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.

50000 plus

I just declared my NaNo at 50,430. I freely admit that a very large chunk of that is disjointed ideas and descriptions of places and people, and comments on life and general junk that I've been letting off steam with during the last month. Eventually I'll make a large amount of it fit together to slot into the novel. But for now I've hit the total.

Now I have serious editing work to do but not for a couple of weeks at least!

FFF55. More NaNo. Meet Bill

Sorry to keep throwing bits of my NaNo novel at you - but it's rather time consuming at the moment.
Here's another of the cast from the Sea View Hotel.

He dressed casually and his general impression suggested tweed. His outfits gave off a sort of browny-green aura, as if he had been carved from a part of the landscape, and they had the kind of texture that conjured up pictures of moorland and bracken. Sometimes I swear I could hear grouse calling around him.

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It's the usual Friday challenge for the G-Man. Go visit him to see more!

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.

Sunday 160

Still dragging out the NaNo extracts!  It's for Monkey Man, as usual. And it's heavily edited from its original to make it 160 characters. But here you are:

Ted Mathews believed he was a big fish in a small pool. The fact that he was actually small fry did not detract from his inflated opinion of his own importance.

FFF55. All aboard. More from my NaNo novel.

OK - you all know what's going on by now so I'm not going to explain.Here's 55 words for the G-Man's weekly challenge, that tell you a little bit more about my novel's narrator, who was sent off to boarding school at an early age.

There were a number who enrolled at the same time, all very young, and dumped on the teachers and domestic staff for a variety of reasons.  A few of the lads came from places where their parents genuinely could not look after them, but most of us shared the dubious honour of being simply unwanted.

Thursday extracts. A bit of history from my NaNo novel

Too busy to hunt for something else for you again. So here's a bit of history from the NaNo novel.

Crowds that turn up at the seaside these days aren’t the same as back in the old times. When I first started touring the coast doing summer seasons all you saw were families. Mum and dad and a couple of kids who spent their time on the beach doing innocent things like building sandcastles and shrimping in the rock pools and playing on the penny slot machines on wet days. It wasn’t until the nineteen sixties that you ever saw groups of young people out by themselves. You won’t remember because you’re far too young but there used to be gangs of lads called Mods and Rockers and they would arrive at the coast on a sunny day and turn the beach into a battleground. You could easily tell them apart so they all knew who to fight: the Mods were on scooters that had a hundred more mirrors than they ever needed to see behind them, and the Rockers were on motorbikes that were polished up so much you’d wonder that they hadn’t rubbed the chrome off. On the worst days the lot of them were armed with knives and happy to kill each other if they had the chance.

NaNoWriMo half way point.

If I'm going to make it to the end of the month with 50,000 words I should be half way there by the end of today.  I'm pleased to say that I'm 1,538 ahead of that, which is almost a whole day's worth. (you do the long division)

I've been feeling off colour for a couple of days though. I can't promise to be on target for long.

Good luck fellow NaNoers.

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.

Writing like a woman possessed

I wrote like a mad thing yesterday (and to be honest the text probably reflects that) but I've caught up a day. I'm about a fifth of the way towards my total (which is good) but unless I can write a lot faster it means I need about 38 days in November.

30 days hath September,
April, June and ....... oh hell.

But I'm writing.

Good luck fellow NaNo-ers.

NaNo latest

Just have a look at that badge on the right...

I am SO far behind with NaNo. (Two days of writing behind.)

But I was busy on Thursday with work commitments and shattered on Friday as a result and I've done nothing all weekend. So I've not written for four days but I'm still only two days behind.

There's hope.

Not much....

......but there's hope.

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?

OK - I'm in

Well, I'm registered for this year's NaNoWriMo, but I've changed my name from the last two years. You can now find me as MorningAJ. 

Are the rest of you joining in this time?

Memento mori

Time passed that day but I do not know how. I am sure there must have been tea – cups of hot, sweet tea that are supposed to be the answer to all of life’s shocks – but I cannot taste them. And I am sure that my ever practical brother would have ensured we all ate. If not him, then his efficient wife Pauline, but I cannot remember now if she was there, I do not know if I was even aware of her presence at the time. She would have accompanied him if she could because she is the kind of woman who believes in appearances. She would support him because it was expected of a wife and so she would have been at the house if her work commitments permitted. 

So there must have been three or four of us, and we must have interacted in some way, but I remember nothing except my own cocoon of misery.  What did we discuss after we all gathered together at the house? I do not know. We must have talked about what we needed to do, who we needed to inform, all the practicalities that surround anyone’s death. Maybe we decided who would take charge of the officialdom and which tasks each of us would undertake. We might have shared fond memories of him and compared stories of him from happier times. But we probably avoided discussing the most obvious thing: how we were going to live without him. 

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Another extract from The Wise Child, my Nano novel from 2010. For all the people I know out there who are currently dealing with the loss of a loved one.

Gardening

It's been a gardening sort of day. I thought I'd give you an extract from my 2010 NaNo novel. Based on reality and still in edit.

I took the photo, surreptitiously, from an upstairs window and he was not aware that I was there. He is wearing a white, open-necked shirt and dark trousers, rolled to the knees, to make way for a pair of workmanlike Wellington boots. On his head is the inevitable straw hat, protecting his ears and neck from the sun. I had been watching him for some time, turning over the ground with a spade and raising small terraces of earth where he was planning to plant potatoes. I was familiar with this ridge and furrow method that he used. It allowed the potatoes to grow freely in soil that was not compacted and did not inhibit their development. The furrows between the rows allowed efficient watering without swamping the plants, which would have encouraged disease. The preparation was effective and we had a regular supply of spuds from the earliest, sweet, new potatoes through to November’s bakers that we would use to warm our hands on Bonfire Night as we watched the whizzing, banging fireworks and burned our Guy Fawkes effigy.

The system was hard work though. He had to dig over the soil twice to break it up enough for the seed potatoes to go into the ground, and raking up the ridges was a back-breaking task. The photo shows him resting on his spade as he seeks a moment’s respite from the toil. Although it is faded I can see that he has nearly finished preparing the area and the rows have been built up behind him, ready for the seed. Beyond where he is standing I can make out squared-off sections that would each hold a different crop. I know there were strawberries, one of the few luxuries that Dad allowed space in his well-worked plot. There were cabbages and carrots, celery and lettuces, radishes, onions and rows of beans. Broad beans and French beans and runners stood side by side, with the climbers snaking their way up bamboo teepees made from three sticks tied with raffia near the top. I can recognise the shapes of four small apple trees near the end of the garden and there is a smudge of green that shows where the bramble grew.