Progress report: Day 4

Day four of NaNo09 (or, as I prefer to think of it, The Month Of Writing Dangerously*), and I’m pleasantly surprised to report that all is going rather well. I’m up to 8.5K words and haven’t even written anything today yet; aiming for 10.5K by the end of the day.

This is well ahead of schedule compared to the 50K/30day daily average, but it was always my plan to hit the writing hard this week. I have a week off work (extra week of half term, as a consequence of working at a private school – bunch of slackers that we are), and I know that when I go back to school next week and for the rest of the month it’s going to be SO MUCH HARDER to find the time or energy to write.

So here I am, nose to the grindstone. Or rather, here I am, churning out a few non-NaNo words and wishing they could count towards my daily total.** I’m also editing a rather demanding book at the same time – written by a dyslexic author, and it’s really more of a ghost-write than an edit – and I have another client wanting to ring me from Germany to go through the query sheet I sent back with an edited manuscript, so all in all – not much of a holiday from work.

Specially for Steph – a while ago I invented a system for magic-use whereby mages need a paired individual who acts as a ’source’, or conduit through which magic power flows. The mage can draw on that power and shape it, but has no independent access to magic without their partner. Similarly the ’source’ individuals have no ability to shape magic or cast spells; they are simply passive channels.

My NaNo novel is an exploration of this idea. There are lots of social possibilities – pimps/whores, exploitation and trafficking, addiction, relationship formation and breakdown – and at the moment I’m not sure which way the development is going. I’ll keep you posted.

Back to it. 10.5K, here we come.

 

* Shamelessly paraphrased from the NaNoWriMo website. I’m nothing if not liberal with my plagiarism.

**Actually, that’s not such a bad idea. I should give my main character a blog and just cut/paste a load of posts from here… Maybe when I’m desperate at the end of the month.

On writing

Well, actually, on not writing. My publication rate here has dropped – I seem to be managing a fairly consistent rate of one post a month, but that’s simply not good enough. Not so much a blog – more of an occasional rant.

I’d like to say this is a fresh start, the fightback starts here, from now on I’ll be publishing insightful, witty and daily posts and gathering a huge and loyal following along the way. (As opposed to the tiny but loyal following I currently have – hi Steph.) However, no can do. Y’see, in a moment of utter madness I’ve signed up here.

NaNoWriMo. The name is clunky, nasty and embarrassing to say in public. The concept is insane – a novel in a month? 50,000 words? In a month? That’s – wait a moment – 1667 words a day. HOW MANY?

The idea is simply to write 50,000 words in the month of November. And that’s it. No more rules. The ‘novel’ doesn’t even have to be finished – it just has to be 50K words long at midnight on the 30th, as verified by an online word counter. Intense, insane, and completely counter to the way I normally work as a writer (think, research, write a few words, rethink, rewrite, more research, realise I got it completely wrong, delete, repeat).

And yet… it may be the only way I’ll ever actually commit to paper (or to the screen) the story that’s rattling about inside my head. It’s not a great story – fantasy fiction in the grand tradition of Robin Hobb or J.V. Jones – but it’s in there, and it wants to get out. Or rather, I want to get it out, because it’s making the place look untidy.

So here I go. Tonight at midnight I’ll be sitting down at my computer with only a copy of Word, a pot of tea and a 100,000-strong community of fellow strugglers across the globe for company. MrH is also taking part (and is far more likely to finish than I am, since he’s now back in the land of the unemployed – more of that particular unpleasantness some other time), and two of the three Hawthorn saplings are planning their magnum opera*, so there won’t be much in the way of conversation in our house for the next month.

So, for the next 30 days at least I have an excuse for not posting here. In contrast to the rest of the year, when I have no excuse other than sheer bone idleness and a lack of any degree of motivation. 1667 words a day. Wish me luck…

* No, really, this is the plural of opus. I looked it up. Who knew?

Sick and tired

I’m never allowed to be ill. It doesn’t compute in our house that the person who makes the hot drinks, wipes the fevered brow and administers paracetamol and Nightingale-like care and compassion to everyone else when they’re under the weather should be able, every so often, to relinquish those responsibilities and languish in a darkened room herself, Lemsip at her side, while partner and children tiptoe about and whisper in hushed tones about calling the doctor and maybe the priest.

No. See, what happens is this. One of the kids contracts something minor but inconvenient – a bad cold, say, or a stomach bug. They suffer for a few days, and maybe pass it on to one or both of their siblings. They also suffer, while I dish out Calpol, provide sick buckets as required, tuck them up in blankets and buy the local shop’s entire stock of Lucozade.

Inevitably, however, after some period of time I contract the ailment myself. At which point, two things happen simultaneously:

1. The children make miraculous recoveries (except when returning to school is mooted, when they relapse and suddenly develop high fevers and sometimes even short-lived rashes). They start bouncing round the house, stir-crazy because of their few days’ confinement and leaving a dreadful trail of destruction behind them.
2. MrH also contracts the illness, but much worse than me. If I have a temperature of 39, his is 41 and rising. If I’m sick twice in the night, he vomits four times and he thinks there might have been blood in it. If I feel dizzy and faint, he collapses on the kitchen floor and has to crawl slowly and painfully to the living room where he just manages to make it as far as the X-box controllers before collapsing again.

