The Journeyman Writer

Days 320 to 339 - A Plague on Both my Houses

2011-08-09T16:22:00.003+10:00

I'm sick. My son is sick. My husband is sick.

The cat is the only one enjoying herself, because we all have too little energy to push her off our laps now. So while my men sniffle with their colds, and I clutch my three-week old migraine, she purrs away in contentment and kneads my knee with her uber-sharp claws, ignoring my weak protestations.

But honestly - what kind of headache goes on for three weeks?!? I've never had a migraine before. This one started with a bang. I got a massive head pain, then when I went to tell my husband all that came out was a random string of noise. That was one of the most bizarre moments of my life. It looked a lot like this:

Like me, she didn't have a stroke. But presumably, like me, poor Serene Branson had to have a CT scan and (*shudder*) a lumbar puncture just to be on the safe side. I'm not good with needles. My toddler, who has a tantrum when there's an ad break on TV, took his shots better than I managed to give a sample of spinal fluid. Then I spent two weeks lying in a dark room listening to Stephen Fry read Harry Potter books to me and wishing my head would stop feeling like someone had stabbed my frontal lobe with an ice-pick.

But I'm almost better now! Last night I finally managed to get some writing done, and I'm looking good to attend the Romance Writers of Australia conference in Melbourne this weekend.

So - what has everyone else been doing for the past month?

Word Count - 611

Days 285 to 319 - And we're back on air!

2011-07-19T23:56:00.001+10:00

Oh wow, this last month or so has just been so incredibly hectic!

First there was the RWA 50K in 30 Days, which went really well - so well, in fact, that it exceeded all my estimates for how much time and energy it would take ^_^ At the end of the day, our writers racked up nearly 2 million words during that time, and I couldn't be more proud of everyone. I didn't reach my goal for the month, but I did hit about 30,000 which I probably would not have done otherwise.

Then for the beginning of July I was at the RWA 5 Day Intensive Manuscript Development Workshop. I got so much out of it, and I feel so damn lucky to have been chosen. Stay tuned for a proper write up!

It's nice to be back home and blogging again - I look forward to catching up on everything I missed over the middle of the year!

Word count - 21,760 (but that's over the past 30-odd days)

Days 283 and 284 - Stealing from myself

2011-06-14T23:55:00.000+10:00

I really liked this post I put up on the 50K in 30 Days blog, so I thought I'd share it here as well:

Be not afraid of going slowly, be only afraid of standing still.

- Chinese Proverb

It's so easy to look at the past and say "I could have done better. I SHOULD have done better. I should have written more, or made more time for editing." After all, it's going to take forever to get where we want to go if we don't make optimal use of our time, right?

Regret and perfectionism can be a bigger drain on our productivity than pretty much anything else. Personally, I struggle to retain a sense of proportion - I've written x many words, which is x more words than I would have written otherwise. Still, it's not what I expected from myself.

Writing is like life. It's messy, imperfect, full of unfulfilled potential (everyone has that one scene that was just so perfect in their head) and layered with excitement, regret, drudgery and bursts of inspiration. It may not go the way we want all the time, but if you do the best you can during the good times, the bad times can only ever drag you down so far.

Word count - 2,972

Days 280 to 282 - Thank Goodness for Long Weekends

2011-06-13T01:01:00.001+10:00

I've been so absolutely exhausted this weekend, I did pretty much nothing right up until Sunday afternoon. Once I buckled down and actually got going, I managed to pull out a decent word count, but I still feel bad for sleeping away most of my free time. It was necessary - I think I'm getting the bug Marcus had last week. My throat was caning earlier today.

While I was lying in bed, I managed to read my first ever full Neil Gaiman book. I once started American Gods, but just couldn't get into it. So I started with Stardust and absolutely loved it. Scarily, I just kept marvelling at his technique - he has such a beautiful way with words. I had to keep reminding myself I was reading for fun and stop examining sentence structure! ^_^

Word count - 7,083

Days 278 & 279 - Only a word count update

2011-06-09T22:26:00.001+10:00

Just popping in here quickly for a word count update! For the month of June, I'm blogging daily at Write in June, the blog for the RWA 50K in 30 Days challenge.

That and work and writing and sometimes seeing my family is taking all my energy at present!

But at least today I got something done - especially good seeing as I was tempted to go to bed at 8pm :-)

Word count - 1,715

Days 276 and 277 - I am an Oubliette

2011-06-07T23:43:00.000+10:00

Yes, I am a place you put things when you want to forget about them.

I just remembered I was supposed to take a book back to one of my mum's friends last week. And looking through my cupboard, I can't help but notice at least three t-shirts that used to belong to my ex-boyfriends. Oh, and two other people have also loaned me books I haven't finished reading yet.

It could be worse, I suppose. At least I'm not the Bog of Eternal Stench.

Word count - 2,687

Day 275 - Some facts

2011-06-06T00:50:00.000+10:00

For a day where I spent all my time in front of the computer, I don't seem to have done much writing.

It's 12.40am. I have to be up at 6am.

I've decided that I'm going to stop reading troll articles. Every time I turn around, some "columnist" is suggesting that NaNo is evil, that YA is dark and depressing and ruining our kids (Won't SOMEBODY think of the children!) or that women don't read hard epic fantasy. I'm with Janet Reid on this - Stuff it.

Minecraft is fun and a little bit addictive.

On a related note, I spent 20 minutes earlier trying to find a floor plan for the castle at Versailles.

It's 12.50am. I have to be up at 6am.

Word count - 1,336

Day 274 - US-centric Internet

2011-06-05T13:32:00.000+10:00

I'm not going to downplay how influential American culture is on Australia. We watch a lot of the same TV, we eat a lot of the same foods. We have some similar problems.

But I don't understand why so many places on the Internets, especially those places with Amazon affiliations, seem to have such a strong and unbreakable US-centric focus. The US dollar isn't what it used to be. Internet access and usage is strong in many other parts of the world. And people who don't live in the United States of America are getting increasingly annoyed at sites acting like the rest of the world is just "those people over there".

Yet places like Kickstarter still won't catch up with the times. Three years ago I discovered Kickstarter, a site where people post art projects in need of funding and people online donate to make it happen. Eager to share it with my friends, I looked up whether Australians were able to use it. Three years now, and they have had the same question and response up on their FAQ. Are you going to be going international? Yes, any day now. Thank you for your patience.

I'm glad I wasn't holding my breath.

And there's no reason for it. It's a donation site which allows random people to share money with aspiring artists to help them achieve their dreams. It's a beautiful idea, and one which in the beginning I was happy to contribute to. After all, people are people anywhere and I loved the idea of helping people with their dreams.

Recently I started to ask myself - why, when I am able to sponsor US artists, can't my friends put up projects? Why is Australian money okay, but not Australian art? Or Scandinavian art? Or Peruvian art?

This isn't about America, or Americans, at all really. It's about businesses and other groups who don't realise that the Internet is a global phenomenon - and that they're losing out all round by excluding approximately 95.5% of the world population.

Word count - 3,547

(Oh hey! And I broke 200,000 words today! Go me!)

Day 273 - Random Picture Day!

2011-06-04T01:08:00.001+10:00

My sister's cat

Word count - 2,091

Day 272 - Discomfort and Growth

2011-06-03T00:43:00.000+10:00

Everything I write always ends up being adventure romance. I try and write a hardcore science fiction novel? It turns out to be an adventure romance. I try and write a literary novel set in WWII Australia? It becomes an adventure romance.

There's nothing wrong per se with writing what you're comfortable with. After all, it is most likely you are drawn to a genre because you love it, and that passion will come through in your writing. But at the same time, I can't help but feel it's important to cross-train, like a swimmer doing weights to increase muscle mass, or a footballer doing dancing to improve their footwork.

So in the spirit of becoming the strongest writer I can be, I have been trying to write more outside the adventure romance field - specifically, I have been trying to write horror short stories.

There's only one problem. I get scared thinking of plots.

Seriously, I chose a magazine that has a monthly theme and started to work up ideas for an entry that would work in well with the theme. I came up with something that is perfect, but it makes me feel icky even thinking about it. A fellow Twitter devotee suggested that good horror came from a place you were scared of, but that doesn't help when the block you put up to stop yourself feeling bad gets in the way of the actual writing.

I'm going to steam ahead with it and see how it turns out. I'd be interested to know - do you have troubles with some genres? Or are you obsessed with the one genre and never want to leave?

Word count - 1,675

Days 264 to 271 - Why Write 50K in 30 Days

2011-06-02T00:56:00.000+10:00

NaNoWriMo has really brought writing challenges to the forefront. There's just something about setting yourself a huge word count goal and just going for it, quality be damned. This year I'm helping out with the Romance Writers of Australia 50K in 30 Days June Challenge - over 100 people have signed up!

Every year, I read a lot of trash talk suggesting that NaNo is the cause of multiple publishing woes, mainly high submission rates of low quality manuscripts. Personally, I think the home PC and a lack of recognised apprenticeship structures goes a long way towards that, and don't get me started on editing, but whatever.

What these people don't realise is that there is a certain freedom that comes from locking your inner editor in a box (side note - my inner editor sounds like my ex-boyfriend, an awesome writer who still proof reads for me on occasion - does anyone else get that? I mean, not get my ex-boyfriend, but get a recognisable voice?) for a month and just focussing on finishing the story. You don't have time to think about how crap it is, you just have to keep pushing ahead.

It's not for everyone, sure. But it's done wonders for me. I've written almost 200,000 words since last September when before that writing was something I was gonna do one day when I got good. A lot of that was through challenges like Nano and the RWA one.

I've set myself a goal of 100,000 for June. I'm already behind (as expected!) but there's a public holiday coming up and my husband has promised me a good chunk of uninterrupted time. Here's to writing a whole bunch in June!

Word Count - 698

Days 257 to 263 - Happy Birthday, Me!

2011-05-25T14:55:00.000+10:00

Yes, today I turn the once-dreaded 30! I must admit, I am a little sad to leave my 20s behind, but in the same way that I never really minded finishing at a school or job, I don't really have much nostalgia for my own past. There was good and bad, and there will be good and bad again. Or, in the words of the Cylons, all this has happened before, and all this will happen again.

My writing this month has been awfully slow, mostly because I agreed in a moment of enthusiastic insanity to run the RWA 50K in 30 Days. Think Nano for romance writers. It's going to be a lot of fun, but the wonderfully large number of sign-ups have seriously cut into my writing time. My word goal for next month is 100,000 so here's hoping I catch up a little!

Word count - 1,147

Days 252 to 256 - Re-reading Novels

2011-05-18T13:48:00.001+10:00

I've been thinking recently about re-reading novels. Some people swear by it, but other people find it's a terrible waste of time when they already have so many new books on their list that they want to read. I do understand where they are coming from - my "To be read" list on Goodreads is becoming increasingly lengthy and I fear it may take me the rest of the year to complete.

But when I'm lazing about the house or I'm unwell, a lot of the time I like nothing better than to read something that I've already read. Sometimes I wasn't even too keen on it the first time around. I just like to read without thinking too hard. Part of the problem is that I'm a very fast reader. One of those tiny category romances takes me a couple of hours so I can read four or five of them in a day when I have the flu and if I were to buy new ones each time I'd go broke.

I also like to re-read novels I loved. I've read the Count of Monte Cristo about 10 times, I've read all of Georgette Heyer's Regency novels and the Rumpole books at least twice and I've read all the Jane Austen novels more times than I can count. I think that this is actually really helpful. Each time I read through I pick up different things - bit of language I hadn't noticed before, how sentence structure is used to convey a particular emotion, depths of character that I may have missed before. As a writer, I think re-reading is a very useful exercise in that it helps us look at the words and not just the plot.

Plot is great. It's what keeps the story moving. However, when you boil it right down to the essentials almost every plot has been done before. It's the writing that keeps it fresh, the way the writer weaves the words to create the picture. And that's what re-reading teaches - the ability to look beyond themes and witty dialogue and fast-paced action and see the structure lying beneath.

What do you think? Do you re-read? And why/why not?

Word count - 147

Days 250 to 251 - Writers v Publishers: Are you playing to win?

2011-05-13T00:51:00.000+10:00

Imagine, if you will, a high-level amateur football game (whatever code you want, I'm not fussy) being held in front of a group of selectors. All your players are supposedly on the same team, and yet they all want something more - a bigger slice of the pie. The chance to shine, the chance to get a call from the big leagues with all its associated fame and money and fast cars. And when everyone is out to become THE greatest, where does that leave the team?

I think that in the writing business we are beginning to see a similar problem to the above. Writers, publishers, agents - we're all on the same team, and yet we come into the game with vastly different philosophies, goals and expectations.

