Now we're getting somewhere!

Well, this has been a satisfing writing month. I have managed to have a good output on all four Fridays, with fewer interruptions, and have been able to churn out a little over 13,000 words in total, to reach a new overall total of 81,176 words! This is my second-most productive month since I started the project, and only a couple of hundred words behind my best ever, so I feel very good about that. I feel as if the story is progressing as it should, at a suitable pace. I read back through parts one, two and three today to make sure my backstory was all straight and, instead of cringing and wanting to set fire to it as I do sometimes, I actually thought it was quite good! I'm not as unhappy with the overall structure as I thought I might be; things move along, characters develop, intensity builds...it might be all right after all!
No romance this week though - the heroine has had time to sit back and think about what she's doing, while also being confronted with further difficulties, the unfortunate result of having a murky past. Such is the stuff of novels!
I also completed by critical commentary of the Theroux book for my travel paper; hope I'm on the right track. It's so hard to know when studying extramurally if you are on the right track or barking up some completely foreign tree...I guess I'll find out in a few weeks when I get my grade. I have booked some great weekends away for the coming more wintry months, which should give me some good fodder for travel stories.

Recent reading
Not a great week for reading - too much sailing, taking advantage of the recent burst of awesome Indian summer weather - but I have started Labyrinth. Not far enough into it to comment yet!

At last, a love scene!

I don't usually refer to my WIP as a romance novel, although it definitely has a strong romantic thread. However, on Friday, finally, after 77,000 words and about 250 pages, my two main characters finally got it on! Well, not exactly, but they did have a good pash and that should make them both good and confused for next week! I kind of wasn't expecting a love scene to happen along but it seemed like a good time - they were alone, it was dark, something exciting had just happened - and the next thing I knew, they were locking lips like there was no tomorrow! It was during a piece written from the male character's POV and his desires are reasonable straightforward; it will be interesting next Writing Friday to get inside the female lead's head and find out what's going on: she has a few Issues that make getting into a relationship a bit Complicated, so maybe it's time to get back into those... I really enjoyed writing it, though - it seemed really natural for my characters to kiss at that point, and I found it came quite easily. Obviously I was in the mood!
Did some work on my non-fiction project also; wish I had more time to dedicate to it, as just as I am finding out interesting things and wanting to include them, I find I am out of time! Why do work days drag and writing days fly past? Mind you, the summer won't last forever and knocking off at 3.30 to go rum racing (sailing) seemed like the right thing to do to refresh my writing-weary brain...

Recent reading
Finally made it to the end of the Happy Isles. I did enjoy it but it was a bit over-long and he didn't cheer up until the very end, which I guess made for a satisfying narrative arc. Did some work on my critical commentary today - due next Friday - and found myself forming opinions about the text that I didn't know I had. I have just started Kate Mosse's Labyrinth but not sure I have the energy for another 700-page book...will see if the story grabs me enough. The start is promising.

So much to do...

Just a quick blog, as I am working against the clock to try to get a freelance edit finished by the end of today (Sunday), so I can get onto the next thing...I always seem to have more things to do than I have time for, but I kind of like it that way. Nothing worse than having nothing to do! I have been lucky (in a way) over the last six months or so that my husband has been building a boat and so hasn't been around much at weekends or in the evenings, which has given me lots of time to freelance and write. The boat is nearly finished and it will be a bit strange (in a good way!) to have him around again. In the meantime, I have to make hay while the sun shines!
Had a good writing day on Friday - still slow progress as I am in a descriptive phase where I am having to check lots of historical details, but I am nearly out of that section and back onto the fully made-up, emotional stuff. It has been fun though, and I feel confident about where I'm going and how it's progressing.
Did a Writers in Schools visit this week too, to a group from Auckland Middle School, at the Parnell Library. As usual, I'm not sure whether they took in anything I said - teenagers are very hard to read - but the teachers seemed to enjoy it! Scored a nice box of chocolates, too :-)

Recent reading
Still going on The Happy Isles; Paul Theroux still isn't happy! I have to write an 800-word critical commentary on this next week for my Massey paper - will be interesting!

