NaNo no no

So NaNoWriMo has come and gone. I got a couple of chapters written and am happy with them as far as they go. I also got some very positive feedback. What I need to do now, of course, is have the discipline to finish it over the winter between work and stuff.

I also, on a long train journey the other day, sketched in a whole series of short stories around a character and I'm quite excited about the possibilities that are there. More on this later but it has the feel of the real deal rather than just a practice piece. I have started researching although I haven't got far yet.

Specifically I have been looking for something I put together a while ago. I remember writing it and I know I've kept it. It was a stream of consciousness thing of images of growing up in the sixties and seventies and I'd like to find it again for colour and tone. It may be in with some old family tree notes in a box in the attic. I'll have a look later.

Slow Progress

I am still writing under the auspices of NaNoWriMo but am unlikely to hit 50,000 words. This is mostly because my time has been called on by my work. To be on track I would really need to be around the 25,000 word mark by now whereas I'm actually at 11,000.

I'm not especially despondent about this because I am writing and am quite pleased that things are taking shape as I do so. When it is going well my subconscious is throwing up all sorts of oddities which amuse me no end.

Also, I knew I needed to work towards a big set-piece scene that would come in the penultimate (or more likely pen-penultimate) chapter and the idea for that pretty much leapt out of my pen and into my notebook whole and entire yesterday so I now have something to aim for and to guide my characters towards.

I've written here often that my main purpose in writing this particular one is to start the process of learning how to write fiction, like first efforts in the school woodwork class where the main aim is to avoid slicing your fingers with a blunt chisel and maybe shape a block of wood into a rough simulacrum of a boat.

It's getting there: if I squint in low light I can just about make out where the stern might be.

Counting Down

It is now less than a week until NaNoWriMo begins and my preparation is worryingly scant.

I have an outline plot and I have quite substantially prepared the first chapter and know where that is going for the most part. Thereafter I am plot light. This is a mixed blessing. My experience of preparing the first chapter is that it has gone off in directions that I didn't expect while still staying within the broad boundaries of my original story idea.

I have a very strong suspicion that by the time I get to the second draft this may well be a very different novel to the one I originally thought up. That will probably be a good thing. The main difference is that as I started writing the characters became clearer to me and various thematic links suggested themselves.

I am still concerned about whether or not my work commitments will allow me to hit the desired 50,000 words given my tendency to go back and revise what I did the day before. I need to free myself up just to get stuff down. Of course my instinct is to try and make the first effort as good as I can but I also know that when, hopefully, at the end of November I come back to start revising I will inevitably make substantial changes anyway based on my knowledge, by then, of the ending.

Word 2

"I generally have very little idea where I am going when I start writing. But I spend a lot of time afterwards making it look like I did".

Malcolm Pryce

Word

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built in, shockproof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

Ernest Hemingway

Epiphany

OK so "epiphany" is putting it a bit strong but I have had something of a breakthrough. It came while I was painting teak oil onto some external woodwork and it struck me that something that has been holding me back is fear of what other people might think about what slithers out of my subconscious and onto the page.

Particularly I have been worried about what my Mum/wife/kids might think, especially if it got a bit weird. 

The minute I had identified and labelled this fear I felt a block sliding away. I don't know if it will make things any easier when I'm faced with a blank page but at least it is one fewer blockers in the road.

And 2300 words followed.

NaNoWriMo

It has been a while.

I mentioned NaNoWriMo in my last post and I did indeed sign up.  I am unsure whether my work schedule will actually let me complete it but I have been doing a fair bit of thinking about a story for it, and this has increased in the last week or so as time gets tighter.

Things have taken a bit of a surprising turn although given previous history it shouldn't really have been a surprise. A character is giving me a hard time, complaining about the silly story I want to put her in and demanding to have a veto about her background, attitudes and development. All my ripostes about author privilege are batted away with an imperious swipe of her hand as she looks over my shoulder at the page. How am I supposed to even have a chance at doing this if my own characters can't be relied upon to co-operate?

On the other hand if the character is that strong then that is a good sign, I think

Unfortunately I still have at least two more primary characters to sort out before I get onto the supporting cast.

Having said that, I decided to have a crack this evening at drafting the opening scene which, on current plans, features the argumentative character and 1500 words came along. Those words will no doubt change should I ever get to second draft stage but it is a fair start to get me going. I reckon my only chance to get through NaNoWriMo is to have a bit of a head start to carry me through the days when work means I can't write.

