'Egad, the Nanomonster is almost upon us

Is it October again, already?

Does this mean I'll be doing nanowrimo. No. Then again, maybe ... I've logged on to the website, advertised my services to newbies, attended pre-nano meet ups, resolved to PLAN and PLOT this time ... even though I'm officially NOT DOING IT. Who am I kidding? I'm doing it, I just don't have a clue what I'm doing. As bloody usual.

I started footering about with one of my stagnant stories, last week - the one about the NZ psychic detective climbing a hill. To resolve the plot difficuties that stymied me earlier in the year, I've moved forwards several scenes and I'm writing a party sequence. I have no idea who the people at the party are, how Donna got there, or what might happen, but what the Hell, at least I've put down a couple of thousand words that weren't there before.

Mistakes can be corrected, wild inconsistencies ironed out. But you can't do anything unless you write something, no matter how bad.

Spoke too soon

So much for SocNoc salvaging my writing in 2008. After grinding out 30,000 words, a combination of flu, employment, new child and plotlessness undid me. With 20K to write and a week to go, I realised I wasn't going to make it, and did the honourable thing, which was to run like the coward I am. The Hell with all this heroic crap about desperate charges, trying to write 15,000 words in the last ten minutes, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and so on. I am Scottish. I know that defeat is inevitable, the only choice is between defeat and disaster. Given the forces arrayed against me, I decided not to lose it all (literally, I think I would have died if I had carried on writing) in a romantic, but still doomed, effort.

Seriously, having done Nanowri mo four times, SocNoc once and various other writerly challenges, I didn't feel the need to prove myself. I KNOW I can write incoherent muck. I think the next stage in my writerly evolution may be to try and write some coherent muck. Yes, that may mean that I attempt to PLAN something, instead of freestyling, come Nanowrimo 08.

Southern Cross Novel Challenge

I've been having a very mixed 2008.

It started very well, with me finishing off last year's NaNoWriMo effort. It was a rough and hideous thing, incoherent in the extreme, but it was still done. Then I embarked on a new project. I was trying for something shamelessly commercial, but it came undone. Couldn't make it work. My bloody detective wouldn't detect. She just mooned about, trying to ignore my attempts to prod her in the right direction.

So I abandoned her, somewhere in a field in the Manawatu, if I remember rightly. Twenty thousand words. Going nowhere. Blergh. Then I tried to make amends, and get her to do something else. Again, she wasn't having it and this second attempt was put on hold after just a thousand words or so. They were good words. But they weren't going anywhere.

But now it is June, and June is So.C.No.C. and that means I really have to try to write something. Forget the new job and the new child and the benighted in-laws that just won't go away. I have to find something to write about, so I've reverted to type. I've dragged the long sufferring Jack Callaghan out of (unofficial) retirement for another stumbling, incoherent, and probably very violent adventure.

So far, it's going pretty well. I've managed to set a new personal best, killing seven people in the first couple of thousand words. Shotguns in enclosed spaces will do that, every time. And, after the fustration of the failed efforts earlier in the year, writing hackneyed pulp nonsense is a breeze.

Quotes on poverty

"Poverty is without its mark unless it is contrasted with wealth."

- John Ross, polar explorer.

"Come away; poverty's catching"

"Pox of Poverty, it makes a Man a Slave, makes Wit and Honour sneak, my Soul grow lean and rusty for want of Credit."

- Aphra Behn, novellist, spy, and more.