Awards shortlist announced

Just a quick blog today because I am so tired from writing today: I did 3000 words on my novel then created a further 2000 words for the sports biography which should now - hopefully - be complete. At the author's request, I have rewritten the appendix on coaching this week so it's now 8000 words, with some really good stuff in it. But this is just rats and mice: the big news of the week was the announcement of the New Zealand Post (Children's) Book Awards shortlist, which I am on for my ghost writing of Mark Inglis's High-Tech Legs on Everest. This is the abridged, young-readers' version of his book Legs on Everest, which tells the story of his ascent of Everest in 2006 as a double amputee. It's a great, inspirational story and the book was lots of fun to work on, choosing what to put in and leave out, making the language appropriate to a 10-14 age group and selecting and writing additional sidebars on points of interest. I feel like a bit of a faker because I'm not the one who actually climbed Everest - I just got to write about it - but it is great to have my name out there, in the paper, in the glossy brochure, being talked about by people who know about children's books and who might otherwise have forgotten me... I also have a day speaking with Mark in South Auckland in May, prior to the awards ceremony, which is always fun.
I have a Writers in Schools appointment on Monday at Parnell Library too, so will be able to talk to the kids about the awards. It feels good to get some recognition for my work; it is always satisfying and a great acheivement to be published, but especially in a small market like this, awards nominations generate buzz and sales, which is all good!
Had an OK day on the novel today - got a bit bogged down in historical detail again but have broken the 70,000 word mark and have just about caught up to the averaging 2000 words a week mark (which equates to more than 100,000 words a year - that's a lot of writing!). I would be more excited about this but I am feeling pretty drained!

Recent reading
The Happy Isles of Oceania won the what-to-read-next contest. At 700 pages it's a bit of a whopper but I am enjoying it. I am currently up to Paul Theroux's adventures in Fiji and he is yet to find an island he likes...will have to keep reading!

Bad for laundry, good for writing

Today has been a highly suitable day for writing, largely because it was shockingly unsuitable for anything else - especially doing the laundry! Normally I intersperse my writing day with loads of washing because the action of sorting the whites/coloureds/fluffies, washing them a load at a time, hanging them out, in batches, and bringing them in fits in at the end of the day fits quite nicely with my concentration span. Whether I'm writing, studing or doing other work, I can usually concentrate quite well for about 45 minutes, then I start to taper off. If I force myself to keep going until the hour is up, I have then earned myself a little break for having a glass of water or an apple, or dealing to the next stage of the laundry. usually on a Friday I get two or three loads washed and dried, but I never seem to have enough time to fol d it all as well, and often it ends up in a big pile on the bedroom floor, where it stays for a week. Oh well, as my good friend Amanda says, boring women have immaculate homes!
In short, today it rained virtually all day, with varying levels of intensity from miserable drizzle to full teeming. The remains of a tropical cyclone have passed over Auckland and sogged away over the Hauraki Gulf, so hopefully it'll stop raining in a few hours. Meanwhile, I got my 3000 words written even though I had to go into work for two and a half hours for an important meeting (impressing the publishing hierarchy being more important than my sputtering little career as a writer). So I didn't get any work done on other projects, such as the three cartoon outlines I have to write for Birkdale Intermediate (I must get this done) or any work on my non fiction project. Fridays seem to come round so slowly and pass by so quickly - there's never enough time to do everything I want to do! But I made my novel the number one priority and got done what I needed to on that today. No interruptions next week - fingers crossed!

