On the #progress of #21stCentury communication… #amreading #gailhoneyman #eleanoroliphantiscompletelyfine

And I’m back! Not for me noise-cancelling headphones, single-cell offices, and dedicated workspaces… #amwriting #snatchedmoments #TheNovel #progress

55222 / 80000 words. 69% done!

So now comes the final push! I’m so close to finishing book two in the Mr Tumnal trilogy.

I’m back and I #amwriting!
#600words #progress #MrTumnal #TheNovel

I’m not following full NaNoWriMO rules. I’m not writing something new, with the aim of reaching 50,000 words at the end of 30 days, and I’m certainly not aiming each day to write at least 1,667 words. That said, for the first 14 days of the challenge I took my self-imposed target of 500 words per day, and smashed it, averaging at somewhere nearer 800-900 words. One day I even topped 1000 – I think that was on a day that I thought I would struggle.

Halfway through exactly, on Day 15 of the challenge I had first wobble. I only managed 100 words. My excuse would be that I was busy having to do something else for band, but in truth I think I had a bit of, if not writers’ block, a stuck period. I had just finished one chapter, and hadn’t got stuck into the next, and I floundered.

Today though, I’ve got stuck back into it, and I’m back in the NaNoWriMo game…

Of course, this is a thoroughly unscientific judgement to make. Equally unscientific is that the majority of participants are writing on their laptops (and thus, their wordcounts are exact). My wordcounts are approximations based on rough calculations…

My writing style is still, in this age of computers and electronic communications, longhand. See the picture below? This is me surpassing my conservative (but probably realistic) target of 500 words (I’ve actually gone on two more pages and started a new chapter!). You probably find this even more surprising when you hear that I work in web and social and digital media by day.

The truth is though that this is a system that always works. It’s a platform that doesn’t rely on internet connections or power supplies. It never crashes and its only a mild inconvenience if you drop it. I have a longer (possibly guest post elsewhere) brewing about my writing everywhere approach – I really should get down to it.

What’s your writing style? Are you ever tempted to give up on the laptop and return to the trusted pen and paper?

The start of November also means that it is the start of the annual NaNoWriMo. I’ve been aware of the National Novel Writing Month for, umm, probably about as long as I’ve been keeping an online journal – tots up the years – so that’ll be about 13 years now!! I’ve never done it because I don’t think that I could, practically write 1666 words every day for 30 days.

This year though, I’m going to try. Try at least to make some sizeable chunk out of my remaining word count. I’m going for about 500 words per day (more if I can) which equates to 3 pages of my handwritten notebook. I’m going to try, and see where this gets me. Hopefully it might get me to within shooting distance of The End.

31303 / 80000 words. 39% done!

And I have been writing lots, progressing the story on quite a bit. Or at least, I think I have progressed it on. Here, I hope that it’s natural to go between feelings of “I’ve got it” to “I’ve lost it” when ‪writing‬ The ‪Sequel‬? ‪I hear that it is.

I didn’t write my book in a visit to the Gruffalo’s woods, but I felt that I ought to have done!

22026 / 80000 words. 28% done!

12409 / 80000 words. 16% done!

11293 / 80000 words. 14% done!

I’m really enjoying telling the other side of the story, and getting my Lewis-fix through flashbacks to their happy, if unconventional, childhood together.

7789 / 80000 words. 10% done!

And then suddenly it was lunchtime, so I made myself a nice chicken and ham salad, and sat outside and munched it whilst reading another chapter of The Story of Alice. Then I switched back to the novel du jour, Rosie Garland’s Vixen (which I’m discovering is a curious, very well written, but not entirely pleasant tale. And then after a chapter of that, I set to my own writing….

Another 1000 words or so done, and another chapter completed. If I can get another 1000 words written over the course of the weekend (weekend’s are usually less productive than weekdays, I find) then I’ll achieved a nice 10% of my novel written, which I think is a very good start.

 

 

7054 / 80000 words. 9% done!