It's only natural. Publishers want to grow their brand - they're focussed on marketing. The agents attract bigger clients by selling to the publishers, so by necessity they too need to think about whether your book is "marketable". They know what winning is, and in order to win they want their writers to be a marketable commodity and sell lots of books - to fight hard and win big.

Marcus Brotherton, guest blogging over at literary agent Rachelle Gardner's, talks about whether your writing is a competitive sport or a backyard hit-up. He says:

Winning, in the most ferocious sense of the word, frustrates us if our main goal as writers is getting the highest score possible and crushing our opponents.

More and more writers are expressing dissatisfaction with the strongly commercial nature of publishing. It's not that writers don't want money - they do! (Well, lord knows I do in any event.) But writers are by nature creative, they want to try new genres, new forms, to push boundaries and to spend their time writing. Publishing, even self-publishing, pushes us to create a brand, growing our reader base by focussing on the one genre and marketing ourselves as authors of [insert genre here] fiction.

I understand the reasoning. Would the romance community flock to buy the new Stephen King regency historical? Stephen King makes maximum profits writing horror, because there is a solid public conception that Stephen King writes excellent horror. But are the publishers underestimating the readers?

Scott Sigler, also guest blogging, at A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, talks about how he managed to do better for himself by changing the goal posts. He had a publisher - one whose marketing plan didn't have room for his cross-genre experiments - so he made his own success. He podcasts his stories free of charge, and has been doing so for years. And that idea of wanting to share the story has bought him a lot of fans. Those fans pay him money for his work, even though the content is available for free online.

To quote the brilliant XKCD:

You don't become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.

Word Count - 1,788

Day 249 - Too Lazy to Write

2011-05-11T20:56:00.000+10:00

So here, have a love song.

Word count - 1,268

Days 242 to 248 - Baking a Book

2011-05-10T23:52:00.001+10:00

I spent this evening making a dark chocolate mint slice for my fellow court minions. Happy Birthday, section overlord!

The interesting thing is that, while I didn't get any actual writing done, all the mixing and washing and stirring gave me plenty of time to think about the novel I'm in the process of editing. I think it was Agatha Christie who said that the best time to plan a book is when you're doing the dishes, but it's never really hit home for me how true that is until now.

Probably exercise has the same effect (I must try that one day!), but the soothing, monotonous motions were really good at letting my brain forget about my body and drift in its own direction - which luckily happened to be my book. I've come up with a whole new opening that is a lot more interesting, and at least two characters are going to drastically change.

Also, it's a pretty darn tasty slice.

Word count - 787

Days 237 to 241 - I Believe in Harvey Dent

2011-05-03T01:23:00.000+10:00

When I read Pride and Prejudice it was always strange to me how interconnected everyone was. The gossip got around so fast it made your head spin, and even if you did manage to marry off your scandalous kid sister who had her heart set on social destruction, everyone KNEW it was just a cover.

In a way the internet has taken us back to those days. There are no secrets you can keep - and while you can live two completely separate lives online you have to be damn sure you keep your house of cards straight because it can all be knocked over in an instant.

In the last weeks, two people have had their barriers crumble between lives. On the funny side, Scott Adams was caught out using an alter-ego to tell everyone exactly how much of a genius he was. And then when he was caught out he interviewed himself using his own sock puppet.

All good for him. But what about poor Judy Buranich? The English teacher with a night job writing racy romance novels who is now being investigated for having the temerity to teach kids about Camus while she writes erotica. In her author persona, she did a YouTube video and now there's no shoving her lives back in their separate boxes.

Sarah at Earful of Cider put up an interesting (if somewhat annoyingly voiced) video on this, but it makes me wonder whether we aren't going backwards as a society. Goody Buranich has been denounced, and if she doesn't disown the Devil's writing she can kiss her teaching career goodbye.

Personally, I hope she tells them to go teach their own kids the difference between a noun and a verb and goes on to become an extremely famous full-time author. But that's not the point.

We all do things in the privacy of our own home that we wouldn't want children to see or emulate. You know all the teachers in your children's school? They've had sex - more than once. They don't tell your kids about it. A lot of them have probably tried drugs. They don't tell your kids about it. Some of them moonlight as horror writers, or erotica writers, or bloggers on the evils of religion, or activists for abortion centres. They don't tell your kids about it.

And the above also applies to your dentists, doctors, police officers, firemen, military, politicians, librarians, dog walkers, waitresses, nurses, lawyers and judges.

Even before the internet, we all had two faces. Only now we're more reliant than ever on people's ability as a crowd to keep perspective and think things through rationally because when the barriers get knocked over it's the whole world who can see.

We're so completely screwed.

Word count - 1,754

Days 231 to 236 - Thor romance fail - or why feminism equals better romance.

2011-04-28T00:54:00.000+10:00

The Man With No Shirt FTW

There aren't enough superlatives in the universe to describe how much I loved Chris Hemsworth as the golden-haired God of Thunder. I even did that girly giggle thing every time he came on screen.

How could you take someone with THAT much raw appeal, throw him in with Natalie Portman, and end up with less chemistry than Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte?

The answer is characterisation. Natalie Portman's character Jane Foster was bland to the extreme. There's almost nothing there - just a bunch of "traits" thrown together with some sidelong glances and an interest in hearing about the world beyond ours. It's not enough to say "Look at my whacky character! They have to shave every three minutes or they go crazy!" Why do we care if they go crazy? Why is it shaving that calms the beast within?

And why do we care about this research she's doing? Why does SHE care about what she's doing? What does she see in Thor beyond killer abs and blue, blue eyes? By the end of the film, all I really knew about her was that she didn't like men in black suits stealing her life's work and she had a crush on Thor.

If men in black suits came and took my computer and equipment, I wouldn't be annoyed. I would be FURIOUS. If I were a character in a book, I would MAKE them give it back.

Jane Foster decides to take a buff but possibly crazy man she almost ran over to the centre of the desert and hope he does it for her. She is never the protagonist, she never makes anything happen. She is a hazy marker that reads "Love Interest Goes Here".

So why bother putting her in? After all, Jaimie Alexander as Sif was loads more interesting. Heck, even Kat Dennings as the kooky, uber-cute hanger-on was a better character. It all comes down to what Hollywood thinks we want, and what we want our women to be. It all comes down to Hollywood relegating female leads to the status of "Love Interests" in traditionally male-dominated genres.

Hollywood thinks Love Interests should never express a blatant sexual interest in the hero. It's left to Kat Denning's character to point out the blindingly obvious point that Thor is hot. Jane Foster just gives another side-glance and looks away.The Love Interest must control herself, keep her emotions in check until the male has declared his hand. What's wrong with our women having strong sexual emotions and proactively expressing them?

Hollywood thinks Love Interests should leave the heavy lifting to the male protagonist. She can be moderately angry, but heaven forbid she cry or scream with rage, or lash out in fury. Even when the male protagonist is injured, she must content herself to running over and exclaiming. What's wrong with our women having powerful rage and grief, and what's wrong with showing it overwhelm them to the point where they lose control?

It's a problem that's endemic in modern superhero and action films. Too many awesome battles with Frost Giants that won't impress "the ladies"? Throw in a love interest and you double the market! We're seeing too many cynical attempts to cover all market segments without any concern for quality or what adding those elements does to the overall balance of the film. And the female characters they're throwing in are restrained to the point of blandness, devoid of any strong emotion or will to act.

I'm certainly NOT arguing that Thor should not have been the driving force in the film, or that Jane Foster should have stolen the show. I'm saying that strong, awesome male protagonists need strong, awesome women to fall in love with. Like Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Notorious.

Word count - 1 504

Days 224 to 230 - Texting Joy

2011-04-21T00:48:00.001+10:00

Normally I am one of those horrible anti-Earth, petrol-guzzling fools who spend their whole day in the car. The problem is, it takes me an hour to get to my son's day care, and then another 40-odd minutes to get into work. Then double it because I like to go home sometimes.

But now my husband is looking after our nerdling, there's no reason for me to take the car. I have to take.... THE BUS!

It's horrible! I get car sick, so I can't read. It's too bumpy to write. The person next to me always sticks their elbows out. And this morning my Creative was out of battery. All I had left was my old phone and the ability to text my friends at ridiculous hours.

The bus goes forward.

Industrial wasteland - right.

Where is my music??

I woke up my friend Greg, who retaliated in kind:

It is 8 AM.

Bad haiku makes my phone buzz.

Is Julia drunk?

I couldn't let that go unavenged!

He lazes in bed,

and calls my haiku awful.

Public transport sucks.

I also woke my sister Penny up. She was apparently dreaming of me in any event:

In the dream I just had, you married Godzilla and me and the rest of the world had to run away from your wedding because he tried to eat us - seriously, why marry him?

Me:

It's not my fault you people don't understand ambition! Bloody Tall Poppy Syndrome, that's what it is.

Penny:

He ate Russia!

Me:

Pft. You say that like it's a bad thing.

It was nice to be reminded of the joys of texting. Though I feel weird having nostalgia for something that I only really started doing when I was 17.

I want a HTC Desire so I can Tweet on the bus. What do you do to make it through the commute?

Word count - 1, 116

Day 223 - After pushing a truck, a car seems easy!

2011-04-15T12:05:00.000+10:00

Momentum is great - once you've got it. My problem is getting that ball rolling. I sit down and open my romance or my YA and the first sentence takes forever.

But I think I may have found the answer. I wrote a haiku before I got started. It took about 15 minutes, but something about forcing myself to write in a restricted format made my writing afterwards much easier - the flow just came really naturally.

I'm wondering if it works moving from short fiction to novel length as well?

Word count - 468

Days 216 - 222 - And then, like, he said he was a director and could get me into films...

2011-04-14T20:08:00.001+10:00

When a person wants something really, really badly it's almost impossible to observe it with the keen and impartial eye of the detached.

Hence the phrase "a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client".

For example, when I was 19 I convinced myself that it was a brilliant and sound financial decision to buy a Ford Falcon a year older than I was. To make it worse, I had no job and I bought it using money I got from a compensation payout. But I loved that car and there was no telling me about insurance and leaded (!!) petrol and registration. (His name was Lurch, he was crud-brown and you could run him into a brick wall and he'd bounce - I still miss that car even though he cost me a small fortune)

And when I was thinking about self-publishing my picture book I was the same way. I made an emotional attachment through a website and a phone call, and just glossed over all the little niggly things that kept pushing themselves forward. I wanted it to be all good so badly that I MADE it all good by just ignoring the bad things.

And by bad things I mean things like over-priced services that didn't (in the fine print) really deliver what I needed.

It took a serious dose of maths for me to straighten myself out.

Here are some random figures from a couple of self-publishing sites all mushed up:

Lets assume a $3000 publishing package with a print on demand service. It involves some very basic "editing" (spelling, grammar), about 35 copies of your book and all the formatting help you need to be able to sell e-books and print on demand books.

So you've laid out $3000 up front. Then you'll probably want to spend a little extra cash on publicity, maybe some petrol to wander around to some book-signing expeditions. Let's throw on a grand - if you're having trouble spending it in your head just buy yourself an awesome ad in a big city paper.

Your print on demand service charges, say, $7.95 per book or $1.50 per ebook. I completely made those figures up just for examples, so don't go expecting them to industry standard or anything. Let's say you sell your print books for $19.95 and your ebooks for $5.99.

Selling only print books you would need to sell 333 copies of your book just to break even.
Selling only ebooks you'd need to sell 899 copies of your book to break even.
And this is before you make a profit.

That's not too bad! There are BILLIONS of people on the planet!
But what kind of sales can you expect? Figures are hazy, but averaging out the different numbers, it seems the average self published book sells about 400 copies. If all those copies are print books, on the numbers above you'd make $800. If they're all ebooks, on the other hand - you're out of pocket.

What I'm trying to say above is this - make sure you do your math before you sign anything. Be realistic, read everything and be smart. It's the only way to be successful.

Word count - 958

Days 212 to 216 - Hi, I'm a writer, and I suffer from MPP

2011-04-08T15:29:00.003+10:00

MPP. Multiple Project Paralysis. The bane of many a writer's existence.

I have three projects waiting for editing. I have four manuscripts that I've started, but not gone past about 4,000 words on. And yet when I sit down to work I can't think of what to do! I start writing, and my editing projects beckon. I start writing, and think there's not much point just piling more on my editing to-do list.

So I've come up with 4 Rules to help me decide what to work on:
(NB. This is based on my specific word goal and 5 year plan, so it may not work for you if you're more focussed on immediate publication.)

1) Is it editing?

If no --> Go to Question 2.
If yes --> Have you had a partial request from a pitch and want to fix it up?

