HTRYN: Getting to know what I wrote.

A month after I started How to Revise Your Novel, how do I feel about it?

It's an eye-opener. It was designed to be just that, a course that makes the student look at their novel differently - taking it apart methodically, detaching themselves from their beloved characters in order to figure out where it went wrong and where it went right. This approach might not be right for everybody, but it appeals to me a lot. Stars Shine Brighter, though I love it still, is fraught with too many obvious mistakes and shortcomings to ignore. It's just not a very good story at that point. What's on the paper is nowhere near as shiny as what's in my mind, and even that is quite confused, so fixing it is no luxury.

Because Holly Lisle used to be a nurse, working in the ER, she uses medical metaphors to describe throughout the course. Your novel is an ER patient, who has just come in after a car-crash (or train-wreck, depending on how messed up it is). The first two months of the course, Lessons One to Eight (although it may take a lot longer than a week to work through some of the lessons), she defines as Triage, when the doctor/writer examines their patient/novel and figure out what is wrong with it.

During that first period, as a HTRYN student, you go through a number of re-reads of your novel in order to give the appropriate diagnosis (most likely it'll be diagnoses, really). Only after this long period of analysis, do you get to start making changes. Why? Because as you read your manuscript and identify its fault, sudden realisations about your work are bound to come and WHACK you around the head pretty much all the time. These are so common (and awesome!) that they even have a name on the HTRYN forums. They are the EUREKA MOMENTS!*

I will talk about the rest of the course when I get to it, but for now, let me tell you about my first few weeks of dissecting my novel.

How To Revise Your Novel, Lesson One:

Holly tells you straight up, when you read your first lesson, that it's probably the hardest one you'll have to go through. I don't know about future lessons yet, but I hope it's true because Lesson One was pretty though. Even after I had been warned that certain lessons may take longer than others to tackle, I was a bit shocked to find that Lesson One took me more than three weeks.

Lesson One isn't titled Magic, Despair and Grace for nothing. I thought I would stop several times and then I went on the boards, got some encouragements from graduates of the course and threw myself back into the task. I filled out the many worksheets, answering questions - What did I want my novel to be when I started? What is it like now? What came to life unplanned as I wrote it? - making notes on my manuscript every time I read something of notice - Is this good characterisation/bad characterisation? Why did this bit turn out to be so good/bad?, etc...

For me, the lesson highlighted many things that I suspected were wrong with the book and helped me see why. Because using the worksheets forced me to be methodical, it also squashed any illusions I could have, any argument I could try to oppose. Some of my characters are straw men and women. Some are flat, one-dimensional or just completely not what I would like them to be. Some bits of the plot make no sense and some elements I was fond of are just not shown at all. But I also know how this came to happen - hurrying through Nano, I left all the good stuff in my head and what made it to paper was mostly info-dumps, plot-holes and weak characters.

This may sound like it should be a depressing experience. But isn't the idea behind Nano that 'You can't revise a blank page'? Well, neither can you fix something if you don't know what's broken.

I know I'm explaining this all in foggy terms, but if I went into details this post would be even longer and I couldn't do justice to the course anyway. More on Lesson two coming up as I complete it!


*The Eureka moments are also referred to as epiphanies very often, but I favour the more science-y, less religiously-charged term. Shocker.

How To Revise Your Novel

For my first ever NaNo, in 2008, I wrote a novel about space pirates called Stars Shine Brighter. I had amazing characters and great ideas and concepts when I started out and, as it so often happens, the magic didn't translate onto what I'd written. Now, even though the first draft is a mess, I've still been in love with the characters ever since, figuring out more and more about them and their personalities and trying to write more. From these attempts, more snippets of text were born, but no significant progress was made.

So I decided to do something that had been tempting me for a while and sign up for Holly Lisle's novel revision course, the appropriately named 'How To Revise Your Novel'. I feel like HTRYN is going to be a good thing for me, because it structures things in a way that I quite like. How much vaguer could I be, huh? Information on the course can be found here at http://howtoreviseyournovel.com/. Now, I know the page looks corny and all, but I've read some of Holly Lisle's previous essays and fiction [and blogged about it] and I really do like her style and what she has to say. I'm just a sucker for anything structured like a class.