Recent reading
I finally got to the end of The Birth of Venus: as I said, great atmosphere but I couldn't sympathise with the main character and the ending was pretty far-fetched. Wouldn't stop me reading other Sarah Dunant novels, though. Since then I have been speeding through Stephen King's On Writing, which I have wanted to read for a long time. Although I've only read one or two of his books, he is obviously a master of the craft and has some excellent things to say - largely, that writing is just a big mystery and you can either do it or you can't, which is something I agree with heartily. As I near the end of this I am trying to choose between more non fiction - Paul Theroux's The Happy Isles of Oceania, which is one of the prescribed texts for my Travel Writing paper this year, or Kate Mosse's Labyrinth, an archaeological mystery novel set in Carcassonne, which sounds fabulous. I'll probably just try to read both!

Writing someone else's story

The last couple of weeks I have been writing much more than usual - and most of it outside my usual Friday slot. I spent more than 30 hours over the last 10 days working on a rewrite of a autobiography which had been submitted too short and way too light on information by the ghost writer. After editing it down from 33,000 to 30,000 words, I then had to interview the subject (a well-known New Zealand sportswoman) every day for up to an hour, taking shorthand, then build it back up to around 42,000 words. I have been up at six in the morning; I have worked till 10.30 at night. And it is just about done. I could have got it finished today (I just need to edit the appendix and finish composing the preface and it's over) but I went to lunch with a friend instead - I can't work all the time! I didn't really have time to take on the job and would rather have been writing my novel the last couple of weeks but it was a great opportunity to earn some Visa-bill-paying money (those Killers tickets weren't cheap, nor was the Coldplay one) and to get some more experience writing non ficiton and especially biography. It was a real privilege to get to know the subject better - we are pretty much the same age and although we have had very different lives, we got on really well and built up an excellent rapport. I can see myself doing ghost writing of this kind in the future - my journalistic skills have taught me parts are lacking or need to be filled out, and what questions to ask to tease out more information. It was also really interesting writing someone else's story in the first person and trying to retain their distinctive voice. I just hope she likes it!
Not only has all this made me rather tired, I've also got a bit of RSI in my shoulder from using the wheelie mouse and the laptop so much, so am going to sign off. Back on the job next week, with the challenge of trying to get back on track in terms of word count: I will aim for 4000 words the next two Fridays and see how I get on!

Recent reading
I have nearly finished The Birth of Venus and I have to confess, I'm picking up my reading pace so I can get to the end and onto the next thing. While it has great atmosphere, I think the author, Sarah Dunant, skimped on both plot and characterisation. I just don't buy the central romantic connection. But she's a multi-bestselling author, so what would I know?

Getting the facts straight

One of the good things about writing a historical novel is that you are free to make things up: no one who reads the book has ever been to the place you are writing about during the time you are writing about, so they can't say 'h, you've got this and that wrong, there wasn't a big tree on that corner and it didn't rain on the 22nd of December, 1840'. One of the bad things is, I am a stickler for accuracy and I detest anachronisms in historical novels, so I always try to be as historically accurate as possible. I try to make my characters speak in an appropriate way, not using words that hadn't entered the language at the time (and it can be really interesting to find out when certain expressions came into use) and act authentically. I'm not really one for super-feisty heroines who defy society and find nothing bad happens to them! Also, my novel is based on historical events, so while I tend to tweak them a little bit from time to time for dramatic effect (and what historical novelist doesn't?), when I am setting a scene based around real events for which I have good descriptions and plenty of information, I like to try and include those things. But my GOODNESS it slows my writing down! I find that when I am writing purely from my imagination - on a scene which involves the central relationship, for example, or some aspect of the story that I have manufactured, my writing is free-flowing and I can get a lot more done. Today, however, I was back onto the based-on-fact stuff so I was able to write a lot less.

Wow, that was a pretty long-winded explaination for why I haven't written very much today, eh?

Also, today I had to prepare for this evening, when I am acting as MC for the celebration dinner for the Glenn Family Foundation Kiwi Cup, a yachting event for disabled sailors. A girl I have sailed with is on the committee and she asked me to help out, I think because she thinks I am never short of something to say! I guess it is also an opportunity for some self-promotion and to practise my public speaking skills. I have written about 1200 words of speech/intro notes today, so that should go on the tally.


