NaNo, novels and desktop no-no's!

In just four weeks, ending on Nov 30th, I wrote 54,000 words, did my horoscope column and edited an 88,000 word novel manuscript. I am now geared up and inspired. I haven't finished my novel yet as I want to get it up to 75,000 words, a perfect publishable length.

That's only the first draft, of course. I shall then send it to a kind friend for some feedback, to see which bits need beefing up or changing. It will probably be February before it's anywhere near finished, but I would never even have started it if it hadn't been for NaNoWriMo.

I have recently bought some new specs especially for the computer, as my varifocals were giving me a stiff neck though the constant adjustments I had to make in order to see the screen through the right bit! The specs are great, except... I get up and forget  I'm wearing them and wonder why I can't see as I'm heading through to the kitchen to make a coffee. This means my tiny computer table, which only just has room for a keyboard, mouse, lamp and coffee mug (yes, very dangerous, I know, especially when teamed with a crumbly chocolate digestive biscuit...), now sports two glasses cases and the pair of specs I should wear to see my way across the room with!

It's very cold in the room I work in, which doubles as my bedroom. It was 7C when I woke up this morning and even now, with the radiators on, it's only 15C. I like to think being chilly serves a twofold purpose. 1) it keeps my brain awake, and 2) I lose weight through shivering. In fact, it's probably the equivalent to standing on one of those power plate things, and is cheaper than going to the gym.

By midweek this week, I shall have finished copy-editing a wonderful memoir by an ex professional dancer who is now a healer and yoga teacher. When it's published, I'll let you all know. Next on the work agenda will be a thriller. Nothing like having a bit of variety in one's working life!

Talking of thrillers, although I read lots of them, I don't think I could ever write one because I don't have the type of brain that can plot things out meticulously, or dream up big enough global threats and nasty enough 'baddies'. But then, I never thought I would tackle the issue my novel is about. So perhaps it's good to set oneself a challenge and tackle something new. Now, there's a good New Year Resolution!

NaNo Never Again!

In the past, I have seen people on Facebook saying they were doing NaNoWriMo and I didn't know what they were talking about. It sounded like a weird form of religion. Then I learned that it stood for National Novel Writing Month and it happened every November and you were supposed to start a novel on Nov 1 and finish it on the 30th.

I have written under time pressure before. In fact, my first ever book, Sweet Temptation,(soon to be re-released as The Earl's Captive) was 85,000 words long and hammered out in just five weeks on an old typewriter, manual, not even electric. No wonder I have arthritis in my fingers! The publisher had given me eight weeks to write it in, but I split up with the man I was living with and had to move house and yet, despite all the tears and upset and a full-time job to boot, I still managed to finish it.

The second occasion, also back in the 1980s, was when Virago wrote to me about a new series they were starting for teenagers, called Virago Upstarts. They had a sudden gap in their schedule and if I could promise to produce a book in just one month, the slot was mine. I did, and it was called City Sax and featured a 16-year-old girl sax player's impossible crush on her teacher, a handsome, worldly-wise jazz musician called Lester. (I am updating this book at the moment as it's been out of print for years and I'm very fond of it.)

The third time was two years ago, when a publisher who shall be nameless asked me to alter a chick-lit book I'd written called Perfect Lives and turn it into a sexy teen novel for the New Adult market. I managed to write 90,000 words in about eight weeks, but, being a lot older and less energetic than I was back in the '80s, it half killed me. I had RSI in my arms and headaches every day! And then they decided not to bring out that particular line of books after all. Now, I wish I had stuck to the original older version and self-published that, but it's too late now.

After these experiences, you'd think I'd know better than to undertake to write 50,000 words in four weeks, without even the carrot of a publishing contract at the end of it. So why did I decide to take up the NaNoWriMo challenge?

The reason is that I needed a kick up the backside to get me started again after the rotten experience I had with Perfect Lives - the promises of multiple book contracts and lots of publicity and the chance to revive my writing career after ten years in the doldrums that just became crushed dust in my fingers.

I decided to leave writing for a younger market behind and venture into writing for adults, something I've wanted to do for ages. In the past, I sold dozens of short stories to magazines like Woman's Realm and Fiction Feast, but I'd lost heart. I actually think I've been suffering from depression. I ticked every box on the depression checklist on one website I visited. I have good reason to be depressed, not the least of which is the poor health of my partner and the fact that I freeze to death every winter in his cold, draughty house.

