Old Snippet - Some Fiction

This is the opening section from my Nanowrimo book in 2010. I wrote 50,000 words in total. It's a dystopian story about a sex slave escaping a totalitarian regime. Very original hey (!) It is very clunky and awkward. I cringe reading it now. But I miss my characters. They were so vivid in my head. Not sure I'll be able to resuscitate them though...


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Condemnation - Part 1

He is pretty, fine skin and feminine eyes; blue eyes with thick black lashes that curl up at the end – to cause jealousy in a million women. Freckles are sprinkled across his cheekbones, down his nose, meeting his wide mouth, a mouth for kissing and pouting. At the minute his mouth is in a moue, frowning at his paper. A lock of hair has fallen across his forehead and as he reaches up to smooth it back his gaze falls across me but veers away at the last minute. I am sure that if I saw his eyes they would burn into me.

As he looks away, back down at his lap, I wind my veil more tightly around my eyes and head, the gossamer silk as fine as a puff of smoke. To look upon me full in the face is forbidden – if he even did so by accident, he would surely look away instantly. No glance will ever linger on my face, veiled as it may be. I am forbidden to all but one. To be caught looking at me is a crime punishable by death – or worse. I wonder about that beautiful face caught up in a grimace of pain; so close to an expression of ecstasy. His head thrown back, eyes wide and open, pupils so dilated his irises seem almost black and that long sensuous mouth either stretched wide in a silent scream or lips barely parted in breathless agony.

Just one word from him and I would be all powerful and omniscient over him. Pain like he had never known could be written upon his body and in his mind. Being forbidden to men and women alike makes you cunning in the ways of pleasure and pain. Trapped inside my smoky veil the blood pounds in my ears as I think of the many lessons I had – and the many things I could teach him. 

A suited, booted body can conceal a multitude of aberrant behaviours – fine cloth can be torn, converted into restraints and allow access to the flesh in ways that can surprise the novice. Perhaps tattoos hide beneath his shirt, crawling across his body like a blindfolded woman across a bed; piercings, spiny and sharp pushing out of smooth flesh and sinuous muscle. I feel my body, well-trained, flush with pleasure and desire at the thought of his response to this. I know that I will pay for this later – the cruel torture of pleasing one man when thinking of another.

Doing The Same Thing Over Again

The definition of insanity is said to be doing the same thing over and over again and expecting results. Sometimes, with this daily blogging task, I have wondered if there is actually any point. I guess it's natural I'd feel like that - it's day 10 and I'm almost half way there already, but also not near enough the finish line to see the tape. It's at this point that I often lose a bit of heart in new endeavours and projects. But I'm really, really bloody stubborn and hate giving up, even if things look a bit rocky (this is not always a good thing!)

It's not that I don't care about the project, despite it's seeming lack of end goal, it's that I'm tired. I know I say that a lot but it's true, I'm pretty much always tired by the time I sit down to write - it's rare that this happens before 10pm. By which time I've usually been up for 16hours.

I know it's good writing practice to write every day, but I feel like I'm churning out quantity over quality here and kind of dialling it in on occasion (here and here). Ideally you're supposed to do your writing practice in the morning - 3 pages (size unspecified, hello there tiny notepad...), whilst you're fresh and awake - that's never going to happen. 

Even if I sort the timing issue, I'm feeling that by writing every day, I'm a bit hit and miss with topics and quality of writing. I'm boring myself sometimes and I'm not even sure if I'm writing for an audience, writing to keep up with my month-long goal, or just exploring ideas - or a mix of all three. 

It's hard because I don't have as long as I want to let ideas percolate (several weeks) and I'm having to just (wo)man up and write the damn posts. Not every topic flows from my fingers and I like to use precise wording and sentence structure convey my point from my conscious to my readers' conscious. That's hard to do without time to think and process - and time to choose appropriate wording. 

But what I learned from doing Nanowrimo in 2010 was to just write and silence your inner critic. To keep writing and writing and writing - and even though 90% of it was crap, once you warmed up you'd get some decent sections of text to work with (that's if I ever get around to finishing and editing my 50k start of a novel). 

