On the fifth day of Christmas

I thought it would be tough to meet today's wordcount target of 5,000 words, but as soon as I got into the flow of the story, it flew from my fingers onto the keyboard.  And I thoroughly enjoyed today's challenge - from dealing with switching viewpoints as well as timeframes, to developing my characters further, and finding new sides to them.

I beat my wordcount challenge once again, but this time by 14 little words. So total wordcount today was 5,014 words, and  I punched it out in roughly under 4 hours, averaging at over 1,000 words an hour. I still need to speed it up a bit, although sometimes that raises the inevitable question of speed vs. quality. At the moment, I'm getting the words out at a reasonable pace, and the quality seems pretty good. I wonder if I speed up, will the quality drop? I guess I'll have to try and push myself and see what happens. After all, the whole point of this exercise was purely to produce a rough first draft. 

Still I'm amazed that I'm actually doing it, meeting the challenge head on. Tomorrow I push it up a notch, with a target of 6,000 words. Onward and upwards.

Lorraine x 

On the fourth day of Christmas

I re-engineered my previous schedule, and started afresh today as the fourth day of Christmas with a target of 4,000 words.  I knew it would be tough, my biggest daily wordcount challenge so far, and that I'd get little time or peace to do it. So I started with my hour's lunch at work, twenty minutes while I waited in the reception at my local GP practice, finished off with 2 hours uninterrupted tonight, and I've done it! And in fact, I've not only met my wordcount challenge for the day but I've exceeded it. Total wordcount for the day is 4,136 words. The birds were definitely calling!

Tomorrow, on the fifth day, my target is 5,000 words, although I doubt I'll get rewarded with any gold rings. And I'm probably going to have to get even more creative to meet the challenge.

Onwards and upwards,

Lorraine x

12 days of Christmas challenge - getting back on track

After failing to gain a foothold yesterday, I feel I'm getting back on track. I managed 2,037 words tonight and whilst I procrastinated at the beginning, I soon found my pace. So although I've the challenge so far has seen me slip and the stutter, I've managed in total 6,575 words in the last 8 days, but I'm roughly 4 days behind where I should be.

My plan now that I've found my pace again is to treat tomorrow as Day 4 of the challenge and to attempt 4,000 words. It's a big leap from what I've done, but I won't get any words down unless I set my sights high.  I know that in order to succeed I'll have to try and find a place I can be on my own without interruptions, but the likelihood of that happening now, particularly around this Christmas period, is slim to none. I guess I'll just have to find a quiet place in my mind.  Fingers crossed that it works.

Wearing the wrong footwear

I tried to get a foot hold, but I'm obviously wearing the wrong footwear tonight. Only managed 441 words and god was it painful!  I'm tired, and just not feeling it tonight, so I'll try again tomorrow.

Trying to get off the slippery slope

Last week I embarked on a wordcount challenge which I called the 12 days of Christmas challenge.  The main crux of the challenge was to write 78,000 words in 12 days right up to the twilight hours of Christmas Eve.

I'm sorry and both glad to say that I failed to get past day 3 of the challenge. I had a very good reason why I stopped at day 3 - an agent interested in seeing the full manuscript of Delve. Woo Hoo! And so for the next two days, I set about turning the nuts and bolts on my manuscript to give both Delve and myself as a writer the best chance possible to secure representation.

I do not know if this latest development will help me to achieve my Christmas wish, but what I do know is that since I've subbed the full manuscript, my determination on the wordcount challenge I'd set myself has slipped and now I'm skidding down that slope.  A social with friends, a day of feeling rough (not as a result of the social I must add), and the fact that I now have a house guest staying throughout the Christmas and New Year period, have all contributed to this slippery demise. 

I need to find a foot hold so I can climb back up that slope. I will endeavour to try and seek that hold tonight, and finish my day 3 target, roughly over 2,000 words. And though I think my original target of 78,000 words is out of reach now for Christmas Eve, I will continue my daily journey and see where it gets me. 

Now I've just got to hold on tight.  ;)

On the third day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas, I only managed 947 words of the 3,000 word target. It was not through lack of effort, or want, but merely through distraction. There has been a development on Delve which requires my full attention for now, but I will resume the 12 days of Christmas hopefully tomorrow or the next day, with renewed enthusiasm.

