the time to train for any athletic feat is before, not after

A break in the writing today (lots of reading & editing, and a few new words, on In Finding).

This is a neat video from the Wellcome Collection -- a medical & science museum in London that's very close to where my new job is. "Childbirth as an Athletic Feat" (1939) shows a class of expectant mothers practising ante-natal exercises.

"fish" and "escape"

The scene outside my window at work is very pretty today: the graveyard covered in a light blanket of snow, with the winter yellow sun shining through the trees. Trails of fox prints through the headstones.

Two weeks left here and then I'll be starting my new job - very exciting!

Yesterday I wrote about half of a new short story, which was born out of prompts from my also-a-writer colleague Geoff ("fish" and "escape"). Love the rush of a new story idea. Title for this one will be something about climbing.

The evil television

After writing, I watched an episode of Celebrity Big Brother. Think it's an interesting dynamic between celebs because they expect everyone around them to know who they are and their body of work. Quite a few "look at me now" sorts of comments, and some barely-covered-by-polite-faces that say, "I can't belieeeve you didn't know that about me"...

Then I saw a TV ad for Ready Brek which has the leek spinning song on it. Which prompted more visits to the leekspin site and watching videos on YouTube!

There's a Basshunter remix of Leekspin here! (a nice connection, seeing as Mr Basshunter himself is in Celebrity Big Brother)

And here's the band singing the original song, a traditional Finnish folk polka:




Hypnotic and catchy, right? Right? Or is just me, obsessed by leekspin. I'm going to try and find the Basshunter remix to download.

More for 2010:

So, I want to do some Good Reading this year, of Important and Interesting books that I Haven't Read Before. Might build myself a reading list and tick them off as I go. Here's what I got so far:

(Currently reading) The Fire Gospel by Michael Faber

Dune by Frank Herbert

It by Stephen King

A new year, new hope imbued. Flow with it, while you can!

Happy new year!

I just finished reading a lovely book that my work secret santa got me: Orscon Scott Card's Writing Science-Fiction & Fantasy. It's well written, with good useful stuff in it, inspiring me to sit down and write. A tad out of date - 1990! - but worth a read just for that push to write. Thank you, santa!

I'm thinking maybe I need to read a "words of writerly wisdom" type book every couple of months. It'll be like a metabolic hit to the writing muse. Keep her in gear.

Shall we set some new year resolutions? Whenever I set them, they're always about writing. And I always fail! But, hey, in keeping with tradition...

This year:

- I want to submit stuff for publication.
- (That means) I want to write some short fiction.
- And, I want to finish at least the first draft of In Finding.

In order to maintain my enthusiasm and participation and achieve these, I'm doing the following:

- Writing every Wednesday evening, at least
- Subscribing / following online SFF magazines (Clarkesworld and Strange Horizons so far)
- Reading more "how to" books??

There's a lot of other things I'm thinking about doing, that I should do. But "should do lists" have the propensity to grow exponentially. So I'm not going to write that and then feel sad when I fail to achieve it all.

And a report on my recent writerly activity:

• Started writing a query letter for In Finding. I'm doing this as a tool to help me define the story and make sure I'm creating the strongest story it can be.
• Approached revision of short story, Dancing at the Lilac Orchid. Will start rewriting this tomorrow now - think I might switch it to first person POV, but will see how that goes.

christmas reading wrap up, and a dash of inspiration

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas! I went to Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, with Duffy. We had a dreadful start to our holiday, with our flight being delayed due to the bad weather in London -- we eventually landed in Lanzarote NINETEEN hours after we should have! That was one big planeload of weary holidaymakers. Anyway, we suitably recovered and got some brilliant days. I didn't expect the weather to be so hot and glorious. However, aside from the weather, the Canary Islands as a destination isn't anything to write home about - a volcano that has vomited in the ocean, and 17 million tourist resorts plonked down on top, chocka block with fat sunburned Brits and Germans.

Now back in London. It's 23 degrees Celsius colder here.

No writing over Christmas (Holidays? Is that a worthy excuse?) but lots of reading and lots of thinking about the story.

So I read:

The Brightest Star in the Sky - Marian Keyes' latest book. I really love Marian's stories, they're so readable and she has a lovely voice. Truthfully, I don't like her early books that much but her writing has improved amazingly. I like the way her stories are crafted to unwind as you read them, and they're not predictable either. To date, my favourite one is Anybody Out There. It's heartbreaking & I recommend it.

The Rapture by Liz Jensen. Fairly absorbing, has a relevant story about climate change. Kind of post-apocalyptic drama set in the near future. I'm finding it hard to figure out why this story didn't grip me and I think it might be because I didn't care for the main character that much - I suppose for some reason, I didn't feel empathy for her, when I know I should have.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi. A fabulous space opera! I just looved the snippets of humour in this too. Some of the dialogue - so snappy, a delight to read. (You can read Scalzi's blog for more of the humour). And the science was awesome too. I looved the green soldiers. Looking forward to finding the sequel and reading that.

