Ten rules for writing

I loved this: "10 rules for writing", which I found on the Guardian site. It's a great collection of authors and their tips (of which there are frequently less than 10, and which in total probably add up to about 112 in total) (I think of them as tips, not rules) (that'll be my first rule as a writer, no rules, only tips)(also I should probably make a rule for myself about brackets).

Some of them are brilliant, some of them you already know, some of them aren't for me, some of them are simply writers saying how they write.

Here are the ones that speak to me. They're not my favourites (the funny ones by Margaret Atwood and Colm Tóibín) but these are the ones that should post-it-noted all over my desk:

Annie Proulx

1 Proceed slowly and take care.

Rose Tremain

5 When an idea comes, spend silent time with it. Remember Keats's idea of Negative Capability and Kipling's advice to "drift, wait and obey". Along with your gathering of hard data, allow yourself also to dream your idea into being.

6 In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.

7 Respect the way characters may change once they've got 50 pages of life in them. Revisit your plan at this stage and see whether certain things have to be altered to take account of these changes.

Roddy Doyle

5 Do restrict your browsing to a few websites a day. Don't go near the online bookies – unless it's research.

Helen Dunmore

7 A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

Neil Gaiman

1 Write.

2 Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

3 Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

PD James

2 Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

Crispy soft squidgy gingery cookies!

I probably won't make many posts like this but I had to share because of YUMMY.

The grocery delivery tonight finally brought baking ingredients to my doorstep, and as I am also now set with a shiny new El Cheapo mixer from Argos (£4.18!!), I was set to go and couldn't help BAKING tonight!

I made these:


Gingernut crinkles, a favoured recipe that I have been using since I was teensy. They are delicious crispy outside and soft inside.

Yield 36.
Preheat oven to 170 C.

125 gm butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 Tbsp golden syrup
2 cups flour
3 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp mixed spice
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder

Cream butter & sugar.
Add egg & golden syrup, and mix well.
Add dry ingredients and mix again.
Roll teaspoonfuls into balls - you do not need to flatten as they will spread a little & crack on baking.
Cook for 15 minutes.

Cool a little and then EAT SOME while still warm.

Third book of 2010

I churned through It by Stephen King and finally finished it over the weekend. Deargod. That was a BIG book. If you take into account that the usual paperback has ~250 words per page, then this book must be over 340,000 words.

Puts my current 46k to shame, don't it! I take comfort in the fact that if I were to write a 340k book, there is no way it would be accepted for publication unless I was a well-established author - and even then only in certain genres. Thank you, btw, straight-talking agent blogs, for learning me that.

So, the book itself - chunky yet absorbing, and unpredictable. Gruesome in parts. And so, so vivid. Won't read it again though. I've read the equally long The Stand multiple times but It doesn't have the same draw to me, doesn't have that same absorption in the tale.

This'll surprise anyone who knows me: I even want to watch It THE MOVIE after finishing this book. That's right, Kate actually wants to watch a scary movie. Kate who, when dragged to such films by the Duffster, "watches" most of them through her fingers and vows never to see another one again.

I always like to see how books are translated to screen though. And maybe knowing what is going to happen will make it easier to watch!

Plus there is always the pause button.

And for Stephen King fans out there -- can you name all 35 of his novels in 10 minutes? It doesn't include short story collections, non-fiction or books published under Bachman. I managed 8 before giving up -- it would have been 10, too, but I misspelled one of the titles and couldn't remember the precise misspelling of another (I knew it was misspelled but couldn't remember how)!

It's the end of the weekend already!

Yesterday was a lovely Saturday! A gorgeous day like that and I start to feel that spring is really on its way, right? Right?! (You can start laughing at me now. Yes it is still February.) After a delicious sleep in, Duffster & I got up and opened up the windows to get a breeze in through the flat, and went for a walk to get some essential vitamin D!

I stopped in at a few hairdressers to collect price lists. I've never had my hair cut regularly before -- for a long time I cut it myself, and coloured it myself using a few spritzes of (gasp!) SunIn. Apparently SunIn is Teh Nasty for your hair health but I never really noticed. Last year, I mustered some courage and cashola and I started getting my hair cut at hairdressers and, well, yeah. They were much better than myself, unsurprisingly...

