Baking Cookies and a Snowy Day #23

My little darling chefs

Today was the first day in months that I had the kids all day without husband around to lend a hand (he had a job interview, hurrah!).

It was nice although the children missed daddy a lot.

“Mummy I love Daddy more betterer than you” my daughter said in the car on the way back from coffee morning.

A statement that was later changed to, “I didn’t want you to tell Daddy that. I love you both most of all.”

Makes all the tough stuff worthwhile.

Playdough snowman. The only kind of snowman my kids wanted to build today!

We had fun today, getting my son’s hair cut finally (he has a double crown and had started to look like he had feathers in his hair like some tribal headdress). We baked chocolate cookies, built things with playdough, played with puzzles and cars and now they’re “wrapping” everything in the playroom and bringing it to me, singing “happy birthday to you”.

I love my kids.

My “Birthday Gifts” from the children. I think the iron was Daddy’s idea.

Thankfully husband appeared at five o’clock, allowing me to walk the dog and make a start on Claire’s exploits for today, tapping away into my phone while walking in the snowy dark. It was beautiful outside with the moon lighting up the snow (it makes it much easier to walk the dog after dark. There has to be one good thing about the snow.)

So, understandably, Claire’s post today features snow. Writing seasonal is always easier if it’s outside the window. That’s why I tend to start novels in the season I’m in. Write what you know.

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A soft glow shone through the window and across Claire’s face. Used to sleeping in the cave-like darkness of a room with blackout blinds Claire was pulled awake by the light. It took a while to work out where she was and why her blinds weren’t closed. Irritated as much by the memory of the last few days as by being woken, Claire rose on one elbow to figure out where the light was coming from. From her elevated position on the top bunk she could see through the gap in the curtains right down to the road.

Snow. Marvellous.

The moon illuminated the street below like studio lighting, making it difficult to tell what time it was. The room was silent. Claire blessed the Gods that the Scandinavian women didn’t snore. She fumbled under her pillow to locate her phone, although she could nearly tell the time on her watch by the eerie light seeping through from outside.

2am. Bollocks.

Claire felt wide awake. If she’d been at home she would have got up and done some work, knowing it was the quickest way to feel sleepy again. With two strangers in the room with her she felt she couldn’t turn on the light or even make too much noise in case she woke them.

This is what that damn Maglite is for then. Shame it’s in the bottom of my rucksack. Not much good there. I don’t even have headphones to listen to music. Idiot.

Claire lay in the dark trying to distinguish the sound of Ola and Francis breathing. She wondered whether she should check if they were still alive. What responsibility did you have for your bedfellows if they were also complete strangers?

Claire heard a noise that made her heart thump in her ears. Someone was fumbling outside their door, scratching, as if trying to insert a key. I’m glad it’s locked. Imagine someone trying to get in the wrong bunk in the middle of the night. She shivered at the idea of having to fend off some sweaty oik and felt glad she’d had the forethought to buy a nightie.

The room filled with the sound of Claire’s shallow breathing as she strained to hear if the noise had gone away. It hadn’t. Utterly awake now, she tensed ready to defend herself as she heard voices outside the door. What if someone’s trying to break in, to steal our stuff? Claire wondered if she should wake the girls.

I’m surprised they’re not awake already with that racket. Maybe this is normal. Maybe you have to learn to sleep surrounded by noise, like you do when flying. A stab of pain shot through Claire’s head as she contemplated weeks of broken sleep. I really don’t do well on less than six hours.

At last the fumbling stopped. Claire took a deep breath which stuck in her throat as the door opened and a light pierced the darkness, followed by another. Flashlight beams shone overhead like search lights as two very drunk girls staggered into the room. One of them tripped over and fell heavily against Claire’s bunk; the other pulled her friend upright with a snigger. They shushed each other and giggled as they headed into the en-suite. Claire could hear them talking in loud whispers that they obviously thought was them being quite. She couldn’t decide what was more annoying: Being woken up by a couple of drunks or being awake already and discovering she’d been trying hard to be silent and considerate in an empty room.

