My writing week: Issue 46, Year 4.

Hi all,

I’ve nearly finished my Christmas shopping. I just hope the Book Depository keeps their promise of delivering within seven to ten working days. I used the Book Depository because my local books shop did not have the audio books I was after and I loath crowded shops.

I cringe at the thought of shops full of old people who have parked their electric vehicles, trolleys and fat bums across aisles. My head hurts at the thought of listening to Paul McCartney sing over and over how wonderful Christmas is. I sympathise with Harry’s in The Slap every time I am stuck in a queue with a parent who seems to have no intention of stopping their kid from screaming.

It seems that I have become a real Christmas grouch. Apart from being an atheist, except when I visit my father’s grave, I think the Christmas spirit could do with a good Marxist reboot. I think Christmas would be much happier time for all if we all it we just forgot about the gift giving (even retailers. Consumers will then spend more evenly during the year and wouldn’t return piles of unwanted gifts). There would also be fewer no-longer-cute-and-cuddly-puppies discarded in the months after Christmas.   

Christmas shopping also interferes with writing and thinking about writing. My goal last week, the first full week after NaNoWriMo, was to write 7,000 words. I completely blame Christmas shopping for not achieving that goal.

I started the week okay with 1040 words on Monday. But then on Tuesday, I spent too much time in Big W looking for some DVD’s that they didn’t have. When I finally got home I only had time to write 440 words.

On Wednesday, I wrote 1127 words, even after being side tracked into writing a review of Ian Irvine’s, The Last Albatross. On Thursday, I was back proving that except for food and grog, the retailers in Wang sell absolutely nothing I want to buy. They should spruik Wang as a great place to save. When I finally got home, I ended up writing 750 words. Friday, was my best writing day of the week, just, with 1130 words.

I had decided to only write if I really had to on the weekends. On Saturday, it was back to skulking around the shops. At last I found a present for my sister, yay. Relieved of Christmas gift agonies, my thoughts instantly returned to my novel and changes that needed to be made. I just had to do some deleting and then writing when I got home. I wrote 550 words for the day. On Sunday, exhausted from Christmas shopping, I took it easy and only wrote 220 words.

All up I wrote 5037 words for the week. I had written 55,600 words of the novel and was in the middle of chapter 27. Now if it wasn’t for Christmas…

Scribe abandons trade paperbacks.

I am a bit behind in my newspaper reading, so my outrage at Scribe is about six weeks late. According to the Bookmarks column in The Age on the 29^th of October, Scribe has abandoned the trade paperback. Fools. Most of the new books I buy and am given for Christmas are trade paperbacks. I buy them because they have bigger print than paperbacks and are cheaper than hard-backs and look better on my bookshelves than paperbacks. It looks like I will be buying less books and getting less Christmas gifts published by Scribe.

Review of The Last Albatross by Ian Irvine

The Last Albatross by Ian Irvine
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Last Albatross is set in a near future Australia where the technology, environment and economy is failing. It is a story of extreme environmentalists versus, in the beginning at least, an apathetic materialistic woman and her partner.

The heroine of the story is Jemma. She is an overweight, unconfident school-teacher who wants to have a child. Her older partner, Ryn, is a computer scientist who forecasts the damage from major weather events. At the start of the book he is working on a program that forecasts the effects of the collapse of one of the Antarctic ice shelves.

In his youth, Ryn and a mentally unstable friend Hercus found a bar of plutonium at Maralinga and buried it in a relative’s back yard. There it remains for years until Hercus returns into Jemmas and Ryn’s life. He is distressed about materialists destroying the environment is going to get rid of them all. And so the adventure begins.

I did not really like the characters. Not my type of people. Jemma had sold her soul to un-fulfilling nothingness long before the novel started. Ryn was too rapped up in his work to care about anything. Hercus wanted to blame the world for everything bad in his life. In the end, only really Jemma came close to redeeming herself.

I did have a problem with technology constantly refusing to function throughout the story. Although the Australia in the novel is a virtual corporate dictatorship, I still kept on thinking, only fools will buy the corporation’s goods if they don’t work. Others will buy, make, illegally import, invent some other product that actually works or just go without. Basically I thought Jemma and Ryn fell into the fools category, the type of people who keep on going back to the Reject Shop to buy a replacement for something that just broke.

