Novel-Writing for Beginners....

I have had something of a religious conversion to novel-writing. Having never attempted it before because I have primarily been interested in the craft of the short story, it is a fascinating process.

Of course NaNoWriMo is not traditionally how you write a novel. The aim is to move fast, move ahead, conquer that daily word count. But I have discovered that it has helped me enormously. I am a relatively slow writer, keen on crafting each sentence, discovering the absolutely right word, the rhythm and cadences of sentences. Sometimes I stop and stumble back over something: fiddling, fiddling oh so much fiddling. I like the indulgence of a good metaphor, the odd fanciful simile. Luxuries that further slow me down

So why is NaNoWriMo good for me in particular?

1. For once I have silenced that nagging perfectionist line editor that follows me like poo on a sheep’s behind.

2. I am concentrating solely on narrative, solving problems of plot as I go, not spending weeks as if I am planning to rebuild the pyramids.

3. More than ever, the story is breathing after I turn off the computer. Remarkably so.

4. I have conquered my fear of dialogue and it flows. It is carried in my head from character to character.

5. There is no looking back. So no novel turning to a pillar of salt.

6. I have produced now 28,445 words. Perhaps not the most exquisitely carved Michelangelo but a piece that can be chipped away afterwards to take away the roughness. In the worst instance, I can do what any ruthless business person does when they take over a large company: I can boil it down and slice away lots of the components, create several short stories. I already have one in mind from a minor character I have just ‘found.’

7. Did I say that I had produced 28, 445 words. For me, in fourteen days? A miracle. Usually I would have 2,000 words of the same story.

8. I am looking forward to the edit, always my favourite part of the whole process.

9. I am calmer, more purposeful. This feels like a job now. I go to work and actually manufacture something.

10. Characters have become friends - some enemies - but it is so much fun to string-puppet their lives. I can say pretentiously that I am a novelist. But whatever happens, I have gone on the journey……

Honeymoon period on NaNoWriMo

Five days into NaNoWriMo - over 8,000 words as of yesterday - stretching my fingers for today’s efforts. Like a nervous athlete. But there is alchemy afoot here: a chore has become an organic experience. I am sitting in my office and it seems that my characters are living in the walls with me. I can pretentiously call the exercise a novel…at best it is stream of consciousness, a meander around a story not yet realised or credible. But it lives. Fantastically so. The house lies in sluttish abandon, I have fobbed off my child to another parent….all I want to do is write.

Of course I am not expecting this to last. It’s the new lover syndrome, before the odorous socks and picking of the teeth gets noticed. But for now, I’m enjoying the ride.

Also, my Jack the Ripper story has been selected for inclusion in The Whitechapel Society’s anthology. A few sweeties on the path help the journey. I will be giving Ripper anthologies and Vanessa Gebbie’s book Short Circuit for Christmas. Everyone should be writing and if I sound like a junkie pedalling the stuff - words that is - then I am unashamed of the fact.

Pssst, you out there want to buy an endless supply of your own imaginary worlds?

AT LAST! Writing! I am human once more!

Today I chained myself to a chair and set myself a challenge. A competition that closed today. 3,000 words.

Did it.

Sent it off to The Whitechapel Society Short Story Competition.

How could there be anything better than killing people at home? On the page only, of course.......

Happy.

Ashamed not to have blogged since July. In fact, I have not really written anything significant since then. I have been in quicksand in literary terms, barely holding on to branches that friends have thrown from time to time. It is strange not to write: distressing, frustrating, alien. Life of course continues and the world is still both evil and wonderful around me.

I also had a rat in my house, under the floorboards, building a nest. To me it really symobolised my lack of action; that another creature had moved into my life and was happily 'getting on with things.' Absurdly, I first thought the scratching behind the wall was mice and researched some gentle mice deterrents. They hate bay leaves apparently and so I picked a dozen, stuffed them into the hole in the air brick into which they had burrowed. I felt a tug and deftly, rather gently, an invisible paw tugged them away from me. So it was a rat, not a mouse. Rats love bay leaves. They are such clever creatures that they use them for natural flea control in their nests.

So I had an intelligent life form living beneath my house that was sharper than me. Or was at least at that time. We baited a live trap and the creature took the food and escaped before the door slid down. Genius. At night a huge owl took position on our roof and hunted it. It still survived and every evening I would hear this hard hard scratching.