Still my 947 words were clocked in about 30 minutes. Getting faster at least.

Lorraine x

On the second day of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas, I hit my 2,000 word target in at a shave under 2 hours, averaging 1,000 words an hour. I sat in my reclining armchair which is much more comfortable than the kitchen table, with telly off , laptop on lap, and husband out at the pub.

The first hour the words flew as I got into some unexpected dialogue between three of my characters which actually worked well, the second hour was definitely harder and every so often I counted my wordcount to see how much further I had to go. I ended up at 2,034 words. No partridges or turtle doves (can anyone tell me what a turtle dove is, I have no idea), but plenty of words down. 

I must say that this process is quite exhilarating. I'm having to be very disciplined about it, not stopping until I've reached my target, but if I'm ever going to get up to 12,000 words, I need to be hitting more like 2,000 words an hour. There's plenty left in me yet, so I'll keep on trying, and reporting my progress. 

Lorraine x  

On the first day of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas, against a target of 1,000 words, I managed to cross the finish line at a modest 1,150 words. I sat at the kitchen table, with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice for company, and took 5 minutes to roughly plot out the structure of the next few scenes, before getting down to it.

It took me 90 minutes to churn out 1,150 words, at an average rate of 766 words per hour.  A bit slower than I'd like but still the words that came out were pretty decent, and brought me to a close on Chapter 4 and into the opening scene of Chapter 5.

So day one is at a close, and I'm glad to say I haven't yet spotted a partridge in a pear tree. I had a tree in my scene, a big oak tree but no birds.

Twelve Days of Christmas

This morning, with my short story near to completion, I knew that I'd have to motivate myself to pick up The Curse where I left it, at around 16,600 words. And then I realised that we only have 12 days till the eve of Christmas, and a challenge formed in my mind.  

It started with a very simple concept  - 12 days until Christmas, 12 days of writing. And then I thought if I used this opportunity as a countdown to Christmas, using a daily multiple of 1,000 words, i.e. producing 1,000 words on day 1, 2,000 words on day 2 and so on until day 12 itself with a target of 12,000 words, I could well have myself a rough first draft by Christmas.  In twelve short days I could accomplish a wordcount of 78,000 words, and adding that to what I've already done, I'd end up with a first draft of around 94,000 to 95,000 words.

Sounds exciting in principle, right?  But I know that if I am going to achieve this master feat, I will have to sacrifice certain things - watching Masterchef and Grey's Anatomy, surfing the net, and most of all, sleep.  I also appreciate that as the wordcount targets increase, I will struggle to get the words down without some kind of technique. But this is the funny thing - I came across another blog post today, was referred to it by a WriteWords friend - http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html

It's written by author Rachel Aaron and explains the methodology she adopted to go from 2,000 words to 10,000 words. Now I'm not one to ignore the synchronicities in life, so I'm going to give her system a go. And although I may not have gone to the same extremes of plotting as she has, I think I have a decent plot and structure to give me enough of a steer to work with.

I think I can do it, or at least try. Call me ambitious or foolish but 12 days of sacrifice will I think be worth it, if at the end of it I have not only a first draft, but can wake up Christmas day knowing that I've done it and can enjoy time with family and friends, eating turkey and Christmas cake, and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. And when the Christmas break is over, I can sit down, print out my first draft, and look at it with fresh eyes.

So it starts tonight. It's late, and 1,000 words seems a long way off but I will at the end of each day report on my progress.  If you are working on a wip and want to join me, please do. You can join me on Fast First Draft or simply comment on this blog on your progress. Your mulitples can be in the thousands, or hundreds. At the end of the day, whether you write 7,800 words or 78,000, you'll be that much further on.

Wish me luck. Lorraine x

Distraction - Remedy or Curse?

Whilst still banging on the door with my first novel, Delve, I thought what better way to take my mind off the painfully long submission process than to start a new novel.  I knew it wouldn't stop me checking my email every half an hour, or ringing my husband from work to ask if anything had come in the post, but it would provide some form of distraction.

And so whilst I knew that Delve in my mind was the first novel in a series, what I couldn't predict was whether it would be successful or not. Not wanting to put all my eggs in one basket, I started out with a completely different kind of project. Not another young adult novel, but an adult horror with supernatural undertones. And not first person POV, but multiple person POVs.