Crash course

Thinking about this, perhaps the most productive thing I could do is set myself up on the NaNoWriMo challenge and just go for it. The 50,000 words which form the basis of the challenge equal 10 x 5,000 word chapters each broken down into 5 x 1000 word scenes. That means 1,700 words a day or thereby.

If I have the sense not to over-think it they don't even have to be 50,000 good words, just good enough to get me to the stage of having a first draft to kick around. And I can improve my chances of getting there by planning and plotting in the coming weeks

If I do this it will be one of the "new" ideas I think.

Yikes!

I know that this occasional blog is writing about writing and therefore not writing at all but it is worth a brief update.

When last we spoke I had a novel I wanted to write and one that I was lining up as a practice run or possibly a trilogy that I would use as a trial run. This was going to plan, albeit that the plan has been sabotaged quite badly by the arrival on my desk of rather a lot of work from my job which is monopolising my time. Also, there is still a substantial amount of plotting to do for both and also some research. I did think, though, that I might see may way clear to plotting out the first draft of at least one of them by now.

This week two unexpected things happened.  The first was that I had a "what if"? moment and an idea for a third novel/story came into my head and "felt" quite interesting and do-able. The second was that this morning, over breakfast, idea number four launched itself from the teapot, grabbed me by the ears and shook me around. In the case of both of these new ones I have jotted down some very brief notes of the core idea and some quick one liners that occurred to me during a walk to the supermarket and back.

The second of the ideas amused me: the first allows me to reuse something I wrote around the turn of the century - I can keep the first scene or two and completely rewrite what happens afterwards.

Both of them are essentially genre novels and within the broad family of science fiction. In each case the general idea has presented itself - I know the outline of the worlds in which the events will play out. What I need to work out is an actual story and introduce myself to the characters whose story it is.

Oh.

The stuff that dreams are made of

I keep a notebook by my bed. It is there on a 'just in case' basis although it is more likely to be used for random reminders to myself than anything else.

Last night I had a dream in which I was lucid enough to realise that I had ideas for a short story or two and that I ought to remember them and jot them down. I was woken up around 06.00 by the monkeys at the neighbouring zoo going into a breakfast frenzy and I managed to jot something down from the dream before I dozed off again.

When I finally woke up I checked my notebook. It read "boy meets girl".

Oldies

I was hunting for some stuff I thought I'd thrown out - in part to make sure I'd thrown it out. It was a bundle of old story ideas and sketches which were embarrassingly bad. I think I've satisfied myself as to their non-existence now although they may yet turn up unexpectedly.

However I did find another folder of lyrics to songs I wrote, one or two of which I like. This is one of them which came about when I followed some internet links and read a site with horrified fascination:

Heard it All Before.

Cindy is a swinger, she's looking for a crowd

Or a guy who'll take her roughly – he must be well endowed.
And she's into spikes and leather and a silk scarf round her eyes
And she's got a private email for personal replies.
Though she loves her husband dearly he doesn't thrill her anymore;
The crowd at Adult Dating have heard it all before
The crowd at Adult Dating have heard it all before.

Michael says he curious, he's looking for a man
To show him what he's missing and take him by the hand;
Or a lonely married woman who's looking on the side
And he's got a private email for personal replies.
He loves his wife dearly but she won't do it anymore;
The crowd at Adult Dating have heard it all before
The crowd at Adult Dating have heard it all before.

Cindy buys new make up and exotic underwear;
She plots her explanations and counts the taxi fare
For her afternoon appointment with a man with sexy eyes
Who wrote erotic email and provocative replies
And her husband will be working, he doesn't notice any more
The crowd at Adult Dating have heard it all before
The crowd at Adult Dating have heard it all before.

And Michael has a rendevous but has to be discreet
His contact says she's married but her life is incomplete.
So he ensures his secretary is primed to tell his lies
And say he's with a client for a meeting on supplies
And if he comes home late his wife will barely hear the door
The crowd at Adult Dating have heard it all before
The crowd at Adult Dating have heard it all before.