But NaNo gave me a way of writing a book before winter had set in, whilst I was still able to write without being muffled up in restricting thermal layers, scarves and fingerless gloves. It gave me a deadline, something which I was used to in my journalist days and which I find it hard to work without.

I am now 33,000 words into the 50,000 and I have to say I am thoroughly enjoying it! I feel rejuvenated, The creative juices are flowing and I feel like a writer again and what's more, I can go ahead and publish the resulting work myself, without having to wait for the rejection slips to arrive. I think I am writing well and that the theme of childlessness will strike a chord with a few readers, at least. Having had to give up my own baby for adoption and having suffered nothing but miscarriages since, I think I know my subject matter, though writing it in the context of a marriage required a big application of imagination!

When and if I finish it and decide to self-publish it, I'll let you know. Trouble is, once I've penned the final word, what am I going to do with the long, empty days then? Oh, of course. I'll write another book. Why didn't I think of that!

Books and boxes

It's an exhausting time. I'm trying to clear out my storage unit and go through every box to see what I can do without, and at the same time I'm trying to write a 50,000 word novel in just four weeks. My days are falling into a pattern of walk to the shops in the morning, then sorting through, re-packing and labelling boxes till lunchtime, then writing in the afternoon.

Here is the heap of boxes I have been through in the last three days. I've had to carry everything right round the house, from garage, to kitchen and finally, to shed. My biceps are starting to feel like Popeye's.

Here is the stuff I've got ready to go to the charity shop, as soon as some kind person agrees to take me and it in their car, as we don't have one any more.

As for the book, I started NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) late, so between November 4th and today, the 10th, I have written 14,700 words. The website says I am on target to finish by Dec 5, which is five days past the deadline. Oh dear! We'll have to see about that. 

I shall bring you another progress report in a few days. Now for Grantchester and a glass of wine!

#just sayin'... and other annoying phrases.

There is something about the phrase,'just sayin', that has become such a popular Twitter hashtag, that really gets up my nose. For me, those two words used together conjure up a certain facial expression - slightly narrowed eyes, head a bit to one side, smug quirks to the corners of the lips - and are often spoken in a tone of voice that manages to be cocky, sarcastic, superior and challenging all at the same time: at least, that's how it seems to me. No current popular expression is more guaranteed to make me feel wound-up, put down and frustrated. I'm glad it wasn't around when my sister and I were teenagers because I bet it would have been coming my way every five minutes!

It is an expression that is not at all funny, but barbed, armed with a zillion spikes of unspoken criticisms, festering resentments and the unshakeable belief that the person who is doing the "sayin'"' is completely and utterly right. "Have you ever thought of changing your hairdresser? Just sayin'..." means they think your hair-do, which just cost you £75 plus tips, makes you look like a cross between Albert Einstein and Animal. "Ever thought of getting a cleaner? Just sayin'..." isn't a helpful suggestion but means your house-keeping techniques would be a disgrace to the average pig-sty.

As for, "People above a C cup shouldn't go bra-less. Just sayin'...", well, if it's spoken with a sly glance at some unfortunate passer-by, you can sigh with relief, but if there's a sly sweep of the eyes over your own embonpoint, then you know you're showing enough wobble and droop to make your interlocutor feel slightly nauseous.

There have been other expressions that have annoyed me for different reasons, from the nebulous 'many moons ago' - I mean, we've only got one, so which moons exactly? The moons of Pluto? - to the annoying and ungrammatical 'my bad'; is it short for 'am I bad', or what? It's always spoken coyly and has the effect of reducing the speaker to a five-year-old, even if they are a bearded fifty-year-old prof.

And then there's 'I'm not a happy bunny'. How does one tell if a bunny is happy or unhappy? They don't exactly smile, purr or whine. I suppose if they're busy doing what bunnies do a lot of, i.e. jumping on other bunnies, they might be very happy indeed. And which bunny? A wild field rabbit, or a tame white one munching a carrot? And why 'bunny'? What's wrong with 'I'm not a happy elephant/llama/axolotl'?

Back to 'just sayin': how should one respond? With a sheepish grin? By jumping to one's defence? By changing the subject rapidly? I know what my response to "just sayin'" is. An unprintable two word expression ending in "off!"