P.S. I Love You by Cecelia Ahern. I saw the movie for this and I enjoyed it. Not your average rom-com, you know the kind which methodically ticks off all typical scenes such as kooky best friend advice, getting drunk & falling over, the Big Misunderstanding, the mad run through city/boat/town to proclaim undying love, blah blah scene, etc. But the book? Meh. Average writing, really average. And I don't understand why it became so popular and won awards and got turned into a movie. But the funny thing about that, is it inspires me.

I can write a story like that. I can write a better story. If Cecelia can do it, so can I.

Lying on the sunloungers, I thought a lot about In Finding (previously known as Molly) and figured out a few little things that need tweaking and scenes that need adding earlier in to balance the story better.

Tomorrow is Wednesday - writing day! - and I will start working on those amendments.

Lastly, here's a random piece of inspiration: Have you seen the new Chanel No.5 tv ad with Audrey Tatou? It's so lush and luminous and golden. I love Audrey Tatou. Ah! Here's an exciting I thing I just discovered when Googling it - the ad was directed by my favourite director, Jean Pierre Jeunet! (Now I know that, I see it too...) So, here it is:

one night a week, it's all i ask for

I have a plan for writing, and I want to feel hopeful and determined about it. I want it to make a difference. I'm not sure if it will, and that lack of confidence sucks. Why do we go through these cycles? These frenzied delightful periods when it's all about writing, so sure of it, followed by a time of inactivity, doused in guilt. A big hairy fuck off guilt monkey, sitting on our shoulders.

Will this up and down ever end? Will there ever be a time when I will just write, and continue to write?



Here my Latest Plan™: to write every Wednesday night. Wednesday is when I make words. Home from work, inhale food, whirl through shower, and sit down with whirring clunky laptop and just do it.

Schedule it in, like an appointment. Like my 'girls night' every Tuesday with Cara & Lou, like my gym every Monday and Thursday (only, well, more regular than the gym even).

It seems simple, right? It's just one short period of time every week which will be for writing. And of course, I can write any other day as well. Let's see how it goes.

So, I sat down last night to work on Molly / In Finding, and it went well. I haven't added very many new words lately but I have restructured it and I'm pleased with how it flows now. There are a lot of placeholder "write this here" sentences, but that's for the next phase of plugging the gaps!

I need to do some research on Dunkirk, and wartime & post-wartime Britain, to fill in Tom's story.

Hovering around 31.5k words at the moment.

oh hai!

Oh, oops, I have not updated here in a while. Erm, see previous post. Plus I had a wickedly busy while at work through Sept-Oct-Nov. It's calmed down now.

Wickedly busyness had an affect on the writing, of course (I did no writing, no blogging, no gymming, no friendling) but I'm back on board now.

First of all, I think I came up with an actual title™ for my Molly story: In Finding

'In finding' the title, I also located lots of themes of the story. So I need to do some edits. Now I know there are those who say, "no edits until you're done!", but I think in this case I will ignore them, and go back to the beginning.

What I'd like to do is rewrite quite a few chunks, making sure the themes are there from the start, that the story arc is supported by them.

Hopefully it won't take me too long and then I'll be back into brand fresh new words - plus with the added benefit of I know the themes when I'm writering them.

I've also been pondering about writing time. It's quite clear that my writing is affected by routine, and if I'm not consistent in a weekly routine then I don't get much writing done. I think I'm going to try setting aside a particular time every week which is dedicated writing time; such as every Wednesday evening. I think even just 1 timeslot like that will make a difference... The issue of course will be sticking to it.

STICKING TO IT.

Kind of the whole issue with writing, in fact.

words spread thinly

Haven't posted here lately. Badbad! I find it hard to spread myself across all these places for my words - the stories, my LiveJournal, this blog, the IWDTFM blog, not to mention our work blog, plus work, personal and IWDTFM tweeting. Phew. A lot of places to write in, and not enough time.

The IWDTFM blog is going well. Five months of archives now, and 77 posts. We've now beginning to build our network, which is a key way to increase readership - basically, make friends with other bloggers. Because we have such an undefined purpose, no set topic, it makes it difficult to connect with other similar blogs!

I'm still meandering along with Molly. I was going to put 'trudging' then, but it's not a chore, it's more like fleeting and bitsy. Meandering. I hit 28,000 words on the story yesterday, which was a nice marker. Plus I discovered a meaty plot point for the upcoming (and dreaded) middleofthebook. It was kind of an obvious place to take the story but I only realised it yesterday.

I also abandoned Writer's Cafe in favour of my dear old Excel, and plotted the story out on a spreadsheet:



I was using a trial version of Writer's Cafe, so I could only have 30 scene cards, and I am too skint to buy the full version. Excel does the job, luverly. Each row is a character (colour coded), and each column is a day.

I really want to get to 30k words. Maybe I'll try some today. I'm at home today, Monday, because I'm sick. Still doing some work as have logged into work webmail, but honestly, my brain is all over the place. Makes me think I probably can't write either. Flitting thoughts and difficulty concentrating.

I'm a big old gushbucket, sneezing + coughing everywhere. Extremely contagious! Watch out...