But Michael's wife was Cindy - they were in for a surprise,
He'd never seen her loneliness she'd forgot his sexy eyes.
And there is no happy ending: they both sat down and cried,
And trapped inside their sadness they couldn't see the funny side.
And it's only through their lawyers that they're talking any more
The crowd at Adult Dating have heard it all before
The crowd at Adult Dating have heard it all before.

Crikey!

The heart of the story for the novel I want to write, after I have written the practice pieces, fell into place this morning. I was jotting some random thoughts down as bullet points in a commonplace book and all of a sudden my sub-conscious joined the dots and zapped the message through to the front of my brain.

I'd like to say it happened in a flash of inspiration and natural genius but, of course, it actually came after several months of research, false starts and ponderings (aka drinking tea and staring blankly at the wall).

This now leaves me free to develop the story properly because I have a big picture, the specific thing on which the plot turns and a clear idea of the role of the lead characters and their motivations and challenges.

Oh Lordy

So I got cracking on the first of the warm up books and then went back and had a look at what I'd written and realised that I was boring myself let alone a reader. So I had a long ponder. It now begins:

I was eight when they first came for my daddy. I don't know why they came but it wasn't for the worst things he did: they were our secret until the morning I killed him.

Thirty six words down, several thousand more to go.

Sometimes good things happen

One of my issues with my "limbering up" books has been to work out an economic structure for the place were it is set. Today I was reading a research paper on the types of endemic corruption to be found in the distribution of emergency disaster relief and I saw before me almost the whole thing, entire and complete.

I can see you...

Many years ago I was smitten by Bill Bryden’s “Mysteries” cycle with the National Theatre’s Cottesloe Company.  One of the staples of that company was actor Jack Shepherd who later wrote of their approach

The line was the line. You just said it. Comfortably. Easily. You didn’t try and ‘do things with it’, or draw attention to it. It was simply an expression of the need to communicate something and as natural as breathing.If, after the rehearsal of a particular scene, a watching member of the cast was seen shaking his head and muttering ruefully, ‘There’s an awful lot of “acting” going on’, this was a sure sign that things were not right. In other words, if the people watching are aware of ‘the acting’, then you clearly aren’t doing it properly, because your performance is demanding more attention than the play.

I have become increasingly aware of reading “literary” authors only to find myself prowling the edge of their stage muttering “I can see you writing”.  Frequently this is enough for me to lay down the book and not pick it up again.

I was digging through some old cuttings today and discovered to my delight something that Elmore Leonard wrote in the NY Times and reprinted in the Guardian 18 July 2001 (no link available). He wrote:

My most important rule [for writing] is ... if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing.

Welcome...

I've now told (only) three people about this blog and this is by way of a welcome to Rosemary.

Rosemary also made some kind comments about the "brutal" love story below. After chatting on Facebook last night I was suddenly gripped by a desire to recast it in Eddic verse with assonance, alliteration and syllabic stresses. I am resisting that urge but, given that I still want to polish it up somewhat, I may give in to it a little bit when I do a final revision.

Curse you, characters

My limbering up exercise has taken an interesting twist. I had an outline prepared for myself and some other material and started writing out some early scenes. This is a story which I am specifically writing as a means of learning to write and it has immediately taught me a hard lesson - even practice characters stand up and give you abuse if you don't treat them seriously.

The swine!

Also, as I continue to work out aspects of the story I really want to write, something occurred to me.  I was thinking about European folk tales in which someone is whisked off to the land of Fairie and spends a short time there only to return and find that years or decades have passed in the "normal" world. I don't know why it hadn't struck me before but this is obviously a relativistic effect.

Autosomal?

I sat down this afternoon with the clear intent to be creative. I did manage that but found myself unexpectedly cramming an idiot's crash course into genetics and recessionary traits into the afternoon. All for the sake of two sentences now but possibly more to come later.

I think that was a good thing.

Yay!

I had some nice comments about the love story I posted a couple of days ago. When it finally appears in the context I have envisioned for it then it will be tweaked slightly as, on re-reading, there are some sentences that could be better. But that's OK because someone read it and liked it and told me so.

What fragile egos we have.

Some years ago I entered a songwriting competition and came third.  I entered two songs and one of them - somewhat bawdy and not the one which was placed - went down well with the audience and lots of folks were laughing and joshing about it afterwards. One person, though, went into print on a forum a couple of days later making slighting comments about both of the songs. Of course it was the slighting comments I took to heart, not the positives from everyone else.

Ah well.

