wannabeapaperbackwriter

The finished article

2007-02-28T15:39:00.000+00:00

I love it when a plan comes together. Finally finished book. It's a nice length I think at around 212 words long (the same as the fab Mitch Albom book I just read).

I'm quite pleased with the reselt especially the fab illo done by Alex of www.moontoon.com.

Order the book from Lulu, the website address is www.lulu.com/content/709630

The race to the finish line

2007-02-08T08:54:00.000+00:00

Hi all,

Feeling quite pleased with myself this morning as novel reached 65,000-words.

I can also see the finish line in sight.

The residents of the home are about to travel to Downing Street and hand in a petition FAO Tony Blair.

Not Quite sure of the exact ending yet but I am feeling confident that the finished 'book' will exceed 70,00-words...then the editing process begins.

Sarah

Extract

2007-02-07T18:24:00.000+00:00

Hi all,
It's been a while since I've posted but have been busy getting to 64,000 words.
Below is a more recent extract I was quite pleased with:

≈
“I’ve been on the internet…” says Annie.
“You’m turnin’ into one o’ them greeks,” says Freddy.
“You mean geeks laughs Annie.”
“Whatever.”
We’re all crammed into Annie’s bedroom, now designated Campaign HQ, talking about how to organise the campaign, if we can organise the campaign – I still think Annie’s crazy, Charlie too.
“Anyway, I found this article and it says we need to start with the five ‘Ws’.”
“The five ‘Ws’?” asks Ern.
“Yes. Why? Who? What? Where? When?”
“Well, the why’s easy,” says Charlie.
“Yes. We’re trying to save Edna. But we need to make it bigger than that if we’re going to give it National Appeal. It’s about the dignity of the elderly, not separating any couple just because one of them’s sicker than the other. I’d like to try and get some organisations on board; Age Concern and Help the Aged.”
“Sounds sensible,” says Charlie.
“Yes. Now for the Who?”
“Well, there’s us,” says Ern.
“..and the boggers,” says Freddy.
“Who? You mean the b-Loggers. Yes. Freddy’s right. The blog will help. We’re getting quite a lot of traffic, visitors, but we’ll need as many people as possible. If we can get Age Concern and H.T.E to join us, that’s great, but we need to think about other ways of generating publicity before the event. I suggest that I act as campaign co-ordinator and press liaison. I was hoping your India might be able to help me out?” says Annie.
“I can ask her,” I says.
“I’m sure she will,” says Charlie.
“OK. Maybe we can call hr later and come up with some ideas for getting the march on the map, which brings us to the What? I say we stick with the original idea. Try and get as many people, nationally, to sign a petition and then take it to Mr Blair’s doorstep and drop it off.”
“What’ll it say?”
“What’ll what say?”
“The petition, what’ll it say?” I ask.
“Well, something about keeping elderly couples together in Retirement Homes, regardless of their level of care. We can iron out the details later. Charlie. I want you to handle the Where? I’ve been doing some research….”
“On the internet?” says Ern.
“Yes, on the internet. Anyway, the Where needs a lot of planning. First we need to decide where to meet, it’ll need to be somewhere that can handle a lot of people but not too far from Downing Street. A lot of the people marching may not be able to walk too far. The logistics of tat are actually quite complicated. You need to speak to the local councils, the Met, maybe even Downing Street….I thought with your legal background…”
“No problem,” says Charlie.
“Here. I’ve already printed off a list of numbers. You can use my mobile. We might need stewards and stuff along the way. Age Concern and H.T.E might be able to provide those, assuming they agree to help.”
“Erm. I don’t mean ta be a killjoy but how are we going to get to London in the first place?”
“Shit! I hadn’t thought about that. The train costs a fortune….besides we’d have to get to Taunton, first.”
“I might be able ta sort something out,” said Freddy.
We all stare at Freddy.
“How?” asks Annie.
“I used to do the gardens for that Mr Harding.”
“The Bus Company!”
“Yes,” smiles Freddy. “We got on OK. I could try and give ‘im a ring. I think I ‘ave ‘is phone number somewhere.”
Annie leans towards Freddy and kisses him on the cheek. He blushes bright red and wipes his cheek but he is grinning from ear-to-ear.
“What about me?” asks Ern.
“What d’you mean?”
“Well, you all have jobs to do. What about me?”
“Ah, yes. I want you to work with Emily. We’ll need publicity shots; something that’ll grab the public’s imagination; something that Tony Blair won’t be able to ignore. I thought maybe you two could come up with some ideas. We’ll also need banners, posters, anything else you can think of to grab people’s attention.”
“Right,” says Ern.
“What about me?” I ask
“Well. It’s up to you….I don’t know how you feel about it…”
“Spit it out,” I say, it isn’t like Annie to beat around the bush.
“Well. I want you to act as our spokesperson, assuming your up to it. Give interviews to the newspapers, radio, TV….”
“Sure. If I can.”
“That sort of brings us to the When….everything hinges on that. We need to decide a date to aim for, something to plan around,” says Annie.
“We don’t have much time,” I say. “The Management Committee still want us out. Bertha had a word with us after the Circle of Life. ‘Don’t think this makes a difference, Everard’,” I say doing my best impression of Bridget.
“You’re right, but if we can start to build the pressure now…keep the publicity going. I think we’ve bought ourselves some time.”
“Maybe. But, well. I might not be able to go marching in a few months’ time.”
“How long do you think we need/” asks Charlie.
“Well. This document I found. About how to plan a protest or march, says that you ought to start planning five or six months in advance. I want to do it in four.”
“Four months!” Charlie, Freddy, Ern and me all exclaim in unison.
“Yes. April 1st. There’s no fool like and old fool…” says Annie.
“Can we really do this?” I ask. “Of course we can,” says Annie. “Right. You lot bugger off. I’m going to write all this up. Who’s doing what and come up with a campaign strategy…I’ll see you at lunch.”

