50,000 words!

Which is 110 A4, single-spaced pages of writing. 110 pages that didn't exist two weeks ago. I am so exhausted. But happy. Good night, everyone!

The morning after the night before

I am so tired today. We stayed up until midnight, when all the election results were in. It was a fantastic evening - we had a couple of friends round for a barbecue as we watched the votes trickle in, then cracked open the champagne and dipped strawberries in chocolate at the end of the night. Definitely worth some bags under the eyes today!

I'm making good progress with the novel, as well. Just over 29,000 words at the moment, and I'm going to hit 30,000 by tonight. I'm aiming to finish the 50,000 words required for Nanowrimo by this Thursday night, and then I can slacken the pace a bit to write the rest of what will probably be a 100,000-word draft - that will be a relief.

So tired. We're going to mum's this evening for dinner, which would be relaxing except that I have to cook. I'm not sure how this was decided. I'm pretty sure I wasn't in the room when this decision was made. But that's all right. And I also have the fun job of trying to get a urine sample from Mink tonight before I take him to the vet tomorrow. Urine sample from a cat? Does that sound marginally insane and tricky to anyone else?

Anyway, enough of my rambling. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, and that all my fellow Aotearoa-dwelling mammals had a fantastic election night!

Remember, remember the fifth of November ...

... But for a different reason this time. In New Zealand, 5 November is the day we will hear what will hopefully be good news for America and for the world. Good luck to all of you living in the States!

I'm wearing some of my thrifted loot from yesterday - it's rainy and horrible outside, which gave me the opportunity to wear this mustard sweater. It's one of my favourite colours, and so comfy. I'm braving the rain this morning to go to the opening of Two Squirrels with a friend (hi, Kelly!). It's a new vintage boutique opening on Cashel Street, owned by the same couple who run Tete a Tete Vintage. I'm really excited about seeing their new place. And since I hit 15,00 words last night, I'm allowed to buy something! Hurrah. This rewards system is working out well so far.

The novel is coming along really well. I have 16,000 words so far, and the first five chapters mapped out. I'm usually the kind of writer who writes an enormous first draft then goes back to trim it, but in this case I can see I'm going to write a slimmed-down first draft and go back to develop and embiggen (ha!).

Good luck again to everyone in the States - we're thinking of you, here on the other side of the world.

To business!

I'm so enjoying writing this book. The idea for the story was actually triggered by this post, where I talked about the Shona perception of the soul after death. I found a wonderful reference this morning - Karanga Indigenous Religion in Zimbabwe by Tabona Shoko. It's a fantastic read, and has some really useful information on traditional Shona beliefs. I took Shona lessons while I lived in Zimbabwe, and used to be fairly fluent, but I have lost almost all of it now. I also studied Hebrew for six years, and I've forgotten most of that, too. Where does all that information go? I wonder if it's still in my mind somewhere, and would resurface if I started learning those languages again? Anyway, it's great to have my remnants of Shona knowledge backed up by useful textbooks like this one.

I think I also have a fledgling title, which is unusual for me this early on. Usually my books are called something terribly original like 'Book3' or 'Other_Book' until they're almost finished. And then it takes me forever to settle on a title. I guess the limitations of Nanowrimo have really kicked my brain into gear.

I wrote another 2,000 words this morning, and now I had better work on the less exciting but far more urgent Masters essay. If I make good progress by later this afternoon, I'm going to go back to the book. It would be fantastic to hit 15,000 by tonight. I have a little chart in the kitchen where I tick off each 5,000-word increment as I reach it, and then get a reward. I'm well-trained that way.

As my reward for reaching 10,000 words last night, I made a trip to a thrift store this afternoon and garnered some loot. The ladies in the thrift store know me now, which is nice, because they point out new arrivals that they think I would like. They directed me to the two polka-dot items - I'm so predictable.

Here's a great quote from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird (an indispensable book for writers, I think), which describes exactly how I feel about this novel at the moment: "And it feels so great to finally dive into the water; maybe you splash around and flail for a while, but at least you're in. Then you start doing whatever stroke you can remember how to do, and you get this scared feeling inside you - of how hard it is and how far there is to go - but still you're in, and you're afloat, and you're moving."

Sometimes titles are hard

Nanowrimo progress!

Today's word count: 2,000
Total word count: 8700. It would be fantastic to reach 10,000 words this early on - if I have time this evening, I'm going to try and put in another couple of hours' work and get to that milestone.

