Doing That Thing I Hate,

Yeah, I know that could be a very, very long list of things but I really do hate writing about not writing, but sometimes that is what it comes to. 

I wanted to write this, because even though I have been writing every day it hasn't been a blog, but I have managed to publish a blog every day and that's been feeling pretty good. Even though I haven't necessarily been publicising them every day - even when I have had photos prepared to post with them since I HATE wordy Insta stories! - because there has been a lot going on. Which I'm not going to talk about. 

Today was my first day in the office this year and it was A LOT to say the least. It meant getting up a lot earlier than I am comfortable with, trying to leave the house with what I needed for the day (and failing not because of forgetting anything, but just not being able to anticipate everything I was going to want or need) spending too long driving and that not being hugely pleasant, realising in the middle of the day something was itching and I wasn't sure if it was my skin or something that just felt itchy in my mind, or in my soul or whatever, and so even though I took my laptop with me to the office (I don't mean the work one, though I obviously did take that one) with the vague intention of writing something on my lunch break, I didn't even take it out of my bag whilst I was there. I was trying to think what I could write whilst I was on the way home and honestly, it was honestly the least inspired I have felt for the whole of this year. I felt empty; devoid of all thoughts and opinions, and let's face it, that's not like me at all. 

What changed was the closer I got to home, once I had collected the pooch from my parents, the more I felt I was getting my groove back. That's not to say I walked into the house and felt like I could write a novel in five days, or crack out a poem in under twenty minutes, but I felt a bit more like my normal self. I'm still overwhelmed and I still feel like there's an army of ants crawling across my skin, but there's a bit more "Charlie Flavoured Normality", not to be confused with the regular kind, mixed in there. I've sent the pooch to bed early (and yes, I feel very guilty for that, got into bed with a thermos-type tumbler of tea (I don't have anything against mugs, I just don't like drinking cold tea and it's too cold at the moment for me to drink hot tea, because I forget about it), my pjs on and my electric blanket keeping me warm, and I'm writing from my bed. It's not the best idea in terms of sleep, but it does mean I will get this published before midnight and I think that will soothe some of my ruffled up feathers as well.

I even thought about outlining the plot of another novel (yes, I know, finish those you are currently writing before getting distracted by any more!) before I realised it was a bit like a film that I love, without the intention of being, so decided not to bother. 

I'm Not Actually As Disorganised As I Look,

 It would be very easy to walk into my house, you know, if you were invited, and think, jees, you have no organisational structure to your life at all, and honestly, you would be forgiven, at least to some degree, for thinking that. I am a bit scatterbrained. I forget things a lot, I get confused a lot and inevitably I walk out of the house with the feeling that I'm going without something literally every time I go anywhere, and sometimes, it's a whole list. Most of the time, that is okay, because for most things you can replace them pretty easily where you're going. I regularly get to camps early because I know I will need to drive off and find something that I have realised I have forgotten. I'm also good at remembering things other people will have forgotten and other people do that for me and generally, we all muddle along pretty well. There will always be a time when you forget mugs, well, there was that time I forgot mugs anyway, there will always be someone who forgets a chair. There will always be multiple people who forget chairs.

Organisation is something I try to achieve but unfortunately there is no one linear way to do things, so inevitably things go missing not because they're stored illogically or in the 'wrong place' but because I can't remember what I thought the right place was when I actually stored it. You know the old joke of keeping something so safe even I don't know where it is, that's me, a hundred percent. I was recently looking for the other book by Dr Richard Shepherd 'Unnatural Causes' whilst reading 'The Seven Ages of Death' - ridiculously I started reading this because I had to wait for Christmas to get the next Bridgerton book, and this was the next "logical" choice - and I was somewhat obsessed with the idea that it was on one of the bookshelves, effectively filed with other books which were the sort that aren't best sellers, but almost like current W H Smith most recommended or something, which would have put it in the same place as 'The Hate You Give' and Hibo Wardere's 'Cut'. I kept looking in the same place, partly because when I last thought I had lost a book, that was where it turned up. Annoyingly, I could see the previous missing title - my beloved 'Before I Go To Sleep' by S J Watson, but I could not find 'Unnatural Causes'. I'm pretty impressed though because I knew I had it. Like, I KNEW. There have been multiple occasions over my life where I have ended up with two copies of the same book because I forgot I had it already, so I impressed myself knowing I had it, even though I was irritated as fluff that I didn't know where it was.

This isn't just some lengthy thing so I can go on about all of the wonderful books that are taking up the shelves of my library guest room merge storage area, but just simply trying to explain that I was looking in a very logical place for it, not just for one reason - it was one of those books that was highly recommended at the time - but also because it was a place I had previously located something which had been missing. It turned out that the damn thing was in the equally logical position of being the opposite side of the room in a stack which sits atop the books which are properly shelved - I refuse to believe I have too many books, I just don't have a proper way to store them - with the likes of Adam Kay's 'This Is Going to Hurt'. Why? Because I sorted the books on that side of the room by genre, or at least started to, and so there is a whole section on crime fiction, there is a whole bit on serial killers, there's all the war time stories like 'Bread, Jam and a Borrowed Pram', everything animal related, Jojo Moyes has her own section, there's the LGBTQIA+ fiction stack and there is the pile of medical books. There's a few different nurses' stories, there's a prison doctor's story, and there is one of the most recent books that ripped my heart out, 'When Breath Becomes Air'. 