Visual Progress

2007-01-23T09:14:00.000+00:00

As Nanowrimo is long gone, and as I've said already, I've created my own spreadsheet to chart my progress. Feeling pretty good this morning as I have reached 30,000-words and probably just over the halfway mark in the story too. Still on course for over 60,00 words. The chart's really helping inspire me to keep going and to stop me from self-editing as I write.

Here it is!

A fontastic breakthrough

2007-01-12T13:09:00.000+00:00

It might sound crazy but one of the things I find hardest about writing is choosing a font and paragraph style that I am comfortable with. I find that it really affects my mood and can affect the mood of what I'm writing, too. I like to define different writing styles ( a different narrator, say) by using a different font. It's an aid memoir to me to know what tense and tone I need to use, and hopefully helps the reader, too.
Until this morning I was typing directly into my chosen template for Lulu (http://www.lulu.com) but was becoming so obsessed with how a finished 'book' would look on the page that it was interrupting my flow.
I've reverted to typing into a normal A4 format, in basic Times Roman (12pt) with a 12pt space between each line and I find I can spot errors more easily. It's easier to write, too.
What's your preferred document style for writing your drafts?

Important Milestones

2007-01-10T09:43:00.000+00:00

It's great to reach a mini-milestone when writing a book is such a huge project. I've broken the latest novel down into four parts as it seemed to make sense.
Last night I finished Part One and now just need to give it a quick edit before moving on. I'm pleased to have hit 20K [the same amount of words I previously deleted, too]. Hopefully, if all four parts are 20K words long I'll be on track for a reasonable length novel and can now claim to be a quarter of the way through.

Do you know how long your novel's going to be, before you finish?
Can you see milestones along the way that help to spur you on?

Train ride

2007-01-03T08:29:00.000+00:00

700 words between Hassocks and Victoria this morning. Conscious that my tippy tapping was keeping the other travellers awake but thankfully no-one complained. Hoping to match that on the way home this evening to make a total of 1,500 for the day. I'm pleased with the mix of styles in the book - a journal, letters and a first person narrator. I only hope that the readers aren't confused.

Not counting any chickens...