I am filled with new-book glow. This may change, of course, as I'm about to start work on the Essay of Doom again. But I have my Monday afternoon housework to cheer me up! (I know I'm strange).
A bit of a subject change, but this week I am in the process of joining a group called Woman2womaN which was co-founded by a very inspiring lady, Shupayi Mpunga. I first met her when I was doing some work for a local magazine, writing an article on Zimbabwe (this was the year when the Zimbabwe cricket team was meant to visit New Zealand, and there was a lot of controversy involved). Shupayi founded an organisation called the Friends of Zimbabwe Foundation with two friends. The Woman2womaN Network is a part of this organisation, and they also do a lot of fundraising for the Harare Children's Home where Shupayi grew up.

Woman2womaN establishes contact with the women of Zimbabwe and offers friendship and hope in many different ways. In June, for example, the group fund-raised and bought groceries in South Africa to send to the women. This month they put out an appeal for donations of underwear and sanitary towels for women in prison. They are also making quilts for the orphanage in Zimbabwe. They respond to issues as they come. What I love about the organisation is that it is practical and personal - as Shupayi says, "We aren't trying to save Zimbabwe, we're just doing our bit person to person." To me, that is the absolute best way to make a real change. I become frustrated with people who have grand plans to 'make a difference' one day, but who aren't doing anything practical right now.

Sunny Sunday

Thanks for all your comments on our Halloween costumes - I'm glad they were effective! Although I'm a little frightened to realise how much I look like Sarah Palin.

My in-laws are coming for dinner tonight. I had originally planned to cook something very complicated that involved stuffing meat with something and wrapping it in something else, but then came to my senses and realised it's disastrous to cook something difficult when they come over because I invariably screw it up. So we're having marinaded chicken, new potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and peas instead (meat and five veg ... we always teased my grandmother for cooking that. And now my genes have come back to haunt me), all of which are very difficult to screw up. And a bought dessert, because I lack the mental and emotional capacity to prepare dinner and dessert together.

I got so much work done on my Nanowrimo novel today, as you'll see from my snazzy word-count-o-meter. I'm really excited about it (which is typical for the first week; in the second one usually hits a wall). It's set in Zimbabwe again, although back when it was Rhodesia, this time, and it's wonderful to return to that landscape. I missed it after finishing my Masters novel. Zimbabwe is the only place I know from the inside out, and sometimes I think that means it's the only place about which I can write honestly. Even after six years in New Zealand, I feel like I only know it from the outside in, like a friend with whom you get along but have never really talked to in-depth.

I live half in New Zealand, half in Zimbabwe, even though I haven't been in Zim for six years. In a weird way I feel like the 'real' Andrea is still living there - as if I split in two when I left, and the me living in New Zealand is an aberrant, alternate-universe version. As if my real life is being lived by someone else, somewhere else. It's a strange feeling. I still wake up in the morning sometimes and can't remember where I am.

Anyway. I feel certain that this is what I'm meant to be working on at the moment. And that's a good feeling.

Halloween party!

Halloween 002, originally uploaded by acatofimpossiblecolour.

I'll write a proper post later, but just wanted to show you how LOML and I looked for the party. There are better pictures of us on a friend's camera but it will be a while before I get hold of them.

It was a fantastic night! Our friends went completely over the top with the decorations and costumes, which is always the best way to go, I think. My favourite was the creepy killer clown they put in the hallway - life-size, and rigged up to a mechanism that made it turn its head when you walked past.

In other news, I have gone slightly mad. After all my careful planning and outlining of my Nanowrimo novel, I threw it all out the window today and started work on something from scratch. An idea gripped me yesterday, and the voice of a character started speaking in my head so clearly that I felt I had to write her story. Damn ideas, spoiling my plans. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a boxing ring being punched by ideas from all sides (in my head the ideas are enormous scary men wearing boxing gloves and tiny satin shorts). That simile is a little strange, but you have to remember I had a very late night and am still in my pyjamas, which makes my brain feel like chewed nougat. (See? Another weird simile. I think I should have some more coffee).

Of course, I might panic and go back to my original plan tomorrow, but at the moment I'm very excited about this book. And flying by the seat of your pants is very much in the spirit of the event, of course!

Happy Halloween!

Simple and casual today - I have a million chores to do. Including getting my Sarah Palin costume ready for tonight's Halloween party (well, the invitation did say 'dress scary'). LOML is going as John McCain. He's coming home from work early so I can make him all wrinkly. I find it fascinating that the elections in the US have eclipsed our own elections so completely, and I am terrified at the possibility of Obama losing.

