NaNoWriMo Day 20

What's going on?

Well yesterday I went to work, while the rest of the family snoozed away because they were having a day off. Progress on the wip this week has been sloow, and reports have been written at the rate of knots. So, as you can see I opted for the no sleep till December route.

So Ella, Leo and Will's story arc is kind of in suspended animation at the moment. Imagine them frozen, waiting for the next tap on the keyboard to wake them up.

This week in the aftermath of the SCBWI event in Winchester, there has been loads of feedback and I realised that I am very much a plot driven writer. I have this idea in my head and I wiggle and weedle and twist and turn and then I sit down to write and the characters come alive. The thing is, I was spending so much time with Will, Leo and Ella that whenever Morgane and Miranda came into the story they were, well... a bit flat to say the least. It was at this point in week 2 that I realised the potential of Scrivener (I know, I sound like a sales pitch). I didn't have to write Morgane and Miranda's story line straight away, in fact I merrily skipped a chapter with a smile on my face.

And now I'm writing them and just slotting them in where I think I want them. As I've already written the other stuff, I know exactly how much to give away or not. I have to say, that I am just a little pleased with myself (yeah, you've probably been doing that for years).

Lastly, I'm writing this in my new writing corner. I've been trying to grab a little space since the summer. It involved rearranging the bedroom and tidying it up. I got a little platform thingy and a cork board. Every now and again I would squirrel myself away and tap away. I've used it more during NaNo, but recently, I've reverted to the breakfast tray on the bed and me in it.

So today when I got home, the desk was installed in a corner with my laptop on it and the Frog has moved his desktop.

Today Ella is outside an open door. All she needs to do is step through it, but the voice she can hear on the other side of the door has stopped her in her tracks. 


Leo is somewhere in the Manning Mansion. I have to admit that I've kind of let him get lost.

And Will is lost with Leo! Eek

My word count is at 35,276 words.

Check me out here.

Writing on Wednesday: NaNoWriMo Day 17

What's going on?

Well the cat is trying to launch a sneak attack on the little bits of chicken left in the bubba's plate and the bubba is having none of it. But that wasn't really what I was asking, was it. Well... basically after the weekend writeathon I hit 30,000 words and I'm nearing the end of the wip. But, I'm shattered, which I knew I would be, which is why I was trying to pace myself on Thursday, but then blew it on Saturday and Sunday. So on Monday and Tuesday I wrote pathetic amounts and this morning I rolled over turned off the alarm at 6.15 and was found still in bed snoring (so the rumour goes) half an hour later.

Basically, I need to decide whether to write this week off and only concentrate on reports (for the day job), or whether to just go for it and sleep in December.

Today Ella is about to go rushing off to the Manning Mansion, near Mullion's Cove. She is pretty much working on adrenaline at the moment and is not really thinking about the consequences of what she might find at the mansion. 


Leo is a bit lost. He's is fairly certain that Ella and Will are helping him to find his sister. It's all the stuff that happened afterwards that he's not sure about. Like, who is Miranda? Where did she come from? Why do Will and Ella think Miranda is with Morgane? And why do they have to get to the Manning Mansion by four o'clock? Why must this press conference not go ahead?

And Will is also a bit confused, but he's more confused about his feelings. For a start he wishes so much that it was him holding this press conference and not his blooming boss. He also knows how wrong it is to think that, even if he does have one live sample in his kitchen. But it's best not to go down that road, instead he'll just think about Miranda. But no,  that's all too confusing too. What if she is there? And what if she isn't?

My word count is at 31,278 words.

Check me out here.

A Memory: Champagne

The Sunday Roast: Diets and Cook Books

I am one of those people whose weight fluctuates. The only time I start to think about dieting is when I get near the 70 kilo mark. This has happened on several occasions throughout my life. Once when I was doing my A levels and my idea of exercising was waddling to the bus. Another time was after two years of living in Spain and living off tortilla (totally yummy and totally fattening). The first time I gave up giving up smoking I hit the 70 mark and the last time I hit it was at the end of my pregnancy. On each occasion I lost the weight either through boot camp style exercise ( a summer job at the post office) or through some crazy diet my Dad, work colleague or gynaecologist suggested.

The problem with diets is that they are either difficult to follow or the food is horrible. And you don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out that eventually the diet is going to fail. After giving up on food combining and The South Beach Diet, I finally ended up trying Weight Watchers, where to be perfectly honest, everything they propose tastes like pants. South Beach on the other hand had well yummy recipes, but an impossible regime to follow. And let's not even go down the food combining road hey.

So, this is where in the end Weight Watchers wins out. You can eat whatever you want. Seriously, I know colleagues who have done WW, stuck within their points, but lived on beer for three months and still lost weight. It's not healthy, but voila.

For me to succeed at WW, I had to eat good food. Tasty food. And The South Beach Diet cookbook is full of tasty recipes, really full. I've tried two, maybe three of them. I'm terrible with cookbooks. I see them, I covet them, I try a handful of recipes out of them. They take up space on my shelf that could otherwise be filled with fiction and in the end they get covered in dust. I have vowed to buy no more. The internet has rendered cookbooks obsolete.  So before I pack the things away for good, I'll share the one or two recipes from each book that I use.

Aubergine Pasta

1 big aubergine sliced lengthways
a tin of tomatoes
loads of fresh basil roughly cut
olive oil
pepper
1 tbsp tomato purée
onion
clove of garlic

1. Brush the aubergines with oil and grill each side for 5 minutes, then set aside until cool (trust me on this one, cutting hot aubergine is painful).
2. Heat the oil and add the onion and garlic. Cook until soft. 
3. Add the tinned tomatoes, purée and loads of fresh basil. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 minutes. 
4. Cut up the aubergine up and add to the sauce for about 5 minutes. 
5. Add pepper.