If yes --> Get out your red pen baby!
If no --> Is your Critique Partner waiting on it?

If yes --> Edit. Don't keep the overworked and unpaid help hanging.
If no --> Is it for a competition ending in the next month?

If yes --> Do it. Gives you time for a beta reader.
If no --> It can wait. Go to Question 2.

2) Do you have a manuscript, let's call it Manuscript A, that you are working on for a competition?

If no --> Go to Question 3.
If yes --> is there another competition coming up sooner that needs you to work on Manuscript B?

If yes --> Work on Manuscript B.
If no --> Work on Manuscript A.

3) Is it your passion project - the thing that struck you in a flash of inspiration that you just can't put out of your head?

If yes --> Get writing!
If no --> Why not?

I don't have a passion project --> Go to Question 4.
Another MS is my passion project --> Go work on that then!

4) Make a very quick list of your current work-in-progress writing projects. Do you know how to play Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo?

If no ---> How on Earth did you ever manage to resolve anything as a child? The rules are here.
If yes ---> Random pick! Which ever manuscript you end on is the one you're working on. Get those fingers typing!

Don't ask how long I spent coming up with these rules instead of actually doing anything...

Word count - 682

Days 210 to 211 - Upcoming Australian Writing Competitions

2011-04-03T10:32:00.001+10:00

For me this month is going to be fairly hectic. I'm planning to enter several competitions, and each of my entries needs some substantial work!

Romance Writers of Australia is holding the Valerie Parv Awards, the entries for which are due on Friday 8 April. It's a competition for unpublished writers and you don't need to be a member of the RWA (though why you would choose not to be if you were a romance writer I don't quite understand - such a brilliant organisation for opportunities and networking!). You need to put in the first 12,500 words of your manuscript plus a 1000 word synopsis.

The Penguin/Varuna Development Scholarship 2010 is looking for "new and emerging writers of fiction and narrative non-fiction" and the prize is spectacular enough to compensate for the $55 entry fee:

The scholarship recipient will receive the following:
$5,000 cash prize.
One year (20 hours) of editorial assistance from Penguin Books Australia, comprising a preliminary discussion, quarterly discussions on progress and an editorial report on the final manuscript. Penguin will also consider the writer’s manuscript for publication.
A two-week residential fellowship at Varuna, the Writers’ House. The fellowship must be undertaken in the period January to mid-April 2012, depending on availability. During the residential, a Varuna writing consultant will support the writer through discussions about the project and the writing process. There is a fee of $500 for the residency.

And finally there's the Text Prize for best unpublished YA manuscript! Once again, an absolutely spectacular prize bundle - a publishing contract with a $10,000 advance against royalties. Entries will be accepted between 2 May and 3 June 2011.

Have you seen a competition that just gets you so excited you absolutely must enter it? List it below!

Word count - 1,511

Day 209 - Author Tansy Rayner Roberts On The Road To Publication

2011-04-01T09:53:00.000+11:00

There and Back Again, by A Fantasy Author

The question to spark off this guest post (hi, thanks for having me!) was “How you got where you did, and how long it took?” Which of course means I have to actually stop and think about where I am!

Where I am is pretty good right now. I have the second book of a HarperCollins trilogy about to hit the shelves, with the third due out before the end of the year (and, most importantly, I have done almost all the work needed on that book), I am starting to write a new series thanks to a couple of major Arts grants, and I appear on the shortlists of both the Aurealis Awards and the Ditmars. This is a very good year.

But the thing about being a writer is that it is by no means a linear path. I know from experience that a great sale to a big publisher does not guarantee career progression, and that troughs come after peaks.

Twelve years ago, I got the call that I had sold my first novel. I was nineteen years old, and had posted my manuscript off to a competition which was open for unpublished SF and Fantasy novels. I won! That was an amazing year, which included me learning to edit a book for publication in a fortnight, having to keep my amazing news secret for months, attending my first SF convention, meeting famous authors, and (most important of all) actually earning enough from writing to live on.

However... by the time the second book came out, a year later, things were not looking so rosy. Sales had not met expectations (and because of the prize money, the expectations had been rather higher than would be usual for a debut author). The books, which were humorous fantasy and might have been marketed as YA five years later, failed to find much of an audience. I lost my publisher, my agent, and my confidence.

I kept writing, and studying, and picked up casual work teaching creative writing (kind of ironic considering my track record, but I like to think I was quite good at it). I was mentored by some great people, got involved in indie press, and wrote short fiction. I sold a children’s novel as part of a packaged series with my writing group - mine was the first in the intended eight book series - but we only got three on the shelves before the series was pulled for - say it with me - sales not meeting expectations. That takes us up to 2007.

But a writer’s career is never linear - did I mention that? Back in 2004 I had started writing a novel I was really excited about, which was sometimes called Creature Kings, or Creature Court, and was later to be named Power and Majesty. I wrote it through most of that year, and only stopped at the three quarter mark because I was pregnant, and desperate to finish my doctoral thesis before I had the baby. I didn’t.

So the next two years were a blur of new baby and academic dramas and hunting footnotes, and getting back to writing was a lot harder than I imagined. My life had turned upside down, and none of my old methods and techniques made sense any more. I retaught myself to write creatively with a 100 word a day for 100 days challenge (you miss a day, you start back at day 1) and finally, eventually, finished that novel. I workshopped it, rewrote it, took it apart and put it back together again. All of this took time. Marianne De Pierres, one of the writers who had mentored me through the decade, posted my first chapter on her website, and it attracted interest from a Big Publisher (who eventually passed on it) and an Agent, who took the project on and sold it to HarperCollins.

That takes us up to late 2008! The book was with HC for a good 8-9 months before they decided officially to take it, and then when I signed the contract, it was for a long time in the future, because they wanted to ensure the other two books (the ones I hadn’t written yet!) were close on its heels. So I had to wait a whole year and a half after signing the contract to see my book in print.

In between signing that contract and the release of the book, all I had to do was write two more novels in about 18 months. I could manage that, easy. I was a stay-at-home mum, and my daughter was at school age. It made all kinds of sense, except for the part where I had another baby on the way. The next 18 months was a blur of deadline extensions and very understanding editors (thank goodness!) and, looking back, I’m not sure how I did that at all. The first book took, with many stops and starts, six years from beginning to end. The next two only had 9 months each, plus a little editing time where it could be squeezed (and editing time almost always squeezed the writing time, because there was no other time).

It’s been a long road to get here. I know so much more about this industry now than I did back when I got my first “break” and I have made contacts and friends along the way. Next year might not bring as many professional highs as this one, but that’s okay. I’m ready for whatever bumps and curves come my way, and in the mean time, I have books on the shelves, and there’s really no better feeling in the world!

===

Tansy Rayner Roberts is the author of Power and Majesty (Creature Court Book One) and The Shattered City (Creature Court Book Two, April 2011) with Reign of Beasts (Creature Court Book Three, coming in November 2011) hot on its tail. Her short story collection Love and Romanpunk will be published as part of the Twelfth Planet Press “Twelve Planets” series in May.

This post comes to you as part of Tansy’s Mighty Slapdash Blog Tour, and comes with a cookie fragment of new release The Shattered City:

It was still raining blood, and the sky was full of colours and shadows and bright, blazing moments of light. Delphine kept her head down as she hurried through the streets, ignoring it all. It was not her world. It was not her problem.

She kept thinking that right up to the point that she reached the yard behind her house, and found it full of monsters.

Day 208 - Can't Query my Dedication!

2011-03-31T06:26:00.000+11:00

When I was in university, I would regularly pull all-nighters to play video games, dance, read books, study or just because it was a nice night and who could sleep? But working full-time with an exuberant toddler has taken its toll and I find myself crawling into bed most nights around midnight with a relieved sigh.

But not last night! Last night I researched, wrote and sent a query letter!

I actually feel better about this one than I did the last one. I gave the manuscript a couple of tweaks, which I think improved it, and the agent had very specific guidelines so I knew exactly what I had to do. After I'd finished, I took a deep breath, checked it one more time and hit send.

Five minutes later I had an email back! But before I could get too excited about getting the quickest agent response in history...it was an out-of-office autoreply email. ^_^

Still, I know these things can take weeks and weeks, so I'll put it out of my mind for now and go on with my other projects. The main problem I'm having is that I'm working on a Regency romance, but my SF Space Opera keeps beckoning me to come back and do a second draft. Leave me alone, space pirates! Can't you see Lady So-and-So is about to go into her confinement? Stupid space pirates.

And I'll apologise for the dad joke in the title. All work and no sleep makes Julia something something...

Word count - 1,030

Day 207 - All the Wonders of the Universe

2011-03-30T13:18:00.000+11:00

We live in a time of seeming unlimited possibility. The more I hang around writing blogs, the more I realise there are chances by the bucketfull to get your novel out there, to get it seen by the shining editor/agent/publisher of your dreams who will rescue it from the slush pile, throw it over their metaphorical steed and ride off with it into the publishing sunset.

If you want to help someone out at the same time as helping yourself get ahead, Operation Auction 2011 is raising money for a woman widowed in tragic circumstances by auctioning off signed books, advertising space and critiques of your work by agents and editors. You can also get your work ripped apart (in the nicest possible way) to help Japan with earthquake recovery - here for genre fiction, and here for kid-lit/YA.

On the other side of the wall, if you write historical fiction Irene Goodwin, of the eponymous literary agency, wants to hear your pitch. Authoress at Miss Snark's First Victim holds regular competitions that result in partial and complete requests from agents. And Savvy Authors has pitch days for different agents which look brilliant.

With pitching opportunities in particular, it's easy to get SO excited about a particular opportunity that you decide the jump the gun. To send your novel in as-is and hope for the best. My YA romance SF (oh, I need a shorthand for that) was not ready on the weekend, but I was oh so very tempted to just pitch it regardless. After all, how bad could it be?

The problem is that once an agent has seen your MS, it's going to be harder to get them to look at it a second time. They already took a chance on you once, spent their time and energy looking over your stuff and it wasn't up to scratch.

My mantra for the week is this - Finish it. Polish it. Sub it. In that order, dammit.

Word count - 1,320

Day 206 - Official Romance Writers of Australia 5DI Participant!

2011-03-29T10:28:00.000+11:00

I believe the universe works on balance, and so I was looking forward to some good news while I lay around the house wishing my belly didn't feel like it had just been cut open and organs removed. I would have been happy with a $20 lotto win, but what I got was even better.

I made it into the 5DI!

As one of 12 lucky people selected to be in the 5 Day Intensive Manuscript Development Workshop I get to go to Queensland and have Sophia James tell me exactly what I'm doing wrong for an hour a day! I seriously feel like the luckiest girl alive ^_^

The thing I'm worried about now is the opening night novel report. Specifically, I'm worried I'm going to shriek like a banshee when I'm told my dialogue is stilted, declare passionately that I'm never going to make it is a writer and go throw myself on my bed for a good cry. I know the whole point is honest, thorough feedback, and I know I'd be disappointed if she pulled her punches, but I used to be a bit of a wuss when it came to even the slightest criticism so I'm worried I'll let myself down.

I guess I'm worried I'll regress to a teenager without a toddler around reminding me I'm an adult now! :-)

Nevertheless, I'm so terribly excited. Anyone else had any good news?

Word count - 0 (but I got to watch Wrong Side of Town "starring" Rob Van Dam and Battista - yay!)

Day 205 - 16 Lighthouse Road by Debbie Macomber

2011-03-28T12:14:00.000+11:00

I found this book really weird and certainly not what I was expecting. It follows the love lives of several women linked by circumstance and friendship in an idyllic medium-sized community. It starts when Cecilia, who is trying to get a divorce after less than a year following the death of her baby, is told by the presiding judge that she will have to go to a hearing, and in the meantime they should try mediation. The Judge, Olivia, is falling in love with the local newspaper editor, a newcomer with a shaded past, while her daughter Justine dates a creepy older man and pretends not to be love with (oh I love you so much!) Seth just to spite the whole dammned world and their obsession with family.

On the positive side, Macomber's characterisation is beautiful. I really fell in love with several of her characters, especially the uncomplicated Seth and the haunted Cecilia. No one was exactly as you expected, and the same went with the plots - in particular the plot line involving Olivia's friend Grace, which was really well handled. The pacing was something I had to get used to. The plot didn't move in a linear progression, it was more a meandering stroll through a park than an action-packed motorway.

But what really bugged me was the constant use of passive voice. Now, I don't mind some "telling". It gives writing a feel of oral tradition, you sit down there and I'll tell you how she felt, acted, what she thought etcetera. But really parts of the writing were so text-book bad in terms of passive voice that I just burst out laughing.