So right now I'm fighting my way through Week One of the course, which Lisle defines as the hardest one, because you have to set yourself a whole new bunch of targets, which you do by reading your manuscript and writing down every time you think something sucks. Which I my case happens often. Updates on this will follow as I work through the course.

My goal for the coming week is to finish Week One and start on Week Two after that.

Oh, lookie, it's mid-May!

April has come and gone in a whirl of script-writing, event-organising and mild swearing. I have tried to be a good ML and I think on some level I achieved that, although motivation strongly lagged after I started finding myself alone at write-ins. Script Frenzy was pretty cool, but it's not as popular as NaNoWriMo and its participants tend to be more of the online type, I think. If only because the fact that there even were MLs for London this year wasn't so widely known.

I'm proud to say that I have won Script Frenzy, with the 100-page mark reached on Friday the 30th around 9pm. I swear one year I'll win before the late evening on the last day. I wrote an adaptation of a romance novel I'd started for JulNoWriMo last year and it went pretty well. It's actually the closest I've come yet to finishing any story, but it's not finished yet, of course. The young padawan, much learning yet to process has. I also had fun with the format although it was a bit difficult to get to grips with it at first. I'm sure I went a bit OTT on visual gimmicks, montages and symbolic things, but I feel like I learnt at least a bit. So that was good.

Now, tell me about your month of April, people. Did you try your hand at Script Frenzy? If so, did you like it or not? Did you find script-writing to be just the thing for you? Or just the thing to avoid? Will you be taking part again next year? Will you give it a try if you haven't yet?

Don't worry, I'm still around...

I'm just quite bad at organising myself and at actually doing stuff. Also, I've been a bit ill recently, which induces tiredness and lazyness. I also haven't written at all in a while, which means the Guilt Monkeys have been visiting, Failure Hyenas and Shame Yodels in toe. It's hard to feel great and enthusiastic about posting on your Serious Writing Blog if you haven't been doing any writing.

Thankfully, Script Frenzy is coming soon, which means I will definitely be writing a 100-page script in 30 days in April. I am very excited about Screnzy this year, all the more so because a Municipal Liaison for London, so I get to organise lots of amazing activities, parties and write-ins.

On the reading front, everything goes smoothly, I've read the graphic novel Kick-Ass because I saw the trailer for the movie and it looked awesome and a Regency romance novel entitled Everything And The Moon, which wasn't that great. Right now I'm reading Temeraire, by Naomi Novik and I absolutely love it. Not that I expected to dislike a book about ships, dragons and the war between France and England, but still, the book fills me with glee and it should be the subject of my next book post.

Reading - The Lovely Bones

I've just finished to read Alice Sebold's best-selling novel The Lovely Bones. Susie Salmon (like the fish) is 14 when she is murdered by a man who lives in the neighbourhood. After her death, she looks back at earth from her own personal heaven, observing the lives of her loved ones, as they have to learn to live without her and cope with her death.

The front cover and the friends who had already read the book all told me it was one of these compulsive reads that can be devoured in a single sitting and on this subject I beg to differ. Even by my slow standards of reading, taking over a week to read one single novel is a little much.

I feel the characterisation is really the strong point of the book. That and, you know, the story's premise - it's original and gripping and beautifully well-served by Sebold's writing. For once, the back cover isn't exaggerating, the writing really is great. The characters' feelings, their reactions to the dreadful events dropped onto them, their relationships to each other, how they grow and degrade, all of this is masterfully crafted and feels incredibly genuine. I truly admire Sebold for that.

I found the story to be a little bit slow-paced and not just as great as the hype around it had led me to expect, but it should be taken into account that I was spoilt before reading the book. I also found the ending of the book to be quite weird and nonsensical and I liked the realistic elements of the story better than the few supernatural ones. I'm quite eager to see what the movie is like, now.

One thing I'm not that good at is multitasking...

When I made the conscious decision to start practising my writing more seriously, I knew that my issue would probably be to stay focused and determined, to keep at it regularly and establish a habit that I could rely on. I'm interested in a lot of things and I like to try out new activities as well as tried and tested hobbies I've come to love dearly.

I tend to organise my spare times a bit like I do my meals - i.e. not at all. I am mostly a nibbler and occasionally a binger when it comes to food and leisure, but I am never very organised or regular in what I do. I eat when I want to and I practise my hobbies when I want to. It should be that easy, shouldn't it? I like to write, I want to get better at it, therefore I should just be able to do it whenever I want. And that should be quite often because I always like to tell stories.