Somehow, despite the fact that there was some emotional turmoil deciding where 'When Breath Becomes Air' should live because I was torn between putting it with 'The Fault In Our Stars' to have a little epic books that made me cry hysterically section, having it with the other medical books where it ended or putting it on one of these gorgeous house shaped shelves that are above the guest bed, because that's where some of my very favourite books are. A few NaNo novels live up there - yes, including the proof copy of mine - 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' is up there, there's a few Jodi Picoult's and the only reason Jojo Moyes didn't end up there is because she's written too many books for me to put them all up there and I can't bare to separate them. 

Okay, that did turn into a bit of a tangent. 

The point is, even when I am very deliberate and very specific with trying to be organised, it doesn't always work, particularly when it comes to issues with object permanence; if I can't see it, it doesn't exist, but it becomes an, if I can't see it, I can't find it, because who knows what system I filed it by. So many things come into this and it's also one of those 'if I put it down it is lost' situations which is why I need to figure out what I'm doing with something when I'm looking at it, or I need to do a task when I pick it up, because if I put it down, God only knows when I will find it again to sort it, and some things just don't work like that, do they? 

It's That Time of Year Again,

Ah, October. How have you come around so fast? I would swear it was only a small number of weeks ago that we were ushering in 2018 and now we're almost putting on it's coat ready for it to leave. Whilst I will, probably in December, be writing a 'where did the year go' post, this is not it. 

I've always loved October. It's my brother's birthday, which was amazing when I was little because my parents called it my un-Birthday (and the same for my brother on my birthday) so we got a present on each other's birthdays. It was kind of cool. After that my favourite holiday was always Halloween. I loved dressing up as "something scary" and I loved the chocolate and the sweets. I still love Halloween. I still love dressing up. I never really hit the Americanised "slutty animal" costume phase, but my costumes tend to be comical in a different way these days, such as the university Pikachu, because a friend was dressed as Ash and it gave my an excuse to jump on his back and scream Pikachu all evening. I stopped short of getting those zapper rings and giving people electric shocks, though deeply regretted it later because that would have been awesome. 

Several years ago though, when I was about 16, I met my soulmate in competition form and started a long term relationship with National Novel Writing Month. It takes over my life in November and has been responsible for some of the very best (and one of the very worst) times in my life. The best advice I can ever give anyone - BACK UP YOUR NOVEL!! CONSTANTLY!! Since that day, October 31st is terrifying and exciting for a whole other reason. As soon as midnight strikes, the witches and wizards and aliens and heart throbs and everything else come out and the literary abandon begins. We do crazy things like eating pizza for breakfast and staying up all night writing. We forsake our communications with friends, family and other loved ones for a single goal - write the novel.

I've started thinking of October now as NaNoAdvent. It is the time where I stock up on pizzas and snacks that will hopefully tide me through at least the first week (though normally I tear through them in a mad panic in the first few hours...)

So this is it - Nano2018 is nearly upon us. It's time to brace yourself!

Wonders Will Never Cease,

Today has been pretty extraordinary. Well, yesterday by now. 

Since the tragic loss of the novel, I have been really awful at convincing myself to sit down and write for a decent period of time. I have been terrible at the blogging thing for a while as well so to get a blog (two now) and some novel done within the same day is kind of incredible. I keep drinking gin though and I should really switch to coffee because I am starting to get a headache from being tired. I can also feel my eyelids dropping which is never conducive to getting words on the screen (which I genuinely called hypothetical paper in my head before I could find the word screen).

Part of me knows it's because I love the characters. They're incredible and I love them and they are really easy to write about, but I think it's also because this is the part of the year where I start waking up a bit. Winter is not my time of year. I like snow, I tolerate Christmas, but I was a Spring baby. I can do spring, summer, and autumn but as soon as winter hits I just get cold, grumpy and I feel like the only things in my wardrobe are jet black or navy. 

Anyway, I felt the need to celebrate the achievement. I will now continue to celebrate by rewarding myself with some sleep. 

Catch you later.

I Mean, This is Crazy, But Whatever,

If you have ever heard of Heath Ledger, you have most likely heard of something called 'Method Acting'. For those of you who haven't, the basic principles of it are that you get into character by living out parts of that character's personality, or their life story, to get a feel for who they are and be able to be a more authentic version of that character. 

The practice has received criticism, as everything does, because of the situations which actors who practice this method can place themselves into. Considering that people are thinking that eating washing pods is a thing to do, I now find this criticism even more questionable than I used to, but then again I realise that there are people in this world that I will never understand, and whilst that sometimes worries me because I would rather avoid churning out different versions of the same character constantly, I think that writing a novel where the main character died from eating a clothes washing tablet or something similar is not something really high on my bucket list. 

