Learned another thing this week. That is that I cannot rely on the wireless access switch on my laptop for my ‘turning off the internet’ trick. It’s way too easy to just switch it back on again. Nope, I have to actually get up and unplug my router, because I’m lazy enough that the whole getting up from the couch, walking across the lounge and replugging in the router routine is a total deterrent.

That said, even with the laptop switch yesterday I got 2 and half thousand words written, including a sex scene (ooh er). Today I pushed it hard with the internet off and my word count is now sitting on 43,234. I managed a thousand words each day on the weekend, one session was even written while half watching Superman Returns. (Great movie that, but I’m never in the mood to watch it.) I suspect it will end up about 60,000 in total but I don’t really know, since I don’t actually know what scenes I still have to write. It’s all organically forming as I write. For example, today I followed up the sex scene with a ghost hunt in a theatre. As you do.

What can I say about the book? It won’t leave me alone. It is demanding to be written. I am exploring themes of sex, self esteem, death, life after death, cruelty and candy floss. Steve’s reliable voice in my head is bringing the drama and just as it was at the start, the dialogue is easy for me to write. I am loving it.

I worry that my teenagers aren’t quite pretentious enough, and I worry that I have internal inconsistencies in the plot because I’m writing so much in the ‘now’ that I forget what’s happened before. Not the big stuff, but the smaller details. I can’t wait to give this to someone to read, because I am very proud of it!

Some linky:

io9 had this great article about the importance of sadness in horror stories. (Lots of spoilers in that one, by the way.)

Check out The Event, CG just put up his part five and Matt’s last instalment went up over the weekend. Now it’s up to Steph to finish it all off…no pressure!

Neil Gaiman is coming to New Zealand for next year’s festival of the arts readers and writer’s week. Awesome sauce. Also Rufus Wainwright is coming, I’m probably going to go to see him with my Mum and Dad, but he’s not writing related so let’s move on…

Wondermark helpfully put up a list of collective nouns for supernatural creatures. I particularly like ‘a vexation of zombies’.

So, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but my flow has been a little….lacking in the last week or two. I guess it got stuck? I dunno. Maybe it’s the Katamari. Maybe it’s the being insanely busy doing awesome stuff with awesome people. Maybe I just got a teensy bit of writer’s block. Whatever it was it’s gone now.

Today I took a drastic step that has been recommended to me all over the place by other writers. I turned off the internet. That’s right, I got home from work today and unplugged the router, which is also the phone line, thus ensuring no distractions. Then I got my head together, had a nap and then wrote around 2 and a half thousand words of a scene so dramatic and moving I actually got upset.

I’m hoping that’s a good sign, that my characters are real enough that I can get upset for them. I think it bodes well for the eventual readers. I also managed to write most of my part 5 for the event. I should be able to get that sorted and posted pretty soon.

So all that means that I still had the flow, I was just allowing myself to be distracted from it. I guess I got a little bored and that was all the excuse I needed to spend my time checking twitter, facebook, my blog stats, cute overload….anything at all that the internet had to offer. Removing that tempation had a magical effect. My Rain novel is now past 36k and I’m heading into the danger territory. Not for me, for my characters. I’m chasing her right up that tree and then I’m going to throw stuff at her for a while. Should be good.

(also I’ve added a wee tag for this new novel. I shall go back and link the previous entries into it…)

Some good writing linky this week.

I freaking love Gail Carson Levine’s writing, and I can’t believe I didn’t know she had a blog. A writing tips blog at that! I really, really enjoyed this article on ways to introduce suspense into your stories.

This storyfix article presents a great way to take another look at your work. Storytelling exercised that can get you published.

I also enjoyed this article about writer’s block and how to use it.

Another twitter feed update, because y’all seemed to like the last one…

How much am I loving this extra time to write? 1000 words already, is how much. 4:21 PM Oct 5th from web

My first extra afternoon off a week. It’s Tuesdays. I’m at the point where I can easily sit down and make myself write for at least an hour. Next: work on writing for at least two hours!

how many times can I have the ghost startle Rain before it gets tired? At least once more I’m thinking.
3:21 PM Oct 10th from web

I am aware of repeating myself action and line wise in this story. I think it’s a theme thing. I think it’s a good thing. Plus, if you were a snarky dead girl, wouldn’t you love scaring the shit out of your living best friend? I think you would.

Some breakthroughs in my novel 3:40 PM Oct 10th from web

This is about realising all the ways I can make drama for Rain with my various secondary characters. I can’t remember for sure though…I just remember that it was an awesome moment, and I meant every bit of that smiley emoticon.

@ajackwriting @rabarts must be a bad writing night, I’m having trouble with mine too, no idea what should happen next…
10:15 PM Oct 11th

Twitter is a seriously awesome instant networking tool. I was procrastinating, having issues with what next, I went on twitter and saw that these two guys were having trouble too. Somehow just knowing that others were out there having similar issues helped me. In fact…

@ajackwriting LOL, nice. I have just hd a breakthrough! Cut to the other lead! Let’s see what he’s doing! Might work for you?
in reply to ajackwriting

Oh, so ajackwriting had said he had his character up a tree but he couldn’t work out how to get him down again. I on the other hand, mixed up my narrative and found the flow again.