It seems to me like I pour into my writing a huge amount of hopes and expectations, and maybe, just like with food, these things I expect of myself are what can charge something I love with more guilt and worry than pleasure. And just like with food, I don't want to let that happen and I won't.

Maybe I should christen these posts Wacky Metaphorical Wednesdays, as I seem to be getting the hang of those metaphors. And at least, if they're not that great now, they'll get better!

Writing - The Artist's Way

Mur Lafferty, the author and podcaster behind I Should Be Writing, the podcast for wannabe writers, is currently releasing a series of video podcasts about Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way, a twelve-week course in 'Discovering and Recovering your Creative Self'.

I like courses, because they give you a framework and I thought that doing this along with ISBW would help me do it properly and not abandon. I decided to shell out the £15 for the book despite Lafferty's warning that it might be a little bit heavy on the whole spirituality side for the sceptics among us. I was quite concerned about this because sceptic is a bit of an understatement when it comes to my views on religion. And in fact it does irk me quite a lot when Julia Cameron tells that I will be able to connect with God better and that I will inspiration from it. But I decided I could live with being irked and it may be worth it.

The Artist's Way's method works on introspection a lot and it includes doing three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness journalling first thing every morning. I am very much hoping this will help me improve my phrasing and get rid of some of the stiffness in my writing which I discussed last week. Of course I'm using a notebook with lines stupidly close together so it's a lot of writing and it takes about 20 to 30 minutes to do - of course that probably wouldn't be a problem if I was able to get up a bit earlier or sacrifice my morning internet browsing to do my three pages. So far I've done most of my week-day morning pages at work during free periods or after work and I could feel the difference with the morning pages that I actually did first thing in the morning.

One thing I am worried about is that in doing this course and in getting ready for Script Frenzy next month (I'll be writing my script and organising events for the Frenzy, as I'm one of the London MLs), I will be so busy talking and thinking about writing that I won't actually do any writing. This has happened to me in the past, so I'll have to be careful to not let that repeat itself. It's going to be a challenge, but hopefully one that I can come out of as an improved writer.

Reading - The Graveyard Book

Last week, I read Neil Gaiman's latest young adult novel The Graveyard Book, which won The Newbury medal and a gazillion other well-deserved awards upon its release. I received this book as a birthday present and was absolutely delighted with it. I was given the adult UK edition - as with the Harry Potter series, The Graveyard Book was released in two separate editions in the UK. I saw the children's edition yesterday at Forbidden Planet and I have to say, I like the illustrations in mine better.

Gaiman says the idea for the book came when he saw his then four-or-five year old* son ride his bicycle in a graveyard. He thought it would be great to write a book just like Kipling's The Jungle Book, but with a boy raised in a graveyard instead. So The Graveyard Book tells the story of Nobody Owens, a boy who is raised by ghosts in a graveyard after his parents' murder.

I found it a very interesting book to read because of the way it is timed. Each chapter takes place roughly two years after its predecessor, meaning that we see slices of Bod's life, when he is one and a half, four, six, eight, etc... I really admired the way Gaiman made his growing protagonist so realistic because, despite my experience working with children and teenagers, I'm not very aware of what children do, what they are preoccupied with at which age. Of course, it helps that Gaiman has three children and that he clearly doesn't underestimate his young readers' intelligence or capacity to deal with difficult topics.

Naturally, because it is Neil and I'm such a fangirl and especially because he says very smart things about everything, I listened to a number of interview he gave about The Graveyard Book. One thing he said** about writing for children as opposed to writing for adults fascinated me - when he writes a book for adults, he expects the reader to read through the good bits, the action and the dialogue and maybe skim through the description and then put the book on a shelf. However, when he writes for children, he always keeps in mind the fact that the reader is going to read every word closely and question how interesting the story is all along. He also knows that if a child has enjoyed a book, they are very likely to read it again next month and again next year, because that's what we do when we love books as children.***

As a grown-up (sort of), I really enjoyed this book and I could also tell that here is a book I would have really enjoyed as a kid. Had this been written when I was ten, it would have had pride of place on my bookshelf and I would probably have re-read it quite regularly, as Gaiman rightly assumes avid younger readers do. And I know that in a few years time, I'll be proud to give that book to my niece. After all, I need to maintain my status as Auntie Claire, who lives in London like Peter Pan and gives cool gifts.