Little did I know how much a challenge The Curse (working title) would prove to be. I had a slow start, and then tried to boost the wordcount in NaNoWriMo style but failed miserably.  After a serious amount of blood, sweat and tears, I think I ended up at a wordcount near 14,000 words. Some of it was just a regurgitation of a previous draft or notes; other parts of it were new and completely unstructured, and totally pants; but when I stripped it all back, there were parts that showed some real promise (or so I'd like to think).

I think part of the problem is that The Curse is technically more challenging than my first novel. I'm not only trying to tackle multiple POVs, but switching timeframes. Oh, and I've created a completely fictitious Island.

Feeling somewhat despondent about my new wip, I tried to breathe life into it by writing a few key scenes, which I could join together later in a kind of frenzied dot to dot. It worked for a while, until I found new distractions - like blogging (she says with guilt in her heart), and most recently a short story competition. Now I'll admit freely that I haven't tackled a short story in years, and it's bloody hard. If I have a muse in heaven, I think they are taking great pleasure in punishing me right now. I will finish the short story as I am not the type to give in easily, but when it is done, I will return to The Curse and after I have kicked and screamed, I will beg it's forgiveness for such folly. 

All I want for Christmas is ....

An agent or publisher, ideally both. I’ve been down this road well trodden, and it seems to have no end. I’ve been subbing Delve since the Summer with little success. I get the standard rejections that many receive, but in amongst them I find a personal note or comment that motivates me to keep going, and keeps me true to the vision.

I have a submissions tracker that records my journey. To date, this is how it reads:

First tranche, sent in Jul 11 - 9 rejections (including 1 positive), 2 non-responses.

Second tranche, sent out at the end of Oct11 – 3 rejections (including 1 positive), 6 outstanding

Note. After the first tranche, I took the opportunity to review my initial submission, took some constructive advice and reworked my submission. I’ve had a low response rate to date on the second tranche, but I’m still hanging onto the possibility that someone will see the potential in Delve as I do.

But whilst I may exude calmness and confidence, beneath my exterior something simmers. A kind of aggravation and impatience, tempered with humility. I knew the road was long but I’d hoped to, at least, catch a glimpse of the final destination, but it twists and turns before me, the prize frustratingly out of reach. And now I feel as if I’m at a crossroads, seeing new paths materialising in front of me that I hadn’t fully considered before. One of those paths could lead me to a publisher, another to self publication, the last leading me down a competitive route.

But even they have their pitfalls. Let’s take the agent out of the equation for a minute. How do you approach a publisher directly? The first step, putting together a professional query letter is probably the easiest part. But then how do you choose who you are going to target? And once you’ve found your target, how do you find the right contact to approach?

There is so much information out there – in books, on forums, or generally on the Net - but sifting through it all to find those gems of practical guidance is something of a nightmare. How do you distinguish between the leading market publishers, the indies, the e-book publishers and the so called vanity publishers. And what do you think your novel deserves? What platform do you want to launch it on? How do you want not only your novel, but you as a writer, to be perceived.

My first instinct was to go to the publishers that would be on the top of anyone’s most wanted listed, but I found that most would only accept submissions via an agent. Then to the indies who seemed more approachable. But in amongst it all, I had in my mind - Who is the right publisher for me? And am I the right kind of author for them? It’s very much a two way street, much as I imagine it would be to develop a relationship with an agent. And a quick glance at a publisher’s website, at the types of authors and work they represent can tell you a lot. Even the design of the site itself, and of the book covers speaks volumes to me.

I thought I’d have a top ten list of publishers by the time I’d finished my research, but in the end I had about six. Three that I couldn’t approach without an agent, two indies, and one that looks like an e-publisher and seems like a bad choice. So I’ve bitten the bullet and sent a query to one of the independents, the one I feel is a best fit for me and hopefully for them.

And now it’s a case of wait and see, will this new path lead anywhere? I don’t know, but what I’ve fathomed is that we as aspiring authors seek agent representation for good reason. To steer us down the right path, to avoid getting stuck in a ditch, but most of all to find our way to freedom, to that final destination. I hope I find mine.

A smidgeon of success

I finally received my first published work in the post. I've been looking out for it for a month now, barely able to contain my nerves or excitement. So when I got home from work, and found it lying on the bed, it was a bit of an anti-climax. 