If you're wondering where I'm going with this, don't worry, I'm getting there... 

There have been times where I have wanted to sit and write, but have felt like there is such a disconnect between the character I'm writing about and myself that I'm almost certain that the character is just wrong. Everything about them. Suddenly, I cannot but an apostrophe right (I was going to say comma there, but I litter commas everywhere and I'm never quite sure that they are right,). 

I can't successfully write about someone being adventurous and strong when I haven't even bothered to change out of my PJs, but in a way, it goes deeper than that. Clothing and make up or whatever might seem like a superficial way to get "into character" so to speak, but I honestly find it helpful sometimes. I have sat around in my heels before now (which is strange because I rarely wear shoes in the house) because it suits the character I'm writing about. Before you think it (or, in case you were thinking it) no, I do not have a full costume change between different characters in order to make sure that I'm really "in character" for each person that's speaking. 

Anyway, yes, that's a strange little look into the way my head works when I'm writing. I think I possibly was using writing this as a way not to work on the novel though. Great. 

Catch you later.

To Mourn a Loss of Something Most Wholly, (Lost for Words)

I didn't think I was going to write this, but now I realize I need to.

I'm not going to be so arrogant as to say I need to write it for anyone who may need to read it - if I can be the cautionary wail, great, but that is not the purpose of this. The purpose of this is what most of my writing is; it is my catharsis.

Before NaNoWriMo started this year, I was excited. I'm a bit of a geek, so I always am, and I mean geek in the traditional sense of the word - not the it's emblazoned on the front of a sweat shop produced t-shirt and mass sold as fashion to people who would have used it as an insult kind of sense.

I had it in my head that I wanted to smash what I consider to be my record, my PB if you will (or if you won't, it's my blog) of 19 days. 19 days hurt. I got ill after those 19 days, but it was an adrenaline rush that most people wouldn't associate with writing a novel; I'm glad I get to be one of the people that knows better.

Anyway, tenacious is definitely an adjective people would use about me, and tenacious I was. I scrapped a whole 11 days off of my PB and "won" on the evening of day 9 in the café of Foyles book store. It was beautiful. It was perfect. I enjoyed it immensely.

Now, this was not an easy feat. I am still an ML so I was attending a huge string of events, I hadn't taken leave from work, so was still working my normal day job, though not my usual hours as my managers are incredible and let me have some flexibility, but I fit writing 50000 words into 9 days of my life. I felt like the steamiest pile of animal droppings you can imagine - I was wrung out, but God, I was happy. I kept having these little panics where I woke up in the middle of the night and thought "I need to back this novel up" then would decide to do it in the morning as bed was warm and comfortable and laptop was in living room and that far. Yes, words dropped out of my thought process so you can almost tell how tired I was. Each time I had picked up or touched the laptop in that 9 days the goal was simple and attainable only with remarkable focus. Unfortunately that meant that I was so engrossed in writing and remembering to save that I forgot to save a back up...

This is the point where I wish this were a horror story I was writing. I wish I could skip back a couple of chapters and scrawl THE MC THREW BACK HER BED CLOTHES, CLAMBERED DISCOORDINATELY OUT OF THE BED AND SAVED BACK UPS OF THAT FILE ON EVERY USB DEVICE SHE OWNED but she didn't. I didn't.

In the afternoon/evening of the eleventh day of NaNo, I closed the laptop lid, put it into my bag and thought nothing of it. I went home and I didn't plug it in. It lost power over the weekend and when II came to loading it up on the Tuesday night for a writing session, it was already gone, and so were any hopes of retrieving it. 

Now, I have a magnificient army of friends who rallied like I have never seen anyone rally to try and revive this file. They weren't going to let it go down without a fight, but it was too late. It kind of felt like simultaneously watching a car crash in slow moyion and super speed and reverse. It was nothng short of a shit show and I had no clue how to react. 

That's not wholly true. There was only one reaction, and I wish I could say that I wasn't in public when the crying started and I was on the phone to my mum wailing about how it was gone. I probably sounded like a four year old who had lost their bear, but in that moment, there was no greater loss to me than this novel. There are still very few things which I feel more of a sense of the loss of. 

The worst thing, to me, because I can be a bit odd about these things, is that this loss is undescribable. Devastated does not cut it. Heartbroken, nowhere near. Even to state that I feel heartshattered and inconsolable does not convey the gravity of how I felt, and the problem with that was it made me doubt myself. I sincerely thought, though have since brought myself to reason, sincerely believed that if I were unable to convey something of that immensity, something which was so inherently a part of me, what that loss meant, to my mother, what good could this novel have been anyway? If I couldn't ensure that she understood my helplessness, my need to change the unchangeable, move the unmoveable, my need to face a different reality than the one which I was presented with (though the only reality I really wanted was the one I had been writing on my laptop) how on earth could I convey a made up idea to a reader? My only conclusion then was that I couldn't. My conclusion now is that I was hysterical, and not in my usual haha sense. Hysteria had overtaken and no one can understand a hysterical person, much less take them seriously when they are professing that they shall never write again. Granted, had anyone told me I was hysterical and it would all be better in the morning, I would have been highly likely to throw something heavier than one of my shoes at them.

