Writerly update

I've been a bad blogger lately.

I've actually been a pretty bad writer lately, which is to say up until the last few days I really haven't done much work on my sequel at all. I've been very busy with work, and have had more writing to do in that department, less free time, and therefore less inclination to write in my free time. Add to that that I've been doing more reading lately (I finally got around to charging my Kindle - hooray!) and it makes for a bad writing mix.

I've made up for it over the last day or two, though, banging out over 3000 words even while being distracted by EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD. Seriously, Jane Austen had it easy. Apart from lots of tea and dances, she must have had bags of free time and nothing to distract her except, I don't know, news of more tea and dances. If she had had a smart phone, it is quite possible she would never have written a thing. I bet she would have been a prolific tweeter, though.

So, anyway, I am still waiting and seeing with Chase. I've had two 'no's from agents, neither of whom feel passionately about my story. That's ok. People like different things. It's not the end of the world. I'm waiting on responses from two others, but I'm not holding out much hope for a positive. I really need to get my arse in gear and 'reach out' (I hate that expression) to more agents, but it is just such a faff and I am so ridiculously lazy. I'll get around to it.

In the meantime, though, I have had some really wonderful feedback from my friend's cousin, who I have met once but basically do not know and therefore she has no reason to be nice to me. She's 17, the perfect age for Chase, and she was so wonderfully generous with her praise that I did a little happy dance around my living room and was actually fizzing with excitement, especially over her comments about my main characters and my ending. It's so amazing to see that what you've written has actually had the desired effect, you know? My friend text me the comments as screenshots so I will keep them forever more. (I may even print them and put them up around my writing space as inspiration. Too much? Don't care.)

So here I am, basically soldiering on with the second book. I'm at almost 11 000 words. I remember that at the start of nanowrimo last year I had already written 13 000 of book 1. If I can get ahead of that now, there is a (small) chance that I will have finished my first draft of book 2 by Christmas. Do you think it's better to approach an agent with two parts of a three-part story already written? Who even are 'you', random person that could potentially happen upon this blog?

Oh, hi mum, it's you :)

Rejection

I am an incredibly lucky person. I met my husband when I was 18 years old. We've been together for more than 11 years now and in all that time we haven't ever broken up. Without delving into the intricacies of my personal life, prior to meeting my husband, there wasn't really anyone else. I had crushes, sure. Who doesn't. But I didn't do much to act on these. (Ok, yes, there was some embarrassing incidents of pseudo-stalking including one instance where I actually texted a boy pretending that I'd meant the text for someone else just so that he would text me back and we could hopefully start a conversation - *sigh/blush/ick*) So anyway, though I often felt rejected, a lot of that was to do with not really putting myself out there. I wanted them to notice me. I didn't really give them the opportunity to reject me as fully as they could have done. I wasn't ever truly heartbroken.

There have been other things in my life that left me feeling pretty blue. Family issues offer their own relationship trauma, so there's that. And then there was that time I applied for English with Creative Writing and got rejected by 3 out of the 6 universities I applied for, despite being a straight A student. That still stings. (And if you're really at a loose end and interested in laughing at the teenage angst version of me, please do stop by poets2000.com/katspoems/default1.htm for some insight into just how rejected I felt and also why I didn't get onto that creative writing course...If they'd had a special module specifically on awful angsty teenage crap I probably would have aced it!)

But generally I am a lucky person. I am loved. I have food and shelter, a good job and great friends. What I'm trying to tell you is that I feel ill-prepared for rejection. So that's probably why I have been putting off sending out my query letters. I had an incredibly strong fear of reverting to that angsty version of me.

Well sometimes, as they say, you have to feel the fear and do it anyway. So last week I sent out two queries. This week I will send out two more. I guess I'll keep going until I run out of people to send them to. Because I believe in my book. I believe in my story. I believe in myself.

*Fingers crossed someone else believes in all that too!*

I'm not sure that I'll keep you posted on all that. Just assume it's going on in the background and if I have any insights to share then I'll post them instead. Meanwhile, it's time to really start thinking about Book 2. Camp Nanowrimo's coming up...who's with me?

 

I'm back, baby

So...long time no post, right? Apologies guys, I've been busy - and sadly not with writing. I have completely failed Camp Nanowrimo - even with another 6 days to go, there's no way I'm going to have time to write any more. It was crazy to sign up for it, really, given how busy I am this month, not to mention the fact that I should be spending my spare time working on the first book before I race ahead with the second! Plenty of time for that later. If I manage to meet my deadline on book 1, maybe I'll sign up again in July.

I saw my brother again at the weekend. I like how direct he is with me.
"How's the book going?"
"It's kind of stalled at the moment. I've been really busy." (To be fair, I'd just got back from a week in America.)
"So what are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know. It's like the more I read it, the worse it seems."
"So what are you going to do about that?"
"I don't know. Maybe take a break from it for a while."
"Maybe you should try writing something else. Maybe a short story for your blog."

He's so wise. I do need to rebuild some of my confidence, gain some momentum, fall in love with writing again. A blog-sized short story sounds like a good idea. I'll try and make that my next post. It won't be well crafted, more like a writing exercise - which is probably the kind of thing I'd know about if I'd actually taken the creative writing course I applied for all those years ago!