My poem, Hurt Me, appears on page 252 of the Poetry Rivals' Collection 2011 - Putting Pen to Paper. I wrote it in one of my darker moments, in a flood of tears, after an incident with my five year old son which left me emotionally crushed. I never thought it would amount to anything, but after positive reviews from my fellow writers and poets at Writewords, my husband suggested that I should enter it in the Poetry Rivals competition. What did I have to lose?

I didn't think it would get anywhere, let alone in one of Poetry Rival's anthologies. I've never been one to write poetry. I like the long haul and the sense of achievement that comes from writing a novel. But here it is. I still find myself welling up when I read it.

Hurt Me

New life begins.
So much hope.
Tiny fingers, toes.
So content.

Five years later.
A child that doesn't understand emotion or pain.
For a second, I fool myself:
Boys take longer.
But when he strikes at me,
It's at my heart.
The boy I brought into this world is lost.
Angry.
Disconnected.
He doesn't know that I love him, what he does.
My dreams and hopes come crashing down.

I don't know
What the future holds,
What he'll become.
But as he gets older,
He'll get stronger.
It scares me,
The teenager inside the boy.

Tears of joy have turned to sorrow.
No matter how much I love him,
He may never understand.
My only son.
My monkey man.
My everything.

Hurt me if you will.
I'll take his pain.
But give him half a chance:
Let him live a normal life.

Free his mind.

Hurt Me.

About 'Delve'

A ritual born out of love, a seventeen year veil of secrecy finally lifted between two worlds.

As Rowan Shaw approaches her seventeenth birthday, she learns that the one person she should trust above all others has lied to her. Again. And then a chain of events catapults her into a world that she never knew existed, one where evil lives and breathes amongst humanity. And without consciously willing it, she begins to delve into their souls.

As she’s forced to come to terms with her new powers and as they continue to evolve, Rowan’s life becomes entangled with those whose souls she’s touched. And whilst trying to protect her identity, she also finds herself having to protect those she loves.

I've been subbing this out to agents since July 2011, and have come to a number of conclusions. The whole process from writing the first draft of a novel to the second, third, and fourth draft, subbing it out, and waiting for responses is painfully slow. And the non-stock responses at times seem very random.

I think in reality what happens is that the success of a submission depends on:

1. Quality of the submission.
2. Agent's preference
3. Agent's mood
4. A big dollop of luck

Anyone got any good luck rituals out there that I could use? No rabbit's feet though please.  I couldn't look at my bunnies in the same way again, seeing the fear in their eyes, imagining their silent cries of 'murderer'.  Pots of leprechaun gold are most welcome though. 

The Calling

I have found myself stumbling through life for the most part as I imagine most people do. I believe experiences make you who you are, but if I strip all of that back to my childhood, I think deep down I am the same little girl who sent off a story to Ladybird Publishing about evil goblins that lurked in her garden.

It's the stuff in between, the experiences that steer you down a different path, each twist and turn taking you further away from who you really want to be that get in the way. And now here I am. For the most part, I have a wonderful husband who, as the years roll on and life takes over, I unwittingly forget to appreciate. And then there's our three beautiful children who I thought we'd never have, and who give me so much love and laughter, they sing to my soul. I've worked hard in my life and have a good job, one that I enjoy, but the calling is strong.

For the last year or so, I've heeded that call, written a novel. And I've been looking for representation without much success. I get the standard rejections, but in amongst them, I find a note of encouragement - a few words scrawled on a compliment slip to give me hope. I'll keep trying because that's who I am. I don't give up. I take constructive criticism on the chin, and rework my wip, whipping it into better shape.

Why do I do it? The little girl within me still lives, but her imagination has matured somewhat or so I like to think. Past all of the joy, grief and disappointment, I still find myself concocting characters in my head, real or imagined, light or dark. My subconscious creates full conversations and scenes in my mind, fuelled by silence or music or the somewhat long monotonous drive to work. It could just be, of course, that I'm slightly crazy imagining other people and other worlds, that it stemmed from childhood as a way to escape reality, but I'd like to think that it's more than that. I will continue to listen to the calling, to act out the fantasies playing in my mind onto paper, until I find an agent or publisher willing to listen to the madness.

Wish me luck.