Where the hell have they been until this time anyway? Even with 24 hour licensing who wants to stay up late in this provincial backwater? And they say we Brits drink too much.

Claire lay in her bunk not speaking. She was tempted to admit to being awake but she couldn’t face a scene. Besides, what was there to say? Excuse me but some of us like to go to bed early? That was rubbish anyway. Back in Manchester her night would still be young at 2am.

What is happening to me? Oh my god, I’m turning into my mother. Next I’ll be admonishing people not to talk and eat or advising them that man-made fibres make you sweat in an unladylike fashion. Right, that’s it. I’m ringing Carl first thing in the morning. Roughing it is one thing but I’ll be damned if I’m going to become a boring old cow before I’m thirty.

No Excuses – the 2013 365 Challenge Day #19

Snow Monster – Kara loves the snow

I’ve always had bad knees but, since I took a Learn to Row course back in the summer, my right knee has been so painful sometimes I can’t walk on it. Rowing used, or tried to use, a heap of muscles that haven’t been needed in a while and I ended up pulling my knee cap out of line. (That’s how I understand it anyway, I’m sure it’s nothing like that if you ask a doctor.) I had physio until we couldn’t afford it anymore then I had some free physio with the NHS. Very different experiences but both came down to the same thing – I must do daily exercises to retrain my muscles. I knew that – I’ve been told that before.

But I’m rubbish.

I do the exercises religiously three-times-a-day for a week or two then I forget or am too tired or whatever excuse I use and that’s it. I hobble in pain for a while and another opportunity to fix it is gone forever. I think the problem is that no one notices or cares whether I do the exercises or not so it’s easy to be lazy. I just can’t seem to get the exercises to become a daily habit, even though it means I spend a lot of time in pain.

But, until recently when my husband took over the task to give my knee a rest, I walked the dog every single day I could. Only when I had the kids all day did she just get a quick play with a ball in the garden. Rain, hail, snow, tired or not, I walked her. Because that’s what I signed up to by getting a dog. In Terry Pratchett’s Thud! the lead character, Sam Vimes, says something like ‘if I miss it for a good reason even once, I’ll start missing it for bad ones.” He was talking about reading a bedtime story to his son but the theory is the same. He made a commitment.

I’m walking in a snow storm as I write this into my phone. And I’m glad I came out. I didn’t have to come – falling snow and poorly knee were excuses enough. But the dog looked at me, then longingly out at the fresh snow, and I had to come. And I’ve enjoyed my walk.

Blogging was the same. When I didn’t have a living beast to care for it was easy to make excuses not to post. I didn’t have anything to say, I had other commitments, I was doing NaNoWriMo etc. Now I have my daily challenge there is no room for excuses. Apart from the time in Italy when I had no laptop or internet I have written every day since 1st January because it’s a thing I must do. And that’s made it simple, and fun. Even when I’m shattered and I know it’s the writing equivalent of throwing a ball in the garden I have to write my daily post.

Now if only I could find the thing that would make me do my knee exercises every day…

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“Hello there, Good Morning. How did you sleep?”

Claire flinched at the bright voice and wondered if she could ignore it. She didn’t recognise the wrinkled face beaming at her, but a vague recollection of the night before threw up a name card.

“Hattie? Yes, I slept okay, thanks.” Years of training allowed Claire to be nice when what she really wanted to say was, Sod off, I’m not here to make friends, I’m working and, even if I weren’t, I’m not about to be best buddies with an octogenarian.

A quick glance round the café showed Claire a surprising number of bodies tucking into breakfast. Hattie patted the seat next to her and Claire had little choice but to sit with her new friend.

“Is it always this busy?”

“Yes, dear. The hostel has a dozen or so rooms and it’s very popular. The locals come too, although not so often for breakfast. Between you and me…” she leant in close to Claire and a cloud of talc and perfume wafted over her, “…their dinner is better. I think the chef doesn’t like mornings.”