So my sick days most often consist of trailing the children wearily around the house making good the worst of the damage, trudging to the pharmacy to replenish our supplies of medication, and caring for MrH, who is clearly at Death’s door with only just enough strength to drink endless cups of tea, play Left 4 Dead for hours and yell at the children when they come into his field of vision.

Come to think of it, MrH has always been one for coming out in sympathy when anyone happens to be ill. When I was in the early stages of pregnancy and incapacitated with nausea and crippling tiredness, I clearly remember him telling me, in what he obviously imagined was a sympathetic tone, that he also felt a bit sick. Decency forbids me to relate my response.

Not that I’m bitter. Not me. I’ll just go and make myself another Lemsip. Sniff.

Post rage – a rant

I love the postman. Not in an opening-the-door-in-my-negligee-and-inviting-him-in sort of way – our postman is not unattractive, but frankly I’m not at my best first thing in the morning. Bed hair, pasty face, morning breath and a temper you could use to blast holes in cliff faces.

No – I love him because of the hope he invariably sparks in me as I see him tramping down our drive with his bag of potential glad tidings. What will it be today? Communication from a long-lost but dearly loved friend? An unexpected gift? A letter telling us we’ve miraculously won the lottery without ever buying a ticket? (I’m not kidding. For a while, during the Great Redundancy, this was Mr H’s favoured and most likely option for saving the day.)

This childish hope persists even in the sure and certain knowledge that what he usually brings is junk, demands for money, and bossy letters telling us that if we don’t return the kids’ overdue library books THIS INSTANT we’ll be barred from the county’s libraries for life. Today, however, he excelled himself.

My joyful anticipation was heightened this morning because I ordered some quilting fabric online yesterday, from a supplier I’ve used before and who often despatches on the same day. Therefore, I was half-expecting it to arrive today. I was actually in the shower when Postie arrived, but I heard the sound of the letterbox and bounded out, all dripping and steaming, to see what he’d brought.

My fabric-related hopes were instantly dashed – neither of the items could possibly have been my order (not big enough). No – what he actually brought was a business letter for a company I’ve never heard of but which  mysteriously seems to be using our address, and a card saying that there’s an item waiting for collection at the sorting office five miles away, which couldn’t be delivered because of insufficient postage to the tune of £1.47.

INSUFFICIENT FUCKING POSTAGE. Some cheapskate moron has sent me something, neglected to put any stamps on it, and now I have to get all the kids in the car, drive to the sorting office and pay for the privilege of collecting it. I also have to return the Mystery Businessman’s letter to the sender so that they don’t come calling to collect outstanding debts or something. Utter bastards.

Frankly, I wouldn’t bother going to the sorting office (I know it’s not the fabric, I had the despatch notice for that by email this morning), except that I’m still waiting for my revised contract so I can go back to work at school next week. And the place I work is SO SHIT that I fully expect the offending item to be my contract which they thoughtfully posted with no stamps on the envelope. So that’s just great.

EDIT (about two hours later): I was right. It was my contract. There’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back… I’ll have words with the HR woman next week, and they won’t be nice, friendly, how-was-your-holiday-isn’t-it-great-to-be-back words, either. Meh.

The screen as mental relaxation

Ok, I know it’s not in the childcare manuals, except in the sections where it says DON’T RESORT TO THIS in big letters. I suspect many childless people would point and laugh, and mutter “Bad mother!” behind their hands. (These same people, I should point out, are well known for snarling and cursing in restaurants at families who have the temerity to interrupt the quiet sophisticated ambience by bringing children along to muck the place up. This attitude will wash in a posh expensive eatery late at night, but not in a child-friendly pub on a Sunday lunchtime – in which scenario I have been known to indulge in my own bout of snarling and cursing at said childless folk when they aim their evil glares at my own offspring.)

But I digress. My point du jour is this – today, everyone in the Hawthorn household (apart from Mr H, who is out earning an honest crust) has at some point flopped down in front of some screen or other and engaged in a spot of mindless staring. Daughter1 watched three episodes of Friends on DVD before breakfast. Son spent an hour playing a succession of casual Flash games online, and Daughter2 is currently happily engaged in thrashing all the other competitors in MarioKart on the DS. I myself have surfed, read blogs, done a bit of opportunistic online shopping and exchanged a few pointless emails with Mr H.

We have all done other things with the day (the weans played outside this morning until it started raining, I did laundry and worked for a couple of hours, and they’ve also created an unholy mess in the dining room while making Pokemon models out of air-drying clay), but my point is that after the busy few weeks we’ve had (doing theatre stuff and then going straight to visit family last week) and after travelling all day yesterday, at various points in the day today we all needed to just stop. And glaze over. And not think about anything.

And that’s what we did. We’ve packed so much into the last three weeks that overstimulation, coupled with over-tiredness, is a real danger for all of us. The kids all emerged from their screen-staring sessions slightly bug-eyed but mentally recharged, if only for a short while. I find myself a bit compromised because my latest bout of internet-induced vacancy set supper preparations back by about half an hour, but that’s ok. They can watch another episode of Friends while they wait.