It was obvious that the writer was very conservative, but honestly most romances are. Marriage is THE goal, regardless of whether you think it is or not, and divorce is not for 35 years of unhappiness, only for 6 months of desertion. (Sorry, I get a little bitter thinking about that plot line.) However it doesn't really ram your face in it, it's more just a story about people with conservative views.

This book is like a warm cup of home-made cocoa on a cold, grey day. For technique you'd probably do better going to a cafe, but that doesn't change the fact that it's warm, sweet and really, really comforting.

Word count - 0 (but I have made friends with almost all the villagers in Old Bowerstone)

Days 188 to 204 - Gah! My Internal Organs!!

2011-03-27T01:42:00.000+11:00

Have I been blogging lately? No.
Have I been writing lately? No.
Have I been on a lot of drugs? You betcha!

Last Wednesday night I went into the hospital waiting room at 5.30 with SEVERE abdominal cramping. I was in bucket-loads of pain. By 9.30 I had morphine (ahhh....), by midnight I had a hospital bed and by Friday I had no appendix.

I've spent the last week slowly recovering and wishing I was back in hospital where all I had to do was sleep and keep taking injections. In hospital, the lovely nurses kept all the cats in the world from jumping on my stomach (to be fair, I only have to worry about one at home, but that's still one too many when you're talking about surgery wounds) and my toddler was too short to jump on the bed in the morning and yell "Hi Mummy! You're all better now!" and throw himself on me.

But aside from my loved ones and pets trying to kill me, I'm actually a lot better now. I did try doing a bit of writing in hospital, but I was groggy and in a lot of pain, and it didn't work out well.

I am going to get back into the habit of every day - it was good for my writing because I hated having to write 0 next to word count when I'd been lazy!

Word count - 1,149

Days 185 to 187 - The Other End of the Rainbow

2011-03-10T11:20:00.000+11:00

Kiersten over at Kiersten Writes has put up an excellent post about the processes you have to go through to be published - or should that be Published? She says she queried 50 agents to finally get one, and then went on to write three more books in the time it took that agented book to be ignored.

It really puts my one little rejection in perspective. ^_^

I had to think a minute about whether I was writing to be published, or wanted to be published because I loved writing. I had to think because I didn't understand the question. Finishing a novel was hard enough loving writing - how the heck could you do it if it wasn't a labour of love?

I want to write for a living because I have, at present, 15 books I want to write, and I have time for perhaps 2 a year working full-time. Oh, the wonderous brilliance of being able to write ALL DAY! My editing wouldn't be piled up 1 and a half books deep. I could finish my current draft in weeks, not months. *blissful sigh*

So, if you're reading this, what make you want to be published? Or do you at all? Is it enough to sit on your manuscripts, warm in the knowledge that you're awesome?

Word Count - 1,410

Days 175 - 184 Too busy for words

2011-03-07T12:23:00.000+11:00

Quite literally things have been far too busy for writing. I'm doing a Masters at present and I'm really behind on my reading, I've had job applications to do and I've still got my baby to take care of.

I just got a rejection notice for one of my submissions. It was expected, but it still hurts a little. Like when you know the boy you like doesn't like you, not like that, but you still can't help but get your hopes up when you ask him out.

I think what I need is a little more organisation and routine. I'll have to work on that.

Word count - 0

Days 174 and 175 - Agent submission!

2011-02-26T00:48:00.000+11:00

I know that I said that I was going to rant more about the publishing industry, but yesterday I took the plunge and submitted something to an agent!

I've never been so absolutely terrified, hopeful, cautious and obsessive about checking my email all at the same time. Of course, it might take months to hear back, but I can't help the fact my heart beats a little faster every time I see I have new email. Then I have to remind myself that my chances of being accepted are small anyhow given the sheer number of submissions they get and not to get my hopes up.

I'll be trying to work on my job application (...sigh - I hate selection criteria) and my mind will just be whispering "But what if you get accepted? What if THIS is the start of everything? You'd be a published author! You'll make thousands.. well, HUNDREDS of dollars! You could totally buy some cool stuff with that money..." And then by the time I stop daydreaming lunch is over and I have to go back to work.

And while I have a problem with the fact that while I'm daydreaming, I'm not writing, I love to just spend half an hour pretending I won $32 million at lotto. I'd buy my husband a mini (he wants one with a British flag painted on the roof...I know.) I'd build my own house that has a 50m swimming pool and a library that goes up three floors and has those awesome sliding ladders around the walls. And then I'd get all my friends to take leave with pay and take them on a world tour in our own private jet (or maybe cruise ship) - stopping at Venice for Carnivale, Cannes for the Film Festival, Los Angles for Disneyland, the beach for fun etc.

Gah! I just did it again! See what I mean? Living out the future in your head sounds nice, but I've got to stop letting it get in the way of, you know, actually doing things. Tomorrow I have a nice full day of writing and studying planned! Should be excellent!

Word count - 0

Day 173 - Who you gonna call?

2011-02-24T13:06:00.000+11:00

There are a couple of real problems with the way authors are treated by the industry, and it's one where most of the people who could do anything to fix it see it as firmly ensconsed in a Somebody Else's Problem field.

Picture books are something everyone thinks they can write, mostly because the very best picture books have text that is deceptively simple. It's like poetry, but it has to jump the hurdles of making some kind of sense, being interesting to a toddler and not being patronising or pedestrian. As a consequence, agents and publishers are innundated with tidal waves of slush to sift through in order to find the next Maurice Sendak or Pamela Allen. (I love Pamela Allen - I really get into reading Bertie and the Bear to my son and Who Sank the Boat? is still one of my favourite books)

And so these people build walls and barriers and hoops and hurdles, all designed to discourage the idle wannabes who wrote a story about their kid going to the shops. The problem is that, looking at it from the other side, the wall they've built sometimes seems inpenetrable.

In Australia at present, as far as I have been able to discover, there are two publishers who accept unsolicited picture book manuscripts from unpublished authors. One of those has a waiting list of four months, and the other has a list of documents you need to send through that make it feel like you're applying for a bank loan. On the agent side of the fence, there is ONE registered agent who currently accepts picture book submissions, and I'm not even 100% certain about that.

So what are you supposed to do? You've written an excellent book, you're sure it's great - you go to the publishers, and none of them will even look at it. Most of the publishers have something akin to "Sorry, we're not accepting submissions at present, but you can contact your local writer's centre for information on how to get published." The problem is, no where else is accepting either, so what are the writer's centres supposed to tell you?

At the moment I've got two options, and I'll give those my best shot first. But at the end of the day, there is a real problem with how the industry deals with aspiring writers. I'll say more on that in my post tomorrow.

Word count - 550

Days 159 to 172 - Second Draft - Complete!

2011-02-22T23:39:00.000+11:00

I have worked so hard over the last few weeks, all I really want to do is curl up and fall asleep! But instead I sit and pretend to write while I'm really chatting to people on the Romance Writers of Australia forum :-)

The 5DI competition entries closed last week. I took two days off work to get my entry done in time, but even then I was pushing it. Not to mention that I stuffed up and sent the wrong file through when I did enter! That was a bit of a nightmare - I accidentally sent in the draft where my henchman was still called by his placeholder name of Genghis!

Nevertheless, I got a lot of writing done and I'm really happy with it. If I don't get into the 5DI (the more likely scenario) then I'll just do a third draft, a polish and start sending it through to agents. Either way, it's going to be a very exciting second half of the year!

At the moment I'm working on a Regency romance between a woman in debtor's prison and one of the guards. It's really started well, but I'm rapidly approaching the part where I'm going to have to start winging it. That's fine - sometimes I write absolute gold when I have no idea what happens next. Sometimes, however, it just means I have to rewrite half the novel in the second draft!

Word count - 28,169 FTW :-)

Days 146 to 158 - Argg! (And cute kitten photos)

2011-02-09T21:06:00.000+11:00

Why is it so hard to get back in the habit??

Well, back to keeping on trying.... And be distracted by cute kitten photos!

Word count - 1,973

Days 125 to 145 - First you have to find the horse...

2011-01-27T12:04:00.000+11:00

It's been 20 days and all I've done is muck about. It's all well and good to say "Just get back on the horse", but where's the damned animal gone?

The 5DI entries are due on Monday. It's my dream prize - five days of intensive critique on my novel manuscript. I was working towards it at the end of last year until I completely lost interest in the whole project and moved on to something else. I've refound my enthusiasm for that plotline (with drastically altered characters and turning points) and I have until Monday night to get it into shape. I'm sure I can make that deadline, I just have to find, saddle and finally mount that darn steed!

Word count - 761

Days 123 and 124 - LibraryThing = Awesome Evil

2011-01-06T11:52:00.000+11:00

Sometimes I just get sucked into something and, carried away with a boundless enthusiasm and passionate desire to be THE BEST at everything, I end up spending hours planting crops (damn you Farmville), killing 10 of various creatures and delivering virtual messages to virtual people (damn you World of Warcraft) or.... entering every single ISBN in my house onto the computer (thrice and double damn you LibraryThing!).

Yes, my husband and I are nerds of the saddest variety. We spent all last evening passing books back and forth, entering ISBNs, talking about our recommended reads and arguing over whether or not it mattered that the cover art provided wasn't identical.

I can't quite remember now why I thought it was so important that I do as much as I could as fast as I could, but I now have over 1,000 recommended reads - hopefully enough to keep me going for a while!

On a separate note, I'm concerned that none of the stories I'm working on are really firing my enthusiasm at present... I'll have to think about what to do next.

Word Count - 695

Day 96 to 122 - Indulging in Christmas Spirit

2011-01-04T21:20:00.000+11:00

Oh, I had such a good break!

I made an agreement with myself that I wasn't going to write anything for the rest of December. It was hard. In fact, as the month went on I found myself getting some really good ideas and it took an awful lot of self-control to go and play World of Warcraft instead of sitting down and writing.

But I think the break has done me good. I'm looking forward to the new year with boundless enthusiasm, and I have some great ideas that I'm dying to write.

I've made it my New Year's Resolution that I am going to send something to a publisher this year. Now all I have to do is write something, then edit it, then edit it again, then polish it and I'm away!

Word count - A blissful 0

Day 95 - Linked Up and Light Hearted

2010-12-08T03:20:00.001+11:00

There are some amazing things going on in the blogosphere, lads and lasses!

Over at Miss Snark's First Victim a whole bunch of agents are bidding against each other for the chance to read the manuscripts of some aspiring authors - but don't worry, I've been assured that the end days aren't as bad as we've all been led to believe.

Rachel Gardener, wonderful agent and all-round good guy, has been reading my diary again. I say that because it's less far-fetched than the idea she reads my blog.

Scarily, The Rejectionist doesn't seem to need caffeine to write as eloquently as she does. I shake in terror as my one plan to vanquish said blogger should they decide to attempt world domination has now been proved ineffective.

I'm an emerging writer! So says Australian Writers Rock! - I don't just have to rely on what my Mum says anymore ^_^ Seriously, I'm reasonably chuffed about that.

Oh! And I'm jealous of Sarah at Earful of Cider because she knows cooler people than I do and of Tahereh at Stir Your Tea because every time I try to pull off cute crazy all I manage is awkwardly bizarre verging on Sweet God Run! and of Gin and Kerosene's owner for getting to go see Muse when the best I've been offered this week is Wiggles tickets. (And yes, I took them.I know one 2-year-old who's going to be uber-excited tomorrow!)

I should have been in bed hours ago.

Word Count - 1,319

Days 90 - 94 - When is a Failure not a Failure?

2010-12-07T21:25:00.000+11:00

I had a five year plan. The first year was meant to be just solid writing - the idea being that I would have a solid base of work to build on come year two.

There have been a couple of problems with this - the main one being that I never see my husband any more. The secondary problem being that I'm dying to start editing my first ever completed novel (I know - I'm weird ^_^) and I don't have time if I'm writing 3000+ words per day!

So I've decided to cut back my word count goal. This was a very hard decision for me - I felt like I'd let myself down, that I'd failed.

But the goal isn't, as my wonderful Dad reminded me, an arbitrary number. It's to work as a published author. And if I want to make it my life, then making balance a habit is going to do me much more good in the long run than focussing all my energy on only one aspect of the craft.

So my new goal is to write 1,000,000 words over two years - to make 500,000 in my first year I only have to write a very manageable 1,305 words per day. That will give me plenty of time for editing, playing Assassin's Creed 2 and teaching my toddler to read.

My quote a day calendar at work has been eerily accurate this year. The day I made this decision, it had this to say:

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

Word Count - 0

Days 88 and 89 - Love, Hate and Kittens

2010-12-02T12:56:00.003+11:00

So, on Tuesday I came home and my rapidly-getting-fat cat didn't meet me at the door.

