Writing on Wednesday: NaNoWriMo Day 10

What's going on?

Not a great deal since Sunday. I really got into the story on Sunday and basically Monday and Tuesday have been a real struggle to hit the word count. I think that I am having a couple of problems here.

Firstly there was a pep talk sent out this week entitled: Silencing your inner editor. So far, I have completely failed to do that. As a result I have been spending every waking moment planning the first edit! I even thought of editing my synopsis the other day!

This leads onto the next point. Rather over optimistically, the day before NaNo started I hoped  I didn't write:

a big steaming pile of poop

and boy am I doing just that. It pains me, because I know I can write better than that. On purpose, I am just getting it down on the page. Sometimes some dialogue shines though, sometimes I think oh! But mainly it's like... mmm, well it's a bit crap.

Maybe NaNo is all about rediscovering your inner vomiter. In 2007 I set myself this goal of writing my first draft of The Shaelhan Sensors during the summer holidays. I churned out thousands and thousands of words and got the story out. Then came the critique, which was just an amazing learning curve. The problem is I think I'm still in that second mode. I've lost the blurt it out onto the page part of me.

The other difference between Shaelhan and this WIP is that, yes I did it in two months, but I was on HOLIDAY! So my final point is I am a wee bit tired (read knackered).

Anyway, I will try and knock something out tonight and then tomorrow I have the day off because it's Armistice Day (I think - I know it's terrible that I'm not a 100% sure). So, I'll try to catch up and get the momentum going again.

So my very final point (I promise) is about momentum. It's kind of hard to get it going when you are constantly interrupted.

OK, enough woe is me, in the end the word count is not that bad, but I do think we are hitting a bit of a midway lull. The thing is that I want to keep the pace of this WIP racing, and I planned it day by day so that something exciting happened every day. Then I got into the pace and I got through the action a bit quicker than I planned. So maybe I should just do what I said I would do on Sunday and make a note to myself and get on as if I had fixed it.

Oh, and this is completely by the by, but if you are signed up on NaNo you can get a free trial of Scrivener. It's described as the equivalent of the writer's shed, and as I don't have a writer's shed I thought I would check it out. I'm about a third of the way through the tutorial and it seems quite exciting. I feel a bit low tech with my corkboard and notebook. The main disadvantage I see with it is that as I don't have an i pad, how am I supposed to use it on the bus? See the notebook fits into my handbag and I took photos of my corkboard and that's on my mobile. Oh well, we'll see.

So now to how the dudes are doing today.

Today Ella is still a bit miffed. She's not a 100% sure if Morgane was ever her friend, or just using her to get access to her Dad and information she needed. Despite this, Ella's decided to help Leo because he's pretty honest and upfront, and she can really understand how he feels.

Leo is sitting at Ella's table baring his soul. Well, at least he is trying to, as concisely as possible. But somewhere, deep down he is also beginning to entertain the possibility that he may never see his sister again.

And Will is now out of the pub and a little hungover (oh OK, a lot) and he's a bit worried about his colleague Travis. Up until last night he thought Travis was a bit of a geek. Now he's discovered that Travis is the laughing stock of the town, mocked for being the only fisherman in Penwithen never to have caught a fish. He's also derided for his inability to navigate and poor steering skills. Given what Will has heard, he's pacing around by the harbour walls waiting for Travis to return on the Timaeus.

My word count is at 16,661 words.

Check me out here.

A Memory: Musee Rodin

NaNoWriMo Day 7

What's going on?

This week's learning curve has been quite steep. For a start, I learnt that no matter how much I thought I had planned there were still some chasm like holes in my plot. The chronology was a bit out of whack and if we were to do a tension graph there were definitely some parts of the plot where readers would be bordering on snoozing rather than sitting on the edge of their seats (read last weeks NaNo update for confirmation).

Normally at the falling asleep stage I would go back and just do a rewrite. And silly old me, tried to pep up a chapter a little bit on Saturday. The problem was I was really tired (that's a whole other story in itself entitled: The varied adventures of Merlin, the expensively deformed cat) and all I ended up doing is cutting my word count. Gah! Slap head, curl up under duvet and have a nap, which I did.

Today (it's Sunday, am I confusing you with the chronology again) I found another one of those chasms. Keep writing I told myself. It's only a couple of lines, my fingers said and deleted. Doh! My head said.

Another thing that was going on today was that I was hosting the first English write-in. English in that you needed to write in English. There was one Brit, one American, one Australian and a French person (YES, I am soooo impressed).

