Nano no no

For the last two years I've completed Nanowrimo and I've created two books, one of which I self published. But this year I've decided to give it a miss. The main reason is that I abandoned a very good project last year in order to start a new work, to meet the Nano regulations. 

Sadly, while the Nano product last year wasn't bad, and it might have potential as another self published book, it wasn't a patch on the one I abandoned.

So what I'm doing this year is going back to the work I left standing. I'm currently reading through the 21,000 or so words I have, to get back into the story line. And sometime in November I shall be adding to the total.

I don't expect to write 50,000 words. I'll settle for around 20,000, frankly. But November is a tough month at work this year and I'm not committing myself to anything.

Good luck to all of you who are going for it again in 2012.  I wish you flowing words and a kind Muse.

Thursday extracts: More Sea Views

My narrator waxed a little lyrical yesterday. I think he might be doing that a lot over the next six days!

Of course they’ve been saying for years that a trip to the seaside does you good. They used to recommend a sea retreat for most things that ailed historic folks. All kinds of people were sent here for the good of their health back in Victorian times – the graveyard’s full of them. You think I’m joking don’t you, but I’m not. Just take a stroll up to the parish church and check out their inscribed list of renowned residents. Writers, musicians, people who were famous just for being famous, seems all very familiar really. These days they end up on a reality TV programme when their careers are dying; back then the less-than-great and not very good were sent away for a coastal sojourn when they were fading.

Some of them took the waters, as they used to say. That meant they draped themselves over plush couches in ornate halls and drank glasses of smelly stuff dripping out of a cracked cliff. They got around to putting a tap on eventually so it appeared more official but however you market the stuff you can’t alter the fact that it’s little better than untreated sewage. You can even try the cure today if you like, the tap’s still working, though no-one makes ludicrous claims about it any more. Those Victorians believed spa water would solve everything from a hangnail to the Black Death but the only thing it actually affects is your digestive system. The quacks and sawbones thought bloodletting and extracting other bodily fluids improved your chances, so they probably believed in beneficial effects of the water. It certainly clears out your system. I tried once. That was quite enough.
 
They didn’t just drink grimy fluids, though, they bathed in them as well. Doctors told people their ailments would improve if they just lowered themselves up to their waists in ocean water; cold ocean water. Can you imagine suffering from consumption and coughing your lung linings out while you stood shivering in your undies and the tide lapped in around your personal bits? Gives you the creeps if you think too hard, how all those sickly types came for their treatments but never went home. Kill or cure must have proved fatal much more often than it offered a reprieve. I think we probably have the healthiest bunch of historic corpses in any cemetery up and down the country.

NaNoWriMo 12 days in.

So I worked out that I was a bit behind on the NaNo. Since then I've been trying to write at least 2,000 words a day because the daily target is 1,667 if you do it every day from November 1. I am hoping by the end of today that I shall have caught up to the NaNo target. (Or the 'if you're going to make it to 50,000 words in 30 days you really need to have written this much by now' point.) My best so far has been 2,736 in a day, which was a chapter I LOVED writing. My worst was 2,027, which I thought I'd enjoy but in practice found much harder than anticipated.

Funny old thing, this writing lark.

I missed three days right at the start because I was arranging a big meeting in London. The meeting was a success. Several people have said it was good. The people who actually do the managing (ie. provide what I organise) said that my efficiency made their job much easier than it was with the other person who used to arrange it. Even my boss eventually got round to emailing me, although it took him five days and he didn't actually say well done. A message to say 'you did it' is what passes for praise in our office.

55 words from my NaNo project

As you all know, I'm doing NaNoWriMo again and I'm typing furiously to catch up with the target because my day job got in the way and I started late. So here's 55 words taken straight from yesterday's declared 2080.

The book is about a guy who lives in a hotel because he's spent his entire working life as a theatre dresser and has travelled so much he's got nowhere that he thinks of as home. He's finally settled down, in retirement, in a hotel he stayed in while he was working at the local theatre.  

There are a lot of advantages in living in a hotel, but it has its downside too. Take Christmas, for example. No sooner have we taken down the black and orange streamers and binned the pumpkin lanterns, than we have to declare the festive season and put out the tree and tinsel. People expect it.

Friday's 55 words are, of course, for The G-Man. Go visit him by clicking here.

Thursday extracts: Old Henry

I'm busy doing NaNoWriMo and I'm pushed for time to find you an extract this week. So here's a few words from my current NaNo project.  The book's narrator is a former theatrical dresser, so he talks a lot about what people wear.  I'm enjoying that bit, because it's not something I often do. 

Meet Henry:

He dressed neatly but never sharply. His clothes were clean and well ironed, but were worn well past the time that less frugal people would have consigned them to the rag bag. A charity shop would have turned them down. He had a penchant for cord trousers and heavy cotton, checked shirts with a plain white vest or t-shirt under them. He always wore a narrow, leather belt and I don’t believe I ever saw him in a tie. When he went out he wore a dark jacket, even on the hottest days, and the whole lot was topped off with a tweedy flat cap. I suppose he was used to the heat down in the mine and his skin rarely saw sunshine, so he preferred to be well covered up outside. His face and hands showed signs of weathering; not a suntan exactly, more erosion by wind and rain, but the rare glimpses of arms and legs that his outfits afforded showed the rest of him was a very pasty white. And remarkably hairy. Over his shoulder he slung an old canvas bag on a long strap. It was the same kind he had used for years to carry his ‘snap’, as he called it; his packed meal to be eaten during his only break in a working shift.

November is going to be a busy month

NaNaWriMo starts tomorrow and I'm already wondering whether I should have signed up this year. November's a busy month already at work (I'm arranging a big meeting in London and will have no spare time at all for a couple of days) and I have a few other things coming up, like the Festive Season and running my life.

I enjoyed myself last year and was deeply pleased when I reached the 50,000 words target and even more pleased after I self published my novel. (So I've sold all of three copies. So what? I'm not in it for the glory.)

This year I have an idea that grew out of a three word week challenge I completed (and I freely admit most of that text will appear in the introductory chapter) and it basically consists of a string of short stories threaded onto the life of a central character. I love the voice (I can already hear him in my head from when I first wrote him) and I'm looking forward to being able to vent some of my natural sarcasm through him. I have about five reasonable ideas for chapters but I NEED 25!

WHAT have I let myself in for?