(If you've read the title, you probably know where this is going.)

When she came out into the loungeroom, she was starving - and A LOT thinner.

Being naturally suspicious of girls who spend all night out with their boyfriends and then spend the subsequent months getting plumper and plumper, I went around the house to have a look-see and, sure enough, there were KITTENS in my bedroom cupboard!!

(NB. The above non-flash photo was taken with Mum in the room, and I put the bub straight back - so please don't think I've ruined any kitty lives)

Squeee!! ^_^

I love babies of all kinds, and these ones are beautiful! I am now the proud grandma of four kittens. I gave Mum lots of pats and hand fed her some chicken curry until she let me have a look at them. She was happy to let me have a squiz, even nosing them over in my direction so I could see them better. She'd lost one already, but the other four are going strong.

I went and tried to write afterwards, but I had two problems:

1) I was too excited about kittens; and
2) I HATED my novel.

I spent most of NaNo writing my YA Sci-Fi, but as I'd finished the first draft (Booyah! Did I mention that??) I went back to my Regency Romance.

I couldn't do it. I hated all of it - the characters, the plot, even the setting.

So I've been stuck for the last two days. Tonight I really actually have to DO something, but I don't know whether to keep soldiering on with this or start afresh on something else.

Suggestions welcome!

Word count - 0

Day 87 - The Crap That Gets Published These Days

2010-11-30T14:00:00.001+11:00

Ask yourself always: How can this be done better?
- G.C. Lichtenberg

I think when people complain about the lack of standards in publishers today what they are really complaining about is the unrelenting tide of mediocrity that faces them every time they walk into a bookstore.

Despite what I've said loudly and repeatedly about Matthew Riley, none of the books that you will see in your average bookstore are actually crap. Think of publishing as an iceberg, and the mediocre stuff you see is the ice bobbing just on the waterline.

Don't believe me? Take a peek below the surface! ^_^

What we really want isn't fiction that meets the minimum bar. We want better fiction. And that's what I believe we should be constantly striving for as writers.

Don't read a novel and say "I could do that". Read and say "I know what would me even more awesome than that!" Even if your proclaimed ambition is to be a hack, write the most adventurous, romantic, melodramatic pulp fiction you can. Always aim to raise the bar, not just meet it.

At the very least, it will make it harder for your kids to show you up in 20 years.

Word count - 1,889

**EDIT - Oh God. I'd never actually READ a Fan Fiction Friday on Topless Robot. My apologies for anyone harmed by that link. It has been replaced with something less evil.

Day 86 - Twitter Popularity and #AskAgent

2010-11-29T20:39:00.001+11:00

I love Twitter the same way Twitter loves words - in short, precise bursts. When the Australian Open finished, I was sad that I wouldn't get to tweet on the #AusOpen hashtag anymore. When Masterchef finished, I may have shed a tear or so at the people I had spent half an hour with every night mocking people who can't make a basic cake, ffs, but can make a three-course designer meal.

Recently I discovered #AskAgent - it's an excellent resource for up and coming writers who are curious about how Agents work. Yesterday I learned:

- It doesn't matter when agents go on holiday, because if you're on the slush pile it doesn't matter when you get there, they still aren't jumping over themselves to read you.

- It is better, if possible, to have the one agent who can handle both genres your write in.

- For the love of all that is holy, DON'T self-publish, submit the MS to an agent and only tell them it's already been self-published after you get a contract.

- Most agents don't really care what you write about, as long as it's really well written.

I've also managed to come up with a formula for how to calculate popularity on Twitter. It's simple, you take the number of people following you and divide it by the number of people you're following.

I'll admit I haven't applied it universally, but using this method I have a popularity of 0.60 whereas Step-hen Free (or Stephen Fry as he is known in the current timeline) has a popularity of 37.6 - that seems about right to me! ^_^

Word count - 2, 534

Day 85 - Amazon Studios Flatters Frey's Novel Factory

2010-11-28T03:04:00.000+11:00

Well, they do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

Amazon, deciding that it shouldn't just be for conmen to screw over overly-enthusiastic and desperate creative types, has come up with its own version that doesn't stop at writers but encompasses wannabe film-makers, actors and animators.

Basically, it's a free contest. The prize money is, for most of us average people, a lot of money. You put your work on the site, people read it, edit it (getting a co-writer credit in the process) and, hopefully, a director likes it enough to make an entire test movie. Then it goes through a competition process, and if it wins you get something.

Otherwise? I hope you didn't want all those rights you just signed away.

If you are considering putting something up on Amazon Studios, I would really urge you to go and read the Development Agreement very carefully.

The problems, as I see it, are these:

1) Amazon state outright they don't hold with any of that union/guild minimum pay nonsense.

2) If you write a script and it wins, the money is split between you and anyone else who edited it. An unlimited number of people can edit your work.

3) If you make revisions to someone else's script, you retain absolutely no rights to any of the content you provided - however point 2 is a good thing for you.

This last point is important.

4) The entire of clause 6 - 'Grant of Rights from You to Amazon' - made me die a little inside. You are agreeing to give Amazon a 'worldwide, royalty-free, non-terminable, sub-licensable, transferable right' to:

...copy, use, edit, add to, modify and otherwise alter any Original Property you contribute to Amazon Studios and to create, develop and produce derivative works based on the Original Property on and off of Amazon Studios in the form of treatments, screenplays, writer's pitches, trailers, videos and other written, audio or audiovisual works...

That's right. They can take your idea and do whatever they want with it. Also? Even after the 18 month exclusive window you give them, they can still use whatever original material you put up to, for example, put out a novelization of your script. And you don't get a penny unless they choose to exercise their option. Which they don't have to.

Because why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

Word count - 3,286

PS - Thanks to Scott Meyers at Go Into The Story for his post on this.

Day 84 - Tired of being the Tortoise

2010-11-27T03:18:00.002+11:00

I have a five year plan. I work towards it every day - more or less.

But dammit, I don't want to take five years! I want it now!

I don't want to worry about my contract being renewed, I don't want to worry about what kind of menial, boring job I'm going to have to take next to keep the money coming in.

I want to write for a living. I want to BE a writer by occupation.

Slow and steady sucks.

Word count - 3,112

Day 83 - Language Warning - To Get Your Ass Into Gear

2010-11-26T01:31:00.002+11:00

Word count - 3,100

Day 82 - Meh meh meh

2010-11-25T21:22:00.000+11:00

I had a bit of a crappy day. I was told that not only didn't I get the job I applied for, I didn't even get an interview. That doesn't happen to me very often (Yes, I know, I'm spoilt - but I'm bloody good at my job). I saw a lot more red than I would have liked in my edit - and gave it to a friend who fixed the scene in a matter of minutes, making it look more polished than I ever could.

So I decided "stuff it" and gave up on being productive and had a sleep instead.

Word count - 0

Day 81 - Weeds Everywhere.

2010-11-23T23:09:00.002+11:00

Today was my second day off work, and I had planned to use the whole day to write. I sat down at my desk, looked at the computer and just about cried. I couldn't do it.

So I got up, did some washing up, took my two-year-old out with me to weed the garden - (sidenote) he looked so cute wearing one of my gardening gloves on one hand, running around and clutching prickly plant bits yelling "Look at me Mummy! I'm running with the weed!"; a phrase that I'm almost certain he'll need to repeat in College (end sidenote) - and then played Assassin's Creed and had a nap.

It was a really nice day, AND I still got my usual writing time in over the course of the evening!

Just one more thing - how fricking awesome is this??

Steampunk Laptop from Datamancer

Word count - 4,301

Day 80 - I Did It!

2010-11-23T00:04:00.000+11:00

I hit the 50K! Technically, I've won NaNo!

However...
(Why is there always a however?!?)
... I still haven't quite finished the story yet. That's the next step.

I had today off work, which is how I managed to have such a good day. I'm hoping to make a similar number tomorrow on my second day off. Onwards and upwards!

But for right now, I'm going to go reward myself with some Assassin's Creed ^_^

Word count - 10, 957

Day 79 - The Missing Day

2010-11-22T10:26:00.000+11:00

Somehow I've managed to misplace a day.

Today, Monday 22 November, should be Day 80 as far as I can work out but my blog is only up to Day 79. I'm reasonably certain I only misplaced it recently - the maths was all sound up until the beginning of this month.

So I've added up everything I've written in the past few months, subtracted the total in the sidebar on my blog and the missing day's word count was 1,912.

Ah, order at last! Take that, chaos!

Word count - 1,912

Day 78 - 'My Dangerous Duke' by Gaelen Foley

2010-11-21T23:25:00.002+11:00

I should say up front that I normally read sweet romances. As much as I support people's right to talk about their character's throbbing manhood it's not usually the kind of thing I want to read about. I like the story, the growing affection and tension between two characters who are falling madly in love with one another.

So when I picked this up, I thought it was a sweet romance. You might ask, as did my husband, "Julia, how did you manage to miss the prominent quote from Publishers Weekly on the front stating the book was exceptionally sexy?"
Good question.
But I did miss it, and I'm glad I did.

My Dangerous Duke is a really good story. It follows Kate Masden, if that is her real name, as she is kidnapped and given as a gift to a cursed Duke with a dark reputation. Managing to convince him that she is not a local girl with ambitions to become a famous courtesan, she and Rohan, Duke of Warrington and assassin for the notorious Inferno Club, attempt to solve the mysteries of Kate's birth, upbringing and capture.

I really liked the characters and in particular the dynamic between Kate and Rohan. The tension between them is tight right from the beginning of the novel and continues well. I especially liked that they were not afraid to talk about things openly - at times when I thought there would be a comedy of errors that would leave me cringing Foley surprised me by averting it through a well-timed conversation.
Bliss! Two characters who listen to each other's explanations!
I also loved how Rohan, a cold-blooded killer doomed by his bloodline, was handled. There was no watering down of what he did as part of his occupation, and Kate's acceptance of him as he was seemed to flow naturally from her growing feelings for him.

The pacing works well for most of the book, and I can't say much about the level of sensuality because I tend to skim sex scenes just to make sure I'm not missing any plot (Seriously, authors, don't do that! Who talks about the people trying to kill them while they're in the middle of coitus?). They only thing I will say was that I felt their change of heart over whether to have a physical relationship or not was a bit forced. The reasons not to didn't seem that important in the first place, and I couldn't really see what had changed to allow it when they did fall into the sack.

The ending of the book - and I won't give away anything here - was extremely unusual, and I liked that about it. Personally, I felt it lacked something, but I really, really appreciated what she was attempting to do.

All in all, a fun read and I'm looking forward to reading the others in the same series.

(By the way - I should also mention that the cover art on my copy is superior to, and less revealing than, the cover art on Gaelen Foley's website - it has convinced me that if I am ever published I am willing to settle for a smaller advance if they are willing to put in the contract that Blacksheep do the cover art. Go check out their publishing portfolio - pretty!)

Word count - 3,165

Day 77 - Finishing the Draft

2010-11-21T10:29:00.001+11:00

I read a quote the other day from Stephen King who said that you should always attempt to fiinish the first draft of your novel within three months, because otherwise it begins to feel like a foreign land. I know he's talking about the concept of immersion, but to me it was a bit of a prod.

You need to strike while the iron is hot. You are interested in this story now, but if you keep putting it off and putting it off how long will it be before you get bored of the whole thing and move on to writing the first draft of that AWESOME idea you had last night?

Just the same as you can't edit a blank page, you have to finish a first draft to have a second. That's my goal for Novemeber. I've won NaNo twice now - 50,000 words each time but not a completed draft in sight. This year my goal is to finish my first draft. I think my goal will then be to do my very first second draft, but let's take it a step at a time, yes? ^_^

Word count - 2,723

Day 76 - First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde

2010-11-20T22:47:00.003+11:00

For years I had thought that the wonderful, innovative, awe-inspiring Thursday Next series ended with Something Rotten, with the action culminating with the thrilling croquet match that saved the world as they know it.

You can not imagine how incredibly ecstatic I was to find out about First Among Sequels. My husband works in a book store and I made him get it for me the day he first mentioned it to me. So as you can see, my expectations were quite high when it came to actually reading the book.

Thursday is still the same, multi-layered character I've loved from the beginning, and the literary references, bizarre happenings and distorted tableaus of everyday life in the world of a mother, wife, cheese-smuggler and jurisfiction agent came fast and furious.

The only problem I had was that parts of the plot seemed a little stilted. It might even be that when I read the first one I found BookWorld, jurisfiction and the like all so bewildering that I was swept along so fast I missed clues, but this time I noticed all the foreshadowing and was able to quiet often guess what was going down. But this was not a real problem and it was still the same familiar world I'd missed.

