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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

This week has been mental, in many ways. Fun – mostly; tiring – definitely; challenging – partly; but mental? Totally.

I’m employed this week and next on a theatre project, run by a couple of close friends who are actors, singers, dancers and musicians. (Both of them do all these things very well. Sickening, no?) Basically, they enrolled 21 kids, aged between 7 and 12, to come along to a summer school for a fortnight to act, dance, sing and play music in a one-night production on the last evening. My own kids, insufferable show-offs that they are, were immediately sold on the idea and have duly landed plum roles, largely on the strength of their enviable self-confidence and willingness to make fools of themselves in the pursuit of their art.

When my friends were in the planning stages for the project, way back in April, I foolishly said, “Ooh, that sounds like fun. If you need an extra pair of hands, I’ll be in it.” So now I find myself in the middle of one of the most exhausting projects I have ever undertaken. A lot of it is way out of my comfort zone – I’m a musician and a writer, not an actor, a costume designer or a make-up artist, but I have done bits of all these things this week, as well as building sets, sourcing props, making jewellery, cleaning toilets, coaching dialogue, learning lines, arbitrating arguments, reassuring my thespian friends about how great they are and how well everything is going, and keeping 21 kids supplied with drinks and biscuits.

Next week is going to be even more intense. The performance is on Friday night, and before then I have three pieces of music to write and teach to the kids who are going to play them, forty or so costumes to design and produce and a good number of lines to learn with my own offspring. Finally, and most worryingly, I have to learn to play the cornet.

The cornet. I ask you. I’m a strings player – I don’t have to breathe when I play my violin. (Well, I do, but you know what I mean.) Neither do I have to purse my lips up and make funny raspberry noises WITHOUT LAUGHING. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to play a brass instrument, but it’s the most ridiculous thing ever – I simply can’t form an embouchure without wanting to giggle, which is obviously not that useful when trying to get a note out of an instrument. On the one or two occasions I have managed to obtain a reliable sound, I have no idea what that note was or how to do it again. My learning curve seems to be more of a random scribble, a situation which is not improving with practice. Indeed, the very act of practicing is a challenge, since I have to blow (and raspberry, and try not to laugh) so hard that I go dizzy and have to sit down after a very short time.

My mastery of this new instrument has to be performance-ready by Friday, when I’m supposed to play two fanfares to accompany the entry and exit of a king. The thing is, this sort of demand is completely normal and acceptable to acting types, who routinely learn new skills in unfeasibly short periods of time in order to play roles. When my friends said to me, “You can learn the cornet, can’t you?” this seemed entirely reasonable to them.

However, I’m not sure they fully realise that they’re not exactly dealing with a professional. They may well have to change the stage direction from “Enter the king, accompanied by fanfare” to “Enter the king, accompanied by strange farting and snorting noises followed by loud thud as cornet player passes out”. Which (and I’m guessing here) is probably not really what they had in mind.

Got five kids here today – my own three and two boys that have kind of been dumped on me. They’re nice kids – over from the US staying with their grandmother, who is a teacher at my own kids’ school, and Son gets on very well with the older boy so they’re having a good time.

But – and here’s the thing – having other kids here turns me into some sort of Stepford wife. I cleaned and tidied like a complete lunatic for half an hour after we got the phone call saying they were coming over (transcript as follows: Grandmother: “The boys would really like to come over today. Is that alright?” Me (inside head): “Well, no, actually, the house is a tip and we’d planned to go into town for lunch and then go to see Harry Potter.” Me (out loud): “Oh, yes, please, how lovely.” Meh). I hoovered everywhere visible, slammed cupboard doors on teetering avalanches of rubbish, issued the kids with strict instructions not to take the boys into their bedrooms (all ankle-deep in sawdust from the various small animal cages which dwell therein) and squirted bleach down the toilets in a vain attempt to remove some of the caked-on limescale. I even loaded and turned on both the dishwasher and the washing machine, in the full and certain knowledge that having both on at the same time is likely to cause the drain to overflow and flood the kitchen.

And then, when the boys and their Mum arrived, I was pretending to be all serene and industrious at the computer (“Oh, that? It’s just the book I wrote, I have to get the final draft to the publisher”), having put on make-up and brushed my hair as they were walking down the drive. I offered the mother a coffee, and when she accepted,  gods help me if I didn’t make real coffee in the percolater. Which I never use. Ever.

We drank the coffee and chatted – she’s American and very garrulous, so I now know where she grew up, her entire work history, how she met her husband, his entire work history, and all the many and varied skills and talents of their two boys. All she knows about me is that I nod and smile a lot, and often glance nervously at the dishwasher.

And then she left, cheerfully informing me that she’s so pleased to be able to get rid of the boys for a day (a DAY? I was banking on a couple of hours, max) so she can go for a walk, because she’s been looking after them ever since they broke up from school in June. (Me (inside head): “Well duh – you’re their mother. That’s your job.”)