I think the novel was too long. It should have ended with Jemma and Ryn’s attempts to stop Hercus using the plutonium. Instead, it continued with Jemma improbably taking over a speech in front of world leaders from her ailing husband. I thought Jemma’s and Ryn’s reputation was so soiled at the time that it would be a bit like Lindy Chamberlain addressing a child care conference. We know a dingo did it, but still there is baby’s blood thrown by the media all over Lindy.

The novel ends up portraying all environmentalists as extremist nutters. This aspect of the novel really rubbed against me. I was surprised to see the author himself has/does work in the environmental field.

Overall, I thought the novel okay, it did keep me reading. I was just frustrated by its character’s motivations and some of its ideas.


View all my reviews

My Writing Week: Issue 45, Year 4

Hi all,

Half of last week was taken up with successfully completing National Novel Writing Month. Apart from a great sense of achievement, that I could actually average 1667 words per day over a month, I also finished with a sore lower back from my desk chair. The back seems to be on the improve today, after a swim, adjusting the chair and spending less time sitting in it over the past five days.

New Article on DiVine

On the last day of NaNoWriMo I got an email from the editor of DiVine magazine wanting me to write a short article about a research project into the experiences of students with disabilities at school. I got up early the next morning and wrote the article and it was up on the site an hour later. We were both happy with the quick turn around; a nice quick earner.

Novel Going Well

My first draft of the novel is probably not halfway written yet. It should end up at least 100,000 words. At the moment I am 6,000 words into part two of its projected three parts.  

My plan for the novel seems to working well. Sometimes the characters take the storyline away from the plan, but they then seem to naturally return the narrative to my outline.

I hope to continue writing the novel at about 7,000 words a week. At that rate, it will be a couple of months before the first draft is finished.

NaNoWriMo - the finish

Hi all,

I started the final nine days of National Novel Writing Month needing only to write 10508 words to reach my 50,000 target. That should have been easy as I was averaging over 1800 words a day. Did I make it?

Day twenty-two: I had the house to myself for the next four days. You would think that would mean an ideal environment to write, but I like to take a break and slob around when alone. I was nearly four days ahead of schedule for NaNoWriMo, my brain was beginning to tire and I was developing a sore lower back from siting at my desk, so I decided to only write a bit on each of those four days. On day twenty-two I wrote only 464 words, for a total of 39956.

Day twenty-three: 287 words for a total of 40243.

Day twenty-four: 110 words for a total of 40353.

Day twenty-five: releasing I was leaving myself a lot of words to write in only five days I wrote 1006 words for a total of 41359.

Day twenty-six: I now needed to average close to the original daily total of 1667 to finish on time, so I upped the word count to 1965 for a total of 43324 words.

Day twenty-seven: 1685 words for a total of 45009. But then I accidentally deleted a chapter from my computer. I had given the chapter I spent the day writing the same file name as a previous chapter and then saved it. Ahhhh. Fortunately I had been backing up every night and was able to recover the deleted chapter from a memory stick.

I then spent a lot of time updating my plan for the next few chapters to ensure that indecision would not limit my word output on the final few days.

Day twenty-eight: 1731 words for a total of 46740 words.

Day twenty-nine: 1692 words for a total of 48422.

Day thirty: I only needed to write 1578 words. My back ached and sudden temperature changes had caused my asthma to suck my energy away. My sister visited. It was her birthday, so I had to at least say happy birthday. It was just as well I didn’t check my email early because the editor of Divine wanted me to write an article which needed to be submitted the next day.

I was checking my word count every 100 words or so and adding them to my excel spreadsheet so it would tell me exactly how many words I had to go. Finally the excel world count said 50014.

Yay me. I had done what I thought impossible. I had written more words in the past 30 days than I had written in the past six months.

What I learnt from NaNoWriMo

I can write 1500 – 2000 words a day. It takes about four hours of writing. Another ½ hour of planning, and many hours of thinking. Before I did NaNoWriMo, I would usually turn my computer on and have a look at what I had written the previous day and spend most of my time fixing it and not moving forward. With NaNoWriMo I mostly ignored what I had written previously.

I did go back and ensure that a character’s hair had not changed colour and I changed the dialogue of one character and made a few changes for the sake of consistency. I also scraped a couple of paragraph starts of a two chapters because I thought of a better way to start them.