“But you eat it anyway?” Claire looked at Hattie’s plates of bacon, eggs and other Full English delights and shuddered.

“Not every day, only at the weekend. They have a lovely little kitchen on the top floor but it gets a bit mucky on a Friday night, what with takeaway boxes and late night munchies.”

Claire smiled at hearing a word like munchies coming through pristine false teeth. “You sound like you’ve been here a long time?”

“I have, dear, on and off. At my age there’s little point spending money on rent and bills. Besides, it gets lonely. There’s only me and I hate cats.”

Claire turned round in her chair, taking her eyes off the laminated menu to stare in wonder at the beaming, line-patterned face. “Let me get this straight. You live here? In a hostel dorm room?”

Hattie nodded enthusiastically. “Not always here, although it is a lovely hostel. Where else could I stay with all my bills paid for £7 a day? It used to cost more than that to heat my flat. I don’t have to clean and I meet some lovely people.”

The words entered Claire’s brain but made no sense. Why would you choose to give up your apartment and live in a hostel? Share a room? No one could be that poor, surely.

“Have you been travelling long?” Hattie spoke around a mouthful of sausage and her chewing gave Claire a chance to choose her answer. In the end she decided honesty was probably easiest. There was no need to impress this garrulous old biddy.

“Not really. This is my first day actually. I’m… I’m writing a blog about hostelling.” Well, that’s true enough.

“Oh how charming. What will you write, will you include me?” Claire was touched to see how delighted Hattie was at the idea, like a small child being offered a tremendous treat.

Claire shrugged, why not? I have to put something in the damn blog.

“Of course. Would you like to tell me about your travels? Why did you choose the YHA? Do you feel it promotes a healthy lifestyle?” Her voice grew stronger as she spoke and she realised at last she was back in her comfort zone. She might not know about making her own bed with a flat sheet or how to start a car with a manual choke but she knew about social media and she knew about fulfilling a brief, however stupid it was.

As Hattie began to talk, waving her hands and nearly knocking over the vase of flowers on the table, Claire sipped at the coffee recently deposited in front of her and scribbled notes on a napkin.

***

Habits (attitudeforgratitude.com)
Why Doing NaNoWriMo Was a Terrible Idea (bekahgraham.wordpress.com)

Renewing my love affair with dragons (and editing)

Still from Stefen Fangmeier’s 2006 film Eragon.
Photograph: 20th Century Fox/Allstar

I find myself in the unprecedented position that I am itching to start editing my work in progress, Dragon Wraiths.

Usually I only enjoy the writing part and approach revision and editing much as I would a trip to the dentist. This time, though, I am having to force myself to finish the four or five chapters in the final section before I start taking it all apart. Thankfully I decided on a structure of nine 3,000-word-ish chapters per section (although I have added a whole extra section in my usual scope-creep), otherwise I would take the easy way out and decide the first draft is done already.

For most of my novels I am aware that I have underplayed the climax because I ran out of steam, or ideas, or a new book lured me away. So I am determined to battle through my battle scenes before I let myself review the whole and start drawing out the themes.

This time I think my last-chapters-lethargy is caused by things other than exhaustion or boredom (although with an average word count of 10,000 a day on the two days a week I get to write, exhaustion of ideas is definitely a factor. Hence no blog posts for a couple of weeks – all out of words!)

Firstly I’ve already closed out the love story and written the final scene. A mistake, but an unavoidable one. The final scene presented itself while I was walking the dog (see next post) and I never look gift words in the mouth. As a result I have written the bit of the story I’m interested in and skimmed over the same parts I often skim-read, namely the battle scenes.

The other problems are more positive. I am nervous, elated and excited about this book. It feels good. I have ideas about themes, character development, setting and so on that I want to build on during revision. All the wonderful blogs I read have clearly had an influence and I am eager to put them into practice.

