One week down, three more to go! How are you?
Today at work one of my co-workers implied that I don’t get out enough. Well, I should say not. 1667 words a day don’t write themselves.
Day 5 and my novel still fails to pass the reverse-Bechdel test. Sorry, men.
It’s certainly been a great week for household chores. I’ve hoovered the hall, baked a cake, taken the rubbish out and cleaned out the fridge.
I worked out how to quickly update my word count on the NaNoWriMo site today. There’s a place to click at the top. This saves a lot of time, rather than navigating pages. Reminds me of my first term at university, when I didn’t know that Microsoft Word had a special tool for creating footnotes and I just wrote everything in a very tiny font at the bottom of the page.
Word count so far:
7816
When/Where have you found yourself writing the most this week?
Writing has happened in various places. Sunday night had to be written in bed as I was feeling too ill for any more strenuous position. I still went to work and managed to write my daily word count afterwards. I would like to thank lemon-based paracetamol drinks.
On Saturday, the second of the month, I took part in a 12 hour drawing marathon at The Forest Café, Edinburgh. I had to write at the same table I was drawing at. Apart from that it’s mainly been writing from my bed.
In your introductory blog you told us you’re writing SF (Speculative Fiction… so no spaceships). Tell us more!
My novel is set in a fictional society. One major difference, that it’s crucial to maintain to keep the plot going, is that paper books are very rare in this world. I had to go back and delete a few casual mentions to paperbacks and newspapers that I’d made without thinking.
This week Ana visited a jobcentre, which included an intimidating security guard. I’ve never understood why jobcentres in England have security guards. Other public services don’t have them. I’ve never seen one in a library. It doesn’t seem likely there are more dangerous criminals visiting jobcentres than the doctors, say. Criminals usually have other ways of getting money – something to do with large sackcloth bags, marked “SWAG”. Meanwhile, they’re more likely to need medical help, due to their increased risk of falling off roofs and stubbing their toe on crowbars.
They don’t have chiffon in this society though. “Chiffon” is the bane of my reading experience. Some novelists just casually throw in a “chiffon” for effect in a descriptive passage and it stalls me every time. I spend the next thirty seconds thinking: “Now, what have I heard about chiffon? It’s floaty, not poufy, because I used to think it was poufy and I was wrong. Or is it the other way round? It must be kind of classy, but it’s not silky. But it can’t be like a crinkly polyester, which is what I’m now imagining, because people think it’s classy, right?” What the hell is “chiffon”?
Talk to us about Ana, your main character. She sorts rubbish for a living; what has she unearthed this week?
Ana has discovered the codex, the book that the narrative centres around. Ana is on a work programme at the recycling plant, which meant she was well placed to discover a mysterious item amid the rubbish. However I’m going to have to get her out of this as it takes up too much of her time and is quite boring to write about. It’s not easy to write a character that is honest and poor. What if she needs to buy something? What if she needs to travel? If Charlie Bucket and Harry Potter had remained stuck in their holey shoes and hand-me-down pants? They wouldn’t have had such an exciting time.
This week’s biggest challenge:
Keeping it up. It feels like a long distance challenge already and I’ve always been more of a sprinter. It feels like a Christmas puppy, who I claimed I would be able to love and now I’m not so sure.
I have been making use of one tip that Meaghan Delahunt, who was my creative writing tutor for a term at St Andrews, told me: to leave off writing in the middle of a sentence. When you return to the piece the next day you can finish off the thought. It’s been working so far.
Hopes for next week:
I’m quite excited about the direction the story will go in next. There were small things I wrote in this week that I didn’t plan, but which have the potential to be developed. For example, a lapel badge led to the description of a unsavoury club, or cult, which will definitely crop up further.
NaNo in a nutshell (week one):
There is not enough time. I need to sleep.
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Follow Suky on Twitter at @SukyGoodfellow
I don't think you should ever start tweaking halfway through, except maybe the odd line or paragraph. For me that just brings everything to a grinding halt and I have to start over.
It does seem absurd to have security at the Jobcentre but they are needed every now and then. I spent far too much of the last few years in my local one and I've seen people take swings at the staff, although I've never heard enough to know why. A few years ago someone even pulled a knife because they were told they didn't qualify for some kind of additional payment - I wasn't there for that in person but it made the local rag.
Good luck :)
Suky, I think your subconscious is telling you that Ana needs to discover chiffon and find out what it's for. Perhaps use it as a tea strainer?
Joking aside, you make a good point about characters in a boring rut. Sometimes we find they stay there too long and we can hardly bear to write it. You're dead right that the reader will spot that too - they know when you're interested and they know when you're feeling the drudge. Could you condense a few scenes in that stage of the story and pep things up faster?
I wouldn't go back and edit it now. Just make a mental note that when you revise, you'll streamline that section.