I probably still couldn't put that loss into words. I'm trying, but this is more like, these are the events, rather than a this is how it felt. I am mourning the loss. No one died, but it felt like someone did. It still does. I don't trust my laptop right at this moment - mature, I know. I wake up and am excited that it's still NaNo and I won already, and then I remember, my novel is gone. I had a few moments, no, hours, of not really even feeling like a writer anymore. I have picked up the pen to go back to it, but I'm writing around it. Part of me cannot bring myself to jump back in and re-write the parts I had already done. This wasn't some half baked first draft - one of these ideas has been forming for the past year, and the other. The other is what I would imagine a somwehat life long stutter feels like. It is that sentence I have always wanted to say, but it doesn't come out right; it has never quite fit. This was the first time that I didn't think the character was periodically being a petulant child. This was the first time I didn't think her partner was an arsehole of epic proportions that she should ditch almost immediately and find someone who, if not intelligent, at least looking a bit Godly so she can just admire them even if they never say anything remotely worth listening to. I was excited to start editing. I was excited about this entire project and I have to admit that for the past almost a week, lukewarm would have been a gross over estimation of my feeling towards it. But as Freddie said, the show must go on. 

Nothing can change that I won this year. Nothinng can change that I did it in 9 days. Nothing can change the fact that I knocked out a 20k day and it barely even hurt. The novel is gone, but it will not be forgotten, only revised. It's not okay, but I will be. 

It still greatly winds me up though that one of the novels in this project is called All is Not Lost, but actually, most of it is.

And on that note, I will catch you later.

Oh, Balls,

Is November really that close? Already? Are you quite sure? Oh dear, oh dear, oh balls. 

I was ready 2 days ago, but this always happens. I feel like I'm hitting the peak too soon and I am ready for NaNoWriMo to start early and then, this happens. This being the craziness of feeling like the world is about to crumble, catch fire and ultimately end because Jesus H. Christ why am I doing this to myself all over again? WHY? 

I'll tell you why - I thrive on the madness. 

Every year I tell myself I will be a good girl and prepare myself for the impending craziness, like stretching when you want to exercise. I will prepare myself for what's about to happen to me and then every bloody year I go, nah, sack that and pants it like Superman. It is never a very good plan. 

This time around feels no different, though having cool news digs is making it feel slightly more sane, I don't have a freezer big enough to store all of the pizza I could possibly need to last the duration of this month, which is less than brilliant. I also did a potentially silly thing and joined a gym. Unlike most people, if I'm paying to be a member of the gym, I will attend it, but the problem I have there is that I naturally won't be able to write whilst doing so (maybe with my phone on the treadmill or the bike, but I am pretty sure that would factor into a list of weirdest places to write in so maybe not) so it is either going to cut into my writing time or my sleeping time and my sleeping time already takes a hit during NaNo. Oh this is just going to go wonderfully, isn't it? 

I'm really looking forward to this now...

Catch you later

A Message from Under the Bed,

I'm not literally under my bed - it's one of those divan type ones with no storage under it so I would have to be a literal wafer to get under there, and, well, I'm not. It's a shame really because I find that hanging out with the imaginary monsters under there not only helps with my writing periodically, it's also a nice space to go when the world outside is, put nicely, being a bit rubbish. 

Without going into too much detail because some of it is work and I'm not allowed to - today has been pretty crappy. In fact, no, it's this week. This week has been pretty crappy. 

However, the good news is that, after a case of the tantrums (throwing my toys out of the pram and deciding I have had quite enough of this novel right now, tah very much love) I have finally picked back up on the novel I started for last NaNoWriMo and no, it is not almost finished, and yes, I do realise it is almost November again, could everyone please stop reminding me? 

It's hard though, because whilst that novel helps me work through difficult things from life, work and all that sort of thing, there are some things that happen and they just feel too raw for me to be able to write anything close to it right then and then, so the novel gets put down. Also, with NaNo being such a frantic rush towards a word count and my ever more ambitious marathon sprints and everything else going on, my novel is still in a few dozen pieces and the idea of having to remedy that at any point soon; quite frankly the thought of it makes me feel quite sick. 

I know it will get there, and it will get finished and then it will very possibly end up like several others and be banished to the dark corners of my hard drive where I can think about doing something with it but not in concrete enough terms to actually, well, do anything about it, because the idea of that is terrifying, but I don't want that this time, so I'm trying to leave less in there for "The Edit" that is never, ever just one edit. 

Christ, Fairies had been out about three years before I realised there were words missing and apparently the ending was Just. Too. Subtle. for some people to understand what I was getting at, and if there is ever going to be a sequel to it - not ruling it in, not ruling it out - the ending can't really have that level of ambiguity to it, can it>? 

/Tangent...

Where were we? Yes, trying to leave less in there for the edit, but the problem with that is that there is a limit to how much forward progress you can make when you obsess over EVERY SINGLE WORD! 

I'm going to go search for my sanity. Catch you later.

