Once in a Blue Moon and Three simple words.

I heard on the news this morning that we're having a 'Blue Moon' tonight - the 13th full moon in one year and on a lunar eclipse - a rare occasion. So, does this mean that all those things we thought we'd never do must be done today?
That once in a blue moon event is due - so start thinking about all those things you thought you'd like to do and never got round to, because this is the time?

I thought I'd use this for the New Year Resolution ideas this year. In the past there have been different approaches to this resolution business. One I liked and adopted for many years was the resolution to 'not chase eskimos'. It summed up my cynical approach to all things resolute - promises made to be broken etc. Then I moved on and did the three pronged approach - a physical, an intellectual and and a spiritual grouping of resolutions. Last year I tried the 'Best Year Yet' approach - a great book (get it and read it at least once) which encourages you to make resolutions that are doable and more importantly fit in with your life. I'm pleased to report that apart from the 'Yoga' (which I did try a couple of times), I managed to hit all my goals last year.

So, that brings us to 2010 and this blue moon. I feel obliged by the phenomena that nature has provided to at least go for one seemingly out of reach goal, which I'll come to later. My friend Jacqui Lofthouse suggests you get ten goals and filter them down to be represented by three words. How hard can three words be?

As anyone trying to say 'I love you' or 'I am sorry' will tell you - three words are the most difficult in the world.

I have thought about this and decided to chose these three:

Complete - I need to complete my novel and get it out there. I need to finish, tidy up and allow things to get to the next stage.

Focus - Focusing on the previous word might help, but also to focus on each moment whether it is teaching, writing, playing or kicking back, this is a 'live in the moment' commitment.

Build - I want to build on what I achieved last year, not just leave things as they are, but to move them forward.

So, what is the out of reach, once in a blue moon goal?

I don't know the answer to this. I think we all feel our goals are just chances, once in a lifetime opportunities, that's what makes them goals. So perhaps this one should just be Acceptance, take what life offers and accept it all.

Have a wonderful New Year and in the words of the dyslexic, never lose sight of your goats!

Back in the Swim.

Hello, yes, I came back to the blog. More out of frustration than anything else. I had such plans for the Christmas Holidays, and now I'm stuck in Jury Service and all plans are out of the window. Mainly, getting back to the novel and getting next 20,000 words edited and off to agent/s.

An update is probably required here. In the summer I finished first rough draft - oh yes, eventually, 72,000 words came or were dragged out of me and onto the page. I then polished and refined 20,000 of them and sent them off to friendly agent and powerful agent. Both liked it! Eek! Both wanted to see more. So naturally I instantly stopped writing - duh, obvious innit. That's what any good self destructive does. At the time though I just thought I was busy doing other things - like teaching and life, until I read the rather less rough draft of an ex-students book. She is writing about the activity of Creativity and how we cope with it in our lives (I'm not sure that's how she'd describe it, but it is sufficient for my purposes this morning).
It was a revealing read. She talks about the archetypes in all of us and our fears of success and failure being equal. (There's more, but you'll have to buy the book when it comes out.)

Knowing the problem is half the battle. I'm a firm believer that 'Writers Block' doesn't exist - it is a euphemism for 'can't be arsed'. The sad truth is that I couldn't be arsed to take the risk. Shame on me, I know. But knowledge is powerful, and now that I know the problem I can deal with it.

So many of my students are bright and talented, but afraid and I see my job, in some part, in leading them out of this fear and back to the joy of writing. So if any of you are reading this, hang on in there, it happens to us all, but it is possible to deal with.

Delightful evening last night having dinner with local writers group in Richmond, all of them have had varying degrees of success and failure - the ideal group to pose this problem to. They all agreed that the fear factor was ever present and yes, it wasn't just fear of failure, it was fear of success too.
One of our group signed a huge (really huge) book deal for three children's books a few years ago. She said that for weeks after signing the deal and getting her deadline she was frozen, unable to even understand what she'd already written let alone write some more!

It happens and when it does, you just have to do that 'standing by the pool' thing, hold your nose, close your eyes and jump. The water is never as cold as you imagine, and after a few desperate paddles you'll be back in the flow, feeling the sure strength of your words skim past you as you plough on, sleek, strong and happy.