If you haven't read this series, you're doing yourself a disfavour - go find The Jane Eyre Affair immediately. It's unashamedly snobbish in its literary references, and the more you've read the funnier the series is, but the plots are excellent even without that layer. An excellent read.

Word count - 837

Day 75 - Octavian Nothing: Volume 1 by MT Anderson

2010-11-19T16:59:00.000+11:00

I often wonder where the line gets drawn between adult and young adult fiction. The Pox Party, the first volume of the Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing pretends the line doesn't exist. Set in Boston during the Revolutionary War, it is a dark novel that plays on the notions of freedom, identity, race and philosophy.

In 2006 it won the National Book Award for Young People. In one of the early chapters it is mentioned how cats are thrown from increasingly high distances to see how far they can fall before they no longer land on their feet. In 2007 it was an honour mention in the Printz award for excellence in young adult fiction. In one scene the young Octavian watches as a man is tarred, feathered and beaten repeatedly until he screams incoherently.

The tension starts quite early in the book. Like a good horror film, even when people appear to be living completely normal lives we feel the twinge of fear at the looming catastrophe. It is unrelenting in some ways, because even when the last issue is resolved, you can see the malevolent shadow of another on the horizon.

I would strongly recommend this book to everyone. As with And Tango Makes Three, I think adults (or people with more mature life perspectives) will get more out of this than your average teen, but it is a cracking good read no matter what age you are. I can't wait to buy the second volume.

Word count - 0

Day 74 - Or am I just jealous?

2010-11-18T21:34:00.000+11:00

I posted that horrible contract, read with a growing righteous fury the offer he was making to these graduates - and then started to wonder what I would do.

Was I really appalled? Or was I jealous?

These people get a shot I won't get. They get a published author (even if it is a douchebag published author) as a mentor. If they write something worthwhile, it will get shown to a publisher who is interested already.

Is it really so much to ask? To say "In return for giving you your big break, I expect to get all the credit and most of the cash"?

Personally, my answer has to be - yes, it is too much to ask. It is too much to ask that I allow you a parasitic existence while I work my butt off with no guarantee of anything except a chance. It is too much to ask that if I work hard, you reap the benefits.

What would you do?

Word count - 1,201

Day 73 - The Contract From Hell

2010-11-15T23:51:00.000+11:00

Hey, aspiring writers! Wanna know what a crap contract looks like?

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/11/read_the_brutal_contract_from.html

I'm semi-admiring of the way Frey is unabashedly evil. As a once-was-law-student, I found clause 15 the most amusing. Forget the fact that you only get paid $125 up front, with another $125 when your manuscript is complete and the company owns your work for the rest of time, clause 15 says even if they break the contract, there is nothing you can do about it - you can't even end the contract.

On the other hand, if you stuff up, or even look like you might stuff up, they can get an order from the court forcing you to complete the contract EVEN if they can't show that your considered inaction would cause a loss to the company.

Of course, I know buckleys about US law, but in Australia I am reasonably certain several of those clauses would not stand up in court. 15.3, for example.

But what I am certain of is this - if you sign that contract, you have almost no legal leg to stand on.

Please, aspiring authors, show your contract to a good lawyer first. Or your local authors association.

We all want the dream - a published book. But wouldn't you like to reap the rewards for your hard work as well?

Word count - 3,142

Day 72 - 'And Tango Makes Three' by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson

2010-11-15T13:31:00.001+11:00

I had to order this book in, but I had read so many reviews of how wonderful it was that I didn't hesitate to do so.

My first thought when I opened it to the first page was one of dread. TMFW! I hate picture books that feel they have to drown themselves in a sea of text. But it cleared up within a few pages and it was clear sailing from there.

As a child's picture book, it is a nice story. Marcus, my two year old, likes penguins.

But as an adult, I got a lot more out of it. A two year old can't read a homosexual relationship into what is, on its face, two affectionate penguins who live in the same nest. A two year old can't extrapolate outwards from the simple story of two boy penguins who want an egg and comprehend the overwhelming sadness that same sex couples who want a child must experience.

To me, the scene where the two penguins try to hatch a rock because they see all the other penguins with their eggs was filled with pathos. Marcus just said wisely "They don't have a Mummy. They need a Mummy to give them a baby." To him it was a simple matter, a logic problem.

In the end, I liked the book more than he did. He couldn't read it as a parable, which is why he couldn't understand why Mummy cried a little at the simple beauty of the final page.

Word count - 1,260

Day 71 - A Minor Taste of Victory

2010-11-14T03:47:00.000+11:00

Today I broke the 100,000 word mark.

That's 10% of my goal to write 1,000,000 words in a year completed. That's 100,000 words I have written since September 4 this year. It's 100,000 words I wouldn't have written in the entirety of this year if I hadn't got my act together and undertaken this challenge.

After a week of rejection, this is particularly sweet. I didn't make the STALI finals (though my sincere congratulations to those who did!) and I got turned down by two jobs I applied for. It's enough to make anyone a little down. The funny thing is, if you keep writing, you keep finding more and more opportunities.

So I didn't get what I want this week. I'm making progress, steady progress, towards my goal. And that is definitely a taste of victory in itself.

Word count - 6,868

Day 70 - Handwriting v Typing

2010-11-13T13:36:00.000+11:00

When I go out to write in public, more often than not I have to use a notepad and pen. That's because I don't have a laptop. Except for the fact that handwriting is slower, I don't often find much difference between handwritting and typing. Other people swear that handwriting, solely by being the slower method, forces them to think more about what they're writing and results in a better draft.

What do you think? Do you prefer typing or handwritting?

Word count - 270

Day 69 - Tightrope Antics

2010-11-12T13:15:00.000+11:00

All of life is a balancing act. Life and work and fun and writing are all trying to get a piece of the action and quite often you have to spend too much time on one thing to do justice to another. As a mother of a two-year-old with a full-time job and, you know, friends and a husband, I often feel like telling everyone to go jump off a cliff for half the day so I can get some damned writing done!

Doyce Testerman, who runs an excellent blog, just reminded us all that we are our own worst enemies. This part of his post in particular rang true for me:

4. No one else gives a crap if you Finish.

No.

No they don’t.

Not even him. Not her either. No one.

Not even me; I’m distracting you RIGHT NOW with this post.

You are the only person who cares about getting your story done, and the only way to make that happen is to viciously (perhaps anti-socially) defend the blocks of time you set up to write.

I struggle with feeling like a bitch when I tell people I can't hang out because I have to write. They don't seem to get that if I don't put the work in, this will never happen. Because there is no one else who can do it for me.

Simultaneously, your brain needs to recharge every now and then. Yay for Rock Band 3!

Word count - 299

Day 68 - Trying to Buy the Wind

2010-11-10T23:32:00.000+11:00

Working as a freelance writer, the first thing that struck me was the high importance non-writers placed on ideas - coupled with the low value that they placed on writing skill.

"I have a fantastic idea!" a prospective client might say. "It's a novel about... well, I can't go into that right now, it's a secret and if I tell you, you might steal it. But I'll give you $200 to write my novel, which will then go on to be published and make millions."

And this distribution of funds seemed perfectly fair to them, because it was their idea. They owned it. The countless hours of writing and editing - well, that's easy when you have a concept!

The principle that ideas are precious items that need to be guarded I find ridiculous. What I find pathetic is the people who wander around, saying "I had that idea first. I came up with the idea of an orphan going to wizard school. I'm going to sue!"

There is no new idea. There are only different ways of retelling the same old stories, using different characters and settings. Yes, you had a good idea. But did you use it? Whinging about how JK Rowling stole your fortune by writing her own book before you wrote yours (the cow!) might get you a couple of drinks at the pub, but wouldn't you have been better off actually writing your book?

I ~~stole~~ participated in the free exchange of ideas culture and acquired this from The Rejectionist's blog:

Word count - 3,624

Day 67 - First Impressions

2010-11-09T23:39:00.000+11:00

Your opening line should hook your reader straight away.
No slush reader ever reads past the first page.
How many times have you heard that? And yet some great published works still start so slowly you want to stand behind the author at their keyboard tapping your foot and looking at your watch pointedly. It took me three attempts to get past the first page of The Count of Monte Cristo, but I've read that book about 10 times now.

In contrast, I just read the first five pages of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson. The first line is:

I was raised in a gaunt house with a garden; my earliest recollections are of floating lights in the apple-trees.

Wow. Just wow.

The writing is amazing. It pulls you in and wraps you entirely in the time period, surrounding you with a sense of impending disaster and a creeping, overarching menace.

Of course, I'm only 5 pages in and I could be wrong, but I have the feeling this is going to be one of those books - the books that come along so very rarely that manage to enthral you without seemingly even trying. I'm looking forward to the next 346-odd pages.

Word count - 3,460

Day 66 - Failure

2010-11-09T12:56:00.000+11:00

I had a very bad day. Yes, I should have worked through it. No, I shouldn't have gone to bed and just hugged my kitty (who I really think may be knocked up...)

So my new goal for the month is not more than 1 day with a zero wordcount!

Word count - 0

Day 65 - The Good, Bad and Ugly of Libraries

2010-11-07T23:05:00.000+11:00

I love to buy books. In fact, one thing I need the most is more bookshelves. I love being able to take down a book and look up sections I enjoyed to see exactly how they were handled, I like being able to look up quotes easily and I like being able to just re-read my favourite books whenever the hell I want.

So I don't often go to libraries, but when I do I'm always bowled over by the sheer scope of them. I spend my time flitting from one section to another going "Ooh! I could learn to play the guitar in three easy steps!" and "Fascinating! What exactly WAS the effect of trade on the downfall of the Ottoman Empire?"

Today our NaNo write-in was at a local library, and after realising that there was apparently a statute of limitations on overdue fees (or perhaps my parents returned the book when the cleared out their house - I have no idea) the library let me take out two non-fiction books on space travel aimed at the 10-13 market and a terrible, terrible novelisation of the TV series Crash Zone, which seems to be aimed at 12-15 year olds.

The ugly came in the form of a crazed religious fanatic who, overhearing our discussion on sex in romance novels, decided to come and favour us with a long and very loud lecture on our own immaturity, the importance of embracing Jesus and the sin of homosexuality. We're not even sure how he got on to that one, but we told him to get lost. Eventually he had to be booted by the library staff. So there's at least one nutjob who's ensured he's going to have a bit part in a couple of novels!

Weighing up crazy evangelicals against free books I wouldn't normally buy and good chairs and free Internet, I'd say on the whole libraries kick ass.

Word count - 4,196

Day 64 - Zzzzz...

2010-11-07T01:39:00.000+11:00

After a full day of cleaning, cooking, reading to and playing with my 2-year-old, then hanging with my gaming group and writing when I had half a moment, I am so very, very exhausted.

I was reading a blog the other day that asked, if you had the choice, would you prefer to be a critically renowned yet poor novelist or a reasonably well paid and "popular" hack. I would pick hack any day of the week. After all, if I could write during the day, oh the extravagant bliss!, I could SLEEP at night. Or talk to my husband. That would be nice.

I'm thinking of taking Tom Cruise for my hero - my mantra will be "Show me the money!"

Word count - 1,081

Day 63 - Can't sleep. Scrivener will eat me.

2010-11-05T22:54:00.000+11:00

I haven't slept in a really long time and it's all Scrivener's fault. They FINALLY released a Windows beta, and of course I had to download it.
"I won't use it," I said to myself. "I'll just get it on the computer so I can check it out tomorrow."

And then I fell in love.

Editing my complete mess of a first draft went from "Oh God" to exciting so quickly! I've been staying up working, but now if I don't get some sleep I may just pass out on my keyboard.

But the research binders! And the index card philosophy!

*sigh* Must. Sleep! It will be there another day...

Word count - 2,101

Day 62 - End of Month Two

2010-11-05T00:57:00.001+11:00

I have to be up in about 5 hours, but I was only 900 words off the 80,000 mark so I kept going. As a matter of fact, if it weren't for the fact that I'd be stuffed at work tomorrow I'd be quite happy to just keep writing all night. When you get into the flow, you can just surf there as long as you want pretty much.

At least until something hits you.

It's the end of month two, and I've done marginally better this month. I achieved 3.51% in my first month, and that has increased to 4.49% in month two. This is still a fair way down from the 8.34% I need each month, but still, improvement is improvement and I'll take that as something of a win. As a matter of fact, it's a 27.9% increase in output. If I keep improving at that rate, I'll catch up in no time.

In any event, I now have 304 days left of my challenge with 920,000 words remaining. This equates to 3,026 words per day.

