Pantsing, planning and NaNoWriMo

This is how I feel, two days before the end of NaNoWriMo.

It's been a challenge, and I'm 12,500 words from the end. I probably won't win, but I'm okay with that. I have a new story that probably wouldn't have happened if I hadn't taken part - I'd have been stuck in a never-ending rewriting/editing rut.

I'm posting today for a bit of a rant... a rant against myself!

I'm a pantser. Always have been. It's not the best way to write, I amble around and spend three years trying to figure out the story I'm telling. Pah. Rubbish. Especially as I then spend another three years rewriting, then giving up and hiding it in a drawer, then pulling it out again.

One new novel every ten years is slow, to say the least.

When I decided to do NaNo this year, I had a week to prepare and thought I might do a bit of plotting. In itself, it didn't go too badly, although the story keeps shifting, new characters are appearing and others have vanished off the page. The beach has been a constant feature, my MC's failing art career has stuck too - although she's still nameless - and there's a shadowy character that might be a dead sister, memory of her mother or a childhood imaginary friend.

And then there's X - the real subject of my rant.

X is also nameless. He started off as my MCs female flatmate, turned into her male fiance and - as of the very early hours of this morning - is her student lodger who bakes chocolate cake. At one point he/she was going to accompany MC on a lengthy road trip, but now the trip has taken a backseat and might just be one night in a Premier Inn to break up the trip to the beach. So much for planning!

It was a good experiment, though - I've realised I can neither pants or plot effectively, so I guess I'll just bumble along as I always have, but with the knowledge that bumbling really is the best way forward 😔

How is/was NaNoWriMo for you?

Are you a regular participant, or was this your first time?

What advice would you offer to me?

A few changes, maybe

I've had a busy week - I think this is the longest I've managed to sit down since last Sunday, so I'm making the most of it by catching up on blog reading.

A work colleague broke his nose last weekend, so I covered a few extra hours which threw out my gym training completely; and I met up with a couple of different friends for a hot chocolate, so I've severely overdosed on sugar and feeling a bit jittery.

However, I kept to schedule on my NaNoWriMo writing, although I might be a little behind now because of some other tasks I've set myself. Yesterday I felt I was just putting random words down, feeling completely bored with the story, and not knowing where it was going. All the ideas I had where either too similar to something I've written before, or too similar to something I've read recently.

But then last night, as I was falling asleep (oh, my writing muse really picks her time!), I had a bit of an epiphany, which I'll attempt to map out this afternoon.

On top of all that, on Friday I had a chat with a consultant-type person about online marketing and promotion. The good news is that what I do is pretty good. The bad news is... all the stuff I don't yet do. So, that's my latest job,

It may mean some changes to my blog, but I don't know yet.

It may mean some changes to how I present myself, but I don't fully know that either yet.

Well, that's that, then... (A NaNo confession)

I've just signed up to this year's NaNoWriMo event.

It's possible I've gone completely mad!

I'm not sure what happened. I came home from work this afternoon, made a cup of tea, checked my emails, signed up.

Okay, that's not strictly true - I've been considering it for a while, but coming up with some really very good reasons not to: I've got a two day course to go on for work in November, the kids will need me to be available for specific reasons in November, I'm already booking up my days off with hot chocolate dates with friends, I'm going to be an aunt and will want to see lots of the new baby.

But, there are some compelling reasons to give it a go:

1. I'm staring at a novel that's just been rejected and wondering what to do with it - I'm not happy with it, but it's been through so many incarnations at this point, I've forgotten what the original point was.
2. Because I've been working on the same novel for most of the year, I think I've forgotten how to write something new. I have no ideas, no characters, nothing even remotely like a plan, plot or vision.
3. I've recently turned my 2012 attempt into a short story that's out on submission - even if I don't win, I might be able to salvage something useful.
4. It's a really good excuse to be lavished with chocolate. I don't drink coffee, so I have to get my caffeine from somewhere, don't I?

So, who's with me? Who's already signed up? Who's thinking about it?

Is chocolate a good enough reason?
Do you have any advice for me?

No story goes to waste

Having fun on Seaton Beach, Cornwall with Artoo

After working hard on You. I. Us. and turning a novella into a novel for most of this year, I'm now looking back at some of my older stories and wondering if I can create something amazing out of them.

I do this on a fairly regular basis, with various levels of success. One of the stories from You. I. Us. - Redemption - was based on a story I wrote around 1997. The actual story bore no resemblance by the end of the re-write, but it kick-started me, and allowed me to tell the story I'd wanted to initially. Sometimes I find my own improvements as a writer enable past stories to be revitalised in a way that I could never imagine.

