Tag: Novels

Novel Writing Winter — weird clothes for weird work!

The French have shown us in S.E. England great generosity, by sending their snow and icy winds our way. Just to look on the positive side of things, this is better than one of the reactors in their nuclear power stations going into meltdown and dosing us with radiation.

This is not the time to think about looking fashionable, unless you have enough money at your disposal to jack up the central heating or to buy all your gear from a designer ski shop and wear it indoors. Poor, environmentally conscious, not-yet-famous writers (note the positive thinking here) must make do with what some snoots might regard as anti-fashion statements. I like to see it as setting a trend, just as I hope to set a trend with my weird novel.

Writer's Cold Weather GearWinter Survival Gear for Writers 

cotton vest top

T-shirt

double-knit three-quarter length, long-sleeved jumper

shorter double-knit tank top

leggings

jeans

plus essential footwear to set off the outfit (omitted from photo at the photographer’s discretion)

brown Birkenstock unisex sandals worn with black socks

With two weeks to go of Novel Writing Winter (NWW) 2013, there is no way I’m going to have finished my project. I will probably reach the 20K mark — words, not earnings. This is not a problem, as I think in the past I’ve slammed out novels too fast for their own good. Also, having removed my genre-shackles and ventured down the route of speculative fiction, its taking time to acclimatize to my newfound liberty.

To describe my novel in one sentence: Eulogy To The Last Man is a minimalist yet epic paradox about a family tree littered with anomalies spanning the 31st century.

It’s a useful exercise to think of a one or two-sentence to describe your work, as it will come in useful as a hook when pitching it to publishers or agents, or in writing your own blurb for self-publishing.

Does anyone else feel like writing a pitch for their novel and posting it as a comment here?

Also, who’s willing to describe an outfit they enjoy wearing for writing, even if it’s their birthday suit?

Novel Writing Winter (NWW) 2013: one month to go

By the end of January, I  felt a huge affinity with that poor frozen palm weighed down by snow in the garden, as my fingers were often too cold to type and my brain was full of sludge. But I persevered, not wanting to make a fool of myself by abandoning Novel Writing Winter after one month.

snowpalm

Today, with one more week of February to go, I’ve reached the 12,000-word mark. This takes me to the end of Part I of my work in progress, which closes on a cliffhanger. At this point, I can officially announce that I’ve fallen in love with my novel, and there are flowers like this appearing in my garden to reflect my more positive mood.

hellibore

I’ve decided to write rather a random post this time, so what I’m going to list next, are the basic reference books I’ve used for this project so far.

And now for something completely different. In the March edition of a respected writing publication (that will remain nameless), I found two errors in one sentence — a wrong word order and a wrong word choice.

(quote) “Your stories come from often quite a deep, buried part of your unconscious.”

Whoops! Spot the mistakes time. One journalist having a bad day, methinks D:

Lucky Seven Time!

I’ve been tagged by Naomi Baltuck of Writing Between the Lines. For those who don’t know Naomi, she’s a most talented storyteller and photographer, and I just love her blog. Do check out her lucky seven post, as well as some of her other awesome words and pictures.  http://naomibaltuck.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/lucky-seven-time/ 

So what’ s lucky seven you ask?  A chance to show off your writing, with a twist. You have to post it as is at the time of the tagging, warts and all.  Well, I’m posting three weeks after the tagging, but without cheating, as I’ve not edited a word of my work in progress.

Here’s how it works.

  • Go to page 7 or 77 in your current manuscript
  • Go to line 7
  • Post on your blog the next 7 lines or sentences – as they are!!
  • Tag 7 other people to do the same

I’ve only written 52 pages of my novel begun on January 1st for Novel Writing Winter (NWW) 2013, so will post from page 7.

futureworld

Eulogy To The Last Man, set in the 31st century, is speculative fiction. The extract (primarily dialogue) is written from the second-person viewpoint of Morag, who’s one of the three main characters. It’s a flashforward (rather than flashback), but voiced in the present tense. She is talking to Anna, the central character, who, despite the misleading name, is a teenage boy.

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“You’ve gone insane.”

“No, it’s you who’s insane for bringing me fish?”

You scowl up at the sky, as if there’s a cruel memory pinned to the stars. I look up. There are no stars. Only the face of a mother—the last mother on earth to have given birth. Your mother.

“She’s dead,” I remind you.

“She lied to me.”

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These are the seven lucky bloggers I’ve tagged (all of them participants in NWW!)

Rescuing Little L

Crowing Crone Joss

Graphite Bunny

Tea with a Pirate

jaycee68

Peaceful Partings

This is Me..For All Its Worth..Journal Blog

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To read more about Novel Writing Winter, go to https://sarahpotterwrites.wordpress.com/novel-writing-winter-nww-2013/

Novel Writing Winter (NWW) 2013 — quote of the week: “The authorities won’t approve of that!”

The first week in February has got off to a positive start, with me managing to organise myself into a work routine not achievable during the first month of Novel Writing Winter (NWW) 2013. I’ve written from 11 a.m. to 3.30 p.m every day, only allowing myself to go on-line to check facts relevant to my work in progress.

I’m not going to disclose what my husband was referring to when he said “the authorities won’t approve of that”, other than to say it was one of those “how-to-do” things freely available on the internet. He seemed relieved when I assured him I wasn’t intending to write a step-by-step account of this particular procedure but just needed to get my head around the subject to prevent some smart arse reader accusing me of talking crap.

When I started my latest work, research was far from my mind. Since then, the story has grabbed hold of me and demands I put an end to playing it safe. This is a challenge I can’t afford not to take. A beta reader of my previous novel (and the novel before that) said to me “this is great, but when are you going to write a serious work?” By serious, she didn’t mean a novel devoid of humour, but one that raised the literary stakes and took more risks.

There are lots of “how-to-do” books out there about the writing process. Quite a few of them are written by people who’ve never had a work of fiction published themselves. I think the best way to learn about writing fiction is to read, read, and read an eclectic range of published fiction, and to write, write, and write, all the time raising the bar.

A psychologist friend of mine once remarked, “Skills acquired through trial and error learning were the best remembered, as long as you didn’t kill yourself in the process”.

What risks have you taken this week?

For The Love Of Haiku

Left-click to see the making of the Art Game image for this week 🙂

World two-thirds transformed,
Tinka Bell’s out of magic.
Recharge her wand. Quick!

Come and join in with this week’s haiku fun at http://allaboutlemon.com/2013/01/26/for-the-love-of-haiku-20/  courtesy of the brilliant adollyciousirony.