cover I designed for my sister’s book

I have enjoyed preparing texts to self-publish (I did one for my sister and her husband for Christmas, as well as several of my own) and I loved designing the front covers. There must be a market out there for those services!

Whatever happens, Writer/Mummy will continue, even if she morphs into Artist/Writer/Photographer/Mummy/Marketer/Designer/Editor.

Phew.

Bring on 2013!

The Long Silence and Giving up Guilt

Life, like Christmas, should be all about the children

I realised today that it’s been well over a month since my last blog post. That sounds a bit like “Father it’s been two months since my last confession”. Not that far wrong, really, as my blog often feels like the place where I confess my true self.

Well today I am going to confess to the crisis of Identity I had at 2am this morning, after my first night out in months. It wasn’t even a night out, just a meal with my baby group girls, who I’ve known for four years. They consist of a Paediatrician, two teachers, a psychiatric nurse and a self-employed business woman. That’s half the issue right there: Marketing Manager or Writer seems pretty weightless and meaningless next to those guys. I worry about not earning enough money while I fart around writing novels and they worry about whether one of their clients is going to kill themselves or if a child will die that week.

It’s always a humbling experience for me when we get together.

We always talk about parenting – we are a baby group after all, even if after four years our offspring aren’t really babies anymore. That leaves me feeling inadequate too. Two of the parents are from big families themselves and now have big families. They have parenting sussed. Their kids are gorgeous and lovely and polite and eat all their dinner and go to bed on time and their parents are fully in charge.

In our house we epitomise those t-shirts you see on babies, “Mum and Dad know that I’m in charge.” Hmmm

Needless to say I approach baby group dinners with a certain amount of trepidation, because I always come away feeling like I’m failing. I’m not funny enough (they all are), I’m not thin enough (they all are – or they’ve just had babies), I don’t work hard enough (they all do – long shifts, extra shifts, three hours marking homework every night. I fall asleep watching Strictly It Takes Two), I’m not a strong enough parent (my kids have no routine or consistent discipline) and most of all I’m a horrible parent (I shout at my kids way too much and tell them they’re being stupid or pathetic. I told myself I’d never use words like those. I know the power of words).

Goldie Hawn’s Great Book

So I lay in bed at 2am this morning, unable to sleep due to the thoughts whirling round my head. I picked up a book I bought months ago but lost (it was at the back of a drawer of clothes for some reason – one of my “tidy the room by chucking everything I a drawer” moments). It’s called Ten Mindful Minutes by Goldie Hawn and Wendy Holden. I bought it maybe even a year or two ago (tempus fugit) after hearing Goldie Hawn talking about her MindUP programme on the radio. I remember thinking at the time that it sounded like something I needed – reprogramming your brain so it doesn’t get hijacked by your emotions.

For some reason I stopped reading it after a couple of pages and that was the end of my attempt to be a better parent. Last night I started reading halfway through and got hooked. When I went back to the beginning I realised why I’d stopped reading. On the first or second page it says that British children are the unhappiest in the world. I didn’t want that guilt on top of all my exiting guilt so I obviously stuffed the book under the bed only to lose it in a the-family-are-coming drawer-stuffing tidy up.

It seems almost fate that I came across the book again yesterday in my rummage to find something -anything – that still fit that was suitable for a night out with the girls. After laying awake chastising myself about losing my temper with the kids so often and saying terrible things to them in my rage, it was wonderful to read that it’s possible to learn control. And learn it from a neutral person. I’ve been told it before but by some of the perfect parents I know, and so in the past I’ve been resistant. (Defensiveness = stubbornness).

After reading a chapter I got out of bed, went in to tell my daughter I love her and I’m sorry and then, when she came in twenty minutes later for a cuddle because I’d obviously woken her up, lay snuggled into my beautiful girl and thanked the universe for her and her brother and my general good fortune. Because despite my apparent failings as a parent I, too, have gorgeous and lovely and polite and caring children who go to bed when they’re told and 99% of the time are amazing (note I left out the eat-all-their-dinner bit: you can’t have everything).

I vowed to change.

I didn’t vow to be a better parent, or reading Goldie Hawn’s book cover to cover, or to lose weight, become organised, or anything that I’ve vowed and broken before.

I vowed to give up Guilt.

: Happy Smiley Children

Because during my hours of wakefulness I recalled something my husband said the other morning. “You could accomplish so much more if you stopped feeling guilty about everything.” I remember responding, “Great, one more thing to feel guilty about.”