*I can't remember precisely how old Gaiman said his son was at the time. I'm sure he does though.
**Please forgive me for my not-so-good paraphrasing, I forgot to save the quote at the time and can't find the interview again.
***If I hadn't been completely in love with this man's brain before, this would have done it.

When I say I'm a grammar freak, I mean it.

An aspect of my writing which, I think, could use some improvement is that I'm often much too descriptive and wordy.

Not only do I tell instead of showing, I also tell in long-winded, elaborate sentences. I tend to do something called 'style indirect libre' in French, whereby I describe someone saying something, instead of just having them say it, as in "Mr and Mrs Dursley of number 4, Privet Drive were perfectly normal, thank you very much." instead of "Mrs Dursley, who lived at Number 4, Privet Drive, said, outraged 'We're perfectly normal, thank you very much.'" I think it can be used to great effect when it's done subtly and on purpose, just like in the example above, but I just do it all the time. Maybe it just stems from my usual talking style. When I recount an event, it can take some time and go in many an unexpected direction. Note how I embrace the British tradition of the understatement here?

A few days ago, I explained this problem to my boyfriend whose answer was that maybe I should try not to use so much pluperfect. Now you may think that's a random comment to make, but it's actually right on the mark. When he suggested that, I got all sadface and objected, 'But I LOVE the pluperfect!' And it's true. I think the pluperfect is a fun, awesome tense. I couldn't explain it clearly, but knowing that I am at liberty to use it makes me happy. I also love the pluperfect continuous. He suggested that maybe I'm trying to show off my English skills a little bit and I am going to deny it, in public. See what I did with that coma there? Erm. So. No showing off. At all. *kof, kof*

More seriously, I think we are touching here on one of the major drawbacks of writing in one's second language. It is very hard, once you've spent more than a decade being taught how to use a tool in the only right and proper way, to suddenly start using it in a more imaginative fashion. At first, you learn how to use your tool in a very basic way, you learn how to take a chip of wood away with a flat-ended chisel, then you progress, you learn the irregularities, you start using different-sized chisels and gouges and suddenly you can make pretty cool stuff. You've got most words, most tenses, most tools. You can make a lamp, or a chair, or write an essay on the compared benefits of reading or going to the theatre.

And then you get the Dremmel. My brother - who is a wood crafter, if you were wondering where all the wood talk came from - has a Dremmel. He loves it, it's one of his favourite tools. A Dremmel is a neat little drill with many different bits to choose from and with it he makes absolutely amazing things. He made me the most beautiful carved wooden pendant. It was almost entirely hollow because it was literally made out of holes. It was a beautiful criss-crossing of dark red wood and ended up breaking in two because of how delicate it was.

Now, to me, pluperfect is like the Dremmel. You can use it to express things that you could hardly have expressed otherwise. You can use it to make things criss-cross and entertwine. And that makes me about as happy as a puppy with a new chewing toy. Which means that I think about as much as said puppy when using the pluperfect. What could go wrong if I'm being grammatically correct?

I know that not everyone who speaks English as their second language has this problem and that I have it mainly because I love weird, shiny tenses too much, but my argument stands. It is very hard for a non-native speaker of any language to write in any other way than stiff, proper, and grammatically shiny, because they have learnt that from their use of the language.

I'm now trying to correct this by not using the pluperfect or pluperfect continuous :'( and by experimenting with writing in the present tense. This was a suggestion from le boyfriend and so far it's been interesting.

On Saturday, I wrote a short spooky piece about a guy who enters his flat to find an unknown woman dead on his bed and on Monday I started on another present-omly story. This one is turning out okay too, but I won't talk about it too much because I want to do more writing on it tomorrow.

People, your turn. What do you think is your Writing-Wise Weakness? Let me know in the comments. Do you write tons of dialogue and no description or vice-versa? Do you plan too much and find the writing less fun or do you start without a clue and have to rewrite the whole first half when it's done? Or do you struggle with finishing your first draft?

Writing - I try to remember it's not that serious.