In Too Deep,

I can already tell that this is going to be one of those blogs that I write more for me, and then look at and think, okay, maybe don't publish that, because of the fear that it leaves me feeling a little exposed. 

I'm sat here listening to what can only be called Romantic Ballads (no, seriously, that's what the Spotify playlist called them) and I can't say that it is helping with the whole effort of not getting emotional. 

Almost a year ago, a relationship that I had been in for a long time, and which I had emotionally committed to in such a thorough way came crashing to a not so abrupt end. It had been a long drawn out process that I can genuinely say wasn't helpful or healthy for either of us, and the truth is that it took a very long time for me to pick myself back up after that. A very long time.

Despite that, I worked on building the life that I wanted, which is an ongoing goal, but I am in a much better position now that I was 12 months ago. 

Now, I'm not going to say I'm over it, because I don't think I could commit myself to that, but I have got to the point where I could be happy, and that's dangerous.

Dangerous? Well, yes. Despite the fact that I can be alone, I can do things by myself and only be mildly uncomfortable, I am happy with my own company and don't really need to leave the house at weekends if I don't want to, the dangerous thing is, I like being in a relationship. 

I like having that special person I speak to all the time, that I can feel close to and that I can laugh with. I like having that commitment to that person. I don't know why, I just do. 

And danger occured. 

Out of nowhere - I wasn't even looking for once, appeared this man. In my usual styling, I'm not going to put his name on here, but C walked into my life quite casually, and then that was it; he was there. 

I'm not going to say that meeting him felt like nothing I had ever been through before, because it was like something I had before, and maybe that was part of the problem. In the space of when I stopped writing these blogs and when I started again, I met him, I started dating him, I stopped dating him and I realised I had fallen for him. And I also realised how much I hated that I let myself fall for him. 

Now, I know it's not like you get a choice in it, but really, I should have known better. He's in a place in my life that it will be a while before he will be gone, or I would have to do something drastic to get rid of him, and I don't want to do that. Partly because I don't want rid of him from my life. The beautiful thing about it has been that despite the fact that there have been tears, there has been pain, and there has been a bit of heart break, on my side at least, it's been pretty amiable. Most of my breakups have been screaming arguments or accusations and all that sort of thing - this has been a very polite, I guess. 

So, why am I mentioning this? Well, because, right at this moment, I don't want to write anything to do with romance, because it makes me want to tear my own eyelids off. I also don't want to ruin the thing that I wrote for NaNo by writing something stupid like, and they broke up because happy endings are for Disney and everything sucks. But where would we be if I didn't have an excuse for not writing? 

Catch you later.

As If I Needed,

I have gone and done myself an, albeit minor, injury.

Last week, in a fit of infinite stupidity a message between brain and muscle got confused so instead of moving a whiskey glass upwards and sideways, I moved it diagonally, smashed it into a table, smashing it and slicing open a large cut in my finger. As that was bleeding profusely and refusing to heal quickly - it was pretty grim - I apparently failed to notice that a glass splinter had lodged in another of my fingers. Now that the cut is healing, the glass splinter is causing me a few problems.

Part of the problem with this is it is on my dominant hand and my other finger is still sore from the injury it sustained. My typing speed has taken a real hit and as this splinter is in the tip of my index finger, which is my main digit for typing. It's also pretty vital for pens and quills, so I can't even handwrite everything.

It might seem like I'm being dramatic - it surely feels dramatic when people around me are insisting I go to a walk in centre or something - but it really is rather bothersome at the moment.

Hopefully it won't have too dramatic an effect as it is almost Camp NaNo and I think, after much debate, I am going to commit myself to a project, though exactly what that is going to be I have not quite put my metaphorical finger on.

Catch you later.

A Room of One's Own,

Hello my digital darlings.

I can't believe that it is March already and I haven't actually written anything on here. It seems strange until I remember that life has been such a busy mess the last few months that I've been returning home on a Friday evening, collapsing headlong across my bed and not moving until Monday morning. (This is only a slight exaggeration I assure you).

So, what was it that was on my mind to prompt an exercise of the fingers and thumbs?

Well. Several years ago I was given a book called A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. It is a combination of essays discussing the needs of a woman in order to write, though it is based in a different era where women were allowed to read but were excluded from particular libraries and, where they could read the same texts, were not allowed to receive degrees at most universities.

Though times have changed dramatically from this, the idea that what women need is a room of their own and money in order to write and create has not changed. In order to have any hope of committing the time which the craft takes as well as the energy and everything else which is demanded by the notebook and pen (other other writing implement at your finger tips) women, well, anyone of any gender or no gender at all needs space, time and independence.

I've picked this up and put it down a few times and I have wondered why, but I think it was an issue of I didn't want to pick it up completely until I knew that I was ready to commit to it again.

I have kind of been the same with dating. I admit to having spent the last year seeing people and thinking about what I wanted, and a lot of times it felt like what I wanted was to go back to what I had before, but recently I realised that I can't.

This last year has not changed me, but I have reacted to the things which were placed before me a little better than I used to, and I can see that I am building parts of the life I have always dreamt of.