Guilt is like that. It’s an addiction. It’s a habit. Feeling guilty for being a rubbish parent or a meaningless person or for eating too much cake is just a way to not have to do something about it. At dinner last night my psychiatric nurse friend was talking about someone with depression who wouldn’t get out of bed to talk to her. She said of her client, “She bloody well had to get up. If she isn’t trying to get better I’m not interested.”

It really got me thinking. By feeling guilty about everything, I’ve given myself the excuse not to get better. Every time I yell at the kids I feel guilty for being angry and aggressive like my Dad. Instead of thinking of all the great ways I’m like my Dad – how I’m creative and spontaneous and loving. I forget that Dad didn’t have the chance to be self-aware, so he didn’t have the chance to change. I am self-aware. So I have no excuse not to change. No excuse not to take a deep breath when my children have pushed me to the limit, to walk away, to swear at the plant in the kitchen rather than them, until I have my brain back under control.

When I feel guilty about writing novels instead of having a life-saving, world-saving job, I forget how many people’s lives are changed by reading books. Maybe not my books, maybe not yet. But one day one of my books might save a life. My own life has been saved or enriched or expanded by literature. I undersell myself and let the guilt box me in until I’m spending more time wringing my hands than I do writing my books.

When I feel guilty because my kids have had pasta shapes and toast for the third night in a row I let that guilt stop me from trying to give them something different. I feel guilty when they don’t like their dinner and don’t eat it, instead of being a proper parent and encouraging them to try new things and eat healthily.

So, although it’s a bit early, I’m making a New Year Resolution: No More Guilt.

What do you feel guilty about? Have you started thinking about New Year’s Resolutions yet?

The lovely Anushka over on findingmycreature has allowed me to write a guest post for her blog. You can find it here:

Finding My Creature

Amanda Martin, NaNoCreature and woman behind Writer/Mummy has been kind enough to Guest Post about what it is like to write as a mother with young kids. Thank you Amanda for taking the time to do this, I always love reading about other people’s creative processes and challenges because it inspires me to continue on with my journey.

Enjoy.

***

One of the challenges I face as a mostly-stay-at-home mother is that I simply cannot write everyday. Despite that rightly being the first piece of advice you ever get as a writer.

Write every day, even if it’s only ten minutes.

I know my writing would be better if I did, but I can’t.

I’m not going to make excuses. Yes I could find the time, between the kids going to bed and me crawling up an hour later after cooking and eating my dinner. I could write all…

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Quick post – Lulu.com promotion

The Lulu discount code

I’m feeling very positive towards Lulu at the moment as they printed and delivered my last proof book in less than a week (it arrived only one day after my Mum’s birthday and the book was a last minute gift for her so I was doubly happy.) Therefore I’m willing to give Lulu a glowing recommendation and also to add that they’re currently offering 20% off anything on their site. The offer is valid until 16th November. This is the email I received from them:

For 5 days only, Lulu is offering you a chance to save 20% on your next purchase with coupon code SERENTIS. Visit Lulu to redeem your coupon code today. Offer expires 16 November at 11:59 PM.

How does this promotion work?
This promotion is good for anything on the Lulu.com website. Browse the site for your next remarkable read, use the savings to purchase copies of your own book, or purchase one of our other great products or services.

Create a photo book or calendar to share with family and friends:
It’s fast, easy, and fun to create. You can choose from a range of sizes, cover types and free professionally designed templates. Photo books and/or calendars are a great way to save and share your digital photographs instead of ordering photo prints. Convert your digital photo albums into beautiful, high quality printed works of art to keep, sell and share with friends and loved ones. Try your hand at publishing a photo book or calendar today.

In my opinion the quality of the finished product isn’t quite as good as CreateSpace (sorry Lulu, I still have to be honest, even if you’re in my good books) but, I have to say, on delivery and ease of use they win hands down. It took only hours to prepare and upload a pdf for the interior and exterior. No need to wait for approval. Delivered in less than a week and I think it cost me £16 for two 300-page books and that was without the 20% discount. Not bad!

So why not get your novel off your laptop and into your hands? Makes it easier to proof read and pass to Beta readers, and it’s the best morale-boosting exercise I’ve ever done!

Art, Literature and Authorial Intention

Do you see a donkey’s head (upside down) a gladiator (tilt head right) or a tiny ballerina?