I have also been reading some excellent and varied middle grade and young adult books about dragons, including Eragon by Christopher Paolini (written when he was fifteen!) and The Dragon’s Eye by Dugald A. Steer. These were complemented by an interesting blog post from 2009 that I discovered when searching for an image for this post: Dragons in Literature by Imogen Russell Williams, adding yet another great blog writer to my growing list.

As well as my eagerness to get going on revision I am also conscious of my deadlines. I am writing this book to enter in two Children’s Novel competitions, with deadlines of 10th September and end October. Clearly there is not enough time to revise properly so I need to get started as soon as I can or face a difficult decision: Whether to forget the competitions and focus on finishing the novel to the best of my ability or do a rush job (including reducing word count from 110k to 80k) and hope for the best.

What are your views on dragons in literature?

Have you ever had to rush revision to hit a deadline? All advice gratefully received.

Interview with Christopher Paolini, author of Eragon (christchurchkids.wordpress.com)

This interview with Christopher Paolini contains some great advice for writers.

Maybe I’m not lazy after all

I think I’ve discovered my problem with editing. I always thought I was just lazy, each time I found myself resisting the necessary process of honing and polishing my work. After all, serious writers spend months and years editing and I can hardly bring myself to do a few days before I’m ready to start writing a new novel from scratch. I’m clearly not a serious writer, just a housewife with delusions.

But maybe it isn’t that at all (well, perhaps the delusions bit is true).

I think the problem is to do with visible progress.

When you write a first draft you can watch the word count growing, the number of chapters increasing. Characters develop and do crazy things, taking your carefully crafted outline in a new and unexpected direction. It creates a buzz, fills you with euphoria. It’s like going for a run, when everything is working properly and you feel like you could fly if only you knew how.

With editing there is no way to track progress. Word count, if anything, goes down. Chapters need to be moved, re-numbered, scrapped. And who’s to say the chapter you’ve just spent three hours rewriting is actually any better? It’s more akin to doing housework: five hours’ of effort and what is there to show for it, particularly after the kids have been home five minutes.

I get confused, too, with what I’m actually doing. Am I checking for readability? Grammar? Continuity errors? If I’ve spotted a character gap do I go fix that, trying to find the right place to add in extra scenes or sentences that will make the character work, or do I stick with my linear progression through the novel?

I’m not the most organised person and I find it hard keeping track of what needs changing, particularly when I only work on it two days a week, with two or three days of childcare in between. (There’s nothing like 57 verses of Wheels on the Bus to dam your creative flow.)

I could do with a tool that magically highlights everything written about one character in green, another in red. All adverbs could be in blue, all passive tense in orange. Clichés could be highlighted in flashing letters so you can pick them off one by one. Even better would be a tool that says ‘This bit’s great, this bit is pants, re-write it.’ (I know, now I’m just being silly.)

Thinking about it seriously though, there are probably thousands of writing programmes out that that might make me more organised. Maybe I should look for one. Or is that just another form of procrastination (like starting a new novel or short story) to take me away from the unavoidable hard slog of editing? I think I probably know the answer.

Still, if anyone knows of super-organising software that won’t kill my netbook, I’d love to hear about it.

P.S. Since writing this post (while out walking the dog, as usual) I have downloaded the free trial of Scrivener, which I have been meaning to do since completing Nanowrimo last November. So far I’m half an hour in to the two-hour tutorial and it does look as if it might be helpful, if only I can figure how to use it!

Anyone used it before?

Carry your story with you

For me, one of the secrets of the writer/mummy is to always take your story with you in your head. If you carry your characters in your mind you can chat to them, shout at them, fire questions at them – their answers won’t always be predictable and the conversations can be very interesting.

Creative writing advice books will tell you that the more you know about your characters the better your writing will be. If you are the kind of person that makes lists or is very good at being thorough, there are various forms available online to work out all the details of your characters – star sign, favourite colour, place of birth. This is a particularly comprehensive one I have discovered (but am far too lazy to fill out for any of my characters!)