So this is it. I'm ready to commit back to the blog, so I'll catch you later.

It's Been Six Weeks,

It has  been six weeks since I actually wrote here, because I have felt as though the last few weeks have been crazy. 

At the very end of October I started a brand new job and on midnight of the first day, NaNoWriMo started. 

I had training in the day, write-ins in the evening and then getting the main bulk of my word count done at night. It's tough, especially when you are also trying not to eat every level of junk food and take aways that are presented to you, and the truth is that I was pretty certain I was going to fail at several points. I didn't. 

This has genuinely been the most rewarding NaNo I have been a part of. It was the seventh attempt that I made and sixth win, which is special in itself. I am very proud of the peice of work that came out of it, and that's pretty rare, because NaNo is a high pressure environment and it does mean that it can be done in a rush. Yeah, I rushed.

I have this stupid habit of committing myself to editing deadlines and when I break them, I then start feeling crappy and feeling crappy is not productive. I've had the great thing in the last few months that I've managed to stay on the good side of my moods and be productive. I've managed to write things I am happy with and as much as it has not been easy, I am doing better now than I was six months ago and a year ago and that is something for which I am supremely glad. 

I'm going to try to get back into writing blogs regularly. I'm  trying to be more healthy in general. I'm trying to be more productive in my writing and I'm trying to stay on top of the problems I know I have so I can do all of those things. Oh, and I'm going to attempt vegan January as well, which is terrifying, but it's good. 

Anyway, I'll catch you later.

Getting the Feels,

I am the sort of person that emotionally invests in things (and people, just to clarify) far too much. It means that this weekend was exceptionally emotional for me, and I wasn't sure how to deal with that. 

I think part of the problem is that I haven't been writing much recently and writing is one of the ways that I deal with my emotions. I think things through better when I am trying to writing and it can make me see when I am being ridiculous. (It happens and I know that). 

Another part of the problem is that I haven't really given myself the time to sit still recently. I've been working a lot, learning to drive and also going to write ins each week. With all the time taken up with that plus life admin and laundry etc. It gets worse. I will have no time to really chill out before I actually start my new job. I think the next time I will actually have time will either be after my driving test is over and done with, or when I go back to Manchester over Christmas, which is slightly worrying though I am pretty glad that is only just over two months away. 

The time I get on a Sunday to write or edit is extremely valuable, partly because it forces me to be sociable and also because it is pretty well protected from other things I do; I don't miss it unless there is a heck of a good reason to. I wasn't there today because I am ill and don't want to make anyone else ill. Also, there is nothing better for illness than a PJ day, so that is what I have done (though not properly as I have been trying to sort out banking things, which has been all of the fun!) 

The idea is to be able to get everything I need to do to get out of the way over the next two weeks so that by the time I start the new job and NaNoWriMo, everything is as under control as it can be. At least if that is the case, then I have a fair shot at getting through NaNo alive.

Best get back to it. Catch you later. 

Final Countdown,

I know it is not quite the final countdown for NaNoWriMo just yet, but I am acutely aware of that countdown because I am going to be starting a new job soon. Actually, on the 31st October. What was I thinking?!

Yes, so I will be leaving a job I have loved for the last three months ready to start something new and whilst I am really excited about it, I am also bloody terrified, because I don't necessarily deal well with change and it's a whole lot of change all at once. I am changing jobs, then at midnight it's my first NaNoWriMo as an ML. I have both of those things to deal with and I need to be writing a new novel, too. Understandably I'm a little bit nervous. 

That is not to say in any way that I don't think I can do it - I know I can. I do well when I push myself. Pushing myself gets me to do more than I thought possible. I was hoping to make another attempt at a 15k day this year, but I think I am going to have to let that go. Particularly as I'm learning to drive also, and my instructor is anticipating I will be ready for a test in November. Once I am ready, I'm going to book in and just do it. I am sure I will probably fail once, but if I could get it out of the way before Christmas, that would be marvelous. 

I expect that this year will be intense. I've had a few ideas of things I might want to write, and I've also, as usual, got a few things that I'm doing at the moment that I am not going to want to put down, but the problem with that is that I can't rush them. I have a feeling that they need time to happen organically and I would rather do that than force them and then ruin them. 

See, this is an advantage of Team Planner. You can have done a lot of the thinking through everything so you know what you are writing and then it is a simple (no, not simple, but simpler) case of writing it down and progressing through your meticulous plans. The disadvantage of that for me is that if I plan too far ahead with writing, I get really, really bored. I like to essentially sit in the backseat and let my imagination take over and I can't really do that if I plan. 

I'm going to have to stop writing this about now because my head has suddenly decided it wants to ache and this is possibly going to turn into a migraine. I'm sat in a Pret in Central London with my sun glasses on just trying to make sure it doesn't get any more agitated. 

Catch you later. 

Sometimes, I Feel Like Screaming,

It should comes as no surprise to anyone that I am quite a stressy person. I like things to go right first time, and they rarely do, and on those regular occasions that they go wrong, I get quite frustrated and don't necessarily know how to react. It's a bad habit that I am trying to break, but it takes a lot of time to retrain yourself, particularly from something that seems very instinctual. 