2007-01-02T20:46:00.000+00:00

Yay! 10K. Finally, made it back up to 10,000-words after abandoning my previous draft. I'm not counting any chickens but it seems to be flowing far better than the previous version. I still have plenty to write about in this section of the book (should account for 1/4 of the book) and I'm hoping it'll get to 20,000-words. There's still plenty of the lead characters' backgrounds to fill in. I'm a bit stuck at the moment and need to start the next part before I turn in for the night. I've written over 3K words, today so on target for my end of March deadline. Have twitchy fingers and am dying to go back and do a rough edit but I'm scared that I'll end up dumping what I've written this time. Better to keep going frwards, I think. Perhaps, I'll allow myself and edit when I finish this quarter.

Lucky for some

2007-01-02T12:54:00.000+00:00

Had to add a quick post so that there aren't 13 posts on my blog (unlucky for some). Actually, I am feeling lucky today. Definitely made the right decision to restart current novel and today reached 8,000-words so just a couple away from the magic 10K. The story seems to be flowing much better now and the characters seem more real, to me at least. I'm in less of a hurry to reach the finish post and resigned to the fact that developing the characters is as important as the later part of the plot where the real action will occur.

Anyone else got any thoughts on how to develop characters through descriptions/their actions and how to introduce significant events from their past as well as their present?

Creative Flow

2006-12-30T10:03:00.000+00:00

Hi all,
Hope everyone's had a fantastic Christmas and is looking forward to the New Year. I've been taking and enforced break from writing while I spend time with my daughter, Amber, husband Mike and all our relatives. It's been great fun but it's hard to pick up the creative flow of where I left off. I read in one of my many how to write a novel books that it's god to finish a period of writing mid-sentence when you're on a roll as it makes it easier to get going again.
Anyone else got any tips for keeping going when you're writing a novel?
SK

Bravery or stupidity/the skill of the rewrite

2006-12-19T21:18:00.000+00:00

It was all going so well. I hadn't managed to complete the Nanowrimo challenge of writing a 50,000-word novel in a month but I'd almost made my own personal target [25K words by the time I break up for Christmas]. Then, I had one of those eureka moments. Unfortunately, the eureka moment meant that while I could see how to get my novel to reach a comfortable 60,000-words it also meant that I had to restart almost from scratch binning the 20,000-words I'd written so far.
Actually, that's not strictly true. I've merely saved it as a draft version in a separate file. It does fit into the overall scheme of things but I realised that in my desire to write the 'killer introduction' I'd always dreamed of I'd actually missed out a crucial part of the plot.
I find this one of the toughest challenges with creative writing. As a journalist in my 'day job' I have to write short succinct phrases and squeeze words into the space provided. However, this isn't always the case with creative writing. I wonder how does one tell the difference between a valid description and waffle?
If you want to compare the new extract with the old, click here http://www.savefile.com/files/353328. I'd appreciate comments on how the two compare.

Cover art

2006-12-15T14:28:00.000+00:00

It's very premature of me as I'm barely a third of a way through my latest so-called book, but I had a great idea for the cover art and managed to merge two high-resolution images together from the web. On a positive note it's spurring me on to finish the project a bit as I can see a glimpse of the finished result. Anyone else got any thoughts on cover art/book covers in general and what makes a good or a bad one? What sort of artwork makes you pick a book off the shelf? Any thoughts on my own design (right?) - and yes, for the eagle-eyed among you that is a fried egg in the sky.

To blog...

2006-12-14T12:39:00.000+00:00

....or not to blog. That is the question. A friend forwarded me a link from the BBC, today, containing blogging statistics (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6178611.stm). The article claims that 200 million blogs are now lying dormant on the web. It's easy to see how it happens. I'm relatively new to blogging and was hoping that this weblog would help drive people to my Lulu site plugging my self-published books. However, after a week I'm starting to feel pretty lonely here in cyberspace as so far I've received zero comments on my blog.

Is there anybody out there or am I about to become dormant blog 200 million and one?

Why write?

