It's almost November.
It's almost time for NaNoWriMo and this year, I'm not participating.
Thank goodness for that.
Last year's NaNoWriMo book (Museum of Impossible Artefacts or Ghosts of Folding Time or whatever title I left it at) is still an unholy mess of time travel, ghosts, giant robots, abandoned streets, sinister future people, the grim reaper who isn't the grim reaper but does a really good job at being the grim reaper, ghost ships, zeppelins, kidnapping and disappearing houses. I should pick two of the above and start again with the thing and maybe I will, but not on Tuesday in particular, and not to be completed within 30 days. And hey, for fun, tell me which two of the above I should pick and run with. Or not. Or maybe I'll just keep them all.
Off to the Twisted Tales House of Fear event at Waterstones tonight. Maybe it'll inspire me.
I am so in love with the title of my new story that I can't stop whispering it. This of course does not make for a productive writer, thus I am currently 654 words into In the Broken Birdcage of Kathleen Fair. I couldn't get the story plan to sit right until I found my main character's name, we ran the gamut from Gina to Erica to Erin (okay, not much of a gamut), but none of them fitted and then we came upon the name Kathleen and she is of course very, very fair.
In other news, I may just, eventually, maybe, you never know sit down and finish my ghostly time travel saga 'The Ghosts of Folding Time' which I started writing last November. I mean, we have an entire first draft and part of a second draft and a whole heap of madness. And then of course there are a bunch of grandfathers to deal with. In the meantime though, I should head downstairs and continue babysitting and watching Alvin and the Chipmunks for the hundredth time this weekend.
Today proved my most productive day of the year so far. I believe it may have something to do with my internet and TV going kapput for about three hours. Coincidence, I think not.
Leaped over a tricky scene in
The Ghosts of Folding Time and added 2760 words to its pot, and wrote the second draft of a short (
Asylum of Lost Shoes) which has lurked in my story file since September 30th. Bad me. Though, I am only following Mr King's advice in allowing that story to brew. Some of the stories hiding in that file are monsters though. Seriously ugly monsters.
Luckily all is well with the technology now, so I can skip downstairs and watch the rather cute Andrew Lee Potts play with some dinosaurs in Primeval. And ooh, I get a double dose of ALP this week as Alice (which I didn't even know existed until last week - thank you
Carrie) arrives in the UK.
Life is sweet.
...I didn't conquer the world (but the world also didn't conquer me).
Monthly Word Count: 25,052 words
Best Day: 3729 words
Worst Day: 70 words
Days Off: One
Acceptances: 0
Rejections: Oh boy!
Determination to Succeed: up 35%
New Short Stories:-
If Monsters Lurk; If (1600)
EverTime, Just Left of 1974 (1400)
The Persistence of Ugly (200)
Sky Painted Metal Grey (The Thunderous Descent of Michael Skyworth) (2200)
Lost Shoes (900)
Plus 16,400 words of
The Ghosts of Folding Time.
Things found lurking in the pages of the above: Houdini, Sand Monsters, Other Worlds, Crappy Motels, Towers, Tricksters, Messerschmitt Bombers, 1970s lampshade, zeppelins, a butt waggling peasant, diagrams drawn in pencil and chalk.
Current WIPs: The Ghosts of Folding Time (my YA) and an untitled short story about grandfather clocks, butterflies and lonely children.
Last line of January 2011:
"By death," Robbie said.*
*Note to self: make sure the last line of February is far more interesting
I'm looking at a picture. It's torn out of a magazine. It's of a girl and a boy and they're running. As soon as I saw the picture, I knew this girl and this boy were from the story that's been swirling about my head since late last year. I was supposed to start writing it in January, but Ghosts lured me back.
Ghosts and I are struggling.
I suspect Ghosts is a book that will make me work on it all year long and possibly all next year too. I've said before, I very much doubt I'll be querying agents this year. Ghosts isn't a book I can rush. Not that you should rush any book, but sometimes... Sometimes, you think you're ready before you are. I had a moment of madness in early January when I thought I might have the book ready for Angry Robot Books open month. January is one optimistic beast. We will not be ready. We won't even be a quarter ready.
So now I'm drifting towards the people in this picture. Running alongside them. I've laid out all my scribblings (actually neatly typed notes, but that's not as romantic) but there's no sense of order to them. Ghosts has order. It starts (I hope) in the right place and each of the scenes (I pray) has a purpose. I get to the point of the book early on, you know what she's about. We won't mention the characters--they're one of the reasons this book could take some time. With this new story, I know the people, they break my heart and yet...
...I'm loathe to set a proper schedule for them, to make everything they do matter. I want us to have a melodramatic time of it. I'll tear their hearts out while they (quite literally) are party to others having their hearts removed. I refuse to define them. Are they a short? A novella? A novel? I'm tired of defining what a story will be. I just want to enjoy the ride for a bit with no care if it's sellable or makes sense to anyone but me.
This really is the sort of day were you should remember your passion and forget the rest of the world exists. This story's for me.
I haven't done NaNo in a few years, and doubt I'll return. It's a rush--of insanity. While I can sit down and hammer out a book in 30 Days, it doesn't necessarily bode well for that book...
Me, I'd go for the ghosts and the zeppelins, but that's because I love airships. See ya at Caffe Nero.... :)
That...that sounds like the perfect book to me. *breaks down and weeps that you're not going to publish it*
I'm all for disappearing houses (to start with).
And I'm one of the mad ones doing Nano again, for the 5th year in a row. 3 failures to complete. Let's hope it is not a repeat of those performances.
I haven't participated yet and don't plan to start.
Besides, at the rate you've been churning out the literary goodness this year, do you really need one month of frenetic writing? Looks like you've got 12.
Abandoned streets and disappearing houses seems to go well together. Tony like.
Nano can kiss my rear. I liked the idea of it, but it never quite worked out for me.
Aaron, Theatre was a NaNo book which should mean I'm rather partial to NaNo but I'm not.
I suspected as much, Simon
Apologies, Kate (but it is rather a mess).
Me too, Mary (disappearing houses that is). Good luck.
OMG! Gef, I so have you fooled. I haven't written nearly enough this year.
Me and NaNo are friends that fell out, Anthony