Apologies, this is a whopper-post about some stuff that’s been whirling in my brain!

This week I had the amazing opportunity to take some of my paintings into a new gallery that has opened in Peterborough, called Art in the Heart. The gallery is a grand eclectic mix of artwork produced by artists who live within a 20-mile radius (preferably within the city but thankfully the Director, Dawn, makes exceptions as I fall in the 20-mile bracket).

The lovely Dawn generously gave me half an hour of her time to look through my abstract paintings, desk art and cards, as well as the marketing literature I have produced since I left work four years ago to become a full-time artist. It is the first time I have had the chance to speak properly to a gallery owner (which probably explains why I gave up my dreams of being a full-time artist fairly quickly) and it was an enlightening experience.

It seems that Art is all about the artist’s intention.

Now I’m the first to confess I know very little about art. I’m more or less self-taught in acrylics and have only had a few classes in watercolours since I did GCSE art twenty years ago. For me there has never been much in the way of meaning. I paint because I love colour (my one solo exhibition was called It’s All About Colour).

It’s All About Colour – Exhibition Flyer

I choose my palette of two or three colours, squirt them on the canvas, and then let my subconscious, or the paintbrush, or the paint, or whatever, take over. I push and pull at the paint to create texture, I follow what seems to be needed and I keep going (usually past the point where it’s at its best!)

When the painting is dry I ask other people to have a look and see what they can see. Often there is something to be seen: a skeleton, a tiger’s eye, an emu, a dancing ballerina, a skull. These are all things that have appeared in my paintings. Not everyone can see them but, like those pictures of dots where you see the image if you go slightly cross-eyed, once you have seen something in my pictures it’s hard to see anything else. My husband’s favourite piece hangs in our dining room: a 4ft x 3ft dark red, black and gold painting that he stared at for weeks when he was really sick once. It is so personal to him now because he sees a gladiator fighting a lion.

Me, I see a donkey’s head.

It annoys me.

I daren’t show him where the darn donkey is or that’s all he’ll ever see, thus ruining his appreciation of the picture forever. (That’s partly why I don’t read book / film reviews. It’s too easily to be shown something that spoils your favourite book/film forever).

So for me there is no intention in my artwork, but I don’t think it makes it any less artistic. If anything, I think a picture is more profound, affects people more deeply, because they have decided what it means to them. They have invested their time and energy in interpreting it. I haven’t tried to push them in any given direction. Okay the pictures have titles, but usually they’re added afterwards.

Do you see a carnival mask?

I might be motivated by the colour of river weed in sunlight or the bark of a Tibetan cherry tree but that isn’t necessarily what I’ve painted. If someone else sees a carnival mask or a desert landscape, then that is what the picture is to them. In writing that would come under Reader Response Theory: the author and reader create the text between them and it is recreated new – and different – for every reader. Much nicer than being told what to think by the author, surely?

When I spoke to Dawn at Art in the Heart I got the impression that wasn’t enough. To be taken seriously in Art circles it seems I need to have profound thoughts before I began to paint. I need to want to say something, or to shock or question or promote thought. I like to think my paintings do that, if you give them enough time. But I can’t lie and say I’m trying to make people question their inner being or their religion or what it means to be a celebrity.

I just want to bring pleasure.

It’s hard to remember to keep the freedom of a child

Somebody bought one of the paintings at my exhibition because she said it was an exact representation of the inside of her head. It doesn’t get more personal than that! Yet some of the feedback I got when I had my exhibition was the usual ‘My two-year-old could do better.’ Actually, when I watch my two-year-old painting, I think that’s actually a compliment. We have a freedom when we’re young, a disregard for what others think, that allows us to be completely uninhibited. My artwork got safer, more boring, less exciting, as I started to care what people thought. I lost some of the freedom of just painting for me, because it made me high on adrenalin to take a blank canvas and turn it into something vibrant and alive.

I’m trying to avoid the same thing happening with my writing. As I read books and blogs on writing craft I sense a danger of trying to conform to expectations, of shoe-horning myself into a genre or a three-act structure or what I am told makes good literature. I’m forcing myself to accept that, through writing what I like to read, I might be writing something that will sell without being too safe.