But I did very little editing. Which left me with the thought, why bother editing at this stage? Especially as I tend to totally rewrite a story/novel on the second and third drafts. Why try to fix what will be rewritten? I think formerly my attitude was a bit like if I died, then someone might turn on  my computer and read my stuff and think I can’t write.

So from now on, my first drafts of anything are going to be an unedited sprawl of missed commas and split infinitives.

  

NaNoWriMo Week 3

Hi all,

It’s the end of week three of National Novel Writing Month and I am feeling tired and of need of a break from writing. In the last two days in particular I have felt like just lying on the bed and dozing. Anyway, I forced myself to write past distractions until the writing eventually became easier. Here is how I went:

Day fifteen: Must have been an easy day’s writing because I can’t remember any issues. I finished chapter thirteen, or so I thought. I wrote 1837 words for a total of 27641.

Day sixteen: I was tired. I changed the ending of chapter thirteen and then wrote chapter fourteen which ended up feeling a bit like a fill in chapter. It might not survive an edit. But I need something to break chapter thirteen from chapter fifteen. I wrote 1947 words for the day. Total 29588.

Day seventeen: I realised that for consistency I better start making a plan of the interior of the spaceship much of the story is set on, which I did. Wrote 1839 words. Total 31427.

Day eighteen: Did some research on heart rates. I had written 900 words by lunch, but found distractions after eating. Eventually got back to the writing and wrote 2140 words. I am two-thirds of the way to the 50,000 mark with 33561 words in total.

Day nineteen: Another daily count in the 1830’s with 1833 words. Total of 35394

Day twenty: Really did not feel like writing. It was a real struggle to get the words out until a flash of insight near the end of the day. I wrote 2099 words for a total of 37493.

Day twenty-one: I felt just as tired as the previous day, which is not the way to start a week. I have decided to divide the novel into three parts. At the moment I am nearing the end of part one, so I reckon the novel will be around the 110,000 words. I wrote 1999 words for the day for a total of 39492.

I am averaging 1880 words a day. I am now 4492 words ahead of schedule. I am very much looking forward to a couple of days off writing.

In other news, Bravenet apologised for sending any email messages I sent the previous week to their spam account. They have given me a month’s free hosting.

I also finished critiquing a novel and reading Patrick White’s intriguing, over punctuated Voss. I will review it when I have finished NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo Week 2

Hi all,

It’s been a busy week of writing and frustrations about writing and technology. I have wondered if technology would intervene in my attempt to get to 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Although I have had no computer mal-functions so far, trying to solve problems with my email (Bravenet) have taken time away from writing.

My email has probably been doing the worse thing it could possibly do: telling me it has sent messages when they haven’t been. I was debating edits to an article I had written for Divine, and suddenly he stopped receiving my emails. He ended up ringing me to find out if I still wanted the article published. I did.

I have contacted Bravenet to see if they care enough to actually fix the problem. They took months to fix a previous problem where my word attachments were being turned into a mess of symbols at the receiver’s end. Needless to say, once I have time, I will be moving my website and email hosting somewhere else.

New Article on DiVine.  

I have a new article up on DiVine today and it is about weight loss. It is particularly aimed at people with disabilities. One thing I knew, which was reaffirmed by my research, was that many weight loss programs have a physical exercise element. Physical exercise can be very difficult for people with certain disabilities. I found a very interesting site in Sparkpeople which is a bit like a Facebook for people who want to lose weight. It has groups for people with disabilities and groups for chair exercises. Because DiVine is a Victorian Government site, I had to severely reduce references I wanted to make to Sparkpeople.

NaNoWriMo.

My goal for the second week of NaNoWriMo was to write more words on each day of the week than I did for the previous week.

Day eight: I spent a while discussing (at least I thought) edits on the DiVine article so I did not get to writing to 2pm. I still managed to write 1788 words which was a fraction over the previous Tuesday’s total. I had written 14416 words in total.

Day nine: I was very angry when I started writing; not the greatest frame of mind to write in. I did some research and found a suitable point in space for the story to be set in. I finished chapter six and then wrote up a lot of notes. The novel’s plot is looking very good. I wrote 1740 words for a total of 16156.