So, even though I've got Jury Service for the next two weeks, I'm packing up the lap top and my notes and heading off to edit while I wait to be called.

So, come on you guys, get out of the shallows and jump in too. The water's fine.

Writing together

Word count has hit all time low - nothing this week, except a few rewrites of a paragraph and some notes. I hang my head in shame.

But.

Boyf and I did get our entry for 'Tower of Blood' film treatment in to the people at jpeg films (being run by Frightfest http://www.frightfest.co.uk/) last weekend.

Writing together is a process of elimination. You have to work out who does what best and it isn't always what you think. I have always thought that as I type fast and think at the keyboard, I should be the one doing the actual writing. However, this goes to pot when the person you are working with sits three inches behind your left ear and mutters at every line you write. I get the urge to re-enact a horror film right there and then!

So, I pace and he types. Occasionally we swap, he'll go to the loo or make tea while I do a quick bit of editing or reading through and I don't mind him yelling from a distance, 'don't forget they need to absorb the evil!' 'OK, thanks, can I have a biscuit with that.'

Teaching has taken over my life recently. The students are varied and full of surprises. Which is as it should be. I am up to my eyes in paperwork, planning and (can't think of another 'p') train journeys.

Have promised students I will write 5,000 words by next week - so am charging up the laptop as I do this. Books for next term are being delivered from Amazon tonight - yippee! (The smell of new books is so exciting, or is that just me?) Hopefully I can try and get ahead with some reading on those long train journeys down to Southampton. This is always assuming I can stop falling asleep.

Off to write and read and powerpoint.....

Weekend what weekend

Blimey! Well, there's two days that whizzed by. Teaching on Saturday morning, then back home to finish slides for Horror and dig up notes for lecture on Queer theory. I finally think I'm getting to grips with this theory now, but will be glad when we can move on and hope that there won't be any tricky questions about it or that anyone wants any in depth stuff on Foucault.
Then I went up to west end to meet boyf who had been teaching Sitcom all day. Down the pub with the comedians - ho ho and back home to go to dinner at friends round the corner - although we were late because we sat down and promptly fell asleep like old people do.

Sunday, run (7.5KM 46mins), visit boyf's mum in hospital, pack four days worth of clothes, notes, memory sticks etc and get daily word count down.

Yes, I've been writing as well!!!

26,817 words - yey!!!

In some part this is thanks to MA friend who gave me lunch and a much needed boost on Friday. So, so lovely to have someone who will just listen and ask intelligent questions about your novel. Who feeds you yummy delicious things while doing so and finishes the whole thing up with home made chocolate cake and espresso. Not sure if it was friend, cake or coffee, but I got back and solved all sorts of problems in the story - so much so that I think (only think mind you) I may have the end.

No word from Auzzie prof dude about a supervision or meeting to discuss next stage.
Must start work on paper for November conference soon.

Meanwhile it is Sunday evening and I need a glass of wine and a crappy movie.

Getting up and getting on with it

The word count is slow. Mostly, because I'm finding it hard to heed my own advice and go for the word count. This has to be recitified, so I have decided (gulp) to post my word count up here as I go.
Today I'm at 18,000 edited words and 7,877 unedited - which is a total of just under 25,000. The aim is to get to 75,000 total by end of October.
Take a deep breath....and....go!


ps. Will post word count whenever I can get to this blog - ideally daily, but not sure if laptop will do it when in Solent.

Just lying down now

Yes, well, I know it has been a couple of weeks since I wrote. But since then I've been writing module booklets for students, gathering a Semester's worth of photocopies and generally working my tush off. Added to which I've been training for a 10K run for Cancer Research. Did this today and am absolutely knackered.

But, have I been writing? Yes, actually I have. I started the new Novel in a Month course and although I'm now 2 days behind schedule, I am writing the damned novel and it is going sort of OK.