I am not afraid of rodents. I have respect for their intelligence, particularly rats. If man died out, rats and cockroaches would remain. Fact. But I could not share my house with one, for all sorts of reasons, mainly that he was chewing through floorboards, then possibly wires. not hygenic either, if he got into the house.

Finally, a bacon bait did the trick and the rat sat there shrieking as I approached. It looked like a frightened wild animal, acclimatised to fear by man's hatred and need to destroy it. But we covered it, took some food and released it in a wood five miles from home. Perhaps it has a chance to survive. It had a large belly.....a very large belly.....so possibly pregnant. Just trying to cope with the usual preoccupations: finding a home, procreating, keeping safe.

Then I saw Lost Land of the Volcano, where a giant and friendly rat was discovered. In fact, all the animals were trusting, loving. They had no experience of man's neurotic need to change, kill or wipe out other species...including his own.

There is a twitch forming, a need to write. An absolute need, like a drug hit.

I wonder how my little rat is doing. I have a rat exterminator coming tomorrow. We booked him as an emergency measure, in case we had to poison them. But now I just want his advice where to block up holes etc. I must resist the urge to tease him though. When his mother gave birth to him, she gave him a fine aristocratic French christian name to go with his equally fine aristocratic surname. I don't think that she dreamed of him as an exterminator, or boasted to her friends that her son worked with poisons for a living. She was proud of him, proud of her son ROLAND.

Mustn't tease......

LARDING IT OVER OTHERS (For Anti-Plagiarism Day)

They castrate the books of other men in order that with the fat of their works they may lard their own lean volumes - Jovius


I am not very good at most things: opening jars, riding bicycles, changing lightbulbs. There is a faulty mechanism in the ‘practical’ section of my brain. But I DO words and I even have been known to form them into pleasing and resonant sentences. Stories have always been my friends. At seven, I would write twelve pages when asked for one, escaping into wondrous or terrible worlds. Then when I learnt to shape them properly, those stories got published, even won prizes. My writing made me happy, more than my practical incompetence made me miserable.

So my words are precious. The ideas behind them, which are kept secret until I can form them into something coherent, more so. Because they are original to me, caused by synapses crackling in my mind that make strange connections. Creating peculiar and I hope, interesting characters. I am also often entrusted with other writers’ ideas and their stories in the raw. I can admire, or criticize, or be envious of their skill. But I have never been tempted to take from them. Ever. If someone produces something brilliant, that is their baby. You wouldn’t steal someone else’s child. Would you?

It has taken me a while to realise that not everyone thinks I should be the sole owner of my ideas. In fact, that no-one actually owns their ideas. Is there anything worse than the creep who cribs your answers at an exam? The one who can’t be bothered to revise themselves. The lazy, unethical ones who feel that cheating is OK. When it is down on the paper, it’s theirs – however it got there. The plagiarist who steals ideas, plots or words is this type of cheat.

It is true that ideas cannot be copyrighted. But if a writer steals from others because they have nothing of their own, this is lowest point at which they can sink. If they do it frequently and compulsively, it is an admission of madness, illness or desperation. It doesn’t matter what they do with this stolen property, whether they dress it up and make it beautiful. It’s still linked to someone else and it will never truly be theirs. It carries another writer’s unique scent.

In their hands though, it will always smell rotten.

So instead, let's celebrate the freshness of an original idea, the uniqueness that makes us the writers we are....

Plenty of stimulating aspects in my writing ‘career’ at the moment, not least that I am actually using the word career. In fact, I am feeling as if there is a path of sorts emerging that might lead somewhere, rather than just wandering in a forest, looking for the occasional gingerbread house on which to nibble.

The BBC want to workshop the writers from the Penguin anthology The Map of Me – perhaps to transform the book into a radio play or somesuch. This should be informative, interesting, hopefully productive.

I am still excited about a short film being made of a flash I wrote during a timed session at The Fiction Workhouse. An hour’s work from twenty prompts – sweat forming – now all scripted and ready to be cast. A lovely young film director has taken it on and is also shouldering the stressful job of finding finance for it.

I am due to go on a weekend writing retreat in August with some other much respected writers. Chuffed to fluffy pillows.