I need to buck up my ideas and stop trying to stick to my arbitrary rules of writing, to let myself be more creative and write more freely. Not for an audience but for me. I think the part of your brain governing creativity is like a muscle - the more you use it, the more neural pathways you grow and the stronger it gets - the more creative you become and I guess create something worthwhile.

There's another 18 days of this month long blogging assignment left. In that I think I need to remind myself of this post on occasion and give myself permission to censor myself less. I know this is really going to be tedious to many people - someone blogging about trying to write more. 

But if my end goal is really to get to grips with the two lots of 6k words of books I've started and make a go of them, I need to think like a sports player. I need to train so that get better and stronger and achieve my dream. That might even mean posting some fiction on here. Who knows.

Thank you and goodnight,

Stupidgirl has left the building 

On not blogging and pleasure in failing.

Despite preaching about the importance of consistency in blogging eg: blogging regularly, to those who ask my advice on blogging, I obviously do not take my own advice. Well, in fairness I do blog consistently - but very sporadically. (Any Clueless fans, great word usage huh?)

But  it's not that I don't have ideas, and it's not that I don't have time - although I have a lot less time than pre-baby45. I just struggle to actually write. And when I do write, I'm just thinking of all the mistakes I'm making. Like:

• too many adverbs (4 alone in the above paragraphs)
• terrible punctuation and grammar (let's not even go there)
• boring topics (I'm in that no man's land of not A.N.Other Mummy Blogger but not a subject specialist)See, current events, mental health, parenting, social media. I flit, like a badly written butterfly.
• lack of multimedia (it's a pain in the ass to find pictures to illustrate concepts sometimes and then also, if I do design my own jpeg, it takes forever and then I just ....oh you get the picture right?!)
• Waffling. Not the belgian edible kind. The going off on random tangents and forgetting the original point of the - Oh wait, where was i again?
• Lack of lists, snappy titles, not writing huge blocks of text. But also, I don't have a sub-editor so.....

So does any of this matter? How do I get the ideas for blogposts out of my head and onto my screen? 

Giving Up Facebook

So I'm giving up Facebook for a month, starting from tonight. I know, how will I cope, I hear you ask? I am a fully paid up FB addict - always on chat/commenting/liking/sharing/posting and notifying the world of my (or more like Baby45's) every bowel movement.

Why am I giving it up? Well, I think it is taking up too much of my time. I haven't blogged regularly for almost two years now - and yes, the small toddler shaped hole in my time is partially responsible but also, I haven't gotten anywhere with this year's Nanowrimo book that I've written 4k of. However mostly it's because there are a lot of people - off and on Facebook - that I've not properly maintained an "IRL" relationship with for some time now - even years in some cases.

I think Social Media - and Facebook in particular - has made me sloppy when it comes to friendships. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't be without my LNMC crew and my other friends on chat and Facebook who have gotten me through the changes of the last few years. No, it's more that I feel I am not giving enough or doing enough with those friends who - understandably - don't just want to be broadcast to.

I feel a little like I'm saying, let's not chat properly about what's happening, just go check out my facebook page - you can see what Baby45 had for lunch, that I shared several "totes cray cray" Buzzfeed lists and a blurry selfie. Wow, scintillating isn't it. I'm arrogantly assuming that people are just that interested.Where is the depth to the relationships, how am I giving something back? A quick "happy birthday lovely xxx" on a wall doesn't replace a card, a gift, a coffee or a call. Instead it just shows that Facebook reminded me.

I am exaggerating a touch here, I greatly value the convenience of Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family across the world, to contribute to groups where I can help other mums, to arrange parties and playdates. But this is a wake up call to me to really cherish the people who are important to me in 2014 - and beyond.  And by that I don't mean a quick mass BCC email tomorrow saying "let's me up for a coffee" and that being all.

