Category Archives: Writing – General

NaNo – No mo’ – I’m done!

Happy dance!

That’s it – I’m officially done with NaNo 2013 – and I managed to make the 50k word count (51, 881 to be exact). I was going to save my Sheldon/Amy ‘happy dance’ for the end of Outlanders, but after the painful writers block in the first two weeks of NaNo, and then swapping to do most of the work in the last two weeks, I am feeling pretty chuffed today – so this is what I’ve been doing. Oh yes – I got a little medal too!

The ‘Faris’ story is just over 25k words, and is complete end-to-end; the ‘Cirque’ story is also just over 25k, but is a mish-mash of scenes and dialogue, roughly in chronological order. It will probably by around 75k words when completed.

NaNo this year was much tougher for me than 2012, partly because work/life has been very busy in November, so I’ve had less ‘brain’ time than I’d liked, but I think the main issue has been trying to blast out a story I hadn’t had much time to plan.

In 2012 I wrote a lot of Outlanders and so the characters, plot, scenes, etc. were really well mapped out. It’s not always easy writing 3k words a day – but I found last time that I will get well over that done in one day when I’m on a writing roll, then I’m not forcing myself to write on other days. This time it was much harder because, although I was really excited about the ‘Cirque’ idea and characters, plot, etc. I just didn’t have enough behind it to really get the scenes written.

I should have realised it wasn’t a good idea going into NaNo – in ‘real world’ I tend to think through all the options and mull things over before making a decision, it doesn’t always take a huge amount of time, but that’s because things are more flexible. In writing world, because whatever you do will be final and has to fit with everything else in the story, the ‘thinking through’ stage for me has to be much longer than a couple of weeks. I’m also not great at planning things out for books – I’ll put odd bits down, like thoughts on a character or ‘rules’ for the world-building and maybe make a sequence list of the scenes, but I’m not normally one for creating a lot of information in advance of writing. Plot plans, character guides, mind maps – I suck at putting them on paper – a lot of it just sits inside my head, churning around until they come together like a little movie. It might not be the best, or most logical approach, but it works for me best because I like it when things are left a little loose and then the characters surprise you with twists that you didn’t see at the beginning.

So there you have it – NaNo 2013 has helped me kick myself into writing a prequel and starting a new, stand-alone novel – not sure what will happen next, but I got there. Not sure if I’ll go NaNo in 2014 though, unless I’ve already got something I’m in the middle of – the support can certainly help you get motivated then.

NaNo – Full flow!

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OK – well, I’m not sure if this is cheating (in NaNo terms) – but although I’ve been getting on with my new project reasonably well, I’ve realised that I’m not good at writing something I’ve not had a reasonable amount of time to mull over before hand. Although I’ve got a good idea of this story and how it all comes together, I’m still finding it tough to ‘flash’ write – especially at the rate of 3000words a day.

So, this was the idea I had a couple of days ago…Several years ago I wrote a children’s story called Faris and the Monoceros – I’ve not published it, but I have been dabbling around the edges of editing it over the last few months. One thing I always wanted to do was write a prequel to this book, that gave you some more detail about Faris’s life before he came into the fantasy world where you meet him.

Faris has been around for a long while – he’s my youngest and oldest character all at the same time. When I was trawling through some old random drafts I keep in my writing folder to help inspire Cirque I found some character plans I’d written when I was first planning his book. They got me thinking…and then they got me writing…

So – there you have it, I’m writing – quite a lot, quite quickly – but it’s not what I said I’d write. In NaNo world, does it count?

Oh – and you can meet Faris here, too 🙂

———————————————-

Prologue

It is a truth – universally acknowledged – that every person believes that they are special. This becomes even more of a truth, when the people in question are the inhabitants of an orphanage. Who doesn’t want to be the lucky boy that discovers he’s the long lost heir to a wealthy family? Or to find that them being in the orphanage was a big mistake, and that he has loving parents who will be overjoyed to find him safe and well?

Unfortunately, for the majority of the boys who inhabit the Grimbaldi Foundation for the Potentially Lacking, no such fortunate discoveries exist in their future. If they are lucky, they will survive their time at the Foundation, but that is all.