I'm currently attempting this process with two stories at the same time. One is basically a piece of description that I'm hoping to squeeze a plot out of, and the other is the first part of my 2012 NaNoWriMo novel.

But I'm going through the whole spectrum of writing within one page. I'll write a sentence I think is perfect, then another which is rubbish, then I'll decide the whole idea is a waste of time, then I'll sweep right back to writing something brilliant again.

This makes it really hard to know if I'm actually writing anything that's any good. In fact, the original title of this post was "How do you know if you're writing a good story?" but that sounded like I was going to give advice and actually explain, rather than appeal for help myself.

(If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you'll know giving advice isn't my forte!)

As far as I can tell, from my own experience, you know when you get that gut-feeling. I've had it many times, and I'm usually right. Which should mean that when I don't have that feeling I should give up, right?

But I won't. Because I'm stubborn.

How do you decide which projects are worth the effort?

Have you ever shelved a story and gone back to it?

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In other news, You. I. Us. has been getting some really great reviews recently. Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to leave a review on Goodreads or Amazon.

Whenever I get a good review, I treat myself to some chocolate - and you should know how much I like chocolate by now, so I really appreciate it on a whole new level.

Half-way through December already?

I've been busy. I've been meaning to blog for ages - my last post (that wasn't a book release guest post) was on 2 November, when I announced my intention to take part alongside NaNoWriMo.

Two days later, I was offered the opportunity to include extra short stories in my collection with Vine Leaves Press next year. So I got busy with that - writing and rewriting - and didn't actually get anywhere near the 500 pages I was hoping to. I do, however, now have four new stories and another couple in very early-idea stage.

I've got a couple of other exciting things in the pipeline, but they're not relevant at the moment. I'll be sharing some time in the New Year, though.

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There has been much excitement in the Crawford household over the new Star Wars film. Yesterday, we spent the day watching all the previous films apart from Episode I. We followed what's known as the Machete Order, where you watch IV, V, II, III, VI - missing out the first one entirely because it's pointless.

I first heard about this order in an episode of The Big Bang Theory, but apparently - with acknowledgement to my librarian friend who has to research everything! - it dates from a blog post written in 2011. If you're curious, the blog post is an interesting read, and explains things much better than I can (mostly because it's 4600 words long!)

We will be watching Episode VII on Saturday. We've had our tickets for ages!

NaNoWriMo... ish

I did NaNo a couple of years ago. I won, and I have the proof - it's in my large chest table in my living room and, although I've often considered doing something with it, I haven't touched it for over a year.

It took a lot of time and energy, and my kids needed me every time I reached a crucial scene. I swear it became the busiest month of the whole year! I haven't even considered doing it again.

Until today.

I'm not going to sign up, because I've decided to take away the word count element. Instead, I'm going to write pages. 500 of them.

For some reason, I started writing my new project on used/old scrap paper in giant writing. On average I'm probably writing slightly more than 100 words on each page.

500 pages, 100 words each... You see where I'm going with this, don't you?

I'm only a day behind the official participants, but I've started off quite solidly. And perhaps, if I'm focusing on the length, I won't focus on the story, on how silly it is, on how I have to start again because it's so awful, on how I need to have the perfect word in order to move on.

So, that's my November taken care off, what are you up to?

Are you taking part in NaNoWriMo or cheering others on from the sidelines?

And importantly, what snacks should I stock up on?

Pantsing - the journey of my WIP

At the end of last year, around bloggyland, there was a lot of discussion about plotting versus pantsing; every award/meme contained a question about it. People fall into one camp or the other... and I'm a definitely pantser. The following story of my WIP will make fellow pantsers glad they're not me, and give plotters a good laugh.

In November I wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo. It came in at 150 words over the goal, and I was amazed I'd got so far. I'd been completely ready for a fail.

The aim was to rewrite it over the winter, read and edit and redraft over the spring, and submit by late summer. Yeah, right! Luckily, winter is dragging on so I'm still within my goal, but I'm still firmly in first draft mode because I keep changing my mind over the story I'm telling.

The novel starts with an explosion at a hotel which kills a couple of people. The subsequent stories were interwoven and the characters falling over each other - that was the original way it was written. When that got tough, I sieved out the individual stories, starting each one at the same moment in time - in this case, one week after the explosion and then looking back over the past week.

The trouble with this draft was that one week wasn't enough to tell the story, and I found myself writing in future tense. I thought hey this is wacky and experimental and literary - this is definitely my Booker winner. But, reader, it wasn't easy. Maybe if I'd only been going a couple of days into the future I could have pulled it off, but the original story covered the whole year after the explosion not just the week.