No, this year, there will be coffees, cocktails, playdates, swim classes, picnics, parties, day trips but also long emails, phone calls and even, letters. Proper birthday cards and catch ups. I don't expect to just pick up where I left off with friendships, they'll need to built back up again, that takes time. But hopefully without Facebook taking up so much time, I'll be able to do that.

Thank you and goodnight,

Stupidgirl has left the building x

AudioFuel - Top 10 Songs/Music To Write To

Another Nanowrimo oriented post, but one thing I really noticed last Nano, was just how much music I listened to when I was writing. For me, music is the equivalent of an airplane when it comes to taking me to that place in my head where the writing bits live. Music, to paraphrase Madonna, takes me there.

It would take a whole other blog post to go into why music does what it does to me (and many other people) but I thought it would be interesting to share the music I listen to when I write - it's partly what fuelled my Lyric Day posts also - as I listen to music when I blog.

Last year, for Nano, I compiled a playlist called, rather originally, Writing Music. It's got 62 tracks on it which obviously I'm not going to list in its entirety here, but it covers everything from Bjork to Britney Spears via Tori Amos, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, Garbage, Counting Crows and The Chemical Brothers.

In addition, last year I also compiled a special playlist of music that helped me focus on my main characters - it plotted their story, music-wise. It might sound a bit odd but it really enabled me to get inside their heads and think about them as real people - and the sort of music they might like.

I'm curious to see if this year for Nano, my writing music tastes change because I'm writing in a different genre (dystopia to thriller). As a result, although this is a top 10 post, really it's just a list post, to help me categorise the music I listen to when I write.

A Universe In A Grain of Sand - Last Year's Nanowrimo Novel

As promised on yesterday's post - top tips for Nanowrimo - I *was* supposed to be blogging about my plans for this year's nanowrimo novel. However it occurred to me that I should probably do a short post about last year's first......

Um, so I dreamt the plot of last year's novel. Farcical as it sounds I really did. I woke up one morning at the end of August thinking huh, I just dreamt a novel idea. After not ever having one before, it was kind of exciting (a novel idea that is, not a dream, i have a lot of dreams - the less said about them the better). So the novel idea kind of percolated round in my head for a bit, I attempted to draft a few sentences, jot down a few notes etc but didn't really do much about it.

"Let's do Nanowrimo" says @aliamck
"Huh, wtf is Nanowrimo" says I.
@aliamck sends me a link
"Hmmmmmm" says I, "you may be on to something here what with this book plot thingummy I dreamt up"

After agreeing to partake in the madness that is Nano, I felt I was off to a good start as I had a title. Oh yes, a title - before I'd written a word. That title is/was Condemnation. I have yet to come up with a better one. Husbando thinks it's naff, cheesy and obvious. (It's a dystopian novel set under a totalitarian regime Con Dem Nation.....) I could also summarise my novel in less than 10 words: Dystopian love story in which everyone dies. Also impressive I think you'll find.

Certainly both of these were a hell of a lot easier than writing and structuring the damn thing. So for your convenience, here's a summary, a character guide and a chunk of the book itself....

Summary
Lotte is trapped in a life serving a man she is ambivalent about, living in a house with a woman who hates her and a society that condemns her very existence as a government prescribed sex slave. Taken from her family as a young woman to be trained into a life of servitude, the best she can hope for is to keep the same master until she grows too old be of any use. When Gideon walks into her life, will she learn what it really means to love someone - and then risk everything for it? Defying her training, her security and ultimately, the government of Condemnation, Lotte finds out how far she will really go to achieve a life she'd never even dreamed of.

Main Characters
Lotte - sex slave and around whom the book revolves
Michael - Lotte's master
Evy - Michael's frosty wife
Gideon - Lotte's love and Michael's colleague

Key Facts
Condemnation - a totalitarian government that has divided the united kingdom into tribes depending on wealth and education, and renamed them all by colour.
The Black - slang for the main city in Condemnation
A Breathless - what Lotte is, a sex slave (I'm thinking of changing this name, but to what, I don't know)

Chunk of book
"I was seeking comfort more often now, a sense of belonging – I thought it had been triggered by seeing the man on the Omnibus. The attraction I had felt for him, even for just a few seconds had been a reminder of a feeling that I could not name precisely, but even so was tugging at the edges of my consciousness, a sense of belonging to someone or something. I knew that I had felt similarly at The Convent but I could not quite place a finger on when the feeling had gone away – and how. 