What I’m not so sure about is at what point Louis is going to re-enter the story, but then when he left book one at the end of part two I wasn’t sure exactly when he would reappear. The alternate Lewis has made some appearances in flashback and I’m enjoying the ‘other side of the story’ nature of alot of this book.

5943 / 80000 words. 7% done!

I’ve also been reading more today. Vixen, the book I chose to read based on the cover being designed by a ‘social media friend’ and sister of a colleague, is proving to be an intriguing and enjoyable read. Written in almost poetic beauty about villagers in Devon at the time of the Black Death, I was amused to find that its author Rosie Garland was a singer in a band who sung on the soundtrack to the 1980s film Some Kind of Wonderful.

Inspired by this week’s Radio 4 Book of the Week, I’ve also started reading the non-fiction book The Story of Alice by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, partly because I’ve discovered that Mr Tumnal 2: The Imaginary Wife has echoes of Lewis Carroll and of Alice.

One of the joys of holidays is discovering by chance a really good book by way of BBC Radio 4’s Book Of The Week. I don’t know what was wrong with the advertised programme, but I’m really happy that it’s The Story Of Alice. Whilst I was in town I popped in to our local Indie bookstore and had a look at it. It’s a hefty tome… I think that it might be one for the kindle!

Today has been a glorious Spring day with warmth and sun, and I felt the need to reacquaint myself with my knees and dig out my shorts for the first time this year. It’s been one of those days when I’ve possibly not been that active, but I feel healthy because I’ve been outside all day. And I have been productive too – another 1000 words or so done. This novel is beginning to come together in mind.

 

 

5047 / 80000 words. 6% done!

It was one of those perfect days where I was productive (did washing, touched up paintwork in the house, re-oiled some bookshelves), relaxed (read some more of a good book in the garden), and I still had time to lose myself for an afternoon in my own writing – and in the garden and the Spring sunshine too.

3761 / 80000 words. 5% done!

 

 

2659 / 80000 words. 3% done!

Peter met the stares of his friends with a grin. ‘How many books are published each year? How many books have ever been published? There’s no such thing as an original story – just an original way of telling the story.’

3788 / 80000 words. 5% done!

And In Your Own Words is set in a very different world, where I can describe Oxford just as I know and love it but where it exists on the water like in Venice. It’s fun imagining the great St Giles Lake at the centre of the city, and coming up with names for streets that are now canals…

3449 / 80000 words. 4% done!

Having never been to a choir before, it seems to have been a success for her, and so it seems that I will be getting an equivalent evening of Thomas-time to devote to writing my next novel, In Your Own Words (working title). My first novel, all in all, took about 9 years to be finished, and Mr Tumnal, five… I’m determined that my third novel will be nowhere near that. Tonight, I’m heading on the way with another 700 words in the bag.

2669 / 80000 words. 3% done!

This week I’ve finally found my novel voice again, working out how to tell the story that I first came up with about eight years ago when I went to the pub after work with Ros and her friends about a guy who has his novel stolen along with his laptop only to read it in the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts submitted to him year’s later.

Oh, and Puck features in this novel too! Not sure if he’s working for Oberon or Titania this time, or neither this time!

1934 / 80000 words. 2% done!

The fact that my friend Jane (who actually coincidentally features along with her blog as a non-appearing cameo in the book) has read bits of it at various points along the way, and that we’ve talked bits of it over in great detail and she likes it, doesn’t actually help in taking away the fears of the writer.

Angella Graff is somebody who I have got to know only after she reviewed my last book with no prior knowledge of it, and loved it. As well as writing books herself and doing book reviews she also offers editing services to other Indie Authors. Although by the time she read Mr Tumnal, she knew a bit more about me than before she was still coming to my new story with no prior knowledge of what the book was about or what I was trying to achieve. At this point of time there isn’t even anything so much as a synopsis to go on! (note to self: must attend to this…) So, imagine my delight when I read:

I really loved your style of writing, it’s different from your first book, but not so much so that you seem like a different author, which I love.  It gives a different flavor to your writing but doesn’t give that sort of writing culture shock that some people experience when reading a totally different genre.