The disadvantages of hosting the write-in is that I have to be there on time. Not being fantastic on the old timing front I ended up having to leave before I could eat the lunch I had cooked, taking a small tupperware of three day old Thai prawn curry instead. The next bad thing was that EVERYONE was late. That wasn't as huge a problem as I make it sound as we are now leading into the good things.

The advantages are that I got two and a half hours (in a row) of uninterrupted me time. To have wasted more than a second of that time would have been stupid, so straight after I'd eaten the Thai prawn curry, I got cracking. I was so busy that I didn't even notice that the first writer had been ringing the bell for the last five minutes!

So, the word count for just under two hours (what with cups of tea, introductions and some cake eating) was just under 2,000. Maybe it was a little bit more given what I had deleted.

The other good thing was that I remembered comments, those lovely little pink, blue (whatever colour your computer does) bubbles where I can write myself a little reminder of why that part of the plot is no good and how it can be fixed and then I write as if I had fixed it.

So, that's me, now let's see how the characters are doing.

Today Ella is stuck in a cave and needs to get home pretty quickly or Will will start wondering where she is. She's a bit reluctant to go as she's just made a pretty amazing discovered about Leo and her supposed best friend Morgane and she's got about a million and one questions to ask. Also I don't quite know how to get Ella home, so I may just leave that till the rewrite and worry about it then.

Leo is with Ella and has rescued her mobile phone, and well, he's also rescued Ella, but he's going to be no help in getting her home. And there's no way he's going to answer her questions quickly, so she's just going to have to wait until tomorrow.

And Will is in the pub with Travis. That is more exciting than it sounds, but I haven't worked out how yet.

My word count is at 14,221 words.

Check me out here.

The Sunday Roast: Chilli

When I first became vegetarian I had two staple recipes. If you came and stayed with me for a weekend one day you would get chilli and the next day curry. Both were essentially the same, I opened the cupboard and shoved everything in, including baked beans (yes, there was baked beans in my curry).

So, over the years I have learned a few things about vegetarian cooking. First, less is more. If you really want to savour the tastes then one or two ingredients work much better than shoving everything and the kitchen sink in. Secondly, the baked beans wasn't such a huge mistake after all.

Back in the day, when I was shoving everything in, I spent one summer in a fit of post adolescent pique sharing a flat with a couple of friends, one of whom was a vegan chef. I learnt several things that summer. Vegan cooking is fantastic for weight loss. I caught sight of myself in the mirror one day and realised that I was SKINNY! I also realised that there was no way in hell I could be vegan. While Chef Leatherbarrow conjured up tasty and wonderful meals, it required culinary skills far beyond my capabilities. The other thing that Monsieur Leatherbarrow let me into was the secret of a good chilli: sugar!

Since then my chilli recipe has developed a wee bit. There was a moment there, where I tried a mushroomless version to please the Frog, but that was just wrong, so the mushies are back.

Vegetarian Chilli

Tin of red kidney beans

tin of chopped tomatoes

big splash of balsamic vinegar

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp paprika

a few drops of tabasco sauce

1 tsp chilli/chilli flakes

pepper

coriander fresh and 1/2 tsp ground

onion

1 tbs oil

a small punnet of mushrooms

a red or green (or yellow or orange even) pepper

1. Heat the oil
2. Cook the onion till soft.
3. Add the chilli, paprika and coriander and fry for about a minute (or until you can really smell the spices). 
4. Add the tinned tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers, tabasco, sugar and big splash of balsamic vinegar. Bring to the boil and then simmer for about ten to twenty minutes (the longer the better). 
5. Add the kidney beans and its sauce (don't drain them in other words). Cook for about five minutes more until the beans are warmed through. 
6. Add the fresh coriander and ground pepper. 

Serve with plain rice or with wraps and creme fraiche, grated cheese and guacamole (that's the fat version, but very tasty). 

Writing on Wednesday: NaNoWriMo Day 3

Last night I realised that to survive the insanity of NaNoWriMo that some things were going to have to go. Unfortunately work has to stay, along with a thousand and one other mundane tasks. So realising that, and after some complicated maths (1667*7-5000(or 6000 or 8000)/5=) I had yet another brainwave: scheduled posts! So apologies dear readers, I confess that it is actually the 17th October while I write this, but the rest is short and sweet and written in real time.

What's going on?

Today Ella is walking to school with Leo and wondering about him. He's weird, speaks in a funny way and reminds her of someone.
Leo is also on his way to school with Ella and has discovered a beautiful sea view. He's starting to realise that the sea is pretty above as well as below. 
And Will is procrastinating. He has discovered a new love for washing, doing the dishes, making lunch and dinner, anything rather than work.

My word count is at 6591 words.

Check me out here.

PS If this post ever goes out blank, there is trouble afoot!

A Memory: Sardines