These character maps are useful, they enable you to be consistent and understand how your character might react to a given situation. However, if you’re honest, could you say what your best friend’s favourite colour is or where she was born? That doesn’t mean you don’t know her inside out, though, does it? You learn more about her real character from gossiping over a glass of wine or from watching how she copes in a crisis.

For me the same can be said of my characters. When I’m out and about I like to imagine what my characters would say to each other, how they would handle a range of situations. I fantasize about their futures in the same way I used to fantasize about my own whenever I got dumped (you know, those scenes where he comes back grovelling and begging for you to forgive him, but you spurn him with a toss of your sleek blonde hair.)

It can help if you think of plot and character development as a series of ‘What if?’ and ‘Why?’ questions. What if your female protagonist jacked in her job to take up sky-diving, what if your male lead got dumped at the altar? Why would she take up sky-diving – is it to conquer her fear of heights, because her ex said she was too scared to do anything dangerous, because her mum forbade her and she’s just pissed off at the world. Why did he get dumped? Was he a bastard, did she meet someone else? Has his fiancée found out she’s dying of cancer and doesn’t want to put him through the pain of losing her slowly?

When I’m in the throes of writing, particularly in the early days of a new book, my head is flooded with questions and potential answers. I often don’t know the answer that will appear in the book until I write, (and characters have a nasty habit of not doing what they’re told) but I have already played out all the various permutations in my head while in the supermarket queue, driving the car or lying awake in the night between bouts of teething tantrums.

Another important thing is to always have writing implements to hand – a crayon, a notepad, a mobile phone – to write down that dazzling piece of dialogue or dastardly plot twist. Once you start with the what ifs and whys it can lead you down the most meandering of mazes. It’s best to take notes as you go along, unless you’ve had enough sleep to have a particularly retentive memory.

My mobile phone is my most important writing tool, aside from my laptop. (As I write, my mobile phone is dead; I am utterly bereft and trying to fathom how to work my husband’s spare!) I like the phone because I always have it to hand; it is both pen and paper; it doesn’t get scribbled on by the kids (though often covered in yoghurt or chocolate) and – best of all – I can send my texts to my laptop, thus saving me the effort of writing it all twice.

My favourite time to write conversations between my characters is when I’m walking the dog, as I can text and walk at the same time (us mothers are good at multi-tasking, yes?) and for some reason I find the rhythm of walking sets a good pace for dynamic dialogue.

If you think you don’t have time to write, then think of all the times in the day when you can tap out a quick text message – waiting in the supermarket queue, sitting in the car with a sleeping child, lying in the dark waiting for them to go back to sleep. (I wrote some of this section at 6am, on my mobile phone, with a sickly child asleep on my chest.)

So, next time you’re tired of listening to the twentieth rendition of Miss Polly Had a Dolly in the car, pass your toddler a banana and, while she’s busy eating, have a think about the stickiest situation you can land your characters in. Then work out the most outlandish way you can rescue them again.

I would love to hear about your favourite ‘thinking’ times, or your craziest plot twists. What is your favourite way of taking notes?

Throw away the excuses

“I don’t have the time,”

“I don’t know where to start,”

“I just can’t write,”

“My writing is boring.”

Let’s explore the common excuses (the ones I said most often to myself) and how they can be banished.

“I don’t have the time”

To produce a 100,000-word novel in a year you need to write 274 words a day. Scan this section (down to imagination). It’s 274 words. That’s not much really, is it? To put it into context, it’s 10 tweets or 9 text messages. If you touch-type at an average speed you can type 274 words in 4 minutes (learn to touch-type if you want to become a writer, particularly if your you-time is limited.)

You’ll hear many suggestions on how to foster a daily writing habit. Anyone offering advice about writing will tell you that you must write every day. And of course, in an ideal child-free life, you could do that.