I prefer this sauce with tagliatelli, but we all have our own preferences.

NaNoWriMo Day 13

What's going on? 
Well, I haven't actually done any writing as such today, what with it being 8 o'clock in the morning. The thing is I did do some writing last night. In case I haven't mentioned this (enough times) I am on my own this weekend. So for the first time in just over two years I can totally have a lie in, I have absolutely no reason to get up and at 7 o'clock I realise that I'm actually awake and planning a scene in my head that I haven't written and will actually need to be shoved in quite early on. At that point, I realised that even if my arms and legs were not conscious, my head was, so I moved my body grabbed my laptop a couple of cables and came back to bed. Well, if I can't sleep in, at least I'm not going to get out of bed!

So two things and I really will try to keep it to two things today. Firstly, after I finished writing last night it suddenly dawned on me that I was basically over the midway hump and therefore careering towards the end of my wip. A bit of quick math and I realised there was a great possibility that with the way I was going I wasn't going to hit 50,000 words with this wip. There was a moment of disappointment when I realised I wasn't going to be a NaNo winner, but like I say that was short, because then I realised that I'm going to get this wip out. It's not complicated, no, what I mean is convoluted. It's got a manageable number of characters, and unless I do nothing but sit on my laurels in December and January, I do have a chance of achieving goal number two. All I will say about goal number two is I need fifteen well written pages.

But then I started to panic. What if the book is too short? Because let's face it, I don't know about you guys, but when I edit, I slash and there are already some scenes that need to be GONE. Which doesn't mean that they won't get put elsewhere, but what I've taken a chapter to TELL, will be SHOWN elsewhere.

A bit of internet research and I realised that my word count is going to be good as a first time author, but in December I really need to decide who I'm aiming for. I know that my wip is not YA, but then I don't think it's traditionally Middle Grade (8-12) either. It seems that there is a new 'Tween' audience of 10-14 year olds and I guess I'm there.  Either way, the word count is OK, so no worries there.

So to the second point. The other day I mentioned Scrivener quickly. It has been developed for a Mac (grr...) but they are running a BETA test for Windows with the Windows version coming out in 2011. If you are signed up for NaNo you can get a free trial of the Mac version until December 1st and if you are a winner than you will get a discount coupon for it. If you are a Windows user you can use it until December 12th, when you can then download another BETA version.

But what is it? Well the link explains a lot better than I will, but I'll try. So, I've used the analogy of a writer's shed, but I've never had a writer's shed, so I'll try and explain it the best way I can.

• First there was the outline written on green post its and stuck on the corkboard in order.
• Next came some sketches of locations and pictures that would help with those locations, plans of a yacht. Stuff like that. 
• Then there was the notebook. It's almost full with notes, timelines, ideas, back stories, motivation letters and little 'ooh aah' moments that I get on the bus. I then come home and write dates all over the green post its, so that when I'm writing that bit I know where to look in the notebook. 
• Then there is a word document called notes. This contains links to that wonderful, if slightly unreliable, resource wikipedia, where most of my research is done. OK there is other stuff as well, a lot of street view and a pdf file for a German submarine makers site. 
• Then there are the chapters written on Word. 
• Then there is the Word Master Document where I put all the individual files together (sometimes adding the same chapter twice and making my word count jump significantly, so that first I get excited and then I realise, who am I kidding, you know you didn't write that much).

OK, well Scrivener puts all that stuff together in one place, and formats your work into a manuscript automatically at the end. In addition, it has this funky little keywords function, so that you can then search through your wip so that you can call up the chapters with a certain character or location in it. Like I said, I can't use it on the bus (unless you have an i pad Father Christmas), but it's full of possibilities, especially on the mac where it has all the features.

So now to whip that wip into shape.

Today Ella is making connections, connections. She's just realised who has Morgane. Now the problem is how are they going to get her.  

Leo is on a pretty low ebb. For a little guy who is usually pretty chirpy, even in the face of dire adversity, he's realised that if Ella is right than the Mearh are in big, big trouble. But Ella could be wrong? Right?

And Will is totally off track and wondering what's going on between Leo and Ella. He's little, she's tall. He's weird, she's pretty cool, even if he is a bit biased. And what about his cephalopod? Travis has gone off on a tangent instead of trying to find the ROV.

My word count is at 23,537 words.

Check me out here.

NaNoWriMo Day 11

So today is day 11 of NaNoWriMo and after yesterday's NaNo lost my MoJo, I've managed to get back a bit into the rhythm. The frog has driven off into the pouring rain with the cat and the bubba to Charente. They have arrived safely, thankfully. I should maybe write a story about the lesser rain god of the A10, but I think Douglas Adams has already done that. And besides I'm digressing. My point is that I have four (if we ignore the fact that the only reason I'm not in Charente is because of work tomorrow) days of blissfully free writing hours. I've taken over the dining room table. The sink is filling up, I've drunk far too many cups of tea and right now I would be making the bubba's dinner, but instead I'm writing this and listening to Coldplay far too loudly.

Today Ella is trying to think up a good excuse for getting her Dad to drag her to Truro.

Leo is wondering why his excuse was pants (but of course, he isn't using the words pants as that is far too colloquial).

And Will is finally getting his moment on the page. After totally misjudging Travis, Will is wondering whether he will have to include Travis's name when he unveils the discovery of a totally unknown cephalopod. Then again he's also wondering how he is going to continue to finding out about the cephalopod now that Travis has lost the research submarine. Oh no, that's right, according to Travis it isn't lost, somebody stole it. Yeah, Travis isn't all that bad, but he is living in James Bond world. Who would steal a 4 tonne research sub? And more to the point, HOW would they steal it.

My word count is at 19,869 words.