Prepping for Pantsing,

Every year, during NaNoWriMo, I proudly pronounce myself Team Pantser, and that's still the case. I am so proud to wear my knickers like Superman and fly by the seat of my pants through NaNo (metaphorically, of course), but that is only with respect to planning the novel. When it comes to Preptober - trust me, I am a prepper. 

When I finished NaNoWriMo as a winner for the first time, it was my second attempt. I wrote at college, I wrote on the bus, I wrote at home and for the first three days I had no idea what I was writing. Some of it was utter garbage, it was a stream of consciousness, but I was writing, and I was doing it at speed. The novel that was born in that competition was eventually dedicated to my toaster, my kettle, and my mum. I've proved since then that I don't need to be living with my mum (and relying on her for cooking dinners and making brews) to finish as a winner, but right at that point, I needed her as much as I needed to win. 

Over the next few years, I have gotten faster and faster with writing and I've also gotten better and better at preparing myself. October 31st tends to be a day where I nap after work and I get myself a pizza and from midnight, I eat pizza and write a couple of thousand words, but I know it's not just that. I have an idea of the number of events I will be going to, I have an idea of what I'm going to be writing with - typewriter, pen, and paper, something electrical... - and I have a plan for keeping myself healthy for at least the first week. I shop cook and freeze what I can and make sure I have bananas. There's plenty that I think about and make decisions on practical planning for NaNoWriMo. 

As such, the @londonnano Instagram page is running a #preptober series of practical things to think about ahead of 31st October. Feel free to follow us, like, comment or message. I'll be writing some blogs on the subjects that are posted up there, too! 

Everything In It's Place, Even If That Does Mean The Floor,

Generally, if someone asks me where something in my room is, the answer is preceded by a lengthy erm, and normally sounds something like, I last saw it on the floor near the... Currently that is not the case, and no, it's not because I have started believing in all that tidy room tidy mind ----stuff (really trying not to swear at the moment and it's really difficult!!) that other people spout. No, it's because I am moving out of my current abode into somewhere new, in another different part of London.

As much as it's really exciting, but also really stressful because of the actual physical transportation from House A to Flat B, what I find more frustrating is that because the majority of my stuff has already been boxed by a slightly over-enthusiastic Ben and myself yesterday, I keep thinking oh, I could do... oh, no I can't, it's in a box, or I could wear, ... no, also in a box. It's only those times where you can't get to them, such as when you're moving or on holiday that you think of those really obscure pieces of clothing that live at the back of your wardrobe on any normal occasion and you think, yeah, that's what would make me the happiest person I can be right now. I think my brain actually like me being like, well, that sucks. 

Another fantastic example of this is thinking about novel notebooks that I haven't touched for so long that they required dusting before packing - and yes, there is a point to that, and it's so you don't transport the old dust to your new place der, I am not the weird one here -.- - and they're now in the bottom of a big box, which is at the bottom of a big pile and behind a stack of other, let's call it what it is, crap (and no, that is NOT a swear word, just FYI) so of course my brain now goes, here are all the wonderfully magical things we could do with this... And I end up being like, Dear Brain, Hold your horses, Chill your bean and Keep you ----socks together for just a week and then we will make all of these magical dreams come novelliciously true, but I already know that is not going to happen, because using the words Calm down to my imagination is like telling me Don't stress, and if you want to know how pointless that is, speak to my boyfriend, because he really knows. Yeah, if my brain and I had a contract, I would be seriously trying to renegotiate it's concept of when it's acceptable to be thinking about novels, because this flexitime nonsense that it has going on at the moment is just not really working for me. I genuinely worry that I will be in work at some point, someone will tell me about some vicious ailment they have and I'm going to spout some glittery garbage about how I'm dispatching the unicorns to fix it. As much as it would probably be amusing for a few minutes, I'm pretty sure that I would end up some combination between sectioned and fired, and none of those look too pretty from where I am sitting.

So, I have a to do list longer than any piece of string, and it seems to casually keep getting bigger, I have two Orchids to attempt to move without inducing plant-y panic attacks, and my very antique typewriter is currently in quite a lot of bits across my coffee table, which if you follow me on Twitter, you will have seen. As much as the many parts are now a severe amount cleaner than they were when he was all together, he's not quite as easy to put back together as I thought/hoped, though I'm pretty sure that I have it in theory now, it's just the actual practical getting all the screws back in the right place, but I've felt that way about driving for a while - as in, I'm well aware how to do it, it's just actually getting my brain to stop going ARGGGGGGH, I DON'T LIKE THIS!!! WE'RE BEHAVING LIKE TOO MUCH OF AN ADULT!! MAKE IT STOP!!! and to actually engage with the task at hand, aka not crashing, is a "little bit" more difficult than I have ever hoped for.

Basically, the upshot of all of that is that the novel that was meant to be edited by the end of last year might end up getting put off until the end of this year... I don't know. It'll happen when it happens, and I'm far too comfortable with that fact quite frankly. It also means that I'm probably not going to be posting blogs as often as I would like, and I am attempting quite loosely to aim at once a week this year, and if I could set aside an hour, of one day every week then I would be like 'here's the day I will attempt to publish it on' but considering how chaotic just everything is, I don't really think there is much point. But, the good thing is that the a forenamed 'computer which potentially works' ought to now be known as 'Zeus' because he's fast as lightening, has a funny symbol on the front that looks like Zeus' headdress and also because he is basically the God of all my writing machinery, so might as well be named such, so when he and I move into our new place, we have no worries of major technically hiccups getting in the way of dissertationing, blogging or general wordsmithy, so that is a major plus.