Part of the problem I have is that when I get stressed about situations, different things go, 'I did not sign up for this sh*t, I'm leaving' so my immune system ends up in the toilet, or I end up dizzy to the point of not knowing where the ceiling is. I had one of those last night/this morning, partly because one of my piercings is not overly happy, and I don't recommend them. 

One of the major problems is that I do not help myself at all. 

Aside fron all the normal joys of a 23 year old (working, Netflixing, saving up for a deposit for my own place, eating, sleeping etc) I am a fully certified crazy person for trying to write a novel in a month, and then have all the palaver of finishing and editing etc that comes along with it, a write in group who also have movie nights (my poor social calendar :P) and have signed myself up to learning to drive again (as in, I am again attempting to learn to drive, though the sucess of this is yet to be measured) AND, this is the big one, I am one of the new MLs for London.

Now, for those of you who aren't down with lingo, an ML is a Municipal Liason Officer. MLs are not only responsible for dragging their own sorry behinds through November alive, well and with 50 thousand words under their belt, but also hauling ass and getting as many other people there to. We set up write ins, send pep talks, moderate forums and are generally there as the wall to wail to and shoulder to cry on when we are needed.

London, as you can well imagine, is a massive region, so there are four of us sharing the load like a lovely pack of Greek donkeys trotting up the side of Santori with a tour load of American's suitcases strapped to our backs, but it is truly an amazing egion to be a part of. We're asked to attempt to provide a write in at least once per week, but we're going to aim at 4+, a Kick Off Party and a Thank God It's Over, because I need sleep and the Red Bull ran out party... As well as an overnight lock in and a walking tour of London with writing stops built in. *BIG BREATH IN*

It is insane to think that it was only 7 years ago that I was preparing for my first NaNo competition. In facct, this time 7 years ago, I'm not sure that my friend who introduced me to NaNo had even done so yet. I came out of that competition devastating at what I percieved as losing. It was an eight month slog that turned my 22,500 NaNo peice into a full length novel that, warts and all, I am still proud of, and it provided the UK size 13 boot up my butt that spurred me into my next NaNo where I managed the 50k and wrote Fairies.

Every year, I have attempted to up the ante. Last year, it was wanting to achieve the 15k day, and I was beyond proud when I realised that goal. I am hoping that being an ML will help me to help other people, not just in the London region, reach their own goals, as well as being able to set and smash some more of my own. The ground work is being laid, the countdown is on. Are you with us? Are  you ready?

A Day Late and a Dollar Short,

My priorities recently have been very much about work (my job work, not novel work) and I have been quite comfortable with that. It hasn't been because I have fallen out of love with writing or that I have changed my mind about it being something I really want to do with my life, but because I know it can be all consuming.

The other issue is that what I have been writing is nothing in comparison to what I want to do. Don't get me wrong, I love a cheeky little romance novel, I love writing about human relationships, and I don't write anything just for the hell of it if I think it is going to be awful. 

Still, everything I have been writing has been very contained. It was something that I chose to do, and I have put several projects which I knew had the potential to get me away from that, but the problem has always been that there have been other things I needed to focus on, and so I did. I focused on other things. 

I keep hoping that something will feel like a pivotal moment, but it never really does feel like a fireworks moment until it is already nearly done with. Self publishing my first novel was thing long and arduous process and I nearly gave up a couple of times, but when the proof copy finally arrived through my front door I could barely contain the excitement. Until then, it was nothing but a concept, a virtual file made of key strokes and binary and computer nonsense, but then suddenly it was there in Amazon packaging, a physical thing made of paper and ink, all black and white and beautiful, having come off a printing press in America and then being shipped across the Atlantic to me. 

I know that there is only me that can make it happen again - I am well aware of that, but the last thing I want to do is to put something out into the world that is not a patch on Fairies. Maybe that is me being far too picky, but I would rather do that. 

I may also be off the blog next weekend, again due to work commitments, but I'll catch you later...

If It Weren't For...,

I really wanted to get back on top of blogging and writing nearly 2 weeks ago, but the fact is that the list of things that I have to do before I can get to that is forever getting longer, and I am never really sure when I will have both time and energy to work on editing and noveling. 

It is an equation - time + energy + motivation = work done 

Missing any of those things means that it is either going to be difficult, nigh on impossible, or actually impossible. 

I am still saying that I love my job. I do, I really enjoy it, and I have committed to it, which means I am spending an awful lot of time either taking my desk with me or thinking about being at my desk. 

As much as I love my writing, I do not want to do it the injustice of being half arsed. When I go to writing group, I am able to do just that, but in the office, or when I am trying to think about anything work related, I just cannot do it. 

I am really hoping that the Bank Holiday gives me a little bit more time, though I doubt that it will. 

I guess I will just have to wait and see, I guess.

When Things Burn,

No, not literally. 