Recent reading
Managed to finish whipping through The Lost Army while watching the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series off the deck last weekend - several really good twists at the end, including one I really didn't see coming. I am now onto Sarah Dunant's The Birth of Venus - speaking of historical novels, I wonder how long it took her to write this! It must have involved a lot of research, and superbly invokes the atmosphere of Renaissance Florence, through the eyes of a young girl.

Fantastic day!

I am rather ashamed to admit (OK, actually I'm not ashamed at all) that as soon as I wrote that headline the 80s track of the same name by Haircut 100 started playing in my head. So of course I had to Google it, which led me to You Tube, and I have now fully reacquainted myself with the whole song, and their other great hit, Love Plus One. I love eighties music so much - they just don't write songs like they used to!

Anyway, I digress. It's a fantastic day for a number of reasons - firstly, the weather is just beautiful. It's bright and sunny, with the odd puffy cloud, and the Rangitoto Channel is bright blue. The breeze has just about reached 15 knots, as there is the odd sheep in the paddock, but it's a friendly, warm, summer breeze. Days like this I love the view from my desk! (In fact, every day I love the view from my desk, but it is particularly glam today.)

I am also feeling fantastic because I have had a great writing day. I got down to business on time, and the words just started flowing out. I don't know whether it's because of the framework I laid down in the synopsis I wrote two weeks ago, or whether I'm just ready to get on with it. I certainly feel I am up to a really exciting part in the story, with lots of juicy thing about to happen. Or maybe I'm just in the sweet spot mentally today. Either way, I wrote 3500 words - and did all the other little writing-biz things on my to-do list for the first time in ages. And I also wrote in the afternoon for an hour or so, on my non-fiction project, which went really well too. So yes, today, I am a writer, and I have written.

Recent reading
I managed to finish Lady Chatterley not long after posting; it didn't end at all how I expected, but underscored my understanding of why it was banned. To hell with the sex - the whole thing would have been way too subversive in the 1920s.
I also whipped through Twopence to Cross the Mersey - I will have to get hold of the later volumes from the library, as I remember enjoying reading them again. A timely reminder of how bad things got during the 1930s.
I am currently rollicking through The Lost Army of Cambyses by Paul Sussman, a ripsnorting thriller about archaeology and terrorism in Egypt. It's pretty lightweight but it tears along and it is great to read about places I've been (and am also currently writing about, although in a historical context).

Slow progress...but progress nonetheless!

I seem to be back in writing mode this week - no time-wasting synopsis-writing for me this week! I think it was valuable to work on the synopsis a little last week as it gave me the confidence to move forward with the story today, and I was able to sit down this morning and just start writing, knowing exactly where I was going. It's interesting: even though I sit in front of the computer in my home office to work on the book only once a week, I do spend a lot of time thinking about plot and character and dialogue and things I want to write the rest of the time, so when I start up, I'm off! I also left what I was writing midstream (sounds like a urine test!) so I can pick it up next week - and old trick I taught myself years ago. There is nothing harder than coming back to a project and having to start on a fresh movement or chapter from a standing start.

Spent the afternoon doing writing for money (actual money, that is, not future potential income!), writing 1000 words for Bride and Groom magazine on choosing a wedding celebrant. Bread and butter, pays the bills!

My Massey study materials arrived this week too: I have enrolled for stage 2 Modern NZ Politics (a history paper, covering the period from the 1890s to today with lots of fascinating stuff about the rise of the Liberals, the war years and economic recession, the birth of the Labour party, Muldoonism etc) and a stage 3 paper on travel writing, which I hope will enhance both my enjoyment of the genre and my output!

Overall I feel positive about the year ahead (writing-wise); I get frustrated when I write for hours on end and only produce something which I can read in five minutes or less, but I have to keep part of my eye on the big picture.