2006-12-12T08:02:00.000+00:00

Of course, you're not always writing for others. I find the whole process of writing is very therapeutic. It helps me to make sense of my life and the world around me.
I'm a firm believer in the power of the written word and think it's what sets us apart from the animal kingdom; our thirst for knowledge and self-improvement, the desire to comprehend the world around us? Books such as Alice Walker's, The Color Purple (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Color-Purple-Alice-Walker/dp/0753818922/sr=1-1/qid=1165910769/ref=sr_1_1/026-6757065-3248457?ie=UTF8&s=books), have changed the world.

Anyone else got thoughts on why they write, or other books that have changed your life/cultural ideas?

Writing for whom?

2006-12-11T16:35:00.000+00:00

As a journalist, in my day job, one of the first rules you learn is to REMEMBER YOUR READER. All publishing companies spend a lot of money researching what their readers like and trying to meet their demands. It's a lot tougher doing that, however, as a first time novelist. You know what you like and who you think you're writing for but it's tough to get a real picture of that person in your head.
I try to write the kind of thing I think I like to read. Anyone have any suggestions about how to focus the reader in your mind?

Next novel - an extract

2006-12-10T12:05:00.000+00:00

Here's an extract of the current work in progress. I'd appreciate people's thoughts/comments on whether it makes them want to read more. To get a copy of the PDF file click here http://www.savefile.com/files/328768

Yay 14K

2006-12-10T11:59:00.000+00:00

Just broke the 14,000-word barrier, which means that the curse of 13 has lifted. Starting to doubt whether the latest 'novel' is up to scratch, though, which is making writing tough going. Just searched on some newly-published novels and they all look far more credible than my own.
Anyone else got views on how you know whether your novel's a go-er or not and also how to stay motivated?

Book no 2

2006-12-09T19:42:00.000+00:00

While I was on maternity leave I became obsessed with the idea of getting a book published. I'd had this idea kicking around for a while, before we had Amber. We'd tried for a long time to get pregnant, and I wanted to write about that. Then I started seeing magpies everywhere I went, I remembered the rhyme - one for sorrow...and decided that there must be a story in there somewhere. Anyway, I bought a book about magpies and within it, it said that magies were considered to have shamanic properties....then I bought a book about shaman.

The result is A Magpie's Tale, my first novel.

Feedburner

2006-12-09T19:29:00.000+00:00

Trying to get some traffic to my blog so publicising my feedburner account http://feeds.feedburner.com/Wannabeapaperbackwriter

10 o'clock unblock

2006-12-09T16:06:00.000+00:00

Managed to find inspiration around 10am this morning while Amber was taking her nap. Actually, I find it helps to focus my mind knowing that I have such a limited time to write. Really want to break the 14K barrier this week-end if at all possible. I'm superstitious and at the moment I'm stuck in Chapter 13 and at around 13,000-words.
Anyone else got any weird writing superstitions?

Nine o'clock block

2006-12-08T21:22:00.000+00:00

It's a quarter past nine, at night and I've just been editing my latest 'epic' again. Haven't worked on it for a week or two since I failed the Nanowrimo (http://www.nanowrimo.org) challenge to write a novel in a month and sadly, I've lost momentum. I guess I need to sleep on it. My best ideas come when 'm a couple of seconds from sleep. Unfortunately, I've generally forgotten them by the time that morning comes.

The Seven Wonders

2006-12-08T11:48:00.000+00:00

I recently spent 10 months on maternity leave...and my brain melted. Well, not quite but while a newborn occupies a lot of time they don't require too much brainpower.
To keep my brain ticking over and, in the hope that I'd hit the Big Time (a.k.a. JK Rowling) I decided I'd write a children's story. Inspiration struck, when I was at home on the sofa feeding Amber. Her old toy trunk is inscribed with the initials C.S - I don't know what they stand for...and I started to wonder.
For some reason Central Station popped into my head. But what would Central Station be and where...
I made it the central point of space and time from where Alex was granted Seven Wonders. These wonders saw her travel to the heart of the amazon rainforest, the depths of London's sewer system and the dark side of the moon....

http://stores.lulu.com/sarahkidner