I've decided that I'd like to grow out my hair, get some more length, and I think treating it kindly will make a difference and so: proper cuts and proper colouring. Hopefully at a hairdresser nearby to where I live. One of them today was in my price range, an Italian joint with a nice atmosphere and fresh flowers, so next month I'll check it out. Seeing as most of my life I've hardly spent a dime on proper cuts, I really loathe forking out a lot of moolah on it now.

You know what's strange -- I'm losing the curl in my hair! I was looking at photos from when I left NZ almost 4 years ago and my hair was a similar length to now -- and it was CURLY. Springy-uppy waves all over the place. And now? My hair falls down flat. It's honestly just straight with a slight wave. Is it getting older, or lifestyle? Maybe it's the harsh London water!

After the hairdresser tour yesterday, we got coffees & the paper from Cafe Nero and then headed up North End Road and the market there. I love the Nth End Rd market, even though I dislike the area (it's just so scungy). Shopping there makes me feel like part of a community. And it's CHEAP. We got fresh fruit & veges and some free range eggs. The fruit went into breakfast smoothies today, and the eggs into French toast for lunch (topped with lush Vermont maple syrup, mmm).

I wrote today -- reached 46,000 words on In Finding. And now I am going to spend the last of the weekend by cracking open a new book because I finally finished It by Stephen King!

Thinking over things

While walking to & from the tube in my new commute, I've been thinking over the current short story in progress, Piscky's Ascent (the title's growing on me). I now have an idea of the edits I want to make. Here are the questions I asked myself to get there:

So, what is this story about? aka, what do I *want* it to be about?
(My answer is the relationship between 2 people preparing to meet their deaths)

I think that is really the Big Question To Ask. Then, follow on questions from that were:

What would people do in the situation my characters are in?
Can I see my characters demonstrating those thoughts/actions?

Maybe I'll work on those edits today, since it is my writing night. (But I'm not going to start writing until I've had dinner because I just.cannot.concentrate on an empty stomach!!)

I've also been musing on In Finding, and its plotpoints (heartbeats). Funny how much stuff you need to unravel and knit together when writing a novel, no? Not only making sure all the threads get screentime but that as my character juggles those things, she is also developing as a character -- getting the tools & prompts, making choices, facing up to her challenges. All the while being consistent.

It did mean that when I sat down with the story in the weekend, I had to delete a scene I'd already written and do it again! Gah. So I'm still on the same word count. One step forward, one step back, it feels like! A while ago I told myself not to get hung up on word count, but yanno... it's hard not to. It's such a concrete measure of progress when everything else is so impalpable -- it's kind of hard to measure "story solidity & consistency" or "level of informed research" or even just "knowledge of this story"!

Flicks on Waitangi Day!

Happy Monday evening everyone. Hope you had a good weekend!

Saturday 6th was Waitangi Day - NZ's holiday! In London, it's a chance for Kiwis to get together and celebrate being a Kiwi. Lots of us go on a pub crawl round central London (roughly following the Circle Line on the tube -- when it actually used to be a circle -- and originally drinking on the tube too, before Boris outlawed it!) The pub crawl ends with a big haka in Parliament Square at 4pm. Mudfest. It's quite messy and raucous but entirely good natured. Apparently, it's the only time of year that the London authorities turn a blind eye to the huge group of people drinking in the square, where you normally need an agreement from the police for a mass gathering of people.

It's much more celebratory and upbeat than I remember Waitangi Day back home, where it's a fairly subdued national holiday that is (was?) often marred by protests. In London, everybody dresses up and shouts and yahoos through the tube network and down the street, gently shepherded by police who are generally in a good mood too and happy to get their pictures taken with Kiwis wearing their police hats. You feel a bit sorry for any normal person trying to catch the tube though! They are either HORRIFIED at such debauchery, or DELIGHTED to be caught up in the fun atmosphere!

I've done the Circle Line pub crawl once and that was enough for me. If you're a girl you basically spend the whole time queueing for toilets. So this year, a few of my buddies came over to the flat for Kiwi snacks (chips & onion dip, Squiggle Tops) and to watch some NZ films.