I got an email from my publisher in Zimbabwe this morning saying that my book is going to Taiwan for the Taiwan International Book Exhibition 2009, as part of a collective exhibit of the African Publishers' Network. This kind of thing always makes me smile, because my book is so un-African in character. When I was a child, I would have loved to live in England. So many times when Mum was reading me Winnie the Pooh or Thomas the Tank Engine or Enid Blyton books about rosy-cheeked children living on Apple-Tree Farm, I longed for an English childhood. Not an insect in sight. Clean, crisp air and green grass, tidy streets and English wherever you go. Africa was foreign and mundane, all at once. I couldn’t fit zebras and witch-doctors into any of the books I read. I felt that my childhood was somehow wrong, that I was cheated. The only book that came close to my own experience was The Jungle Book, and I remember how excited I was when I discovered it. Finally, a children's book where there were animals and landscapes I recognised! Of course, when I got older I realised how lucky I was to have an African childhood, and my writing now is almost exclusively African ... but my first published book was set in a fantasy world that had more to do with Narnia than it did with Zimbabwe.

Nanowrimo begins tomorrow! I feel excited and apprehensive. To complete the 50,000 words in 30 days I need to write 1,667 words per day. I'm going to shoot for 2,000, and see how it goes. Of course, I also need to be working on the Masters essay this month, but Nanowrimo wouldn't be Nanowrimo without some huge distraction, so that's all right.

Things I am researching for the Nanowrimo book:
Asian students in New Zealand
'Cyberathletes' - people who participate in competitive video gaming
Collage artists
Rabbit anatomy
Computer animation
Programming
Wine
Wow, you could put together a really bizarre plot from those elements, couldn't you? More will emerge as I go on, I'm sure. I'm looking forward to seeing how well writing from a vague plot outline will work for this, too.

Speaking of bizarre plots, if you haven't looked at the 'dares' forum on the Nanowrimo website, you definitely should. It's hilarious. I haven't decided if I'm going to do any of these dares yet, but I'll keep you posted.

One last thing - I haven't updated my links in a couple of weeks, and I'm so sorry if I haven't added your link yet. I'm getting onto it this weekend. Thanks for all your comments, and thank you for introducing me to your lovely blogs, I do appreciate it.

Polka dots, awards and impatience

I am reading 'What is the What' by Dave Eggers (he of 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' fame). It is amazing so far, and well-deserving of all the accolades heaped on it. It tells the story of a Sudanese refugee, a man who really exists - but the story is a novel, not a biography, peopled with composite characters and imagined events as well as the real. A really brave project to undertake, I think. It reminds me that I also really want to read 'The Other Hand' by Chris Cleave, which is about a Nigerian asylum-seeker in London. Have any of you read it yet?

I so admire these writers and the subjects they tackle, and I want to be that kind of a writer too - Nanowrimo (well, cheating Nanowrimo that I have started already) book excepted, because that one is for fun. Although an interesting element has crept in unintentionally - the character who appeared in the text the other day is a Korean student, and the way Asian students are treated here in Christchurch has started to emerge as a strong theme in the book. I am starting to get gradually more and more excited about the book I'm writing when I finish the Masters, though - the points of view I'm using are going to be really interesting and challenging, I think.

Today is a significant day - eight weeks since I sent out the first batch of queries to agents. Generally you don't hear from agents until at least eight weeks have passed; a lot of the agencies ask authors not to nag - er, I mean, inquire - about their queries until eight weeks have elapsed. I'm not going to follow them up yet, though ... the Frankfurt Book Fair was last weekend, so they would all have been flat-out busy with that, and they may only just have had a chance to look at the manuscript. I'll wait a couple more weeks. Even though it is driving me insane. INSANE. Sorry.

Thank you for bearing with me through this long and rambling post. I hope all you Kiwis had a good first day back at work!

I'll have my usual, please

I'd like to take this opportunity to shamelessly plug the wonderful Nanowrimo, or National Novel-writing Month. I've signed up again this year - I've never actually made it past the finishing line, but I'm determined to this time around.

Here's a brief spiel, although the website describes it better - the idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month, finishing at midnight on 30 November. As you can imagine, this method values quantity over quality, but it's a great kick-start. It forces you to switch off your self-critical side (and crap-o-meter), take risks and create without editing or stressing out wondering 'is it any good'? At the end of the month, you will inevitably have a Shitty First Draft. But a SFD leads to a Passably Good Second Draft and a Good Third Draft and a Nobel-Prize-Winning Fourth Draft (maybe). It gives you something to work with. And it's fun. And you'll be able to tell people you wrote a novel in 2008.

There are different ways of doing it. I'm cheating (although I like to think of it as 'being a Maverick') because I'm using the month to work on a novel I have already started, but which has been on the back-burner for a long time. I'm combining Nanowrimo with my experiment of writing from an outline - we'll see how it goes. Nanowrimo recommends just starting the novel without any outline or plan at all, as this is much less likely to drive you completely insane, but I (Maverick, remember) think my spiralling into insanity will be, at the least, very amusing to watch (and since I am going crazy anyway waiting to hear from agents, at least this will channel the madness into a different area). But if you sign up and decide to do it entirely off the cuff, I will be filled with admiration.

