NaNoWriMo

Blog-vember Sunday Confessional … Lies I tell myself

It’s Sunday. I have a few things to get off my chest!

Sunday essentials
Oceans of tea

It seemed right to share some of my secrets in a cathartic Sunday session for Blog-vember. I will need to pull every stunt in the blogger’s tool box to make it through this month of posts. Here goes (no laughing please!)

Lies I tell myself – just a random sample

1. I need all the more glassware

2. I will have two alcohol free days a week

3. I will put away my clothes and not live out of the washing basket

4. I won’t try to re-hydrate at 10pm on the weekends

5. I will learn to use all the features of wordpress before I cherry pick and launch into stuff before I know what I am doing!

To celebrate the release, the warm sunny Sunday, a musical treat. Deborah Conway embodying how we should all live out our Sundays with joy. Staying in with coffee, toast and chocolate! Amen to that.

Got anything you need to get off your chest?

There’s your Sunday Blog-vember post!

Blog-vember post the third … what sort of story is this?

#breakfastattiffanysdare

On Friday, I wore a little black dress all day. I didn’t wear pearls round my neck but I did wear them in my ears.  I was dared by @foxinflats. I find her hard to resist. I did her red lipstick dare too. I wore red lipstick all day, every day for a week! The little black dress dare was called #breakfastattiffanys It was great. I had a lovely day, worked hard and when I got home, I spent a glorious evening watching the movie. Read More

Gin, how I love you, let me count the ways…

I don’t remember my first sip of gin. There is, however, a crystal clear memory of my favourite gin drinking moment and the beginning of my love affair with distilled botanicals in a spirit base.

I was 21. The mother of my then boyfriend took me to lunch for my birthday. I was about the start my Honours year. We went to a restaurant on the North Shore of Sydney. It was just the two of us and it was rather a treat. I was, at the time, a starving student and so lunch out was a luxury. Liz ordered two gin and tonics.

I was sort of momentarily shocked. In the daytime?

It was glorious. Read More

It’s Blog-vember! Post the first

On the way back from Melbourne, I gazed out the window mouching quietly about having missed seeing some fantastic people. There were just too few hours and I really needed a time machine to make it all work. I even missed out on drinking gin in The Gin Palace; that really really hurt. The trip was too short, the family commitments too long to make it work.

I started on a bit of a reverie then. I’m missing people, I’m missing writing, and I’m missing NaNoWriMo!

I tossed ideas around. What if I could do something else? How could I make this work? How could I write and keep the little smouldering embers of love of writing burning? I certainly couldn’t write 1667 words a day! But I could blog every day. I workshopped ideas. What to call it? Blog-a-rama? NoNoNaNoWriMo? Blog-vember? Yes that says it all. It’s November. It’s blogging.

I wrote the post and sent this little idea out into the ether and who should show up?

Only the gorgeous people I missed in Melbourne!  I may have let out a little squeal of delight at the first response.

Here we all are. Drum roll please.

Blog-vember! A little idea to keep my writing spirits up and share the love.

Here are just a few of the people playing along.

Under The Yardarm

Twitchy Corner

Segovia

Join us. You can still play and catch up and keep your writing spark. A post a day. Every day for November. Blog-vember!

 

 

 

Blog-vember or NoNoNaNoWriMo

No No NaNoWriMo for me. I have come to a sad realisation that I cannot participate in NaNoWriMo this year. As much as this decision pains me, it is the right one for this year. I just cannot commit the necessary time and my experience last year taught me exactly what that commitment looks like. Of course, I am not willing to give up altogether. Too easy to do that.

 

Instead of NaNoWriMo this year, I give you Blog-vember!

A blog post every day for the month of November. At least that way I have a target and a writing goal. Feel free to leave pull-your-socks-up comments if I start writing about what I had for lunch – unless of course the lunch was at Tetsuya’s then you’ll just have to suffer through a blow by blow description.

For added interest, I will also give myself the end of November as the deadline for my long overdue book reviews that I keep promising and failing to deliver.

Join me! If you are NaNo-ing then go you. But if you are not join me for Blog-vember.

A post a day for November. Who’s in?

I won! I’ve finished NaNoWriMo!

 

That is all. I won. I wrote 50028 words from 1 November to 29 November 2011.

NaNoWriMo you are mine.

NaNoWriMo Halfway Update

 

It’s November 15.

It’s NaNoWriMo halfway mark.

Shortly before 4pm I typed the 25 002nd word of my NaNo story.

HALF WAY! HALF WAY! Sky rockets in flight! #NaNoWriMo
@stellaorbit
Louise Bassett

 

Here is my last paragraph for the middle of the story.

Outside it was warm and the late summer breeze carried with it the promise of cool weather and the change of seasons. They walked to the tube, Cooper still none the wiser about their destination. The afternoon was proceeding better than Matthew had hoped. Pleased with himself, he bounced on the balls of his feet.

Stay tuned. I’m on track and have really started to enjoy the process. I am now so focused on the task at hand, my week has been reorganised around getting me in the chair and in front of my macbook. Seems to be working.

 

I’ve lost control

Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction No. 40

INTERVIEWER

E. M. Forster speaks of his major characters sometimes taking over and dictating the course of his novels. Has this ever been a problem for you, or are you in complete command?

NABOKOV

My knowledge of Mr. Forster’s works is limited to one novel, which I dislike; and anyway, it was not he who fathered that trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills, although of course one sympathizes with his people if they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or wherever he takes them. My characters are galley slaves.

Nabokov’s characters did exactly what he wanted them too. I’m close to 7000 words into the NaNo novel and already I’ve lost control. My characters are doing their own things! I’ve written myself into a corner and now I have to write a sex scene. There are continuity issues, my flashbacks are out of order, it’s the past – no wait not that far back – fuck. Wait, that hasn’t happened yet. It’s a nightmare. And entirely par for the course with the challenge of writing this fast. Regardless of my plotting, I’m still having to ‘pants’ parts of the story. There isn’t time to story board the sequences, so by the seat of my pants, I am guessing, making it up. Cranking out the daily words so I don’t fall behind.

Trying to introduce enough tension between the central characters and avoiding any more love interests – man are they trouble!

National Novel Writing Month #nanowrimo

Update!

It is now two hours until NaNoWriMo starts!

I am bursting with excitement and nervous energy. Tomorrow I will be sitting drinking coffee and writing like demons are pursuing me across plains of lava; in other words as fast as humanly possible to get a great start.

I have an arc of a story. It has characters. Love interests (yes plural – holy crap!) It has locations and I can actually smell it now.

Wish me luck.

This much neglected blog will now become further neglected and I am sorry to my handful of loyal readers for that, but a larger cause and a bigger quest is at hand.

 

____________________________________

It is nearly November. In fact there are fifteen days and counting left of October.

This year this means one important thing. National Novel Writing Month.

I have started my preparation. If you can call staring into the middle distance and hoping a story arc whacks you over the head, preparation.

This year I have themes. This year I will start on the first day. This year I will write every day. This year I have some characters.

All of these little preparations are a big improvement on last year. Last year I didn’t start until the first week was almost over. I had no characters. I did not write every day. And I only wrote a pathetic 3260 words.

I have high hopes this time. I am better prepared. I have a child who reliably sleeps through the night. I have a day off a week. I have a couple of story ideas. I’ve made some notes.

I am participating in this grand writing collective frenzy for one reason; to test myself. To see if I can do it. To see if I have enough story writing in me to write something sustained.  50 000 words. It is a tough ask. It is 1 667 words a day. Each and every day for a month.

We shall see. In the meantime, I will continue to hope for a story arc or a brilliant idea. I have still got a few days.