I guess this is draft two of my story. Draft one would be in the handwritten original in the the three leather-bound volumes and draft two would be the process of typing it up, and then the rough pass that I did to sort out any inconsistencies. It does seem that that draft is actually a very clean draft though, from the sound of the beta read…

Mr Tumnal is a very interesting story.  It plays out as a character piece, the character living the life he always wanted at the same time interposed with the life he really has.  When these pieces start to come together, his life gets crazy and random.  The prose tightens up about 20% through the story, so you start to get the ideas that there are two simultaneous stories happening.  It’s very organic and reads very well, though the early chapter work might benefit from a little more tuning, this way even though you’re not sure what’s going on, you don’t feel so completely lost.  I think the best way to do this is add a few touchstones during the real/fake scenes so that the reader can empathize a bit earlier.  I think the heavy focus at the beginning to the music and its importance is a little overplayed.  It is a huge part of the story and plot, but it might serve to be touched on a little less frequently.  Overall there’s a delicate balance and interplay working here, and any and all edits need to be done carefully.  I would have someone focus on bridging and connective text to make sure that the ideas move from one piece to another to help reduce the feeling of being adrift.

I’m now decided that its time to further go down the route of becoming something more akin to a professional author… and get the work content/copy edited as being the place to really find out where the story is not working. This is altogether, very exciting. I feel like Mr Tumnal’s curious little tale is finally going to emerge into the world in the not to distant future.

So I’ve also done a quick’n’dirty conversion to eBook format. I say, quick’n’dirty – I could have been quicker but even when its for my own benefit I still have my own exacting standards to deliver. It has style, and chapter breaks, and a full table of contents. I even had to give it a rudimentary cover (of sorts). And I’ve started to read it too…

There are errors. I’ve got quite a bit of present-tense slipping in. That’s to be expected though, for some of these early chapters were written at the same time as The End Of All Worlds was still a wip. I’ve also identified a number or Louis/Lewis inconsistencies that I’ve had to sort out. It’s therefore not even yet ready for my first of Beta readers to have a go at (and laught at, and tear it shreds), but encouragingly story-wise it still hangs together. It’s still all good. I’m still loving the story of Mr Tumnal.

The way that Critique Circle works, is that in order to submit chapters for review you need to build up credits through critiquing (or critting) other people’s stories. Being a critter (as is the parlance) and giving crits, does in itself improve one’s own ability to evaluate your own writing to the point that you can spot the problem areas before others get to find them.

Critting takes time though, and I think that’s why I fell out of active usage of the site, but I still owe the site alot, and I owe it to the site that I put my next novel, Mr Tumnal through the critiquing progress. To this aim, I have reactivated my membership of the site, got back in the critting arena, and given some crits, and I’ve submitted the first two chapters of Mr Tumnal’s story to the queue for the week after next. We shall see what happens next…

The way that Critique Circle works, is that in order to submit chapters for review you need to build up credits through critiquing (or critting) other people’s stories. Being a critter (as is the parlance) and giving crits, does in itself improve one’s own ability to evaluate your own writing to the point that you can spot the problem areas before others get to find them.

Critting takes time though, and I think that’s why I fell out of active usage of the site, but I still owe the site alot, and I owe it to the site that I put my next novel, Mr Tumnal through the critiquing progress. To this aim, I have reactivated my membership of the site, got back in the critting arena, and given some crits, and I’ve submitted the first two chapters of Mr Tumnal’s story to the queue for the week after next. We shall see what happens next…

I’ve worked that now and written the what only amounts  a couple of hundred words that takes meonto the next stage. And now of course I’mliving my story again instead of it.

79741 / 90000 words. 89% done!

78906 / 80000 words. 99% done!

Clearly Mr Tumnal has other ideas. I am into the final quarter and building to its disturbing conclusion, but even so I think I’m going to over shoot the 80k and some. I like how its going though.