I entered the Bridport. Not with a shrug or defeatist forgetfulness but a real: ‘Stands a chance of something, doesn’t it?’ – entering a reworked story that was shortlisted for this year’s Asham Award. The confidence given by being shortlisted makes writers walk taller and trust their talents more. It’s not false pride; it’s proper pride in a job well done.

I went to a swanky party recently. I don’t generally do swanky, as I am more and more a country girl in green wellies, listening happily to a tiny wren’s enormous song in the garden. But I enjoyed, despite myself, dressing up and standing in a room with J K Rowling and Tim Burton. Talking to another very down to earth film director, David Yates (The Way we Live Now, State of Play) about his passion and respect for the talent swimming everywhere in the British Film Industry: set directors, designers, prop makers. Not schmoozing, just watching the madness, the vanity and the people who buzz around the famous, trying to ‘catch’ some of their success. Failing to see that they have to get up off their arses and work hard.

Last of all, I nursed a chicken back to life after a serious illness. A vet called it miraculous and I felt great that I could do something else other than write stories. Something practical and caring. Something that qualifies as miraculous. I have also further developed a lovely friendship with a feisty elderly lady of 86. We have political discussions and she rings me to tell me how much she values my friendship. She’s a tall woman, quite intimidating, very brusque. Takes no prisoners. Writes letters to complain and tells doctors’ receptionists that they are ‘frightfully inefficient.’ I think that she’s fabulous.

Mind Your Language

Today has been a strange day. A mixed bag. A very respected colleague and friend of mine has decided, for very good reasons, that it is time to give time to her own writing and close her feathered wings to the many writers who have taken shelter under them previously. In the past couple of years, I have been supported, chastised, encouraged and generally made into a better writer by this powerhouse of a woman. She is blunt, original, unafraid of grinding toes into grit, egos to reality – if it gets the job done. It’s all about the writing: the nuance of story, the solidity of character, poetry on a page even in prose.

Her initials give her school report on her achievements to the writing community: VG. Very Good. Bloody hell: Fucking brilliant. You should save a swear or two for when it matters and when it comes to writing, the very passion and despair of arranging those swirly shapes on a piece of unprepossessingly paper – needs a touch of awed profanity.
Not going to miss you because the end result will be in those words – more of them – with your mind fully on the job rather than being altruistically splintered in all directions.

So strange day. Also feel that I need some more time – more quality of time. Had a whimsy to join a private club and damn the elitism. Just got an urge. But I don’t know anyone personally at The Groucho Club, so that dream squealed away like a lost balloon. Still, I do like their rules. If there have to be rules, they should be eccentric and witty. Words and the cleverness of language again – like music it’s all in the arrangement:


Club Rules
Upon arrival at the Club, Members shall approach the Reception Desk to SIGN and PRINT their names in the Signing-In Book, this Ancient Ceremony being a necessary preliminary to entry into all Club Rooms.The use within the Club of Mobile, Cellular, Portable or Microwave-controlled Telecommunication Instruments is an anathema, a curse, a horror, a dread and a deep unpleasantness and shall be prohibited in all locations save the Reception Area. Please be alert to the acknowledged misery of Ring Tones and silence all such mechanisms before entry into Club Rooms.The ingestion into the bloodstream of powders, pastilles, potions, herbs, compounds, pills, tablets, capsules, tonics, cordials, tinctures, inhalations or mixtures that have been scheduled by Her Majesty's Government to be Illegal Substances of whatever Class is firmly prohibited by Club Rules, whether they be internalised orally, rectally, intravenously, intranasally or by any means whatsoever. So let it be known. A member may invite into the club up to four (4) GUESTS at any one time, for whose behaviour and respect of these Rules the Member is responsible. Be it understood that a Guest will not be allowed into the bar unaccompanied by a Member. The wearing of String Vests is fully unacceptable and wholly proscribed by Club Rules. There is enough distress in the world already.To step out into Dean Street owing money to the Club leaves a stain on a Member's character that cannot be pleasing to them. For this reason all bills and moneys owing to the Club shall be settled in full before a member shall leave the Club.Upon settlement of aforesaid bills and levies, all Members are reminded that Soho is a neighbourhood containing many residents. Show dignity, consideration and kindness by leaving quietly and with as little brouhaha as may be contrived.A Club is a Club. A place of sociability in which to relax and be affable and friendly. Respect the views of your fellow members and ensure that your Guests do the same. Let amiability and charm be your watchwords.