Recent reading
I am nearly at the end of Lady Chatterley's Lover, which I am sure is going to end in tears. I kind of want it to be over so I can get on with the pile of books I got from the library yesterday, including Helen Forrester's Twopence to Cross the Mersey, which I must have read at least two times before, if not more. It is a compusively readable account of a young girl's life in the depths of the Depression in Liverpool, which I loved as a teenager and interests me now due to my growing interest in early twentieth century history.

Back on the job

Today was my first day back on 'Writing Friday' after a somewhat enforced sabbatical for the last three months of '08 - a month out with illness, then a university exam, some school visits, work commitments and the annual holidays, including two and a half weeks in Thailand! However, I have been thinking and plotting during this time and was all ready to get back into it today.

I finished last year at 53,510 words of my novel which, plus the 35,000 words or so of A New Zealand Christmas that I wrote in April-June, means I managed to write nearly 90,000 words last year. Considering I only wrote on nine months of those Fridays, that means a 10,000-word-a month output, which I think a lot of writers would be pleased with. I am hoping to keep up a similar output this year, maybe even greater. I realise the (western) New Year is just a day on a calendar, a new number at the end of the row of numbers, and one that is meaningless for vast numbers of people in many other societies, but it does help to focus the mind. In a year from today, say, I will hopefully be sitting here blogging that I have finished the first draft and am well onto my revisions, and that I will also have completed a non-fiction YA manuscript in that time. Here's hoping!

I spent today getting sorted for the year ahead: tidying the desk, making up a new goals spreadsheet etc, which might sound like procrastination, but it needed to be done! I also decided that instead of just charging in and going on with the story where I left it, I should write down the results of all my recent cogitation so I don't forget what's going to happen! Yes, the dreaded synopsis.... Like many writers, I am afraid of writing a synopsis at the beginning of the project or part-way through it in case in some mystical way, by writing out the story, it will kill the book. The idea will die, or I'll realise it was a bad idea in the first place, or I will become so overwhelmed by the enormity of what I am trying to do that I will become disgeartened and give up. However, my logical side tells me that a synopsis is an extremely useful tool, and that making notes on the second half of the book will give me direction and confidence, aid me when I get stuck or am not sure where to go next, and make sure I don't leave out anything important or relevant. Just because I write it down, it's not set in stone, and I can change it later if I want to. But, like any effective goal, once it is written down I will be able to see where I am going and be able to stride confidently in that direction. Or so they say... I'll keep you posted!

Recent reading
Because it's been holiday time, I have had lots of time for reading - and my selection has been rather eclectic!

• Over the New Year break I finally finished Ken Follett's World Without End, the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth. I think it was a little over-long and I have to admit to doing some skimming to get to the end. I admire what he was trying to do but I think the story arcs of the various characters could have been wrapped up a few incidents sooner. And how come none of the main characters died of the plague?
• I also read fo the first time Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. Late last year I read Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, a non-fiction work about one of the earliest Victorian detectives, upon which the character of Sherlock Holmes is said to be based. It is hard to appreciate The Hound now as the novelty it would have been when it was first released, as we are so saturated today with detective stories and mysteries, and his detection techniques are no longer viewed as revolutionary. My enjoyment of it was also somewhat diminished by the fact I was reading a textbook edition with endnotes; try as I might to ignore them, I couldn't help myself flicking to the back all the time to read the references, which disturbed the flow of the story.
• On a completely different note, I really enjoyed John Burdett's Bangkok 8. I am not usually a thriller reader, because I have a tendency to nightmares and also have trouble suspending my disbelief over some of the more outrageous crimes writers come up with (it often makes me wonder what's going on in their heads!). However, what I really enjoyed about this book was it's strong flavour of Bangkok, which I have recently visited, and I am keen to read Burdett's two other Bangkok novels, Bangkok Tattoo and Bangkok Haunts.