At least when it comes to authorial intention it doesn’t seem to matter so much in literature as it apparently does in Art. It doesn’t seem unforgivable to start writing without an intention, to not know where the story is going when you tap out the first sentence. I am sure there are as many authors who set out to teach, shock, thrill, amaze, tease or terrify as there are authors who start merely hoping they’ll get to the end of 100,000 words and have a story that works.

It was never my intention to paint a skeleton (right hand side) it just appeared!

Thinking about it reminded me of a section of my English Masters course about Authorial Intention. At the time I hadn’t written anything creative since GCSE English, ten years earlier. So, when I read that an author’s work could (should) be separated from the author’s intention, I thought What rubbish. Surely an author is always in control of their own writing? You can’t read into a character’s depth without accepting that the author meant for them to be like that. You can’t debate whether Hamlet is mad without accepting that Shakespeare knew very well whether he was or not. He must have had an intention.

Now, as an author with five novels and dozens of unruly characters under my belt I understand what baloney my old opinion was. Characters are sneaky: they do things we don’t expect or intend them to do. Their motivations can turn out to be nasty when we meant them to be good. They go off at tangents and fall for the wrong man. Somewhere in our subconscious we probably know why, but I don’t think it’s always a result of our intention.

I’ve found myself analysing my characters after I’ve finished a book, looking for their motivations, their flaws and strengths. To begin with that felt as fraudulent as adding words to my paintings after they’re finished, saying they’re about death or anger or whatever. The difference I guess is that people are easy to analyse by their thoughts and actions, presented there on the page. Paintings aren’t. And it isn’t fraudulent to look at Leah at the end of Dragon Wraiths and say she has suffered from growing up without a father figure. It’s there in the text, if you look for it. And it’s something I’ve been told is true about me. So I’ve written it into my character subconsciously because I understand it as a concept and because it fitted with my character and story. It wasn’t my intention but it’s still there.

One of the texts I studied on Literary Criticism during my MA is the one quoted below (borrowed from Wikipedia)

W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley wrote in their essay The Intentional Fallacy: “the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art.”^[1] The author, they argue, cannot be reconstructed from a writing – the text is the only source of meaning, and any details of the author’s desires or life are purely extraneous.

I can’t remember how I viewed this during my MA – those years are thankfully a blur – but I know how I view it now. True and not true (actually that’s exactly what I would have said then. My academic answers were always neatly balanced, me being a Libran and all.) I believe my books can be judged separate from me – as my paintings can – but you could use details of my life to help understand them better. My own relationship with my father, for example. Fathers, living or dead, feature quite often in my work. (In my NaNoWriMo this year the father has just had a heart-attack). Whether you could use that information to better understand my characters I’m not sure. My characters are not me. They draw on my experiences, they live lives I might have lived, or would want to live, or am glad I never lived. They often have red hair and green eyes (which I have always wanted!) or grey eyes (like a Georgette Heyer heroine) but they’re not me.

Wikipedia do a lovely summary of the different approaches to authorial intent in literary criticism (which made me quite nostalgic!) here. It was fascinating to remind myself of it all having now written some novels. It makes me want to go back and review my course through new eyes. Maybe it should be a requirement that every literary critic has written at least one novel (preferably a deadline-driven NaNoWriMo one, when your characters are most likely to wander off by themselves.)

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, thank you so much! Having scanned back through my post it isn’t always lucidly written. My academic days are long gone I’m afraid. But it’s been fun revisiting all those ideas and it was good to have your company. I would love to hear what you think!

NaNoCreature Interview

This week I have been fortunate enough to appear on the fab blog Finding my Creature, courtesy of the lovely Anushka Dhanapala. This is my interview.

In a couple of weeks I will also be appearing on her blog with a guest post. Be sure to check out her other posts, this is a great blog: http://findingmycreature.wordpress.com/

Finding My Creature

Finding My Creature presents to you NaNoCreature # 2! You’ll be seeing this creature again so stay turned.

> CREATURE PROFILE:

Name: Amanda Martin / Writer Mummy

Species/Sex: I’ve forgotten since having kids. I’m just mummy.