So, essentially, follow the yellow brick twitter page....

90,

So, after reminding myself with my last blog that I need to stop procrastiKNITTING, I have since managed to finish editing roughly half of the novel - content, not formatting unfortunately - watched far too many episodes of Grand Designs, come up with yet another design for the house I would like to build one day, which of course made me wish all over again that I was studying to be an architect and also managed to finish the back, the front and almost a full sleeve of a new jumper (baby sized). 

Whilst I know that my Knitsmithy ought to take a back seat to my Wordsmithy for a little while, it's more difficult to convince yourself to go on to review what you have previously done than it is to either knit more of a cutesy little hoodie or to stitch it together, and I think the reason is this. 

When it comes to Wordsmithy, it takes a lot of time and effort, and once done, you are best advised to leave it alone. When you have finished knitting something, you can give it away as a gift or just torture stuffed animals with what you have produced, and you can do it with the TV on without knitting the characters from The Big Band Theory or doing something equally ridiculous. In the space of a couple of weeks will have managed to produce three baby jumpers, two of which are adorable, one of which was my first attempt at knitting something to a pattern and there was more than once when I threw it on the floor and complained that I wasn't playing anymore because it was too big of a pain in the ass. Yes, I am a grumpy fool.

Even with half done, it is really difficult to focus on editing Yours, at the moment on account of the lack of sleep in my life, which is being caused by the really uncomfortable mattress. As is a custom with rented accommodation, our mattresses are at the point where they are sagging as you sit, so until the arrival of the new ones which have thankfully been ordered, I am resorting to sleeping on the airbed that I keep in case we have house guests, because my back doesn't take well to springs poking it at random intervals. 

At least it's now half way there...

In The Wake of NaNoWriMo,

So, it's now over a month since NaNoWriMo ended, and I can quite honestly say I haven't touched what I wrote since the day I hit fifty thousand words (19th November 2013). While that isn't a bad thing necessarily - I know many people that think the draft of a novel is like red wine, you have to give it time to breath - the fact that all I have done since then is a couple of handwritten pages in a notebook that seems to be going on forever is sort of playing on my mind. 

My thing is I have a very active imagination, and when I don't force myself to sit down and let some of the ideas come out in a constructive way, they form some pretty vivid and often pretty confusing nightmares. Now, you'd think that being used to this would mean I would convince myself to sit down and force myself to write for a set amount of time per day, but even during NaNoWriMo that's simply not how I work. Additionally, when I do decide to write and get very drawn in by something, I always have to go to bed before finishing writing something, because I'm too tired to carry on, and that also influences the things I dream about. 

Oh, and I always feel pretty burnt out after NaNo.

I am however thankful that now my urge to write has naturally returned, though I'm still struggling with convincing myself to edit Yours,. I feel like there is almost a fear surrounding it, and I'm not sure exactly what's causing that fear, because I accept it could be a great many things and most of them are pretty common to other writers as well. 

Editing means finally finishing something. In a way, it's the same as reading the last chapter of the book. Whilst you are still reading the book, the characters have an existence, they have a life, but as soon as the book is finished and put back on the shelf, whether the characters were living or dead by the end of the story, there existence ceases in a way. It's the same with writing.

I've been told a great many times that it would be a mistake to pick up a book you once wrote and re-read it, because for whatever good it could do you in identifying your style, your characters and all that sort of thing, you'll find bits you aren't happy with and things you could have done better, so when you finish the last edit on a book, it should be the last time you look at it, which can be quite saddening. 

Though characters are more like an early kind of Sims characters than most of us would like to admit, it is possible to become rather attached to them, and I very often do. There are definitely times where I have an intense amount of hate for my characters, and other times when the things I write about them make me want to have a little cry in the corner. I know that it's strange to try and understand, but they have an importance in my life for a while, however long or short, and then as if in a puff of smoke without any real provocation, they are gone. 

Then again, it's possible to say that I'm fearing the day that the printed copy of Yours, arrives on my doorstep, because as much as that day will mean to me, I then have to find a way to accept that it's no longer mine. When you first start a novel, or first write it, it gets to be all yours until you let someone read it. Unless you tell them, no one else may even know of it's existence. As soon as the printed copy arrives, it has already been through countless hands and you've had no say in where it goes, and as soon as you push the button that starts all the commands to do something with that book - whether it be load it into the Kindle store or Amazon, or even upload it to somewhere completely free - you are letting go of any sort of control of it. Anyone who wants to can access it, and say what they like about it, and you might hear it and that's a scary thing.

Which leads onto the inevitable really scary thing. Someone might call it trash. Someone might insult it or upset you, or use it against you, or see things in it that you think have no basis. Essentially, people can think and say what they like about it, and there's nothing you can do about it. 

Tough. 

I think most of you reading this will know that I've been in this position before, and I know how scary it is. The fact is, though it's going to take me a while, I'm going to get to the point where Yours, is out there and there's nothing I can do about it, and I'm going to be happy that it is.

I've been in the position where people have said things about my novels that I don't like or that hurt, and sometimes it's been by people who were pretty close to me, but the thing is, I know I have to take that with the good things that people say too; you can't close off your ears to an entire half of the argument. If you're sat teetering on the edge thinking should I, shouldn't I? The answer is going to be, yes, you should, because most of the time, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than you regret the things that you did, so go for it. Publish a novel, or a group of poems or short stories, or even just one. That thing you can do?, show it to people, because it is impressive and it is real. 

I know I need to give myself a rather large kick in the bottom to get this ready and finished, and I will, and you should to. 

Be proud of your wordsmithy.