I was doing my utmost to conceal this during my day-to-day activities and behaviours but when alone I was spending a lot of time thinking; about my current situation, about being a Breathless, about escape even and most importantly about the man on the bus. These thoughts themselves concerned me, I felt powerless to do anything about them but I worried away at them in my mind, like a dog chasing its tail." 

What Next

So I've not done anything with last year's book. I wrote my 50k words but it's nowhere near finished let alone edited. A couple of friends *have* read it - and asked me what happens next and suggested I finish it. I don't know if I will or not. I love the story and the characters but it's just so hard with so many plot strands and bits + pieces. Any comments welcome, I'll try not to cry :P

Anyway tomorrow I'll be posting about this year's Nanowrimo book idea!

Thank you and good night

Stupidgirl has left the building

Didn't You Get The Memo? My Top Tips for Nanowrimo

This post has been a long time coming, but seeing as Nanowrimo starts in eeeep....(counts on fingers) 9 days, I thought I'd better put it out there. So, if you're thinking of doing Nano, you're a newbie and you've signed up or you've done it before (winner or not), this post is for you.

Btw, if you're wondering wtf Nanowrimo is, it's a crazy month of madness whereby you try to write a novel - or 50,000 words of one - in a month. Hence National Novel Writing Month. I've only done it once before - last year - when @aliamck encouraged me to do it. However I should add that prior to November 2010, the last time I'd written more than a sentence was at university. So doing Nano last year was a little like running a marathon with no practice. That's not to say it shouldn't be done like that. Anyway, on with the tips aka "what I learned from Nanowrimo 2010 and how it might help you"

Tip One: Write Like No One's Going To Read It
You know that expression dance like no one's watching? And then you see people dance who adhere to that - some are bad, some are good, some are awesome. But, they're all putting their heart + soul into it. Well from what I know about writing, that's how you should write. Sounds a bit crazy I know, but the books I most enjoy and the authors I most admire, are the people who write with a true clear voice and stick to it.
That's not to say you won't worry about people reading your writing, but with Nano, I worked on the basis that no one was ever going to see what I wrote. Not my husband, not my friends, not agents or publishers let alone the general public. Nope, not a page/sentence/word/letter. Remember that actually, you're in control of who sees your writing, so if you don't want people to see it then uh, don't show it to them. I found that reminding myself of this - and I did most days when I was nano-ing - really helped me overcome my writing inhibitions

Tip Two: Have Fun!
I can see the looks on your faces....how does writing 50,000 = fun? Well try not to take it all so seriously. If you're adhering to tip 1, you're well on your way there....remember if your book/character/plot is boring you - chances are, it'll bore other people. When you're a writer you effectively get to play god :)
A good example from my experience last year was when I got totally stuck. I'd written about 12k words and I knew what I wanted to have happen but I seemingly couldn't get there without writing pages of crap. So I asked my husband what I should do. (Warning: typical man response coming)
"Blow something up!"

Let's Talk About Sex Baby....Word of The Week

Well yeah, as the song goes really, let's talk about sex. Let's just get right down to the nitty gritty. How does one write the perfect sex scene? Neither too smutty/pornographic nor too fluffy and schmaltzy. What words do you use to describe parts of the anatomy? Do you make it funny? What if everyone who reads the scene assumes you've written it based on your sex life + the person you're sleeping with? What if what if what if................

In case you're new to the blog and am wondering WTF is this crazy person going on about, every week I do Word of the Week (WoTW). I pick a word and talk about it in relation to writing. The last few weeks' words have been quite intense - and provoked a lot of discussion - so I thought I'd do something a little more light-hearted this week and talk about sex.