Occupation: Mummy / Writer / Artist / Unemployed Marketing Consultant

Location: Northamptonshire, England

Plotter/Pantser: Pantser definitely, though beginning to see the merit of plotting

NaNo username: amanda-martin

Genre: Romance probably, haven’t decided (see above under Plotter/Pantser)

Muse status: Praying for inspiration/sleep

> CREATURE INTERVIEW

1. Welcome NaNoCreature where is it that you lurk?

I can mostly be found at writermummy.wordpress.com and occasionally, like a rare breed, I can be spotted tweeting @WriterMummy

2. Is this your first time doing NaNoWriMo?

No, I think it’s my fifth

3. How did you prepare for NaNo?

I didn’t! Up until the last minute I wasn’t going to do it, but it’s rather addictive. I thought I’d see…

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Tarot Cards, Dragons, Babies and Georgette Heyer

My novel Finding Lucy is all about Tarot

Tarot Cards, Dragons, Babies and Georgette Heyer: What do these things all have in common? They’re the main themes of my last four novels. Just as I have an eclectic taste in books and music (Metallica and Einaudi currently my car-CDs of choice) I appear also to have a varied set of themes and genres for my writing.

I’ve heard it’s wise to settle on one genre and writing style that represents your voice and stick to it. But when in your writing career do you do that? I’ve enjoyed writing Young-Adult-first-person-paranormal as much as writing third-person-contemporary-woman’s-fiction and now (hopefully) a romantic comedy. Who is to say which one is really my style?

Except they’re all romances. Gotta have a love story.

I guess maybe the market decides, by what you manage to get accepted by an agent or what sells online. Georgette Heyer, the subject of my NaNoWriMo this year, wrote forty odd Regency romances and something like a dozen detective stories, together with a historical novel or three. By all accounts she despised her romances and the people who read them and her best book is considered to be one of her historical novels. Yet her witty and well-researched historical romances still bring pleasure to millions. Even Stephen Fry counts her as one of his guilty pleasures.

I guess the thing to accept is that unpublished fledgling authors like me won’t know what their voice, their style, their genre is until it’s validated externally. If I’m extremely lucky I might get one of my styles published. I’m not fussy which one!

Until then, in my best Strictly Come Dancing Bruce Forsyth voice, “Keep writing!”

NaNoWriMo irony

The cover I mocked-up for Dragon Wraiths to print a copy via Lulu

I’ve been really struggling this week. Not just with a bad cold, conjunctivitis and a newly-unemployed husband at home scuppering my writing routine. None of those things has helped, of course, any more than the freezing rain, or the end of British Summer Time that has resulted in my kids getting up at 5.30pm every day.

No, what’s really killed my Muse at the worst possible time is the appearance of an unknown character in my head: my Willing Editor.

I’ve met my Inner Editor before – that nasty critic who stops me writing before I’ve even started and tells me everything I write is rubbish. I’m even on nodding acquaintance with my Reluctant Editor. The one who half-edited Pictures of Love before getting bored, and who tortuously ploughed through Dragon Wraiths to meet a deadline.

But to want to edit? To want to edit more than write something new for NaNoWriMo?

Unheard of.

Until now.

I think the change came when my husband commented on how much easier it was to read the second draft of Dragon Wraiths and has told me several times since how impressed he is at how good my editing was.

Praise – it works every time.

Also I’m deliriously happy that I managed to edit Dragon Wraiths enough to make the darn thing actually made sense. For the first time editing has produced tangible results rather than just giving me a headache. Hurrah.

The irony?

Well it’s Nano. I wasn’t going to do it this year, knowing I had too many projects on and am neglecting the family as a result. But I got swept up in the online chat, the excitement, the buzz (although that’s not being helped at present by the fact I’m not receiving the pep-talk emails. I really miss them and hope the guys at Nano fix the problem soon.) I persuaded my husband and my best friend to give NaNoWriMo a try this year. I wrote my top tips which said just get on and do it.

Then I got Writer’s block on a scale I’ve never experienced before. It has taken me five days to even settle on a topic and the one I have chosen is an old novel idea that’s so technical I keep getting dragged off into research. Thus far I’ve managed 1600 words including the synopsis.

Oh, and I’ve edited 30 pages of Pictures of Love. Properly this time. And do you know what? I think I enjoyed that more!

What if anything has derailed your NaNoWriMo this year? Will you get back on track? I now have a dual target of 50k words and 500 pages of editing for November. Apparently I work best under pressure.

p.s. one of my best NaNoWriMo-avoidance activities this week was making a mock front cover for Dragon Wraiths so I could print a copy for my mum for her birthday. It’s not what I’d choose for a final cover but I was pleased I managed to turn a word doc into a printed Lulu book (interior and exterior) in eight hours!