I don't really know how many people noticed my long absence from this blog, but there is a long story and right at this moment I don't feel like telling the whole of it. Partly because I've had to retell it so many times I'm surprised that the entire world doesn't already know it. The important bits are that some people are a complete waste of oxygen, I can be a lot stronger than I think I can, I am surrounded by some truly amazing people and things do get better. 

Unfortunately, all of that did mean that a lot of my stuff, including my PC, was in storage for a week. Let no mistake be made, the last few weeks haven't been me having a jolly. The last few weeks have been intense with me moving my stuff more miles across London than I have the whole time I have lived here and despite being In a new fixed and settled home, I'm by no means back to being sorted.


Every time you move house there are three million things to do and I am nowhere near through that list. I mean, you have to change GPs, and notify Everybody that you've moved house and it is just intense.


I haven't gone to pieces though and I have been writing and working and reading even, which has been a novelty. I even got to have a bath the other night with a face mask on and my book and a Lush bath bomb in the water and I'm not kidding, it was glorious. Now I just need a holiday and I really will be set. Well, let's see when that happens.


People can often think that I'm pretty highly strung, maybe I am, but I think that I have just had so much going on for such a long time that trying to calm down has never really happened. I would love to go away for a week and just chill out on a beach sometime, but it doesn't look like it is going to happen any time soon, which is a damn shame.


This weekend I will be working, which I am simultaneously looking forward to, whilst being rather anxious. It's going to be a long one and I won't actually get a break now until the following weekend. My new job is something pretty wonderful though so I can't really complain too much.


I am hoping that all of this should now be resolved, or as resolved as it can be and I should be available to be back to the once a week blog posts (and I'm even going to try to do this on the weekends when I am working). I really didn't want to drop the blog, but I didn't have much of a choice with everything else that was going on, but I'm going to try and stop it from happening again.


Catch you later.

Well, That's an Unfamiliar Phrase,

Even though I am exhausted, and it's been a long week and my mouth has been in pain many times where I am missing a tooth, I can honestly say that I love my job. 

I started my new job on Monday morning and it is a very steep learning curve, believe me, but knowing a lot of different things for my job is not the problem. The "problem" which isn't really a problem per se is that I went into my last job with at least a small amount of knowledge, whereas with this I am learning pretty much from scratch. 

To say that I have not got as much writing done as I might have hoped would be the understatement of the century. I barely got a few thousand words done after the weekend, which means that I am struggling in terms of word count. It always seems that drafts of my novels end up as a sort of Frankenstein's manuscript with bits and pieces here and there that need to be sewn together. Part of the reason that they all need bringing together is because otherwise, I have no clue what my actual word count is; it's all guess work and underestimations. 

I don't miss my old job, but I do miss having the time to write whilst doing my job. Whilst in the call centre it was more than possible to be scribbling a few paragraphs or drawing up a little plan or something, but my new role is much more intense, and I don't have that luxury. Granted, having a few canine compadres wandering around more than makes up for it. Then again, I'm biased. I prefer most people's fur babies (dogs, cats, rabbits etc...) to actual babies because generally, they don't make quite so much noise - though I do love a terrier more than anything and they can be yappy little sods. 

So I have a million and one things to try and get done and nowhere near the amount of time I need to do they, but I'm just going to try and get stuck in. 

Catch you later

Decision Not Yet Made,

Last week I was writing about the possibility of making what could be major life decision, then I had another one pretty much dropped on me, so it has been bumped down the list like a few of my literary priorities. 

I have been having a long think about it, though, and that has brought me to the conclusion that several of my friends are correct and that going at this like a bull at a gate like I did with becoming a vegetarian, because otherwise I'm going to make myself ill like I did by not keeping an eye on my iron levels. 

What I am doing is stopping drinking actual milk, which is harder than I had thought it would be because tea does not taste the same with any other form of milk (and soy milk, which is most widely available, is most definitely not beautiful) and tea is a big deal to me, but it's important.

I'm not going to go on a big rant about why milk is bad and why it sucks that it's going to take time for Quorn to move their ranges away from using something from eggs that's considered as an industry byproduct, to a more expensive vegan ingredient, but I do feel the need to argue against something I recently read on Facebook. 

A lot of people who make a lot of noise about "preachy" vegetarians/vegans are actually pretty "preachy" about eating meat. The latest thing I have read from any of them was an article which essentially argued that vegetarians and vegans are responsible for animal deaths, too, because of the way we farm in this country and the wildlife which it affects. One of my friends describes it as a sliding scale - yes, we have an impact on the lives of other species, but we're significantly reducing that impact. 

Personally, I think it's more like living as closely to your ideas as humanly possible. In order to live in London, I have to accept that I can only afford to do a certain amount of things. I can't have a compost bin because I don't have a garden, I can't have a pet because of my contract, and I can't sleep because there are starlings nesting in my loft, and when I was looking at humane ways to persuade them to move out I found that they are losing a lot of their nesting space and obviously that is leading to declining populations, so I'm just going to have to get used to the chirping bastards. 

So I've turned into a packet reader, making sure I know exactly what I'm actually eating, instead of just blindly following what I think I should be going for because apparently putting that something is suitable for vegans on packaging can actually put other audiences off. 

Catch you later.