This whole post was inspired by one of my status updates during Nanowrimo, when I was struggling with writing the sex scenes in my book. Seeing as one of my main characters is a sex slave, I couldn't really avoid writing about it, but god it was hard . My status update read:

"lots of people have asked to read my nano book but I'm very sorry I can't show it to any of you. It has sex in it and then you'll know far too much about what I think about sex and it's just all too wahhhhhhhhhh I bet Jilly Cooper doesn't have this problem she just gets on with it. Help! "

This status provoked 21 comments as to what makes a good sex scene and whether people can still look you in the eye after you've described anal sex (not that I have, just a for example).


So - is there an art to writing a good literary sex scene? And what do I even mean by good - everyone has different ideas of what makes a good sex scene right?! And clearly none of this applies if you're writing erotica/bonkbusters/posh porn etc.


My best example of this is the library sex scene in atonement. It's simple but obvious and leaves your imagination to fill in the blanks (blanks that were hugely helped by the divine James McAvoy playing Robbie in the film). I think Ian McEwan should also win an award for excellent, if not the definitive use, of the word cunt.


Therefore, for the purposes of this post, I shall define a good literary sex scene as one in which you know exactly what is happening without it being described in TMI detail. Equally it should still be titillating - I want my readers' pulses to speed up a little, I want their pupils to be a touch dilated  - but I don't want them frantically dashing home for a quick one! It is the fine art of brushing the canvas without painting in the detail. 


It is also quite hard to write a sex scene that doesn't end up being comically amusing - mainly due to issues with what words to use for the various parts of the anatomy. If I list some examples here:


Male: penis, cock, willy, member, rod, erect, erection, hard on, stiffy, tumescent, spunk, come, cum, semen, sperm
Female: Clunge, gash, cunt, vagina, vadge, clit, flaps, pussy, quim, minge, lady garden, hairy mound, mons venus


I could go on - I did considerable research on twitter for this, which resulted in much tea being snorted out of my nose onto my laptop and general hilarity at our inability to find attractive names with which to label our body parts. I must also pay brief homage to Judy Blume here who surely must win an award for best name for penis ever - the hysterically named 'Ralph' in the book Forever - followed by the immortal line "I have an uncle Ralph". Loving how this does not in any way, diminish teenage ardour.


There was also much revulsion at any of the common metaphors used in books including things like "his eager fingers caressed her wetness" - for a start, how can fingers be eager? They're just fingers - are they possessed? Let's not even go near the wetness side of things. This is what I mean by TMI - we know what you're doing, either use the proper words (it's a clit, folks, every lady has one) or just don't bother at all. As for descriptions of orgasm - where everyone comes together naturellement, all the talk of waves crashing and reaching peaks and riding it out sometimes makes me wonder if the characters are fucking or on some sort of outward bound course.


Which brings me onto the verb one uses for sex scenes. Do they fuck? Do they make love ? Do they shag? Do they 'do it'? Do they screw? Is he giving her one? Shafting her? The list is endless. I know that there are different types of sex - fucking is different to having sex IMO - but really, lets call a spade a spade people. They're having sex. End of.


My final issue with writing about sex is actually fear of how it reveals what your own attitude to sex is. My book involves several different types of sexual relations - infidelity shags, loving sex and paid for fucks. All of which have to be described differently + provoke different reactions in the reader. It doesn't mean that this is the type of sex I have myself, but when you've had the same partner for many years does that mean your readers think you're drawing on experience. Ultimately my characters define the sex they have - not me - I'm just their conduit and I certainly haven't experienced (sadly?) some of the situations I describe.


I guess the main conclusion I can draw about writing a sex scene is that - much like the act itself, and like writing - everyone does it differently. You have to write a sex scene that stays true to your book, its voice and its characters and screw everyone else (bad choice of words, slaps self). Surely, much like sexual partners - for every sex scene, there is the perfect reader? You just have to work out which buttons to press.