72190 / 80000 words. 90% done!

68803 / 80000 words. 86% done!

66051 / 80000 words. 83% done!

Kathryn looked down at the order of service and saw the music was being provided by the Dumas Quartet. She smiled as she remembered her recent re-reading of Fire & Hemlock and the string quartet of which Tom Lynn was part of. She looked up to watch them, wondering who was taking place of Tom on cello. As she sat and watched and listened, a brush of fabric and a rush of cold draught swept in next to her—

65259 / 80000 words. 82% done!

63480 / 80000 words. 79% done!

60999 / 80000 words. 76% done!

55797 / 80000 words. 70% done!

53817 / 80000 words. 67% done!

I’ve actually written a lot more than this, so much in fact that I have had to order my third leather bound Italian wrap journal this week to continue the writing. I am therefore behind on my typing up, but I will get there.

For me, I get to enjoy writing in my references to the stories that I love, and working real, published references with works of my own invention and real, unpublished, references to those of my friends…

Next up was a present from Eleanor. A preliminary feel around the edges told Kathryn it was a book; and a slim hardback at that. She peeled back the tape and unfolded the wrapping. The cover struck her immediately. It was a black and white photograph with some selective tinting of a field in autumn with a dark silhouette of a hemlock stalk set against a misty, smokey background and some faint blurs that could be people. J. Rawson’s Book of Essays & Stories – the title and author were blended into one.

‘She works in one of the university libraries in Wren Hoe, I think,’ said Eleanor.

Kathryn nodded, unable to take her gaze away from the picture.

‘I’ve read a couple of bits in it,’ continued Eleanor, ‘Thought of you – Rawson evidently shares your same passion for old myth and reworking stories which she then talks about along with other books in her essays.’

Kathryn opened the beautifully bound and typeset book, leafing slowly through the pages to the contents list.

‘There’s a brilliant essay on Diana Wynne Jones, and then her own version of Tam Lin – you’ve got to read The Hyacinth Girl first.’

52001 / 80000 words. 65% done!

I’m enjoying your story, it’s quite a mystery. I still feel as if the narration is quite stream of consciousness because of the shifts in tense.

Umm, actually, if there are changes of tenses then that’s a mistake on my part – brought on by me writing this novel in the more conventional past tense whilst my last novel was in present tense. Hardly really surprising that I’m getting myself in a muddle really. However the rest of the review filled me with squeeful joy…

This makes his memory-lapses/reality-losses all the more mysterious and unnerving. Some of it is a dream, perhaps? That would explain why he ignores Sarah and why she has such an adult voice. She is far more grown-up than him and encourages him to take care of himself. I fear she and Amanda are dead and he’s a bit nuts. All will become clear! I love the way he justifies his interest in Kathrine by saying they share the same language. They SO don’t talk the same at all :o) but they seem to fancy each other, which is nice. For once something concrete seems to be happening for Louis.

I’m loving the interpretation that is going on here; the questions and the guesswork as to what is going on. As long as I can carry the reader through this convincingly to what is actually going on then I am really happy with this response.

51585 / 80000 words. 64% done!

In her dreams she lived the story again, and she was both storyteller, and Janet. She traveled away from home through the forbidden woods – why do these stories always involve dark and foreboding woods – to meet with Tam Lin, with the voice and face of Louis. Back home an the old knight – a wistful, smiling version of her own dad – advises her of a herbal remedy for her injury.

51084 / 80000 words. 64% done!

37106 / 80000 words. 46% done!

The words have poured out of me the last couple of days and already I am eight pages into the new book and its starting to feel pleasantly used…

36066 / 80000 words. 45% done!

34778 / 80000 words. 43% done!

34451 / 80000 words. 43% done!

33821 / 80000 words. 42% done!

33138 / 80000 words. 41% done!

32676 / 80000 words. 41% done!

32465 / 80000 words. 41% done!

32164 / 80000 words. 40% done!

“Nine years. In January we’ll have been working here for nine years.”