People say that life is hard. That may be true, but most children are fortunate enough that they do not find this out until they grow up. I am sorry to say, that this is not the case for the boys who live within the grey stone walls of the Grimbaldi mansion.

(To extend further on Faris).

Chapter 1 – The Beginning

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!!

The morning alarm bell rang out, loud and piercing, jolting the boys from their beds half-scared, half-asleep. Many of them had no memory of life outside the walls of the Grimbaldi Foundation and for that reason their dreams and waking lives were not particularly different from one another. Sleep might come easily for the boys at the end of each long day, but that was only because they were exhausted from working a twelve-hour shift in one of the Foundation’s ‘creative rooms’.

Faris tumbled from his bed just like the other boys. He followed his feet as they pulled him automatically into line with his roommates and moved towards the dingy bathroom at the end of the dormitory. His eyes were bleary from too little sleep – it was 5:00am as always – and he had been up well after midnight. Unlike the other boys, he found that he did not sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. It was quite the opposite: when bedtime came, he would find his mind waking up in a way it never did during the long days of hard labour.

“Sorry,” Faris mumbled sleepily as he staggered over his sleepy feet and bumped into another boy. There was no response. Why waste your energy on talking when there was work to be done? (That was a favourite saying of Mister Grimbaldi’s).

After splashing their faces with icy cold water from the rattling taps and brushing their teeth with their fingers – “why do you need a toothbrush when you have eight perfectly good fingers? was another gem from Mister Grimbaldi – the boys made their way back to their beds to change into their work clothes.

The air in the dormitory always smelled a little stale in the morning and so – as was his habit – Faris opened the small window beside his bed. Fresh air rushed into the room, a little chilly, but the boys were used to the cold so it didn’t bother them. The air carried away with it the smell of boys who only got a bath once a week and helped wake everyone up that little bit more.

Dressed and ready for action, the straggle of boys formed a straight but ragged line beside the main door and waited. Faris was towards the back of the line, not especially bothered about getting to breakfast first. No matter how hungry he got, he just could not get excited about breakfast gruel. FOOD IS FUEL was the inspiring motto emblazoned on the wall of the boys dining room/work room. It was a waste of space really, as only a handful of the boys could read.

Ahead of him, Faris heard the door click open and he watched, as it swung open on squeaky, old hinges.

“Mornin’ boys.”

Faris did not need to look at the face behind the rasping voice to recognise Gamage. He was a tall, wiry-looking man, with grey-brown hair and hollow, muddy eyes. Gamage was caretaker at the Foundation. Faris had never asked, but the rumour was that Gamage was the oldest boy lacking in potential ever to be housed at the Foundation. Every now and then other boys at the Foundation were collected by long-lost relatives or disappeared on cold dark nights, but Gamage had always been at the Foundation. Always had and probably always would be. Faris believed that the stories about Gamage were true because when you looked closely at him, which wasn’t often as he wasn’t the most handsome of men, Gamage had a strange doomed look in his eyes.

“Ready for work lads?” Gamage continued, giving them a cruel, toothy grin. No one replied. No one looked at him. That was only for the incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. “Let’s go then, I’ve not got all day!”

With this last instruction barked loudly over their heads, the line of boys moved forwards, their eyes cast down at the floor and shoulders curving downwards like a row of unhappy mouths.

Breakfast was a quiet affair. Rusty spoons scraped every last morsel of food from the cracked bowls and shovelled it into hungry mouths. Aside from the odd gurgling stomach, protesting that it wanted more than the small portion of food that had been offered, there was no other sound except for the gentle clinking of cutlery.

NaNo – Slo-Mo

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OK – it might be too soon to say this, but I think I’ve found the solution to my NaNo mojo issue…word count has been going up rapidly – update to follow 🙂

NaNo So-So

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I’m still plugging away with my ‘new’ idea – I’m definitely getting more written, just in writing scenes that are quite clear in my head at this point. It’s a bit scatter-gun as I’m jumping forwards and backwards in the chapters of the story, so probably will be a bit inconsistent when I come back and re-read for editing.

Best solutions so far to the dreaded block? A playlist that gets me picturing the scenes like a mini-film in my head (you’ve got to have a montage!) and just jumping from one action / dialogue piece to another 🙂 Let’s see how we go from here.