It's always more fun doing something borderline insane like this when you can suck people in to your little vortex of craziness, and this is my attempt to suck you in (metaphorically). If you sign up, you can add other participants as writing buddies. Be my buddy! My username is theluckyblackcat.

Anyway, back to work.

Edited to add: I'm so sorry for the delay, but I have responded to all comments now. I really appreciate you taking the time to leave them, and I always reply, even if sometimes it takes a couple of days! I'm also a bit late in catching up on all your blogs (blame my post-holiday brain and busy-ness), but I will stop by over the weekend and see what you have all been up to. It always brightens up my day.

The struggle to the end ...

This Week Four pep talk from Deanna Raybourn during last year's Nanowrimo perfectly expresses how I'm feeling at the moment ...

"Welcome, writers, to the place I call Very Nearly the End.

By now, NaNoWriMo has taught you that writing is not for the faint of heart. You must be stalwart and brave, like pioneers of old, unafraid of uncharted lands or crossing vast frontiers. It was exciting at first, wasn’t it? Preparing for the journey, stocking supplies, counting down the days until the start of the great undertaking. That enthusiasm would have carried you through the first weeks, and even the pitfalls along the way might have seemed like thrilling opportunities for adventure. But now you have come to the bleak no-man’s land just before the last great push to the end. It is barren and empty and it seems as if no one has ever passed this way. Except for every other writer who has come before you. This place lurks along the journey of each book for all of us. Here we hate our characters, our plot is mundane, and our prose is as flat and unlo vely as the landscape. Be watchful; it’s dangerous, this place. I have heard of writers who lacked courage and who turned back to safety, never to return. They simply stopped being writers because they could not find their way across this nothingness. That is not an option for me, and I don’t believe it is an option for you. You have come too far, weary travelers! And there is a way across, I promise.

The solution has two parts. The first is to be a little selfish. At this point in the book, a writer is a bit like an invalid emerging from a life-threatening illness. We are fragile and wan, and people will remark that we have grown thin and pale. We startle easily and we tire quickly. This is when we have to be kind to ourselves. If there is someone who can cook for us and bring us cups of tea and rub our feet, excellent. If there are children to be attended to, they ought to be settled onto the sofa next to us&m dash;or better yet, the bed—and told to read something soothing to us. Phone calls and e-mails and chores that can be neglected, ought to be. A few hours of cosseting are often just the thing to restore us. If that fails, we must employ more drastic measures. We must get right away and leave the book behind. Some writers take up big-game hunting, others like to sail or climb mountains. I shop for shoes, the higher the heel the better. (Fiction is more easily subdued when one is well-shod.) You might try a massage or a pick-up basketball game, anything to change your perspective. When you return with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, you will be ready to work again.

That is when you move on to the second half of the cure: you must sit down and be quiet. It sounds like an admonishment, but believe me, it isn’t. Think of it as a gentle reminder instead. I know, writing every day is challenging. But it is also incred ibly easy. When you write every day, you are always in the story. There is never a period of reconnecting with your characters, of trying to remember what mood you were attempting to create the last time you worked. And by working every day, you engage your subconscious in a way that simply isn’t possible when you keep a more whimsical schedule. There is no need to summon the muse because there is no time for the fickle little strumpet to go anywhere. I become so immersed in my story that I seldom write more than an hour a day, but I am typing the entire time, with no breaks to think or to wonder where the story is headed. I write flat out because the other 23 hours I have been thinking about the book while going about the rest of my life. (That includes the time I’m asleep. I seldom wake up without thinking of the scene I’m preparing to write. When I sit down to work, I’m essentially taking dictation from myse lf.)

Now, for being quiet. This is by far the more difficult of the two, but I have learned through painful experience this one, incontrovertible truth, and I am going to put it in italics so you will know I mean it: you only have one chance to tell your story for the very first time. One chance. Do you want the first time you tell it, when it is imbued with all of the passion and enthusiasm and verve you possess, to be when you’re chatting up the UPS guy? Or your mother? Or your cat? Trust me, you don’t. You want that first time to be on paper, so it’s there forever, recorded in all its juicy, rich, living color. When you have already described your brilliant twist or your genius plot device or your protagonist’s crippling character flaw, you have killed some of your own thrill, whether you realize it or not. Yes, it’s an ego rush of the very best kind to watch someone’s eyes widen when you tell your tale, but the thrill is very short-lived, and when you go to put that twist on paper, it is just a little bit stale. The more times you tell it, the duller it becomes. Like a bottle of opened champagne, the fizz has faded, but when all of that wonderful effervescence is bottled up, seething and bubbling, you have one choice: work or explode. That last delicious burst of creativity is what will see you through to the end.

So, be kind to yourselves. Be quiet and be seated, and be ready for the heady rush of completion because you are almost there!

Deanna Raybourn"