Anyway, back to the keyboard.

Anita

When I first started putting together notes for a novel (the 'main' one I have in mind, not the limbering up exercises) my thought was to make it an episodic set of short stories based around the same characters in the same world. I was reminded of this over the past couple of days as I have read "Anita" by Keith Roberts which is a collecting of individual stories initially published in the late nineteen sixties.

I have read a reasonable amount of Roberts' writing before and have always enjoyed it but Anita is something else and I like it as much, if not more, than much of the material for which he is rightly remembered. What struck me immediately was the economic precision of the writing and the amount which was left to inference rather than description or exposition.

I have recently been reading some weighty modern fantasy novels which have passed the time agreeably enough without ever really gripping me. In one or two, the early chapters were so concerned with world-building that it was hard to discern a story. There is none of that with Roberts: there is enough to spur the reader's imagination but in essence we are straight in with story and character and I find that very refreshing.

Paradoxes of style

I read a lot and I read a lot of science fiction and related genres. That covers a lot of stylistic ground, of course, and I try to read around the bases although I don't do so systematically.

There are some authors whom I will buy and read sight unseen and I've noticed of late that the quality of writing has generally improved when compared with the norm when I first got into skiffy in the early seventies. That doesn't mean the quality of the books has necessarily got better but the writing has - at least amongst the authors I have read over the last three years or so.

However yesterday I picked up an Anne McCaffrey novel - Pegasus In Space - in a charity shop and read it quickly. Although it was published relatively late in her career it struck me quite forcefully that it was not especially well written. The earliest chapters clunked, cliches abounded and the wrap up happy ending left threads dangling left, right and centre. It was largely plot driven although there was relatively mechanical attention paid to character development and internal dialogue, at least for the protagonist.

I am willing to bet, though, that it sold a great deal better than many a better written and more interesting work.

And that's the paradox of style - all engaged writers want to write well, I think, but it I reckon that it is rare that something well written with a literary quality hits the commercial big time.

One other thing struck me about the McCaffrey novel - I found myself being reminded on occasion of the work of EE "Doc" Smith, father of vintage Space Opera. Perhaps it was a generational thing but it did strike me that McCaffrey will have started out in the tail end of that era and absorbed that ethos of crafting yarns that sell, clunkers and all.

Scratchings in the Dark

Since coming back from holiday I have been pretty much fully occupied with work and even my weekends have not been as free as I'd like. I've been tardy in doing a number of things - a proper write up of my holiday for my "other" blog, sorting out a mass of photographs and, alas, writing fiction.

I have been reading some though - the Chinese classic "Journey to the West" in a dodgy translation, a couple of books by the excellent Christopher Priest and Joe Abercrombie's latest. Honest, these are not displacement activities.

Nor have I forgotten you, dear reader. Stick with me. I'll get there yet.

Happy Discovery

Ah me. I have been otherwise occupied either with work or with being away on holiday and hence no posts here and, regrettably, no real writing. At least , no writing of fiction.

I did have a happy discovery today though. I was checking to see what was on some old memory sticks and I found a couple of fragments of a stories I started writing long ago and had simply batch copied at some point when clearing off an old laptop. One surprised the hell out of me - pure science fiction and it read really well.  Sadly it was only a page and a half long but I had to check at first to see if it was a cut and paste of someone else's work.

It made my day finding it.

The other was a 20,000 word alternative version of a story I later abandoned. As a story it sucked but the writing looked to me to be OK as a first draft.

Silence

Apologies for the hiatus in posting. I have been working rather than storifying I regret to say. Anyway it will be quiet a bit longer as I'm off for a three week break in foreign parts.

Having said that, ideas continue to swirl and I keep jotting them down so all is not a complete dead loss. I know where my main story is going, mostly, and that is a significant advance on where I was when I started writing about it here. With some luck the fact that I'll be away from work will let my subconscious to the fore and I can get some momentum going.

The roar of silence

I'm still here.

I haven't updated here because I haven't had much to say. The holiday period ended up being a disengagement from most things including writing and since the turn of the year I have been busy with work which looks set to eat up a lot of my time for the foreseeable future.

This is disappointing but needs must.

I have been thinking about the story though and have kept jotting things down in my notebook. "Jotting things down" in snatched moments is not the graft of actual writing, of course, but it does keep some momentum going - or so I like to think.