Last night, as I was lulling myself into a restful sleep, I had another idea...

Short stories!

You weren't expecting that, were you? Oh, you were...

Anyway, it doesn't change the main premise of each of the stories I want to tell, but they are now not dependent on a rigid timeline, they will work in isolation without consideration of the other characters. One story is now free to cover the year, while another will take just a few days. I don't have to rush my coma patient into recovery, he can wallow in his subconscious for as long as he needs to.

Am I happy with this decision? Yes, I am... for now!

U Got the Look - NaNoWriMo special

The lovely Allison at Geek Banter has tagged me in the 'U Got the Look' meme that's been circling blogland. I did this back in August with my then current WIP - but this time Allison has mentioned that she'd like me to use my NaNo project, which I think is a great idea.

If you haven't seen this meme yet, you track down the first mention of the word 'look' in your WIP and then post the paragraph(s) surrounding it. Please bear in mind that this is exactly as I wrote it on 1st November (I haven't yet started re-writing it) although I'm pretty sure that even though these are currently the first two paragraphs, they won't be soon!

One moment The Sea View Hotel was standing proud on Grand Parade, dominating the sky line, alongside a terrace of similar buildings; the next, one whole side had blasted out across the promenade. The huge explosion was heard several miles, several towns, away.

At first, no one moved. There were small groups of people just looking up at the space left behind. The rubble created a cloud of dust. Someone somewhere shouted “Fire!” and that’s what got people moving. They ran forward, then ran away when a secondary explosion from somewhere deep inside the building made the walls shake.

And now I'm going to tag some people - I don't always tag forward, because it's so hard to choose, but I love Allison's sub-clause of using the NaNo project that I'm going to stipulate the same thing.

Kate, Julie, Jennie and Kyra you've been tagged!

Ahem... :-)

Bang on target

Because I am deep in NaNoWriMo, this is another post about it. Feel free to stop reading now - normal service will be resumed in December...
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Oh, you're still here - good!

Last night, for the first time, I hit the target. On day 18 the target was 30k. I sort of wanted to go a bit over, even an extra word or two would have be great - but the scene ended perfectly at 30k, so I saved the document and closed it down. It's waiting for me now, I can hear it calling.

As you know, I started November with a title "The Day Nothing Happened" and a first line "Yesterday something happened". Then it turned out, as I started writing, that quite a lot was happening, and I changed tense - half-way through - to past tense. So the first line no longer fits. Argh! I've never had to rewrite a first line before, it's usually the one fixed thing. Anyway, that's something to think about in December - I'm not going to bother changing the present tense at the moment, I need to push on and finish.

From the initial idea of having an explosion in a hotel, I've managed to get five separate story lines - the survivors of the incident all have their own stories to tell. One woman who was trapped has post-traumatic stress, another woman used the chaos to run away and pretend she was dead, another kidnapped a coma patient. Then I've also got a pregnant widow, and a man who's trolling Facebook - although that story line isn't fully fleshed out yet.

It's been fascinating seeing these stories coming to life, and my characters having their own thoughts about their situations. None of them are related at the moment, and I'm unsure whether to force them together, or to leave them separate and just passing each other randomly in the street. I know, as a novel, they should be connected by more than just the explosion because at the moment they read as intertwined short stories.

But again, that's a question I'll be able to answer in December. The first thing I plan to do is print out the MS and cut it up, putting all parts of the same story lines together to make sure they are complete and don't have huge gaps. Then I'll be able to see if they can slot together. There is a precedent of leaving them separate - eg. Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk, and probably lots of others I can't think of at the moment. But whatever happens, I'm definitely hoping this book will turn into something and not be left in a drawer.

Is your NaNo project something long term, or just a collection of words?

PS. I am still reading blogs, but commenting on all of them is too time consuming at the moment. I hope you understand. 

Is it time for a chocolate break?

Despite my plans to buy myself a big box of Thornton's to bribe treat myself after a hard day's NaNo-ing, I haven't had any... Yep, 11 days without chocolate... I'm breaking out into a cold sweat just thinking about it. Tomorrow... I'll definitely be going out to buy myself something yummy, tomorrow.

I wasn't planning to post very much during November, but that goes hand-in-hand with not managing to visit many blogs - and the ones I have read, I haven't had time to comment on. Currently my blog post queue stands at 880!

Today I've reached another slump. I've got to about 13,000 words, and all my characters have started receiving the anonymous Facebook troll messages that they're supposed to - but I can't find an uncontrived way of getting all these characters together to talk about the fact they're receiving them.

