On the couch

Room with a view at the Hurst

My pretend mentoring scheme kind of worked. I stuck to my daily word targets until I got to 85k which was when I began to relax and congratulate myself on how close I was to my 90k goal. I think the pause for self-congratulation also cloaked the fear of the finishing.  I was close to the end, but could I do it? Would it fall flat? How would the characters get untangled from where they were now to get to where they were supposed to be at the end? The last 5k was like doing the 5k Race for Life which I signed up for when it was months ahead in the far off land of the future and for which I didn’t train very well. Through every bit of training I swore I would never run again after I’d done the race. I never did manage 5k before the race, but on the day itself I did run every step of it (very, very slowly) thinking at various points I would die, but I did cross the finish line, my cheeks the deepest red they’d ever been from the exertion, my legs a trembling wreck. Of course the final 5k of writing wasn’t physically the same as running - I can’t say I’ve ever built up a sweat while sitting at my desk - but that horrible sense of not being able to carry on was often weighing me down. Finding the right words and the right pathways to shepherd the characters through to the ending seemed impossible at times, but somehow they got through the maze.

In the woods of the Hurst

The bluebell woods at the Hurst

Because it wasn’t a real mentoring scheme I wasn’t actually getting any feedback on the draft so how could I tell if the 90k words were any good in their current configuration? I could have given it to my Beloved to read, but as he hasn’t yet acquired the art of a praise sandwich (or a shit sandwich, depending how you view it), I didn’t much fancy the inevitable maelstrom that would follow. I could have sent it to friends but I didn’t want to infect them with first-draftyitis – I imagined them wading through it, worrying how to tell me it was terrible and then my shame of them thinking it was the best I could do. Arvon stepped up with a possible helping hand. I couldn’t resist the lure of a tutored retreat at the newly renovated John Osborne Arvon Centre in Shropshire - a complete luxury which I could only indulge in because I’d been squirreling away a small amount of money each month for a couple of years for any such personal emergencies. I’ve done a tutored retreat before and sending off the chapters in advance for the tutors – Monica Ali and Jacob Ross - to review for this retreat wasn’t any less excruciating than the first time. To cut a long story short, after my sessions with Jacob I felt I’d got this novel licked, but after my sessions with Monica I felt like my characters had been psycho-analysed to within an inch of their lives and had been found wanting. In the saying out loud to Monica of a couple of the plot points they suddenly sounded a bit, well, far-fetched and delusory.  The couch was the right place to be.

I hope that post therapy, the current draft is all the richer for the intervention. Now it’s out there with a friend, being read and I’m feeling a bit lost without it.

Bit by bit, day by day

I still can’t quite believe Jenn Ashworth didn’t pick me as a mentee for the Jerwood/Arvon mentoring scheme – grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr - but at least the process wasn’t completely in vain. In my rather last minute application I had to outline how I would make best use of the year on the scheme if I was selected. I decided that with the encouragement of a mentor I could finish the first draft of my current novel in that year and devote the week-long retreat at the end of it to rewriting and editing. At the time, the novel stood at 30,000 words and 90,000 seemed like a nice number to aim for – it divides nicely into 3 - the beginning, the middle and the end. I then broke down the 60,000 yet to be written words into months, weeks and days to see how much I needed to write every day to achieve this goal. It would mean writing 5000 words a month, 1250 words a week, 178.5142 words a day: Completely achievable with dedication and encouragement, yes?

Then of course I realised I didn’t need to wait and see if my application was successful, I could just crack on with the deliciously bite sized pieces of writing each day. I’m sure that the more prolific writers out there will scoff at the measly 178.5142 words I aim for everyday (I have rounded it up to 179) but for me it’s actually working. It’s an amount that doesn’t overwhelm when there are lots of other things to be squeezed in to the evening. It’s an amount that, even when multiplied a couple of times to compensate for the off days when even that tiny number isn’t possible, still doesn’t overwhelm. And the nice thing is that once the minimum word quota is done for the day, it’s so much easier to keep on going.

Of course I’m still sorry I didn’t get picked for the Jerwood/Arvon mentoring scheme, but I’m not sorry I made the application. So far, so good: 53,000 words and counting.  

Obsessed with word-count, me?

Pants!