(Flashback: I'm 18, it's time to apply for university. I want to do English with Creative Writing. I apply to six universities and get rejected by three. Ouch. Rejection stings. I get accepted by one, but when it comes to it, I'm too afraid to pursue it. What if we sit around reading out our work and everyone thinks mine is bad? I switch to English with Film Studies and put my writing on hold for...oh, about 8 years. End of flashback.)

I'm typing this and watching MTV. Sometimes music can be so perfect. You know, when it just fits, and it's like a soundtrack to your life? "Everyone's a kid that no one cares about. You've just got to keep screaming 'til they hear you out." I have to keep screaming if I want to be heard. The softly, softly approach will get me nowhere with this.

Out on the water

Have you noticed how hard it is to take a screen break these days? Don't want to watch TV? Why not read - oh wait, my Kindle doesn't count as a screenbreak. Go on the computer, then? No...that's not going to work. Text my friends? No, that won't cut it either. So what am I meant to do? Stare into space? Well, on a beautiful spring day like today, I should probably head out for a run, but I have 30 000 words to write this month and a novel to edit and pitch before July. So back to work it is - except here I am, not working, but blogging.

I have written almost 2000 words today on my Camp Nanowrimo project, so I won't call it a complete failure. If I manage to get to 3000 I might even call it a success.

Meanwhile, in actual blog-worthy news, I went out on the water yesterday with my husband and my brother as one of my field trips. In Chase, my main character is escaping captivity in the drowned fens, and so she and her companion, Will, go part of the way by boat. I have been canoeing before, but not for a long time. As my brother works at an activity centre where they have such things, and because he is acting as my mentor/sponsor, he offered to take me out on the water so I could get a feel for what it's actually like. Well, it was beautiful.

You can't really tell from this picture, but it was actually a really nice day yesterday. Bright, but cold. At one point it started to snow (are you kidding me, 1st April??), which was fine because it's freezing cold in my book, so it was all good research. Actually, the effort of paddling kept me warm enough - well that and the thermal undies.

It really is a beautiful way to travel - the water was still and clear, the reeds were making a nice gentle shushing sound, and it's fairly companionable - as long as your companion can steer ok. (No comment.) At one point we just stopped for about 5 minutes and watched a barn owl swooping and hovering, obviously looking for something to eat. Just beautiful. And if it weren't for the few solitary people walking along the river we would have been completely alone. There's also that feeling - a little bit Thelma and Louisey without the suicide - that we could just keep going. What if we just followed the river all the way to its source, or all the way to the sea?

My brother gave me some useful pointers about the technical elements of canoeing, and I got a feeling for what it's like to paddle for any length of time, and the way the wind makes your eyes stream and how you have to work together to get the boat to move how you want it to move. None of this is especially eloquent, but I'm hoping it will make that part of the book more descriptive when I go back to redraft. *Sigh* I do not enjoy redrafting. Anyway, I will leave you with some pictures of us enjoying the canoe. Happy writing, people!

 

 

 

 

 

Being your own cheerleader

I wrote a little tweet last week about how, sometimes in life, you have to be your own cheerleader. You can't expect other people to understand your goals and your successes in the same way that you understand them. That tweet was in response to the fact that I'd just completed a 10 k run in the freezing cold and knocked a few minutes off my time. I got home, jubilant, sweaty and cold (an odd combination) and my husband was like 'Oh yeah, nice one' and then went about his business. I sort of wanted a confetti explosion, perhaps some applause - at the very least a high five. But as far as hubby is concerned, I've run 10 k before, so what was different about this time? He didn't know how I'd struggled up those hills, or how many times I'd thought about stopping or just walking, or considered taking a short cut just to get home earlier. How could he know that?

Similarly, when it comes to writing, you can't expect other people (non-writers, especially) to understand how some days are so much harder than others, or how some times it feels like you're never going to finish, and then other days it's like you've won. So at times like this you have to be your own cheerleader. You have to push through the tough days, and revel in the good days, and pat yourself on the back for even attempting to write a novel. No one else in the entire world - and this includes other writers - is going to know what this effort costs you.

But...a caveat. Sometimes we self-cheerleaders can be guilty of going too easy on ourselves. For example, for the past week or so I have been giving myself a break. No good reason, really, except a hard couple of weeks at work and a tough weekend. There hasn't been time to get really stuck into it, I've told myself, so I may as well take some time off, have a break, and return to it refreshed. But when? When will I return to it? I could be doing it right now, but I'm writing this. I could have done it yesterday but I spent much of the day distracting myself with You Tube. On Friday - a perfect bank holiday opportunity - I actually cleaned the oven, rather than write. Not just the oven, I actually took a toothbrush to the window frames. I mean, that's some quality procrastination. My house looks better, my novel does not.

And now, to add some extra pressure, I have signed up for Camp Nanowrimo. I've decided I am going to write 30 000 words in April, and that will form the beginning of the sequel to Chase. Have I finished Chase? No. No, I haven't. So why am I starting on the sequel? I honestly don't know. Probably because I want to feel good about writing again, whereas my feelings towards editing are mixed at best. I'm going to have to dig deep, find those pom poms, and work bloody hard in the next few months to start the sequel and finish the original and start approaching agents before my self-appointed deadline of my 30th birthday this July.

So I need to stop giving myself a break and sart working, right now.