If you’re interested, here’s the prologue updated a bit…

It wasn’t late – only about six o’clock – but the dark rain clouds hanging over the city had brought an unnatural, early night with them. He liked the darkness, so this was perfect. He was hungry and it had been a long journey. He wouldn’t wait to feed – he never did.

Crouching on the turret of the cathedral clock tower, he watched the figures below in the busy street. The little people scurried here and there, many of them hidden beneath a multi-coloured sea of umbrellas, trying to avoid the unexpected rain. It was the outskirts of the city and there were too many people here in the crowds, but from his position he could see that beyond the train station and bridge their numbers began to dwindle.

There would be a good place to start.

* * *

Corinne Hawkes sloshed her way quickly down the busy street, through the crowds of people ambling along the pavement. The weather was horrendous, with heavy rain pounding down, so you couldn’t escape getting soaked.

Why would you want to be out in this if you didn’t have to be?

People were crazy, she concluded, as she squeezed herself between a dawdling couple and the steam-filled window of a coffee shop. The air was full of brightness and colour – it wasn’t even December yet, but the Christmas shopping season with all the lights and the street markets was in full swing. Seeing everyone else carefree made her even grumpier that she was on her way to work. The holiday season was no fun, if you weren’t part of it.

She was past the crowds now and able to move faster. The alleyway to the right was unpleasant – filled with stinking bins and fire exits that looked like they’d never been used in the last ten years – but anything that offered a faster way to get out of this weather was a good thing in Corinne’s mind.

At the start of the street, where the people were still close-by, Corinne felt fine. But, as she hurried deeper into the dank, darkness of the alley she felt strange. An odd sensation at the back of her neck, under her hair, prickled on her skin. Corinne shivered and began to move faster, as cold fingers trickled down her spine telling her she was being followed or watched from the shadows. It suddenly dawned on her, how vulnerable she was in the deserted passageway: no one would notice if anything happened down here.

Why are you thinking about stuff like that right now?!

She shook her head, scolding herself for getting wound up. “It’s nothing,” she muttered, sounding convincing. Even so, as she stuffed her hands deep into her coat pocket and found her house keys, she gripped them tightly in her fist, pointing them out through her knuckles. You know, just in case.

She escaped the alleyway, only to be greeted by a fresh blast of wind, which pushed more rain straight into her face. It was a really bad day to have come out without an umbrella.

You’ve been living here for two years now, you should know that Manchester can always guarantee you rain.

Pulling the hood of her jacket tighter against her face, Corinne ignored the zebra crossing further up the street – one hundred metres felt a long way today – and sprinted across the main road instead, dodging the two nearest, slow moving cars.

Up ahead the tram station beckoned: bright green sign and white florescent lights. Wood Green Road station. It was like a beacon, shining through the darkness and calling her in with the promise of shelter.

“Finally,” she muttered and scurried into the station, pausing for a few, drippy minutes at the ticket machine. Her wet fingers stuck to everything as she searched through her purse to find change, but eventually her gluey hands found what she needed and she pushed a few coins into the slot and grabbed her ticket from the tray at the bottom.

NaNo – No no…

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Day 13 of NaNoWriMo and I’m really not doing very well… Four weeks ago, when I was finishing RMT I was bubbling over with enthusiasm and ideas for another book: scenes kept springing into my head, one-shots were pretty much writing themselves, cover design was done in a single sitting….

Then 1st November rolls around and pfft – nothing, nada, zilch. I tried the next day and the next – I tried the prologue, and skipped forward to chapter 1, because I wasn’t really feeling good about the writing. I tried jumping ahead to some of the ‘action scenes’ thinking they might spur me on (yeah – I’m not even going to bother letting you see those). By 4th November, I had a grand total of 462 words:

Prologue

“How can there be this much friggin’ rain?”

Corinne Smith was muttering to herself as ran for the shelter of the tram station platform. Her feet squelched inside soggy boots as she stomped down the stairs, annoyed that no one had thought to enclose them to protect passengers from the elements. Twenty seconds later, she stepped into a dark, damp recess on the platform and out of the storm.

She shook her head, which made ringlets of wet hair stick to her face and the inside of her hooded coat. I hate being damp.

(Note: Insert major action scene to draw in reader and bump off this lovely lady in a pretty gruesome fashion).