Day ten: More quick research, this time on the brain and what parts of it do. There were no interruptions as I was blissfully unaware that my email wasn’t working. I wrote 1771 words for a total of 17927.

Day eleven: I felt like crap all day, with a sore back of the head, sore hands, even a splinter – which I removed – in the tip of a finger. If I was going to concede defeat on writing my daily quota, this would have been the day. Instead, I wrote until I finished chapter nine. With lots of small chapters, this novel is different from the other two I have written. I wrote 2100 words to scrape over the 20,000 words.

Day twelve: I was distracted by finding my email wasn’t working. Again I didn’t start writing until after 2pm. But I still made the quota and I still bettered last Saturday’s word count. I wrote 1839 words for a total of 21866.

Day thirteen: And I failed to better last Sunday’s word count. I finished chapter eleven and thought that would be a good place to stop for the day. I figured out I am writing at about 500 words an hour, but I am not going back past the current sentence I am writing to edit. I also spend about half an hour a day sorting my notes out. And many hours thinking about the novel. I wrote 2059 words for the day and a total of 23925.

Day fourteen: Again I was distracted by my stupid email. I am fed up with Bravenet and I sent them an email telling them so. I would not recommend Bravenet to anyone, their customer support is probably the worst I have encountered – and I have dealt with Amazon to get a Kindle replaced. I managed to settle the mind and do some writing. I wrote 1879 words and passed the halfway mark for a total of 25804 words. 

I only missed bettering the previous week’s daily word counts on one day. I am now 2471 words ahead of schedule.

My NaNoWriMo week.

Hi all,

I have just finished the first week of National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. This is how I faired:

Day one: I started a brand new novel. The ideas for the novel had only been pulled together over the previous few days. I was not sure whether I would get anywhere near the 1667 words required on average per day.

The first chapter was to introduce the main character, his predicament and his somewhat drastic reaction. I wrote this chapter in first person. I finished the chapter and then thought about stopping for the day as my word count was at 1630, just below the average of 1667. But I was reminded by a friend that it’s easier to begin writing the next day if you have a scene set and started, so I wrote the first 70 words of chapter two. I wrote 1700 words for the first day.

Day two: When walking back from the pool, I thought up a better way to open chapter two, so I scrapped the start and began again. I then had to stop and walk to the dentist and then spend a lovely hour and twenty minutes getting a root canal finished.

Chapter two is written in third person and the story is told from three different POV. I felt like I was creating distinct voices for each of them. I wrote 1710 words for a total of 3410.

Day three:  I went back and did some editing (naughty Graham) and deleted about 100 words. The writing for chapter two became more technical as characters followed step by step procedures. I finished chapter two and started chapter three. I wrote 1647 words for the day, so I did not make the average daily quota. 5057 words in total.

Day four: On the way back from the pool I found myself stopping to write a lot of notes and, once again, I thought of a better beginning to a chapter I had started, so I scrapped some more words. Chapter three, like chapter one, is one long scene, and when you don’t need to stop and think about setting a scene it is a lot easier to punch out the words. After I finished writing, I spent some time sorting out my notes for the novel. I wrote 1760 words for a total of 6817.

Day five:  I woke up a few times during the night to write down ideas for the novel. When I got up the next morning, I immediately snatched up my notebook to write more notes.  When I finally began writing, I finished chapter three and was well into chapter four before stopping.

I am finding that writing at this pace certainly helps with remembering what is happening and keeping a character’s voice consistent. I wrote 1760 words for the second day in a row, for a total of 8577 words.

Day six: Writing seemed very easy. I finished chapter four and was well into chapter five when I stopped, rushing to 2197 words and a total of 10774. I am finding the more I write, the more I want to write.

Day seven: A few things interfered with my writing time, like the editor for Divine sending me an edited version of my next article with changes, some of which I did not agree with. I spent a lot of time composing an email that explained why I thought some of his changes diminished the article. Then the house insurance bill arrived and a long discussion broke out about whether we are under or overinsured. Did yet another online insurance contents estimate – came out much the same as the previous ones. Just as well I had written around 800 words before I checked my email and mail. I then managed to write another 1000 words or so for a total of 1854 and a week one total of 12628.

After week one I am 959 words ahead of schedule. I have amazed myself with my output. I have written more in seven days than I usually write in seven weeks.