Tag: manuscript

National Novel Writing Month 2018

October 27, 2018

I’m reflecting on this time last year. I’d just joined an online writers group and they were all chatting away about something I thought was one of their Nana’s poetry classes, true story 😂

I tentatively made some enquiries and it turned out that the National Novel Writing Month (of November) was started in the US by some buddies who wanted to encourage those thinking about writing a novel to simply sit down and thrash out a first draft. No editing, no worrying about the plot, just get it down. In 50,000 words. In one month. Simples.

While there are sceptics who suggest you might be better to type slower and more methodically, reducing the need to eliminate rushed writing from your manuscript at a later date, many do still join the thousands each year because they know that writing communities help each other. This is like one mother fudge writing retreat in which we can all, and will be, posting wordcounts and encouraging each other through the tough days. 1,666 words a day sounds do-able, until you get left behind because life happened to get in the way.

Last year, around this time, I looked in awe at the writers who had planned and plotted and knew what scenes they would write on which days whereas I simply dived in at the deep end and started spewing words out.

The result became the basis for my present WIP, of which I am proud, and this year I wish to progress the wordcount during the weeks of NaNo (unofficially as you have to be working on a brand new project to register with the site).

There are many guides to help approach what we all admit is quite an extreme form of creative writing, and I have a copy of this book on my kindle by Megg Geri.

Megg’s site is really worth a visit if you’ve not been over yet. Full of fun tips and a book club and all sorts of editing and writerly offerings 🌸

This time around I know what NaNo means and what it stands for. Yet have I done any planning? A little…. and even some of those post-its have fluttered to the floor and mingled in with the to-be-but-never-will-be ironing pile 🙄

I’m going to have to be much more self-disciplined about blogging and insta and FB if I’m to give time to this. I did read some more of Megg’s tips in the bath last night, so I’m on the right lines!

I’ve warned Man of the Woods that I shall need to be left in peace for periods of the day. He pointed out he walks the little dog twice a day even now for at least an hour and what was I spending that time doing if not writing? He has a point… I am so disorganised.

My basic efforts daily will include:-

  • Bottle of water to keep hydrated.
  • Mobile phone out of the room until the end of any writing session.
  • Limit blogging to once a week (😱 just need to sit down a minute).
  • Make sure my playlists are ready for ambience.

🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵

Who else is preparing, mentally and any other way?

‘You stay quiet. Or I will silence you forever’

September 21, 2018

On waking, the moaning which had kept her awake in to the early hours, had ceased.

In its place were noises of an average morning in the neighbourhood – dogs barking, mopeds sputtering up one way-streets against the arrows, a distant knocking of nails into wood on an unrestricted building site and the faint swish of traffic on the main road a few miles away.

She could smell the air was different. Seagulls cawed and screeched their agreement as they waited on surprisingly supportive upright yellow legs for fishermen to arrange their nets for the day.

Smaller birds sprinkled palm trees with a chattering which became louder when she focused on it.

Then it started. The pitiful moan, almost inaudible if you’d not heard it before.

But Lara had shuddered for hours under only a sheet in the heat while desiring the coziness of a duvet.

The distinct slap of human hand sliced the air and even the birds became momentarily silenced. A woman’s gasp cut short and Lara’s heart lurched in her chest.

She held her breath and waited. Something horrible was happening. Nearby.

💫💫💫💫💫💫💫💫💫💫💫

Morning my lovelies!! Now, why, when I am presented with these beautiful sites on the first morning of my mini break in Spain, do I come up with a piece of flash fiction evidently going into the dark depths once again 😂. oooh, I just love subjects like that.

However, what I am really here to do is progress my manuscript. I feel prepared;

My laptop was on charge all night.

I have my critique report through which I am working.

I made notes last week for new chapters so I have bare bones to work from that the Reader who produced the critique hasn’t even seen

I want to be true to YOU and show you I can progress this thing.