The creature pulled himself up into a tree, his long finger nails sinking into the wet bark. It was an easy climb for him up to a low branch, which gave a good view of the platform and his recent handiwork. He didn’t miss being human, not one bit, but that didn’t stop him being fascinated by them.

hapter 1

“Beth! Psst – Beth!”

I turned in the direction of the voice. As did half of the people on the tables surrounding me – they obviously didn’t appreciate being interrupted either. My fellow students looked at the whispering girl and then glared around the library workspace until they identified the other guilty party. Perfect, it was me.

Please don’t come over, please don’t come over…

“Hey!” Kerry greeted me, at full, normal ‘non-library’ volume, as she plopped into the chair opposite.

“Hey,” I whispered back, closing my books and piling them together as quickly and quietly as possible.

“Are you finished?” Kerry continued, still on full volume.

“I am now!” I hissed back, getting out of my seat and grabbing the book tower I’d just made. There was no point trying to continue working and I was eager to get away from the death-stares we were receiving from the people studying around us.

With my books in my arms, I hurried through the library stacks, passing dozens of bookcases with shelves crammed full of every type of book and document you could imagine. Kerry trotted along behind, close at my heels until we passed through the glass doors into the main library entrance hall.

As soon as we moved into the hall, we broke out of the bubble of silence that existed inside the main library and re-entered the normal world,

“Who the hell says psst, anyway? You sounded like a character from a bad spy film or something.”

“Whatever – I stand by my method of extraction.” Kerry shrugged. “I had to get you out of there: you were turning into one of those brainiac zombies who devours books and craves silence.”

I nodded, in mock-agreement. “Yeah – those guys are crazy. You’d think they were there to learn or something, who’d want to do that when you’re a student?”

———————————————

So, for the last nine days I’ve been stuck – I really like this story (the one in my head, not the one I’ve managed to get down on paper), but my mojo has definitely gone. I’ve 17 days left in November – and I actually think I could still complete the challenge – but I don’t think it will be with this book: there’s too much planning and prep to put into it, to write something I’m not sure I’m ready to write.

Maybe if I want a break from Ambrosia but can’t get into gear on this piece, I should try something else… ?

Your thoughts (and any additional word count you can offer!) would be gratefully received!

Do you want to come on a journey?

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I suppose this isn’t a particularly fair question, as I’ve already kind of decided that I’m going to share some of my NaNoWriMo 2013 experience as I go along anyway 🙂 As I’m working on a brand new project this time, I didn’t think it would hurt to share some of the bits I write this month – first draft, mistakes and typos and all, because NaNoWriMo is about writing and not editing. So, if you’re interested in seeing what I’m doing, how my word count is going or catching snippets of bits as I go along, then keep an eye on me in November, and I’ll try and remember to post, along with writing a couple of thousand words a day to meet the 50,000 word target.

As it’s 1st November, I’m off now, to get started on Chapter 1 – no title for it yet, because who knows where it’s going?

30 days – 50, 000 words – are you up for NaNo in 2013? Tell me what you’re doing if you are 🙂

Where to now? It’s NaNo time :)

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After finally getting to the end of editing RMT and letting it out into the world, I’ve been debating what to do for NaNoWriMo in 2013. Last year I worked on Outlanders during November, but as I already know I have quite a lot of work to do there, I fancy something short and sweet to give me a creative boost before I zoom off into the next big project of completing Ambrosia 3.
There are a couple of stand-alone novels I’ve been thinking about for a while – one is a contemporary romance with a twist, another is a modern gothic horror YA – they’ve both been trundling around my head over the past few months and I definitely want to get them written, but then I got ambushed a couple of weeks ago by this new idea 🙂 and I think this is what I’ll be doing for NaNo in 2013.