These days, I'm struggling with the idea that everything I write is not destined to be the ultimate best-seller. I'm still at the beginning of my learning process and I need to write plenty of imperfect sketches before I get the proportions right. I need hours of practise before I can even reproduce a melody, let alone create one. This is the step where I usually abandon my creative attempts because it's hard and I suck. I've seen it happen with drawing, with singing and playing the guitar, with circus arts and calligraphy. I also ditched horse-riding after the first fall.

Drama and English were the subjects I stuck with and they were the ones I got decent at. It helps me a lot that I truly believe talent is a mix of imagination, experience and hard work. Very hard work. And then more very hard work. And while I have a sneaking suspicion I won't be too good about going to the gym three times a week, I really want to keep training on my writing.

So I'm planning big projects, like the revision of my Nano 09 novel, the same one that despaired me so much last week. I've thought about it a lot, and decided to keep the first 20,000 words or so, because they make sense and I actually like them, surprisingly enough. There's a story and a half in there, so I'll work on making it two different short stories whose main characters are close relatives and I'll shoot for about 20k each. After that, there's two more stories I can write, again with characters related to the first two.

This project terrifies me because it's huge and historical, but I think it'd help me learn a great deal. Right now, I'm mainly writing very short pieces and blog posts for here or LiveJournal . I'm trying to keep myself writing in the time I would otherwise have used berating myself for not writing.

I can do this. Right?

Reading - Playing for Keeps

Last week, I read Mur Lafferty's debut novel Playing For Keeps, a superhero novel with average-hero protagonists - with super powers like the ability to cure hangovers, or never drop bar trays - and officially superheroic and villainous antagonists on a wide scale of barmytude.

It was a fun book to read and I wanted to know what was coming next. The story was interesting and the protagonists (it feels strange to say 'the heroes' or 'the heroin', given what these means in Seventh City), they actually felt like real people. They were put in a less than enviable position and they dealt in what felt like a genuine way.

I finished the book quite quickly by my standards, mainly because I kept sneaking in a page or two whenever I could - which is how I used to read back in middle-school. It was great to find a book that made me want to read it like that again.

I wanted to read this book because I listen to Lafferty's podcast I Should Be Writing regularly and enjoy it very much. If you're an aspiring writer and you've never heard of I Should Be Writing, I recommend that you try it, it's a great show. Lafferty talks about her writing, discusses writing problems and interviews awesome authors - including Neil Gaiman!* I've gone back and listened to quite a lot of ISBW and heard Mur discussing Playing For Keeps, from when she was writing and editing it, to the rejections and to being picked up by her publisher, Swarm Press.

I feel that listening to ISBW has taught me a lot, so I felt it was important for me to buy Mur's book and I wasn't disappointed! Check out I Should Be Writing and Playing For Keeps!

*Oh dear, I'm such a fangirl...

English and I, a steady, long-term, exclusive relationship

This is a more personal, less writerly-oriented piece than I intended to write for today's column, but the experiences described here colour so much of my life and my writing that I feel it is a good start to my series of random posts of being bilingual and a second-language writer.

English and I, a steady, long-term, exclusive relationship

My first encounters with English date back to my early childhood, when I observed my mother as she helped neighbouring children with their English homework. I asked to be enrolled in the English club when I was eight years old and enjoyed it a lot until the teacher I liked left to be replaced by one I didn't like. I sat the next year out but remembered enough to come top of the class when we started English lessons in our last year of primary school. I kept being quite good all through middle school, but failed the exams that could have secured me a spot at a top-notch language focused high-school.

My English levels stagnated quite a bit, I disliked my Year 11 teacher and I was still the best in the class. My smugness levels deflated the next year when I started studying for my Literature baccalaureate in a class of seventeen people, with a new English teacher. Don't mistake me here, I was good, but Ms N. knew it would only take a bit of work for me to be great and she treated my lazy approach with all the 'So what?' it deserved. She gave me a 13/20 for a piece of writing coursework with dreadful tenses coordination mistakes (I was more used to 16s, 17s) and I couldn't hate her for it. I wanted to impress her. I hold her responsible for my being such a huge grammar nerd.