And then when lunchtime rolled around I somehow wound myself up into cooking for the five kids – I set the table and everything. Normally at lunchtime I make a few sandwiches and chuck them at the kids, barely interrupting whatever they’re doing and certainly not making them sit up at the table.

I’m sure my own kids think I’ve been abducted by aliens and replaced by a robot uber-mummy. But – and get this – they’re not complaining, or indeed showing any sign of alarm that their mother has been mysteriously transformed into Bree Hodge. In fact, they seem to like it. Ungrateful little brats…

Great excitement chez Hawthorn. Mr H, whose propensity for impulse buying is matched only by his overestimation of our current disposable income, has ordered Rock Band 2 for the Xbox.

I scoffed. I choked. I refused to be swayed by his pleading justification that £50 was a bargain. I waved the unpaid electricity bill in his face.  I ranted, and I would even go so far as to say I raved. I dismissed the guitar and microphone which come with the game as irrelevant and pointless.

However, then he mentioned the drum kit. I’ll say it again. The. Drum. Kit.

It is a little-known fact about Hawthorn that ever since I had a five-minute bash on a school friend’s drum kit in a garage in 1984, I have fancied myself as a frustrated drummer. I have no reason to believe I’d be any good at it, other than the fact that I KNOW I’D BE GREAT. And it looks like fun. And how hard can it be, really?

The children are equally excited, although I don’t think they realise that they’re not getting near the drum kit, it’s MINE. So imagine our delight today when we checked online and found the package had been despatched from the warehouse and is even now winging its way to Casa Hawthorn. Of course, this means that we’re now confined to quarters until the delivery van arrives and we can’t go to the local agricultural show as we’d planned, but really. That’s ok. DRUM KIT.

I received my contract in the post yesterday, for the classroom assistant position I’ve accepted for September. The post is at a private school, which means the pay is crap (verging on the derisory) but the fringe benefits, like pension, extra-curricular support and as much training as I can handle, are better than in the state school system.

However, they also seem to be unable to offer a job without cocking it up in some way. When I applied for the supply post I’ve had since June, it took them weeks to call me for interview and then further weeks to offer me a job. And then another few weeks to sort out a start date – I mean, how hard can it be?

And this time I was offered a 28-hour part time permanent post, which I was happy with because it means I can continue my freelance editing without having to grind out jobs in the evenings. However, on scanning the contract I couldn’t help but notice that it was for a 23-hour post. What gives?

I rang the HR woman at the school to ask precisely that question, and got some flannel about a communication breakdown between the Deputy Head and the Head of Teaching. She promised to look into it. In actual fact I wouldn’t really mind the reduction in hours – my editing rates are nearly treble what the school pays, so the more of that I can take on the better – but that’s not the point. I’m not signing anything until I know it’s correct, but I do suspect that I might be still waiting, with my unsigned contract in my hand, come September.

Yesterday I made a Big List of Unfinished Projects. I figured, if I have the UFPs written down in black & white, carefully arranged by category and with notes attached telling me what to do next, and then stuck on the wall in front of my nose whenever I sit down at my desk, I might actually turn some of these sorry projects around and make some progress. Hell, maybe I might even finish one or two of them.

Predictably, what actually happened is that the Big List of Unfinished Projects itself became a UFP when I was repeatedly called away to deal with minor but hugely important crises. In no particular order: a scab came off Daughter2’s grazed knee and had to be found, picked up with tweezers and thrown in the bin. Daughter1 managed to smoke out the living room with her pungent and exceedingly smoky incense, causing coughing fits and great indignation in the other two. Son couldn’t find his football (turned out it was in the attic under a pile of sleeping bags). All three demanded a trip to the park, where they refused to go on anything “because there were big children there”. Came home to find Cat2 had kicked dirty cat litter all over the bathroom floor, rendering the whole room unusable until the carpet had been scrubbed.

By that time we were into the daily supper/bath/bed pantomime, and when that was over with I was brain dead and good for nothing more intelectually stimulating than watching T play Grand Theft Auto IV and laughing when he got beaten up. So now I have been forced to include my List of UFPs as an item on my List of UFPs. While the reflexivity of this appeals to me at one level, I do realise it’s dangerously circular. I also managed to trigger a short period of deep depression and apathy when I realised that my List of UPFs runs to a side and a half of A4, and most of the items are over five years old.

However, the depression and apathy was soon lifted by the comforting realisation that I’ve made a list. And, as any fule kno, the very act of making a list brings the listmaker a significant step closer to actually thinking about maybe doing some of the items on the list one day, when there’s nothing else going on and no other (newer, more exciting) projects are claiming one’s attention. See? I’m half way there already.