It started out just with a few images, an idea of a few of the characters and some witty banter – then BAM! I’m right into the thick of it: the plot has fleshed out quickly, I have the opening sequence and the last line of the book, with many of the scenes playing out in between. I know what will happen, then what comes next, who our hero is and why they are the way they are. So, as much as I would love to spend some concentrated time on Ambrosia I need a little break – and sometimes these things happen for a reason. So here’s to NaNo 2013 and Cirque du Nuit, my new adventure in writing 🙂

Feeling Inspired…

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I’m officially done on NaNoWriMo – 50, 265 words in twenty-nine (ish) days – phew! There’s lots more writing to be done and a whole load of editing, but still, this has been a great experience and quite inspirational in its own way. Just having something behind you pushing you *ahem* forcing you to write each day, actually reinforces what you can achieve. Perhaps it is too easy to say I’ve been busy at work, or must read someone else’s book or lose some time on Facebook…

One of the best things about NaNo has been the regular motivational posts they send you to keep you going. Of all these my favourite came on Day 2 (which I’ve copied below to share with you) and I think has probably given me the best idea for something I can take away and keep doing after November, because goodness knows you couldn’t keep rolling off 50k words a month indefinitely! (Sorry – going to go off at a tangent now) NaNo is a bit like speed walking – ‘speed writing’ if you like: when you speed walk, you look more silly than you would do normally, but you are driven and have a purpose for wiggling those hips in a slightly odd manner; speed writing is the same, you go a bit faster than usual, probably write some downright silly stuff at times, but you have a clear start and finish and it gives you something to aim for.

So, back to being motivated…Kate DiCamillo wrote one page every day – whether it was good or not, needed editing later or got deleted altogether…she wrote it. That’s what seems to be important about NaNo really – just get on and do it! Don’t flap, don’t edit, don’t procrastinate…just write it and sort the problems out later. Writing in this way can feel quite cathartic, especially if you’ve been sat on a book for a while (figuratively speaking, obviously) – you just put it down on the page, instead of leaving it turning over and over in your head.

So – I’m NaNo’d out for now – I’d definitely give it a go next year again, just to get a kick-start…but in the meantime, I’m now back to final edits on RMT…slightly less inspiring and creative, but altogether necessary 🙂 Hope you like Kate’s letter:

Dear Writer,

When I was 30 years old, I moved to Minneapolis and got a job in a book warehouse. My official job title was “Picker.” This meant that I went around the third floor of the warehouse holding a computerized print order in one hand and pulling books off the shelf with the other hand. I put all the books into a grocery cart and I took the grocery cart and wheeled it into an ancient, crabby freight elevator and went downstairs to deliver the order to the shipping department. Then I took the stairs back up to the third floor and started over again.

It wasn’t a challenging job. It didn’t pay much. I was on my feet all day long. My back hurt. My hands hurt. But I was happy. I was surrounded by books and by people who loved to read them. Also, for the first time in my life, I was writing.

I got up every morning before work (the alarm was set for 4:30) and wrote two pages before I went into the warehouse. And then, when I arrived at work at 7:00 to punch the time clock, I received my daily so-you-want-to-be-a-writer pep talk from a coworker.

Let’s call him Bob. (Even though his real name is Gary).

Bob wanted to be a writer, too. But he wasn’t writing. Every morning we had the same exchange.

Bob: “How did the writing go?”

Me: “Fine.”

Bob: “How many pages did you write?”

Me: “Two.”

Bob: “Do you think Dickens wrote two pages a day?”

Me: “I don’t know how many pages Dickens wrote a day.”

Bob: “Yeah, well let me tell you something, you’re no Dickens. So what’s Plan B, babe? What’s Plan B for when the writing doesn’t work out?”

For this question, I had no answer.

I turned my back on Bob, pulse pounding, fists clenched, and climbed the stairs to the third floor and started picking books.

When the alarm went off at 4:30 the next morning, I thought about Bob and that is part of the reason I got out of bed.

It is a truly excellent to have someone to believe in you and your ability to write.

But I think it is just as helpful to have people who don’t believe in you, people who mock you, people who doubt you, people who enrage you. Fortunately, there is never a shortage of this type of person in the world.

So as you enter this month of writing, write for yourself. Write for the story. And write, also, for all of the people who doubt you. Write for all of those people who are not brave enough to try to do this grand and wondrous thing themselves. Let them motivate you.

In other words, do it for Bob!

Your friend in writing,
Kate DiCamillo

Kate DiCamillo is the author of The Tale of Despereaux (Newbery Medal), Because of Winn-Dixie(Newbery Honor), and a The Tiger Rising (National Book Award finalist).

Mel Cusick-Jones

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