I worked hard, I tried to understand the mechanism of the language, I read and watched a lot more English and I became quite good. The smugness returned. My year 13 English average was 18/20 and I didn't hesitate long to pick a uni major. I walked out of my baccalaureate English exam thinking how easy it had been to find all of my classmates in tears. It seems that year's paper was one the hardest set in that decade. Waiting to take the spoken English exam was nerve wracking, but I could see the relief in the examiner's face when she realised that there was someone who could speak good enough English to have a conversation with. I got 18/20 for both and when I went back to my highschool to tell Ms N. about it, she said she hadn't expected any less of me.

I went to study English and Communication at uni and remained quite smug throughout my first year. By the end of it, I was dead bored. The English wasn't challenging whatsoever, everybody else sucked and the communication part was definitely not something I wanted to pursue. I knew I didn't want to be a teacher (Oh, the irony!), so I went to the second uni in town and started a cultural management course. It included maths, economy and I was better at English than the teacher. A giant uni strike came along at just the right time. I fell in with the bad leftist crowd, fell in love, fell out of school.

The next September, I went back to study English in my first uni Lyon 2 - I had validated all my credits in my first year there, so I was allowed in second year without any issue. The people were more interesting, the English more challenging, I met linguistics and translation and delved more deeply into Frenglish geekery. I took medium German and Spanish for beginners and kept being told off for adding random English words in every other sentence.

Third year was a blast uni-wise. By then there were people who were really good, providing some healthy competition and I had geeky friends to make fun of the people who were really bad with. My best friend had transfered to my uni for his third year and we always sat together, making snarky leftist comments and earning ourselves a reputation for asking too many questions. I applied for a spot in the Erasmus programme to come and study in London. There was only one spot, but most of the really good students were applying for places in the US or Australia and I landed the London spot.

Then I came here and got to be immersed in English all day long and I don;t even know how I could describe this to you. I don't know if it's a feeling, an opinion, or what, but it makes me happy.

I miss French, sometimes. I miss speaking a language that I don't have to think about. I miss the colloquialisms of French and the fact that I know precisely what all the connotations are to everything that I say. I miss how I wouldn't have to think twice of the structure of the previous sentence, were I writing it in French. I miss having French people around to share social, political, media-related references. I miss the food and the friends. I want to cry writing this list.
Yet when friends back 'home' ask me if I'm staying in London next year, I can't imagine not staying. I have discovered in the past two years that I care about the English language more than I do about politics and if you know me, you know how big a deal that is.

I've always read stories, in french or in English and I've written stories before I came to think of myself as a writer. But what draws me to writing, ultimately, is the English. That's what makes it hard and what makes it interesting.

Not in the greatest of moods right now...

In this post, I originally intended to reveal my grand plans for this blog. Namely, I wanted to let the world know how often to expect an update (that'd be three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, folks!) and what each update would be about (one on writing, one on reading and one on whatever else takes my fancy). I also wanted to add in fancy details, like what section would be reserved for each day and what they would all be titled - the only problem being that I have no idea.

I'm still quite lost about how to organise this, so I'm taking this week as my figuring out time and I'll probably update this coming week-end or next Monday about it. In the meantime, look forward to regular updates on Wednesday and Friday.

Of course, it doesn't help that I've just started re-reading my Nano 09 novel this week-end. In case you've never done Nanowrimo before, let me just say that one generally doesn't remember much of the actual writing on their novel when they pick it up several months later. In my personal experience, it means that you can be amazed or appalled by what you find on the page.

This year's novel fell more in category number two for me. At some point I just had to stop reading a certain bit of the novel, cause it was just so boring and non-sensical I wanted to cry. Not all of the novel is dreadful, some bits are actually okay, but some bits I hate.

The main problem with this novel is that I changed stories half-way through. It's the same family, but not the same storyline, which means that even though I only want to keep one of the storylines, I need to add a good 40,000 words more for it to reach novel length. Do I want to do that? I really don't know right now.

Writing - Goals re-setting

I've decided to revise my writing goals. My long-term goal hasn't changed, I still want to be a writer, preferably a pulished one, but I feel that focusing whole-heartedly on this idea might not be the best thing for me to do right now. I'm still a baby-writer, I have a lot of time to get better at writing. As long as I write, I'll be fine. I'll get used to it and I'll get better or I'll get bored and I'll stop.

But I won't know unless I try.

Of course, I'd love a shortcut. The secret to writing, the one that allows you to whisper an idea in your computer's ear, hit ctrl+P and collect your proof-read and edited manuscript from your printer a minute later. It'd probably be great for the first couple of books, but I bet it'd get really boring after a while. A bit like cheat-coding your way through a game. Sure it's easier, but it's also less interesting.