Happy typing and creative writing all of you fiction writing buddies 🖌

Let’s make a pact here and now – to encourage each other between now and Monday lunchtime when I have to leave, to have increased our wordcount 🥂

Your wordcount or your life? I jest. Obviously.

My wordcount now is: 25,207

Tell me in comments what your present wordcount is and where you’d like it to go in four days?

🤗

I challenge you to a wordcount update;

Mike2all a blogger who is reinventing his brilliant fiction born some years ago, now with the hindsight of more life lived, more miles cycled and mental health studied .. I love this man’s writing 👏🏼

JonBeckett a travelling family man and a writer with a passion for fiction. Great tone in his posts, I know I’m going to enjoy what he creates.

Joseph Beech a blogger with an intriguing mind, creating fiction from a science-based world where he works but is often found to be thinking outside the box 📦

ALittleBookProblem a book reviewer who is also writing fiction 🖌

A little bit of Greek 🇬🇷 (#saraalexi)

September 14, 2018

Popped into the library this morning to return a book of which I’d read only the first chapter yet owed £2.38 in fines (it’s been a long summer 😂🙈).

The Curtis Brown Creative writing course I started this week (it’s online and called STARTING TO WRITE YOUR NOVEL) suggests we pick up at least ten books and read just the first page of each. (Don’t think I’ve gone mad.. I know I started my novel ten months ago, but I’d like to know the foundations I should perhaps have been putting down before starting to build 🙈).

An exercise to analyse how authors grab our attention and have us wanting to turn to page two, then three and so on. The mystery. The question. The hook as it’s known.

I had a genius idea and started to flick open books at random, having emptied my purse of coppers, to read their first pages.

So many different styles! Some set the scene describing the weather – although I’ve read somewhere that opening with weather descriptions has rather had its day. (Don’t go and re-write your first page if you’ve started with weather – I can tell you from this morning that many books get past the submission stage whilst gloomy clouds billow into view!).

The really spiky hooks, for me, are those that send a shiver along my skin. Or perhaps a dynamic and unexpected action of some sort. A shocking statement.

Of course, the cover is the first flirt a book has with us – unless we know and follow the author like a newborn foal follows its mother. Then, we couldn’t give two hoots what the cover shows, we know we just NEED it. And NOW.

This book caught my eye. Blue and white together are my favourite two colours 💙

Blurb;

From an idyllic Greek village steeped in tradition to the smoke and noise of 1970s Athens, In the Shade of the Monkey Puzzle Tree is a tale of a belated coming of age for one man whose dreams take him beyond the comfort of the only way of life he’s ever known.

Dissatisfied with life in a tiny village where nothing much happens, Theo, in his forties, makes a decision to move away from an uninspiring future running the village café, and from his controlling father who he feels will forever see him as a child.

Determined to make his mark and stand on his own, Theo travels to Athens to make a new life amongst the unpredictable, unfamiliar hustle and bustle of the city. But things do not turn out as expected, and time and again Theo finds his morals and honesty being tested, as urban life challenges all that he holds dear.

As Theo finds himself making bad choices and slowly becoming somebody he doesn’t like in order to survive, he is torn between sticking it out and returning home; that is if returning home is even an option after how he left things with his father.

As he discovers his humble needs are to earn his keep and find a woman to love and marry, will the unpredictable ways of life in the big city prove to be everything Theo wanted, or will the village really hold his heart?

Me, when I go back to read some of my scenes 🙈

April 4, 2018

which I wrote during NaNoWriMo last November 😱😱😱

Oh my word .. they churn my stomach in parts.

Way too dark ….. seriously, I’ve slashed the wordcount. I had to. I’ve scooped up whole chapters and placed them carefully in files on their own, potentially destined for dark flash fiction or poems (you know how I write a little dark every now and again) but the main manuscript I feel needs to be intriguing, thrilling, exciting, chemistry-filled at times… but not the dark which was pouring from my fingertips last November … deary me!

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/churn/”>Churn</a&gt;