First of all we saw the absolute classic "Such a Stupid Way to Die" - a short educational video made in 1971 about the dangers of hypothermia when tramping (that's "hiking" for non-Kiwis) in the mountains. It's just brilliant -- dark and unsettling with jangly music, a touch of Pink Floyd, and full of thick Kiwi accents and stunning scenery -- filmed in the Nelson lakes region. I remember watching it as a kid in school. I think almost every Kiwi kid would have seen it, no matter when you went to school. This stuff might be dated but it's good value! The immortal line "Oh no, it's the wrong bloody way!" had us all in hysterics. You can watch it too at the link above, on the NZ On Screen website (which is brilliant if a bit slow).

We then watched The Frighteners, Peter Jackson's movie before he did Lord of the Rings. We had a lot of fun pointing out ex-Shortland Street actors. It's a 1996 film, and apparently the graphics were masterful for the time, with the largest number of digital effects used in a feature (the same year as Independence Day and Twister, btw, so I'm not sure if that's true??) but watching it now, it's quite ho-hum. Some good dark laughs though. It's quite astounding to think how slim Jackson's back catalogue was before he did LOTR.


If you're interested, the NZ On Screen website also has a documentary on the making of Bad Taste, Jackson's first finished film. It includes the very youthful Jackson demonstrating all the special effects and wizardry he cooked up himself in his garage - masks and guns and camera braces etc - true "Kiwi ingenuity". Fascinating. I think it shows how he must know everything that goes into making a film. He might have employees making the masks now, but he's done it himself.

Another waaaay exciting event this weekend -- the Duffster & I put up new bookcases! Our flat has no decent storage, which is soo annoying -- I hate clutter -- so we needed these for a place to put "stuff". We now have a bookcase on each side of the bricked-up fireplace, so they're usefully standing on floorspace that wasn't being used before. I have put all of our books on one, and the other will be for boxes & magazines & trinkets etc. Stuff. You know. The things you compromise on when you move in together (him: pretty floral vases and little pictures frames. me: beer steins and stubbie holders.)

When I get a Real House(TM) I would love to have built in bookcases. *dreams* And no beer steins.

A stack of books to read!

Here's my mahoosive reading list. Or my "as yet unread and might not ever be read stack", I should call it, as I don't think I'm going to finish some of these books. Most of them I'm really excited about getting into though!


Top to bottom:

The Elements of Style by Strunk & White -- part of the leaving gift from my old work (they got me a bunch of books from my Amazon wish list!). This book is widely considered a classic 'how to', gathering together writing best practice in a succinct way. I will probably flick through this and then have it on hand as a reference. One of those books you just need to have on your shelf! (nb 'White' is E.B.White -- Charlotte's Web)

Little Constructions by Anna Burns -- picked up on the cheap from a Books Etc store during the Borders closing down sale (wish I had planned this instead of stumbling across the sale in its final dying throes and thinking, 'of course! they have stock to get rid of!' and at that point, all that remained were bad biographies and travel books). I already started this book and I haven't finished it and I doubt I will try starting it again. In the first 15 pages, it introduces 8 characters who are all named J---- Doe. The writing wasn't good enough to sustain the gimmick and I lost my patience. I didn't know who was who and it was too hard to battle on with.

Exurbia by Molly McGrann -- from the same Books Etc sale. Not sure about this one, was quite a random choice. A "I have my doubts but we'll see" pick.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith -- Xmas gift from my sister-in-law. To be honest, I've tried this book before and I couldn't finish it. I know some of my friends who were in the same situation (in fact, with the same copy of the book - we had a competition to see whose bookmark would go the furthest). I know it's supposed to be amazing though, and now my SIL has gifted it to me, I am beholden to try it again. And so I will! Perhaps now I live in London, I'll like it more?

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz -- Xmas gift from my sister-in-law. She wrote "I found this book to be both so funny and touching... you may need to keep a Spanish dictionary handy! It's awesome!"

Essence and Alchemy by Mandy Aftel -- leaving gift from my old work. I read this as a library book years'n'years ago, and have wanted it for myself ever since. And now I finally do! This is a luscious book that looks first at the history and magic of perfume, and then also delves into creating your own. In another life, I would like to be a perfumer. I have a character sitting in my brain who is a perfumer. One day we'll find her story and put her down on paper.