I think one of the major things holding me back is the sheer number of 0 count days. And there's really no excuse for it. I can do 1000 words easily in about 20 minutes to half an hour. The thing is, and this goes back to the editing versus careful drafting debates as well, is that if I say to myself - Oh, you must reach your whole target even if you're tired, I probably won't do anything at all and will watch TV instead.

I need to give myself permission to have mid-range and low word count days. In most cases, once I start writing I get in the zone and I'll probably keep going. But it's important that I get something down every day.

So my major goal for month three is to not have a single 0 word count day. My secondary goal is to lower my daily target back down to the original 2,739 words per day it was when I started.

Word count - 5,281

Day 61 - The War of the Words

2010-11-04T00:18:00.000+11:00

I'm continuously amazed how sometimes just sitting down and writing with the aim of telling a story that's only half-formed in your head can come up with some plot turns and twists that you had never anticipated.

For example - I was a little lost the other day. I was writing my young adult science fiction, and I felt like my voice was all wrong. My prose felt really stilted and even the dialogue (something I'm normally quite good at) was feeling forced and unnatural. Then suddenly I found myself writing from the perspective of her great-great-great grandmother at a modern day university trying to choose between a life on Earth and a never-ending mission to the stars. And then, because I'd mentioned her, I brought in a diary of hers later that has become a kind of important plot point.

In other new, I took part in three separate word wars today - two through NaNo and one through RWA and ended up with an excellent word count that makes me feel a lot better about myself after being so lazy yesterday!

I hope your NaNos are all going well! I love plot doctoring, so please feel free to ask me questions about what should happen next - that kind of stuff is awesome fun.

Word count - 5,963

Day 60 - The Natives are Restless

2010-11-03T16:30:00.000+11:00

We've only been lost in the novelling jungle for 2 days, and already it seems that some may be resorting to canibalism. Mostly I believe the troops are missing the home-style cooking of the NaNoWriMo forums, which have been attacked by a plague-like disease that threatens civilisation as we know it.

Am hoping to hit a path through to the mainland soon. The natives of NaNo Land line the shores and look at us, their eyes hinting at secrets I dare not guess.

Please, tell Mary I love her.

The drums! The drums!

Word count - 0

Day 59 - All for One, and One for All!

2010-11-01T21:54:00.001+11:00

There's something really inspiring about writing with other people. I've done several word sprints today, where another writer challenges you to something of a race. You type for half an hour or an hour (or whatever) and then compare word counts. You win some, you lose some, but you always get a lot of writing done.

It helps if you, like me, are competitive by nature. I can't play poker for fake money, I can't play badminton if no-one is keeping score. To strive, to achieve, to excel - all of these things require a form of measurement by which to judge your progress and success. To do something 'just for fun' with no end goal is something completely foreign to my mind, and something I struggle with as more and more of the world seems to be moving that way.

Even NaNoWriMo is a competition. I'm competing against myself, measured in word count.

Image from Sport.yahoo.com

I was thinking that what we need is an Olympic sport of writing. It would be scored similar to diving or gymnastics. You would have a certain time limit, and the amount of words you wrote would constitute your "difficulty", so to speak. It's harder to write an excellent 10,000 word story in an hour than it is a poem. Then the content counts towards the execution scoring phase. There would be a panel of judges, all holding up little placards with scores on them.

NB. This is in no way a cheap way to give myself even a fighting chance of getting in the Olympics. Nope. Really. I promise.

Word count - 3,860

Day 58 - Like Minds

2010-11-01T00:18:00.000+11:00

Today I spent four and a half hours talking to a whole bunch of writers. I love that no matter who you are, how old you are, what your background is, when you meet another writer it is almost ludicrously easy to find things to talk about.

Mostly I think this is because writers are interested in the world around them. They read a lot. They watch movies and TV series - maybe even if just to judge the quality of the scriptwriting. They have opinions.

This goes back to what I was saying before about the difficulty of making choices. Writers are an opinionated lot because they have conditioned themselves to make those choices. Love Austen? Hate Austen? Writers generally have an opinion. We're not a group of fence-sitters in general.

To be honest, I was a bit nervous at the beginning that the kick-off party was going to fall flat. I shouldn't have worried. When you're dealing with intelligent, funny people who analyse the world around them for material and aren't afraid to make themselves heard you're always going to have some sort of interesting time! ^_^

Word count - 2,551

Day 57 - One More Day till Nano!

2010-10-31T11:10:00.000+11:00

I'm so excited! I've been thinking about my plot, making plans for the kick-off party and talking to a lot of people about what the pros and cons of a month of uninterrupted, edit-free novelling.

If you haven't joined up yet, go to www.nanowrimo.org and get a wriggle on!

Word count - 214

Day 56 - Rocking Out

2010-10-31T01:16:00.000+11:00

Rock Band 3 kicks some serious butt. I sang for hours, my voice was so hoarse! But for a short time I had the glory of knowing I was ranked number 2 in the world for one of the songs.

My friend doesn't have the keyboard peripheral yet - I'm looking forward to having a go at that. I would say that the singing seems to get easier with each iteration of the game. A couple of my friends and I started on medium (which is about my level in Rock Band 2 - I can do maybe 3 songs on expert) but by the end of the evening we'd just switched to playing on expert and we were consistently scoring in the 90% range.

One minor annoyance was that they seem to have removed the ability to navigate in the menu via the drum-kit. You have to use the d-pad, which is much less fun.

Word count - 0

Days 54 and 55 - NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul

2010-10-29T12:18:00.000+11:00

Well, if by "soul" I mean "sole amount of writing time I get" :-)

I love being an ML, it's fun and interesting and I'm naturally bossy so it's good to have something to organise. But it does take a little of my writing time, especially in the week leading up!

Speaking of which though, I am so excited about November! Woot woot!

Word count - 0

Day 53 - The Beauty of Georgette Heyer

2010-10-26T23:01:00.000+11:00

My mum once told me that she had some books she knew I would love. Being a teenager, I responded with "Bah! I'll thank you to keep your foolish Regency romances to yourself!"

A few years later and I actually ended up reading one of the Georgette Heyer novels my mother had been so keen on. I was hooked immediately. She is an exceptional writer - her pacing, characterisation, use of language, everything is perfect. I own all of her novels now, and I'm a bit sad about it because I've been reduced to just re-reading them over and over again.

I just started The Foundling again. I took that novel with me through Egypt and read it about ten times, so I haven't read it since. Even now, a few pages in, the way she hooks the reader without ostentation is brilliant. Also, in a time where romance novels are decidedly sexualised, her romantic adventure stories are incredibly refreshing. She is people I wish I could be.

Word count - 3,416

Day 52 - Working through the Burn

2010-10-25T23:13:00.002+11:00

My shoulders ache, I'm tired and I really just want to curl up in bed with a book.

It's nights like this I feel heroic.

Word count - 3,058

Day 51 - The Agonies of Inadequacy

2010-10-25T20:46:00.002+11:00

Stephen Fry always makes me feel like a tongue-tied toddler living in the double-plus good world of 1984. I just wish I were half as fabulous as he. And just to rub it in and have a brilliant laugh at the same time:

Day 50 - My Favourite Crush

2010-10-25T00:04:00.000+11:00

I went and saw The Marriage of Figaro at the Sydney Opera House. Oh, it was wonderful! I love the whole Figaro and Suzzana dynamic - and, funnily enough, the main female characters weren't stick figures! I'm what they call very curvy, and I don't expect people to cast fat chicks, but it's nice to see people with, y'know, breasts. And hips.

Over the last couple of Operas I've been to, I've managed to develop a crush on Dominica Matthews. She was absolutely brilliant as the horny-as-hell teenager Cherubino. Even knowing she was a woman, watching her male character try and act like a girl was hilarious. The whole crowd just loved her.

Jose Carbo played the Count and pretty much dominated the stage with his sheer presence. It was a bizarre example of how a character can be almost repellent in his lack of concern for others, but the actor can still draw you in with his amazing magnetism. I mean, generally I don't fall for guys who threaten their wives with axes, but in this case I'll make an exception ^_^

After the opera I was treated to the best dinner I have ever had at the Number One wine bar and restaurant (awww... best. food. ever!) Sumptuous and extravagant - my taste buds were just dancing. And THEN there were fireworks outside my hotel room. Honestly, a pure bliss weekend.

Plus I managed to get some writing done too!

Word count - 586

Day 49 - Spring Cleaning

2010-10-24T22:16:00.000+11:00

My house is always a mess. My Dad always tells me that if I can just get it cleaned, then it will be really easy to maintain but I've never seen any evidence of that. I think it probably helps that my folks have a guy come in once a fortnight to help tidy. If it's that easy to keep up, why waste the cash?

Anywho, I spent the night tidying. The house looked worse at the end, but that's because I had cleaned out everything from the cupboards, thrown out everything behind the bookshelves, found Marcus' library books (that were borrowed in December last year.... X-( ) and pulled out all the clothes to wash.

Net gain, I hope...

Word count - 0

Day 48 - Playing Catch Up

2010-10-21T22:44:00.000+11:00

Today was an excellent writing day! My wonderful husband basically threw me into the computer room and took our toddler to the park, and I managed to get myself ahead a little.

But now my head is empty and I have nothing to say. Oh, except:

Word count - 10,136 (Woohoo!)

Day 47 - I heart Sheldon Cooper

2010-10-21T10:04:00.001+11:00

Still not sufficiently recovered to be creative, but at least managed to do some NaNoWriMo stuff and watch some half-funny TV. I'm gonna count that as a win.

Word count - 0

Day 42 - 46 - And I thought I was joking...

2010-10-20T17:43:00.000+11:00

I made some cracks about pneumonia when I was in the process of getting sick last week. Apparently I was right. I had mychoplasma pneumonia or something, which is mostly quite mild unless it happens to set off your asthma badly and then, like me, you spend days lying in bed struggling to breathe.

I'm now feeling a bit better (still sleeping most of the day and all night) but I know how woefully behind I am. I'm not sure that this is even a plausible challenge anymore, but I'll just keep whacking away at it. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

Word count - 349

Day 41 - Between a Rock and a Hard Place

2010-10-14T23:31:00.001+11:00

Choice is often touted as a good thing, but I remember a study by a consumer group that showed too much choice is actually bad for people psychologically. If you have to choose every day between 45 types of bread, 6 types of butter and 23 different brands of milk just to have breakfast, you're going to be a nervous wreck by dinner.

That's because choice takes courage. It means closing a door that perhaps will never be open again. If you have Dargblet milk today, and they stop making Crishgy milk tomorrow, you'll never get to have it again.

Writing involves make hundreds of choices, constantly. What would my character do here? What direction does this take my plot? Is this the best word to describe what I'm trying to convey? If I do this here, am I closing the door on some interesting conflict down the line?

I was writing away today when I realised that my main character was trying to use feminine wiles to resolve a situation. Now, I have no trouble with that in general, but that's not who she is. And her journey is not so much one of discovery of the sexualised self as discovery of the power of choice. I went back to the last node and tried again. I had to do that four times and after turning down three trope streets and a dead-end I was finally happy with the direction we were going.

I'm also choosing a different technique aspect to work on each time I write. Today was excess words. I wouldn't stop for telling (not showing), under-written dialogue or trite descriptors, but I always went back and deleted excess words. My worst offenders are 'and', 'but', 'just', 'only'. It's funny how often they are completely unnecessary.

Word count - 2,930

(I'm not so fond of Crishgy as a word, come to think of it, but I do like Dargblet...Anyone want to try their hand at coming up with a definition for it?)

Day 40 - New Moan-ia

2010-10-14T11:57:00.003+11:00

Blerrrrrgghhhhh....

Word count - 0

Day 39 - Downtime for your brain

2010-10-13T12:42:00.000+11:00

I just read the most recent blog post by Nicole Murphy and it's really helped me be a little bit less down on myself about my on-again, off-again writing habits. What it boils down to is that you can't be performing all the time. Occasionally you need the time spent NOT using your brain to create to be able to create at all.

Also, last night it was my sister's birthday party. Too. Much. Pide!!

Word count - 0

Day 38 - Mondayitis

2010-10-13T12:22:00.000+11:00

A love of lasagne is one of the only things I have in common with Garfield. I don't attack mailmen, I don't try and hit spiders with newspapers (Why would you? A shoe is much more effective) - and I don't hate Mondays.

How could you? They're the start of a new week - so much opportunity! Not this week though. This Monday was blergh-ish and yucky and I'm glad it's gone away and will never return. Huzzah!

You know what's heaps more awesome than my blog? Garfield Minus Garfield.

Word count - 232

Day 37 - Multi-tasking Fail

2010-10-11T12:33:00.000+11:00

I wrote a little during the day when my toddler went to visit a friend and planned to write more in the evening, but we had people over and I wrote 30 words while they were here, but they were all crap words and I missed a good joke.