As there is no shortcut, however, I'll start small and write regularly and steadily, if not too much at a time. I'll focus on exercices and prompts and on ideas that have been on my mind for a bit and I may also try to revisit some of the stories I've already written using a different angle. My aim for this year is to progress, however small the improvement may be. I want to get a few stories finished and get some feedback on them, I want my Nanowrimo '10 novel to be a bit more properly complete than its predecessors and maybe I'll start on another story as well.

I am setting Stars Shine Brighter aside from the time being, as I fear I may be on my way to becoming that writer with only one story that occupies their mind so fully that it prevents anything else from happening. I have no doubt whatsoever that I will come back to it at some point, I just feel it deserves a better writer than I am at present.

Reading - Mainly Pratchett and Gaiman, with a sprinkle of Dawkins.

January 2010:

In January, I've made life easy for myself and gone on a thoroughly enjoyable Terry Pratchett binge. I've read the third Discworld novel Equal Rites, the first in his Witches series, as well as Truckers, Diggers and Wings, the three books in his Nome series, which is aimed at younger readers.

Pratchett's writing fills me with awe and pure glee. The quirky routes he takes to make his points just bafle me with how imaginative they are and his use of English reminds me why I fell in love with this language in the first place. I remember my mother warning me against trying to read Pratchett in the original - 'It's crazy and complicated enough in French without adding the language barrier, dear.' - but now that I've given the English version a try I could never go back. Translation can only go so far. Traduttore, traditore.*

To me, Pratchett's books are among these things that are so great that they can alternatively fill you with the ultimate writing mojo or sap your moral entirely, because whatever you write, it'll never be half as good.


February '10:

I had been wanting to read short stories for a while and I decided to start with Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, a collection of 'Short Fiction and Wonders'. I thought these would read very fast because of their average length, but I find that I need a pause between stories, like a glass of water between the main and dessert. Often, I'll try and read the story aloud for the music of it, and some I will re-read several times. I do feel strange about the idea of writing short stories while reading these, because I don't want to be writing in a Gaiman-esque style - I have nothing against his style, I love it even, but I think I ought to be developping my own style, rather than doing a copycat of his, which would probably not be very good anyway.

I've also started Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, which I got for my birthday, but this going to be a slow one, I think, as it is non-fiction and is written in quite a complicated academic vocabulary and style. But it is really interesting and I'll keep reading it in parallel with the rest, hoping the dual reading stays as doable as it is now.


* Italian proverb, literally 'Translator, traitor'.

One of these good problems...

I was delighted to find out, just yesterday evening, that I won a prize in the winter contest over at Two to Write.

Two to Write is Pamela and Crytal MacLean's awesome writing blog. The two sisters live in South Carolina and have been inventing stories together since they were children. Two to Write is a regularly updated collection of their fiction including several short stories and novellas, mainly in the supernatural and fantasy genre and I highly recommend that you go and read some of it, because it's quite good.

It made me happy to have won a prize in my friends' contest, but it truly made my day when I found out what the prize was! In addition to a cute totebag, snow globe and custom graphic, I won a critique by the sisters on 3000 words of my writing!

This feels like an awesome learning opportunity to me, but it's also scary because I don't really have anything that's ready to be shown to anyone yet. This really sums up what the issue is with my writing: I need to do more of it, more consistently.

So I'll try and solve my good problem with some serious dedication in the coming weeks, so that I can have something to show Pam and Crystal.

A well-deserved kick in the rear end.

Dear all,

I could tell you why I haven't posted since the 21st of December. There was the usual being lazy and not making the time for it and there was more serious stuff. But in the end, it all comes down to this:

I written very much at all since the end of December. And that makes me unhappy because I like to write and I want to get better at it.

I want to be a writer. And I want to be able to tell people that without hearing a little voice in the back of my mind going 'Yeah, right, if you really wanted to be a writer, you'd be doing some writing!'. I don't want to show up at my writing group on Mondays and just not know what to write.

So here's the plan: I'm going to start posting 3 times a week and see were that gets me.

Tune in tomorrow for an update on my projects, my goals and my writing.

Not-so-snotty French Girl.