Students aren't doing too badly either. Some are way over the word count, some are a bit under and one or two are struggling, but they are all writing, and that is the point after all. Their biggest problem, it seems, is letting go of preconceived ideas of where their plot should be going. I keep telling them to let the characters lead the plot, but they will insist on wresting it away and forcing it. I've had to heed my own advice this week. Justin - my heroine's casual boyfriend, has just travelled nearly 400 miles to visit her - NOT so casual it seems, AND then he asked her to move in with him. This wasn't something I'd planned, he was always supposed to be peripheral to the plot and now he just marches in wily nilly without so much as a by your leave. (Please imagine me with outraged expression, hands on hips, right now). BUT, and this is important, it has raised all sorts of interesting scenario's and piqued my interest - How will my heroine get out of this and keep him away from this other life she has? I have no idea, I'm letting them sort it out for themselves. God, I love this job sometimes!

So back to Solent (officially the worst university in the country - we can only go up, I feel) tomorrow and introducing the students to Screenwriting and Horror Writing. I'm looking forward to it. We'll have some fun.

No word from two agents I sent chapters to yet - sigh...

Laying down the layers

First response to first five chapters from my supervisor arrived in my email today. My supervisor is an Australian as well as being an academic. I know the two aren't mutually exclusive, but it makes him a kind of professorial 'dude', which can be disconcerting sometimes. (He says things are 'groovy' - which I like, but you have to admit it's a bit quirky)

Anyway, email arrived. I read it. I read it again. I lay down on the floor and thought about it a bit. Then I printed it out and read it. Then I called boyf and read it down the phone - blank. I started moving furniture around trying to see things from a different angle. Nothing. I rang an MA student friend who is able to understand Rachel Cusk's lectures on subjectivity and objectivity in narrative fiction ('nuff said). We took it sentence by sentence and slowly but surely I began to get to grips with what he wanted. Basically go through the whole thing and add more layers, go deeper, play around with language and style more, make it work harder.

Great. Desk looks great against this wall now.

I'd sort of planned to give some of it to an agent tomorrow. He's coming to College where I work to discuss future talks etc. So that won't be happening, because, now I understand what is needed it is patently obvious I'm nowhere near close to being ready.
This is the sort of thing that happens when you write a novel for a PhD - you take it apart piece by piece, you make every word count, you write a 'Novel' rather than a story (This is if you believe the idea that a story is simply a series of events, following plot, conflicts, characters etc. Whereas the novel tells us something about ourselves.)

The question is - which sells?
And does it matter at this moment?

My next job is to find some money to make up the rest of my fees for my PhD. I had thought the bank would give me a loan, but after a long chat with Mumbai, it seems that if I have a partial scholarship I can't get a partial or even full loan. I need to go deeper, find another layer, read the small print. The money is out there somewhere, I just need to find it.

Any writing?
Yes, some. Novel in a month starts in earnest on Saturday 19th - so if anyone is reading this and would like to join in, the idea is to get 50,000 words written in 30 days. It is how I intend to blast through the rest of this draft of my novel and will act as a nice respite from making (I quote) 'micro structural prose changes while keeping a mid voice dialogue.'

Get revved up and join the fun - you'll be glad you did and frankly I'd like the company.

New novel, new blog

We all think we have a novel in us, but only a few do something about it. This blog is my diary/record of writing a novel using the various different 'How to Write books' that are available in all good bookshops. This is also part of my PhD, so sometimes I'm going to be trying out my observations on the process here before I write them up for my thesis.
This is also my commitment, to whoever reads this, that I will write the novel in a year and finish the thesis in another year - so my aim is to be done in two years. Even though I am going to write daily, the blog will probably only be weekly - I have to work too!

The book is started, kinda. I've got a draft of about 18,000 words so far, and I'm trying to get an outline written. It has a title, 'Take me with you', and my first method is going to be "Nanowrimo" as created by Chris Baty and which I have taught as a short course for a number of years. I first wrote a novel using this method about 3 years ago and found it fun, exhilarating and frustrating in about equal parts. I never managed to do the rewrites for the book, but I an agent did read the rough (very very rough) product of the month's work and liked it and has said she'd read this one when I've written it and polished the final draft.

The thing is I know this is a good method, and I'm hoping it will help me blast a way through the story of this book,and not give my mind time to interfere too much.

I'm also using Scrivener - a writing programme for Mac, which helps me to organise the outline a bit as I go. If you have a Mac and you like moving around ideas on index cards, this is a great resource.

Have just got back from holiday. So this feels as good a time to start as any. Wish me luck, it could be a bumpy ride!