I thought it must have been a scam of some sort. As a very lazy blogger, receiving a blog award nomination seemed rather improbable, but I looked into anyway, just to be sure. It does have the whiff of a chain letter about it, something as a rule I would steadfastly ignore, but it also seemed like a fun thing to do. Maybe it caught me at the right time for a bit of distraction. The last time I got involved with anything chain-letter like it involved pants – knickers I suppose I should say. I can’t exactly remember what you had to do but it involved sending a certain number of girlfriends a pair of knickers (new ones!) – somehow you knew what size and style they wanted - and at some point you would end up with very many more knickers pouring through your own letter-box.  Needless to say the numbers were exaggerated and my bottom wasn’t adorned with an endless supply of fancy pants. The Liebster-blog-chain-letter-award thing asks for a lot more involvement than putting a couple of pairs of pants in the post (see the RULES at the end of this post), but that’s also what’s quite nice about it – engaging with bloggers. It’s a good way of catching up on what people are blogging about. There’s so much stuff out there, but there never seems to be enough time in the day to read it so making an effort to stop and look has been rather nice.  
So, thank you Karen Heidi Rees for the nomination. I have engaged and now I am passing on nominations, in no particular order, to:

http://mrstwritesinclemency.blogspot.co.uk/
http://barkerbarks.blogspot.co.uk/
http://debbivoisey.wordpress.com/
http://www.writerslittlehelper.blogspot.co.uk/
http://teresa-stenson.blogspot.co.uk/

These are the questions set by Karen with my answers:

1) What inspired you to create your blog?
I can blame my daughter – ‘Sign up to Twitter Mum, then you can follow me’. Oh, okay. It seemed totally pointless, but then I realised I could follow other people apart from my offspring. Writers! So many of them out there. Tweeting writers, with blogs. It wasn’t long before I had been sucked into the vortex. All those generous, funny writers who write about their experiences and offer advice. All for free! Then came my daughter again, a blogger herself at the time, ‘Start a blog of your own Mum, it’ll be good for your writing.’ Oh, okay. Reluctantly I dipped my toe in the bloggy waters where I stayed undisturbed until Karen fished me out.  

2) What do you enjoy most about blogging?
I still can’t work out if I enjoy or not. The introvert in me despises talking about myself.

3) What is your favourite book?
There are way too many to narrow it down to one. I have my old classics - Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Albert Camus’ Outsider and more up to date favourites include any of Kate Atkinson’s Crime novels, Emma Donohue’s Room. A more recent delight was Peggy Riley’s Amity & Sorrow.

4) First film you saw at the cinema?
Dumbo – not on its first release though! I still remember the tears I shed very clearly.

5) Do you have a favourite place that inspires your writing?
Nice idea, but writing is squeezed into whatever nook and cranny I can find for me and my laptop – in terms of time and location. 

6) If you were whisked off on an all expenses paid holiday for 2 weeks, where would you go & why?
I’d be off to Peru – because Paddington Bear made it sound so mysterious. I’d spend a week exploring the deepest darkest part and maybe do some adventure-type activities that don’t involve great heights, followed by a week staying in the most amazing beach house.

7) Describe your ideal Saturday night.
Depends what I’ve been up to on Friday night. If I’ve been out on the town the night before there’s nothing I like more than having a cosy night in in front of the TV – some crappy family shows followed by a film and some wine. Dinner with friends would be the alternative.

8) If you could be any fictional character, who would it be & why?
I’d be Mary Poppins because in real life I can’t sing and I’m not really that good with kids. I also quite fancy chimney sweeps. 

9) What would be the one dream job you would do if you could?
A detective who only takes on really interesting and well paid jobs.

10) What is your favourite post you’ve posted on your blog?
My literary shame and glory confession.

11) How do you want to be remembered?
As quiet but deadly. Not so much the fart version as the assassin.

And 11 (11! Really?) random facts about myself – as if you need to know anything else about me after I’ve answered all the questions above.

1.      I’ve always lived in houses with the number 9 in the address.

2.      I hate the word titivate.

3.      I love mowing the lawn.

4.      I find it really hard to think of random facts about myself.

5.      I’m scared of bovine animals.

6.      I am prone to cycle rage.

7.      I saved my twin brother’s life when we were 2 years old.

8.      It took me 3 attempts to get my maths O’level

9.      It took me 3 attempts to pass my driving test

10. My 3 kids were born in 3 different decades.

11. My favourite number isn’t 3.

My 11 questions to you, dear Liebster nominated blogger or to anyone else that wants to answer them:

1.      How often do you manage to write and how long for?

2.      What’s the worst job you’ve ever done?

3.      How much research do you do before starting a new writing project?

4.      What little things do you get really cross about?

5.      What are you reading for pleasure at the moment?

6.      Do you ever give up on a novel you’re reading or do you have to stick with it to the end, however bad it is?

7.      What was your New Year resolution and are you keeping to it?

8.      What was the last film you saw at the cinema?

9.      Who are your favourite writers?

10. What has been the biggest adventure in your life so far?

11. When was the last time you got the uncontrollable giggles?

So here are the official rules, for those nominated please copy & paste as a means of forwarding instructions to your own nominees, so they aren’t left totally confused:

RULES

1. Thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.
2. Display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)
3. Answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.
4. Provide 11 random facts about yourself.
5. Nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers. (Note that you can always ask the blog owner this since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know this information!)
6. Create a new list of questions for the blogger to answer.
7. List these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to:
8. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)