It really is a solitary occupation.

Word count - 970

Day 36 - Stupid French

2010-10-10T00:32:00.000+11:00

My characters have just landed in France, and I'm not as confident writing there as I am in Regency England. I believe that there was some form of official document needed to enter the country, like a passport or something, but I wish I knew a little bit more about French customs procedures at the time.

I'm going to have to do some more research. I'd actually like to write stories set in other parts of the world during the Regency period, but there is less information on places like, for example, Holland than I would like. Thank heaven for Google Books...

Word count - 2,987

Day 35 - Quantity and Quality

2010-10-09T22:43:00.000+11:00

I just rediscovered 'Write or Die' - a wonderful free web-based program that forces you to focus on writing. You can set whether you want to work towards a word total or a time limit and then there are varying levels of punishment if you don't keep typing. At the gentle level, you get a pop-up reminder you should be writing. On normal, your screen flashes a deeper and deeper shade of red till you start typing again. The worst is Kamikaze mode. If you stop working on your writing for long enough, you words begin to unwrite.

I find this an incredibly useful tool. I work for 15 minutes, write a scene and then go away, look at Facebook, come back and write another scene or so. But is there a point where it makes you focus so completely on quantity (the only thing it can measure) that you forget about quality?

A lot of the criticism I've seen for NaNoWriMo is that it produces nothing but crap. "Why bother?" they say. "Just take the time later to write a real novel. You know, one that doesn't suck."
My problem is that I just can't work that way. If I start thinking "Oh, this sentence isn't as wonderful as it could be" I freeze up and don't write anything.

It's a case of different methods suiting different writers. Shakespeare took something like two years to write Romeo & Juliet, while Ray Bradbury apparently wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 9 days. Shakespeare's work was performance-ready, and Bradbury had only a first draft - but in the end it didn't matter whether they crafted each sentence to perfection or bashed out a draft and polished, they still produced excellent work.

Now, if only my polishing were as good as my bashing out...

Word count - 1,266

Day 34 - Talent, practice and tenacity

2010-10-08T00:12:00.000+11:00

A study came out recently which suggested that talent wasn't as important in reaching the upper echelons of your chosen profession as practice was. There is an excellent blog post on it at I Should be Writing here.

I can't help but disagree with the study a little. Talent is important. I could practice every day for as long as I live, but I will never be an Olympic sprinter. Or a top-selling pop singer. My talent is writing - I can't sing for the life of me and I'm not in anyway built for speed.

Of course, talent can only take you so far, which is why I liked the concept of writing practice. It's all about pushing your boundaries, and writing solely to improve your technique without any consideration for whether or not what results will be publishable. It's about giving yourself the leeway to make mistakes and not have it matter to your ego.

Then there's tenacity. You need to be able to pick yourself back up again after every stumble and keep on moving towards your goal. The study suggested that it took 10 years of working hard and practising to get really great at something. And that is really what this challenge is about for me. It's not so much about the word count as the sustained, regular attempts to write every. single. day.

What do you think? Is there such a thing as natural talent? Is it that important?

Word count - 938

Day 33 - Romanticising Sexual Assault

2010-10-07T21:16:00.000+11:00

When does a strong, masculine Alpha-male hero become a sexual offender?

I just started reading The Rogue's Disgraced Lady by Carole Mortimer. Sebastian, the 'rogue' from the title, has decided that he wants to seduce a beautiful widow who is rumoured to have killed her husband. He makes it abundantly clear that he has no further intentions than sex, and in fact he has only ever seen her once from across a room. The lady in question, Juliet, attends a house party he is at. So what does he do?

He arranges to be given the room next to hers - and there is an adjoining balcony. A few minutes after being introduced to Juliet, she makes it quite clear she is not interested in a fling with him. Undaunted, Sebastian continues to make overtly sexual comments to her and later enters her room uninvited through the balcony and refuses to leave when requested. The next day, he says he will only stop pestering her if she goes for a drive with him. She reluctantly agrees, and when he AGAIN makes uninvited, unwelcome advances and refuses to stop when she becomes distressed she knees him and walks off.

To this point, Juliet has given Sebastian absolutely no indication she is interested in him at all.

That evening, at a party, Sebastian stands behind Juliet on the balcony while she is watching the evening's entertainment and unbuttons her dress, kissing her down her back. She asks him to stop and he begins digitally stimulating her until she changes her mind and becomes aroused.

He makes it clear she should not move because everyone will see her dress is undone and she will be ruined. She is upset that she has no choice, but then (she asks herself) does she really want one?

Is that romance? Or is that sexual assault?

I'm not against sex in romance novels. I'm not against rough sex or BDSM in romance novels. I am against the disempowerment of women through the trivialisation of sexual assault. The Rape Crisis Centre defines sexual assault thus:

Rape/sexual assault is not about passion or sexual desire. It is the use of power and control by one person over another person using sexual means.

Your alpha male characters can be strong, even dominating, while still engaging in consensual sexual intercourse. Look at Han Solo - he is standing with Princess Leia in the corridor. He is the overwhelming physical presence, but at every point she has a choice. And she is able to use that to leave, knowing that he will not break into her room and continue to force his presence upon her.

In fact, I'd argue that a part of the role of the hero in romance is to engage and seduce the reader as well as the heroine. I personally find it hard to connect with a hero who has so much trouble taking no for an answer that he just takes what he wants regardless of what her feelings may be. I mean, EVEN if you said that her deeply buried inner desire for Sebastian was enough to make in consensual, he had no knowledge of it. Her desire, or lack of it, didn't feature into his decision. And that is enough to take away his hero status for me.

I'll finish with a passage from A Daring Passion by Rosemary Rogers, where a girl masquerading as a highwayman is picked up by a man in a carriage who, realising she is a girl, claims her as his mistress, ignoring her pleas to be allowed to leave:

"Phillipe...no," she breathed.

A thin, cruel smile curved his lips as he lowered his head to stroke his cheek over her curls.

"Your first lesson, meu amor, is that you never, ever tell me no," he said in a low, rasping voice. "A mistress is always pleased to accommodate her lover, no matter what his request."

Raine was wise enough not to struggle against his hold. When you were cornered by a dangerous predator you did not continue to bait him.

...

She trembled even as she struggled to deny the sensations already coursing through her body.

"I will be no man's slave."

He merely laughed as he tugged open the cloak and his arms encircled her waist.

"You belong to me, Raine Wimbourne (...) There is nowhere you can run, nowhere you can hide that I would not find you."

In disgust, word count - 0

Day 32 - Low Blood Sugars

2010-10-06T12:54:00.000+11:00

Just for a change, hungry, tired and grumpy instead of just tired and grumpy.

Word count - 97

Day 31 - End of Month One and Podcast Goodness

2010-10-05T00:37:00.000+11:00

"On your deathbed, are you going to be proud of the novel you wrote? Or are you going to be proud that you watched The Office several times?"

Today, I didn't play Final Fantasy XIII. I wrote. What did you do today?

That was a major point that came out of the I Should Be Writing podcast I listened to while I wrote. It was good to see that other people came out of WorldCon having had the same epiphany that I had. You DO have time to be a writer. You just have to want it really, really badly.

Actually, this was the first podcast I had ever listened to and I was really happy with it. Perhaps some of that has to do with how much I love listening to Paul Cornell speak. He spoke about how realistic and ruthlessly honest feedback is really important if you want to improve your writing: "You need to find people around you who won't just say 'That's great'.", and about how rejection can make you stronger; "You become a better writer from being punched."
(That last comment was a metaphor and you shouldn't take this as Cornell-blessed advice to go punching your writers group to 'help them out')

So it's also the end of the first month of my challenge, and I am behind by quite a long way. I have 335 days left, and 964,834 words left, which comes out to 2,880 words per day. In percentage terms, I'm meant to be achieving 8.34% of my goal each month, and this month I've only reached 3.51%.

I say 'only', but if I keep going at 3.5% a month, I would reach over 400,000 words by the end of the year. That's the equivalent of 5 first draft category romances. At the moment, each percentage point is a celebration.

And honestly, if you're going to be 5% behind in your goal, you want it to be at the beginning! Still lots of time to catch up ^_^

Word count - 2,904

Days 29 and 30 - The Future Trap

2010-10-04T00:29:00.001+11:00

On day 29, my word count was 0. And I know why. I spent a couple of hours looking at agents, weighing up different blogs and trying to decide whether:

(a) it was worth getting an agent, and
(b) if there were any out there that might legitimately like my work.

That's a trap.

All agents talk about the need to have polished your manuscript, to have something to give them that is the very best you can do. How can I write with that kind of pressure? Everything I thought of writing sounded stupid, crass and trite so I just didn't write anything.

Of course, I know they're right. But I'm just not up to that phase yet. What they are really saying is "Please don't send us your first draft", and I still need to, well, FINISH a first draft.

As a sort of salve, I went and spent a bit of time on the Nano forums, where any written word that takes you towards completion of your imperfect first draft is a good one. I love everything about Nano. The sense of community, the way it makes me focus on completing one manuscript and not jump around all over the place like I so often tend to do. Mostly I love the fact that they tell me to be forgiving of myself for not being an amazing writer at the beginning of my career.

If I write it, I can edit it. If I try to write it perfectly, freak out and don't write anything at all, I have nothing.

Word count - 3,523

Day 28 - Culture Shock (Off Topic)

2010-10-02T04:20:00.001+10:00

Are America and Australia really that much alike in terms of culture?

I've been reading several American blogs recently, and more and more I find myself falling in a hole I didn't even realise was there.

To be fair though, perhaps I should have known.

KFC came out with an ad aimed at the Australian cricket market. It showed an Australian surrounded by Jamaican fans, and they all got together over yummy chicken. I didn't even know there was a stereotype that Jamaican's liked chicken, but it was enough for a group of US citizens to protest the ad. KFC pulled it, which I think was cowardly. There is nothing racist in it. It was about how, while we might take different sides in cricket matches, we can all agree the food is good. Specifically, hopefully, their food.

But then, I was also a little bewildered over why a group of guys dressing up as the Jackson 5 was racist. After all, Tracey Jordan dressed as a white woman on 30Rock. What's the big deal?

Maybe it's something you just don't get unless you live there.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there isn't a race problem in Australia, just that we define racism differently.

Anywho, that's what I've been thinking over the past day instead of writing.

Word count - 0 (but 5 hours of Final Fantasy XIII)

EDIT - I meant to include this link which tells you more about the KFC thing if you're interested.

Day 27 - Following the Yellow Brick Road

2010-10-01T02:32:00.000+10:00

I've been lost for days because I didn't like what I had to write next. I'd written myself into a corner where the only way out that I could see was cross-dressing as a nun, which even in the dead of night sounds silly so I would be loathe to expose it to the cold light of day.

My amazing husband listened to me vent and suggested that I take a step back in the story, go back to the juncture where the story started drifting and try taking it in another direction. It's worked amazingly well. My characters, being chased by the bad guys, elude capture and then decide, not to go to the local nunnery and steal habits, but instead to go straight to the docks, with my heroine in her nightgown. Basically I've cut out a boring clothes shopping detour and found my highway back to the plot. Huzzah!

Word count - 2,070

Exciting news!

2010-09-30T23:58:00.000+10:00

National Novel Writing Month is a challenge. It dares writers to consign their inner editors to the back of the cupboard for an entire month and just write. 30 days, 50,000 words. It is a fun, fast-paced ride with thousands of other writers.

And I'm the Municipal Liaison for my area! So my October and November will consist of helping organise write-ins, convincing people to join up and generally doing anything I can to help the writers in my area get over that magical 50,000 word line.

Bring on November!

Day 26 - Seriously, how is this so hard?!?

2010-09-30T12:56:00.000+10:00

Tired, grumpy.

Word count - 0

Day 25 - Pwned by the Wave

2010-09-29T13:35:00.000+10:00

I can't write romance with a heavy heart.

Word count - 0

Day 24 - Riding the Wave

2010-09-28T00:00:00.000+10:00

Man, I LOVE days like today. My wonderful, amazing husband took our son as soon as he got home from work, telling me to get my ass into the computer room and start writing. He can't wait for me to start getting published so I'll stop bitching about how I'd rather be a writer than work in an office ^_^

I had a little trouble getting started, but as soon as I got going there was no stopping me! I had no idea where I was going with the plot, but it all just followed on so naturally that I just kept on going. That buzz is what keeps drawing me back into writing. Some nights, it doesn't matter how good a writer you are. You just want to see what happens next in the story.

In fact, I'm sorry I have to go to bed!

*happy dance*

Word Count - 5,353