@rabarts yeah, I was doing that, but then I thought too many scenes of Rain having family/friend dramas back to back gets boring
@rabarts so I’m breaking it up with some insight into Jake, his tragic past, how cool he is and probably him getting beat up
10:45 PM Oct 11th from web

In response to my earlier post about being stuck Dan brought out the old ‘make it worse for your lead’ line.

Woo, Jake cutaway scene is written, somewhat influenced by Supernatural, I have to say ;p
4:16 PM Oct 12th from web

Finished the spooky action scene for Jake, threw in some humour, some monster hunting lore and a set up for a nasty plot twist at the end of the book. It was all very much like Supernatural but as long as you’re aware of your influences and put your own twist on them, it’s OK right?

What with my birthday last week and organising a party and having a party and generally being busy, I kind of lost the flow. Then when I tried to pick it up again on Sunday (when I may have been ever so slightly hung over), I couldn’t do it.

Naturally I was terrified. How delicate is my flow that if I put it down for just a few days it’s gone forever? I lamented. I panicked. I lived in fear. I actually considered not trying to finish it….

Then the madness passed. Yesterday for my afternoon off, even though Lee was at home sick, I faced the fear, opened up the word document and started writing again. Guess what? My flow came back. *Dances about.*

I am past 33k words now, which is showing as 62 standard format word doc pages. I have introduced a new character to gum up the works, and had a pretty awesome plot twist occur to me. Conversations and dialogue continue to be easy as, and although me and my main character are aching for the action we’ll just have to wait a little longer.

This may have all been helped by the poetry reading I attended on Monday evening at the library. It was to promote the new New Zealand science fiction poetry publication Voyagers, as edited by Tim Jones and Mark Pirie. It’s been ages since I saw poetry read live, and by ages I mean….maybe 6 years? I’d forgotten how much I enjoy poems.

The science fiction theme is an unusual one for poetry but it fits remarkably well. My favourite ones are the mind twisty ones and the funny ones, and the funny ones when they are mind twisty. The whole book should be fun to read. I would have totally hung around after it and asked all the poets there to sign my copy but I was really hungry so I went home for dinner instead. The inspiration was still there though. Poems are intimidating because you really have to think about every single word. You have to with novels and short stories as well of course, but with poems it is so much more important. You only have a few words and you have to make them count.

I wonder if I should try writing poems again. I used to be quite good at it.

PoF: Awesome new hoodie from Evie and Jarratt
CO:

Figured out that Rain is curious, and once she has decided she has to know something nothing can stop her. Curiosity is a good handy plot device for getting your characters into trouble. Also, she has a wicked temper. Nice.

I also figured out the whole ‘what’s the point?’ of my novel, which was a relief. Rain is looking for revenge, so that’s the plot, but the story is about her growing up and gaining responsibilities. Rain will get town in different directions by revenge, her love interest, her friends and her family. How she learns to choose what’s really important will be the thrust of the story.

I know now why Rachel is a ghost, which was another bonus, although I’m not sure if she’ll get to pass on to her final resting place at the end or not. I’ll see where the story takes me.

I don’t have a plan for this book, aside from inside my head, but it seems to be working out alright.

Interesting fact: I can’t write while I listen to Leonard Cohen, he demands too much of my attention. I have made up a writing play list of stuff I can ignore because I know it so well. It helps me tune out random distractions like traffic and concerning banging noises from the plumbing, it’s like white noise. It has to be quite quiet still, but it works to help me relax into a writing trance.

On my playlist you can find: Tori Amos, Coldplay, Live (mostly Throwing Copper), Hunters and Collectors, songs from Moulin Rouge (esp Bolero from the end credits) and Romeo and Juliet and various odds and ends from my teenage years. There’s a couple of Red Hot Chili Peppers songs but I like to groove to them so not too many.

Napping sometimes boosts my creativity. I was having trouble focussing this afternoon because I felt so sleepy.This is partly due to having lunch out with Viv and eating too much delicious Scopa pizza and hot chocolate. I managed to wrangle my synopsis for What’s the Worst That Could Happen? into something more punchy and cool and then I had a nap. It went longer than I usually power nap for, but Giffy called and woke me up from it. After that I was full of energy and my head was in the right place to write more novel.

As of now the word count for Rain of the Fair-oh (working title) is just past 20,000. I am quite proud of myself, the speed I have on this is much more than I’ve had previously. Well, except for the kid’s book I wrote a couple of months back, but I still haven’t typed that up so I don’t know how long it is. Anyway, yay for progress. Yay for getting better with practice and yay for The Flow!

I was in the middle of a particularly spooky investigation in the dark in enemy territory scene when the sound of Lee’s key in the lock scared me out of my skin. I hate to jinx myself, but I think I am writing something awesome.

Point of Fashion: fortune cookie necklace
Current Obsession: I think it should be clear that it’s writing at the moment.