Finding Serenity: anti-heroes, lost shepherds and space hookers in Firefly (multiple authors) -- leaving gift from my old work. I loved Joss Whedon's Firefly - best ever sci-fi TV show. It was so well written, such amazing characters. This is a set of essays about it and I'm looking forward to reading them, seeing a critical review of various aspects of the show and what made it so great.

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (multiple authors) -- leaving gift from my old work. I've had my eye on this collection of short stories for a while. One of my favourite themes - apocalypse! - written by some fantastic writers: Orson Scott Card, Stephen King, Elizabeth Bear, Cory Doctorow, Octavia E. Butler!

The Art & Craft of Storytelling: a comprehensive guide to classic writing techniques by Nancy Lamb -- leaving gift from my old work. A highly rated book on Amazon. This is part of my plan to read a good book on writing every now and then, to bolster my inspiration.

Character & Viewpoint (the elements of fiction writing) by Orson Scott Card -- leaving gift from my old work. This book is rated well on Amazon and I loved his other one on writing sci-fi. Another book on writing for my inspiration.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger -- Xmas gift from my sister-in-law. She remembered how much I LOVED The Time Traveller's Wife, by the same author, what a sweetheart! Ooh I hope this is as good at The Time Traveller's Wife. That book made me weep!

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood -- soo excited about reading this one! I just love Margaret Atwood: she is one of my all time favourite writers of all time ever and ever. And Oryx & Crake is my favourite of all her books and THIS book is apparently like a sequel, set in the same post-apocalyptic world (!) so ohboy, I can't wait to delve into it. I got this hardback on sale. I usually don't buy hardbacks but I found out the paperback won't be out until, like, October. So I snapped this one up.

Nanotechnology for Dummies -- leaving gift from my old work. This was on my wish list because I have a story I want to write someday which has a lot of nanotechnology in it. It's a complex story for a few reasons - quite a few characters I'd like to be in the center stage, and there's the science too. I don't think I have the skills or knowledge to write it yet (I tried, and didn't get far!) so this book will help me get there.

A post before i start my proper writing tonight

Oh noes, I think I am getting a cold. Must be my new commute, mashed in to the tube with all the other commuters.

So far the new job has been good! Am still learning the ropes (I think I am finally figuring out what my company actually *does*). The new place is more corporate so I have said goodbye to my jeans & sneakers during the week. I quite like dressing smarter though (also a good excuse to go shopping...) My new colleagues are a friendly bunch of people. Really nice offices, but no fridges, microwaves or kettles! This makes lunch quite difficult / expensive! Anyway, I look forward to getting my teeth into the role. Gnarrrr.

Writing-wise, last weekend I did none! In fact, I had a deliciously lazy weekend, I didn't even go to the gym or for a swim. I needed to zone out for a couple of days -- meeting for coffee, a touch of shopping, painting nails, watching TV shows, reading the Sunday paper. I imagine this would be a normal weekend for non-writers. I often think about how writing is like having another job -- part-time and unpaid. Like a charity. Run by the guilt monkey.


Here's some of the interesting stuff I've read recently... I tweeted a few of these if you follow me on Twitter:

NY Times article: How radiation therapy can harm as well as do good. Quite long, but a fascinating & scary & quite sad read. Highly recommended. I would be interested to know comparable accident rates for the UK and NZ -- I hope UK & NZ are better than the USA, due to the different healthcare system models.

E-Consultancy blog: An interview with the guys who set up Hungry House. Duffman & I order a lot through this website, which gathers local restaurants together and allows you to order via the site. You can see ratings from other people on every restaurant. It's a great idea -- although another site, Just-Eat, has been doing it for longer!

John Scalzi's blog: his take on "Amazonfail" (the big hoopla when Amazon threw its toys in a childlike tantrum over a conflict with Macmillan on ebook pricing, and temporarily delisted all Macmillan books from the Amazon website). Scalzi's analysis is hilarious and spot on. Righteous author anger! He also has a few other posts about it. Go read now!