Thanks for listening - and for the very entertaining contributions to this from the tweeties! As ever, please let me know your thoughts. Am hoping to be back tomorrow night with a photo essay and then interview day on friday. Sunday is going to be my Top 10 Poems!


Thank you and goodnight


Stupidgirl has left the building

Kindness Is Not A Swear Word

(Kindness n The quality or state of being kind. Kind adj Humane, considerate, tolerant, generous, agreeable, warm-hearted,friendly, charitable, understanding. Ety: from O.E. gecynde "natural, native, innate," related to cynn "family"and pre-Germanic gakundiz)


I've been wanting to use Kindness as WoTW for a little while now, especially after last week's word; I've been blogging regularly for nearly a month now and one thing has really struck me in that time. In all the blogs I read and all the tweople I follow, in all the discussions about writing, writers and authors just seem to be *so* hard on themselves and their work. What happened to being kind to yourself? Just why are we so self-critical and lacking in confidence + self esteem when it comes to our projects and w-i-ps?


Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the X-Factor style delusion either (you know, when the tone deaf idiots show up to audition thinking that they're the next Mariah Carey only for SyCo to set them straight). It's important to understand that for the most part your work on a day to day basis isn't going to be the next War and Peace but equally, it's no Snooki/Katie Price either. Why can't we give credit to ourselves for trying to follow our dreams and do something different and creative.


I think maybe some of it is attitude related - I think it's very British not to blow one's own trumpet - but some days I think we need to acknowledge what we've achieved; whether that's an amazing scene, a new plot twist, another 1k/5/10k of words or simply just finding the perfect word for what you're trying to say. Why *not* celebrate that? It is good to recognise when you're just that little bit closer to finishing your masterpiece. It sounds terribly cliched to say *think positive* but sometimes that helps. 


One of the reasons why Nanowrimo worked for me + why it was so great was because of the lack of pressure - all I had to do was work towards a word count. It didn't matter if those words were crap or not - and that was unbelievably liberating. I felt happy to just write and write - and yes there was tons of dross but I think you need to work through the crap to get to mine the gold underneath. This attitude of positivity and kindness is also something I have learned - and practised - at work when it comes to being creative. You genuinely can't get to the really good ideas without chucking around some seriously crazy ones too. In fact I've been told in one job that they paid me to come up with "daft ideas"!! 


So lesson number one, for me at least, about kindness: relax your attitude a little, ease up on the inner criticism and feel free to play around with the crazy ideas and tangents - you never know what amazing plot line or character you might discover.


The other part of kindness, is that it's not just attitudinal, its about how you actually act towards yourself in both giving and receiving kindness. Sometimes when someone is kind to you it's really frickin hard to trust that kindness. After all - as many people on twitter said - an act of kindness is often an act of selflessness, giving without expecting anything in return; in these cynical times of economic doom + gloom it can really be hard to believe that people will give something for nothing. I am particularly learning that with twitter and blogging - that people will RT me or follow me or recommend me or let me interview them - and for what personal gain - nothing. It is amazing to be able to accept that and see that they have faith in me and want to help me. The more I see that the more I want to be kind to other people too. Again another cliche but the whole idea of pay it forward I think makes a big difference. Doing good makes you feel good. 


So lesson number 2 that I have learned is just to accept when other people are kind and *trust* them. To just open up and allow people to be kind to me so that I can learn how to be kind to other people - but also how to be kind to me; which will have a knock on affect on my writing.


I know that this week's WoTW has been a little mushier than usual but I'm in a bit of a reflective mood today. As some of you know (and some of you may not), last year was a bit of a tough year and I had a melt down over Christmas. When I went to see the doctor, as well as giving me meds + an appointment with the counsellor, she also told me to be kinder to myself and to learn how to worry less. So this post is my first tiny step on that journey. I know it's a little self indulgent but I hope you'll forgive me this once.


Thank you and good night


Stupidgirl has left the building


PS Many thanks again to all the tweople who gave me their thoughts on kindness, you know who you are - couldn't have done this without you