Instead of staring at a blank page, I thought I'd say hello, and read lots of posts. I might not get around to commenting on many, but at least I'll have a fair idea of what's going on in bloggyland!

Tomorrow evening, after my huge box of chocolates, I'll start writing again... although by that time, I'll need to write about 7000 just to stay on track... No problem... easy peasy...

Today's question: what's your favourite Thornton's chocolate?

And if you haven't heard of Thornton's, what's your favourite luxury chocolate?

Can you fail #NaNoWriMo on the third day?

Maybe, fail is too strong a word, after all, it is only the third day, but my mind has gone blank.

As a self-confessed pantser, it was always going to be a tough challenge, but I thought I had an idea - I had an explosion in the first scene (that's dramatic enough to last several thousand words, isn't it?) and I had an array of characters either trapped or watching the drama unfold.

I thought that after a few hours of writing random scenes the characters would take over and show me their stories.

Except, they haven't jumped off the page yet, They are staying resolutely flat and half of them don't even have names. They are the bride, the guy in a coma, the nurse, the housekeeper. 

So, after a moment of utter panic, here's my list of things to do:

• Eat chocolate (of course! I haven't eaten any so far - that's obviously the reason!!)
• Encourage my muse to appear - my muse is my three-year-old self, she likes to play hide-and-seek, and she doesn't eat her greens.
• Relax and read something - I have a stack of books waiting.
• Dress up as a witch! (Seems random, but I'm going to a Halloween party later!)

How are you doing so far? Any tips for a first-timer? How was your Halloween?

NaNoWriMo Eve

As I've already mentioned on this blog, I'm participating in my first ever NaNoWriMo, and what's fantastic is so many of my blogger friends are doing it too - some for the first time, some have done it before and still signed up again! Most of these wonderful people are more prepared than me, so I thought I'd have a little run down of the progress I've made so far.


1) The Soundtrack. Yep, the first thing that happened after I decided to sign up was I listened to the album Tales of Grime and Grit by Ruarri Joseph, and suddenly my head was filled with a feeling. If you've followed my blog for a while, you'll be aware that I usually have a sense of my project before I have any of the details. This is the title track:

2) I came up with the title, which is... (drumroll)...

The Day That Nothing Happened

3) Then I woke up with the first line running around my head... (2nd drumroll)... Yesterday, something happened. (See what I did there?)

4) There's a man in a coma, somewhere - not sure who he is, or why he's in a coma, or what is going to happened to him, but he exists!

5) Erm, there is no 5. That's all I've got. But I'm not worried. I'm looking forward to it. Really.

This is my profile: please feel free to buddy me!

How are your preparations going?

IWSG - My NaNoWriMo announcement

A couple of weeks ago, Kate from The Suddenly Kate Show and I were discussing chocolate on Twitter, when the conversation took a turn and we were suddenly agreeing to enter this year's NaNoWriMo. Isn't it weird how things like that happen?

National Novel Wrtiting Month (NaNoWriMo) started life in 1999, which makes this year the 13th year (which happens to be my lucky number). It challenges people to write a 50,000 novel within the month. 1999 had 21 participants, 6 of whom managed to complete the challenge. Last year there were 256,618 participants and 36,843 winners (14%, if you're interested in figures).

There's a reason why I've watched other people taking part, year after year, and settled down contently not taking part. Actually, there are several:

• the only novel I've ever written that was more than 50,000 words took me more than ten years to write
• my mind goes blank when I'm given a deadline, and my procrastination gene kicks in to overdrive
• I'm not keen on first drafts, I don't plan and I don't write in chapter order
• I tried something similar in the past and did badly.

I have a whole month to panic!

And now for the reasons I'm doing it this year:

• I've been bumbling along with small projects this summer, but haven't started anything big since Cat and The Dreamer was published
• I want to know if I can do it... after all it's only 1666 words a day, how hard can that be?
• if I can get a new idea written, I can spend the rest of the winter re-drafting and try to have something ready to submit next summer
• it will give me a really good excuse to eat chocolate... brain food, don't you know???

But, I'm feeling a teeny bit insecure... what if I fail? What if I write rubbish? What if I end up writing the same chapter over and over again? What if I won't ever be able to string another sentence together, let alone have the strength in my hands to write out my Christmas cards? What if I eat so much chocolate I actually start to hate it?

Okay, that's enough insecurity! People have been doing this for years now, so I can definitely try!

What about you? Are you taking part? Have you done it before, or is this your first year too?