I don’t write every day. I get two days a week to do my writing, when my children go to nursery.

I am very lucky.

However, when I’m consumed by a new plot twist, I’ve been known to sneak in writing time on mummy days. I write when I’m walking the dog (being able to touch-text is handy), or I pull into a lay-by when the kids are asleep in the car and fire up the laptop. Or bribe the children with Peppa Pig so I can sit and tap out a few hundred words. (Did I mention this isn’t a blog about good parenting?)

I can’t tell you how to fit time into your day, as I have no idea about your schedule. All I’m saying is, if it matters to you, you can find the time. Sacrifice a tea break, an episode of Grey’s Anatomy or your twenty minutes of Facebook, and delve into the murky world of your imagination.

“I don’t know where to start,”

This is the excuse that scuppered me for the longest time. I owe it to the OU and their marvellous Creative Writing course that I ever got past it. I realise now that I fell into a very common trap: I was too self-critical. I tried to write whilst listening to the evil genius on my shoulder telling me how rubbish it all was, making me re-craft every line, every word.

Big mistake. Big. Huge.

The OU use a technique called Freewriting, the basic concept of which is that you tell your evil genius to go down the pub, and then you hurry up and get writing while he or she is gone. You can freewrite using a prompt, or just sit with a blank sheet of paper and write the first thing that comes to mind. I find working with a prompt is best. I’ll probably do a post on freewriting and prompts but, for now, I’ll suggest a couple of ideas that really got me going (my first novel came entirely from a freewrite using technique #1)

#1: characters from objects.

Get someone you know to write a list of random objects (a telescope, some tarot cards, a box of matches, an amber necklace, a seashell, it can be anything).

Now sit and think who might own some or all of the objects and why. Don’t analyse, just write for ten minutes without stopping.

#2: freewriting from prompts.

Take one of the following prompts and write for ten minutes without stopping (set an alarm. Do Not Stop until it rings.)

The sunshine makes me happy because…

When the kids leave home I want to…

He said it was all my fault…

“I just can’t write,”

Yes, you can. You do it already. Every time you tell someone about your day, relate a funny story you’ve heard or share something your children did this morning, you are writing.

When I first started thinking about this blog, I worried that I wasn’t one of those people who just had to write. You know, someone like Virginia Woolf, who wrote diaries, letters, stories because she was compelled to. Then I realised that I have always written; it’s just that much of it was in my head. I would retell my day, sometimes changing bits to make it the day I wished I’d had. I’d often write the conversation between me and my boss where he did appreciate all my hard work. Or, better still, the one where I told him to take a long walk off a short pier. I would construct amazing scenarios where the boy who had just dumped me drove across town and found me, just to tell me he’d made a terrible mistake.

Okay so maybe I lived in a self-delusional fantasy world, but it has given me amazing fodder for my fiction. Particularly when I tried to turn my hand to Mills & Boon. That’s for another time.

“My writing is boring.”

How do you know? Has anyone read it but you? If they have, if (like me) your friends or family suggested that maybe your writing wasn’t the most entertaining they’d ever read, then remember one key thing: you are writing your first draft.

I consider my first draft to be the rough pencil sketch that I will paint in with colour later. I hope, of course, that I won’t have to re-write it all, but I know for a fact I’ll have to work hard on some of it to move it from tedious bunkum to something worth reading. Plenty of time to worry about that later. As I’ve said before, you can’t edit a blank page.

The important thing to focus on when you start writing is to just write. Go with the flow of the story, follow the twists and turns of the plot, and get to the finish line. When you’ve done that you can polish every sentence until it shines with brilliance. I guarantee your first draft will not be your last. And it won’t all be boring. Yes, bits of it will drag: those are the bits to shine or slash later. But parts of it will shine so bright you’ll wonder who drugged you and added them into your story when you weren’t looking. Those are the morsels that make writing addictive.

So, what are you waiting for. Get writing!