The low season

I always feel low in autumn. If ever I'm going to get a cold, it's at the change of the seasons, and this year is no exception. I have a real streamer, feel absolutely dreadful, haven't slept for two nights and don't think I'm going to get much sleep tonight, either, as my nose is running like Niagara.

Over the last few days, my computer has been acting weird. It was OK until Mr Grumpy suggested I run a program that gets rid of all your temporary files and releases more space on your hard drive. What he didn't tell me before I clicked start was to un-tick certain boxes. The result was that all my passwords were wiped out, so I had to try and remember what the Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Hotmail, eBay, Babble (and more) passwords were, and of course they all different.

My Windows 8 (should be called Windows Hate) tiles vanished and so did all my icons and I got a blank brown screen. Panic!!! With much grumping, he managed a semi-fix but it's still not quite the same as it was before I meddled. I've never had an easy relationship with technology and swear most colourfully at all my devices. I even managed to do something to my Kindle through pressing the wrong button when I was sleepy.

I think I'll go back to real books. The worst that can happen is that you fall asleep with a book on the bed and it falls off in the night with a crash and wakes you up with a horrible start, making you think there must be someone in the room, either corporeal or ghostly.

Then there's the autumnal weather; a return of grey, damp days, of the last of the flowers, of the trees de-leafing, which always makes me think of that wonderful, lump-in-the-throat poem, Spring and Fall: to a young child, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, which conveys the same core message as all those syllable-dragging volumes of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, encapsulated in just fifteen lines. If only Proust could have been equally brief.

I've just taken a half dose of Night Nurse. If I took a whole one, I'd sleep till lunchtime. Hang on a minute... what a blissful idea!

Late tomatoes

Last year, the cherry tomato plant I bought at B&Q was so successful that I collected some seeds, put them in an envelope, then forgot about them till, well, March... (didn't get round to planting them)... April... (still didn't)... and they finally got planted in May, which was much too late. Still, five of them germinated and the most vigorous one now has a good crop of green tomatoes which, unless we get an Indian summer, are unlikely to turn red.

I was cross with Mr Grumpy's granddaughter. I know she's only three, but she really didn't need to pluck four of the biggest ones to throw at a spider's web. Grrr! I put them on the windowsill and one of them is now turning blush-pink. Perhaps that's the answer. Or else I'll just have to find a green tomato chutney recipe.

If you've grown tomatoes this year (Jacula, I know you have!), let me know how they are doing. You've probably been eating yours already! Oh well, there's always next year.

Old, familiar comforts

This morning, I felt an odd sensation and looking down, I noticed my white felt slippers that are covered in blue and pink spots had acquired a new scarlet spot - my red-lacquered toenail poking through a hole. My comfy old slippers had had it. There was no patching them up as the fabric had worn too thin. Anyway, slippers aren't exactly expensive so I could afford a new pair.

But, as most of you will know, new slippers are never the same as your old ones. They are too stiff. They take time to mould to the contours of your feet so that they coddle them in a cosy cuddle. It's the same with gloves, yet gloves aren't quite so intimate, somehow. I have never not been able to part with a pair of gloves, but throwing worn-out slippers into the bin gives me a wrench akin to shutting one's beloved pet or helpless granny out in the rain and telling them never to darken your doors again. You couldn't do it.

So my hand, holding the slippers, hovered over the black plastic maw of the bin-liner time and time again, until at last, steeling myself, I thrust them well down and hid them under some sheets of greasy baking parchment. If I couldn't see them, I could pretend I'd never owned them, and if I had the sudden urge to pull them out again, I'd find them covered in grease and grot.

Mr Grumpy is made of less stern stuff than I am. Amongst his shoes are at least five pairs of worn-out slippers, with holes in soles and toes and stains on the fabric. Many's the time I've offered to chuck them out for him, only to be told that he'll do it when the time feels right. Some of them have been sitting there collecting cobwebs for ten years!

The only other thing that I find almost impossible to throw out is a cuddly toy. No matter that the bear, dog or tiger is noseless, eyeless and has stuffing poking out and ears falling off, it is still one's beloved Spot or Wonky and surely the sheer tattiness shows how much it's been loved.

And so with slippers. They clothe one's feet so often and so intimately that, after a couple of years of wearing them every night and sometimes all day, too, if I'm not going anywhere, I swear we swap DNA. To get rid of old slippers is to chuck out part of oneself. So... surely I must be able to scrub those grease stains off with the help of Vanish and as for the hole, well, there must be a large sticking plaster somewhere...