Hey, look, I’m writing!

This is my seventh cup of tea today while writing and planning and eating croissants. I’m having a productive day and I wanted to share that feeling with you all.

So far, I’m happy.

I’ve written 12,624 words of my novel and reached my goal of 500 words today. This is something of a struggle for me lately because I’ve been juggling my degree with friends, family, working for the magazine company I help run, and doing daily basic human-like things such as eating, washing and sleeping.

Oh, plus I read a lot so that too.

So I haven’t been able to write chunks of my novel so regularly as I would’ve liked. I know it’s a pathetic excuse, but where is the time? I’m trying to fix this and I love the feeling I get when I actually write it and revisit the characters I’ve gotten to know.

I write YA fiction which I love on many levels I just can’t explain. So I love my two characters who are hell bent on not falling in love, but do. Well, one of them, at least. I love their relationship and the dynamic it takes. They’re two of my favourite ever constructed characters I’ve created – and I didn’t even plan this novel.

Listening alongside to country and folk music gives me a release I simply just love. Silence can do this too. But today it is country and folk and I’m happy.

Who cares if I haven’t eaten properly today, or showered, or brushed my hair? Writing really does need to take priority sometimes.

Knickers

Eleanor had gotten her knickers in a twist. Her mother was always warning her about it, that one day if she wasn’t careful it would happen. Now Eleanor looked down shamefully at her knickers, tried turning them this way and that to untangle them. It was absolutely no use. She tried stepping into them and pulling them up past her thighs but it just wouldn’t do. To deal with that, lumbering around all day, would be far too uncomforable. She sought out another pair, then another, and another. But she was utterly dismayed to find that every single pair of knickers was in a twist, all joined together and conjoined in a long line of sad complex knicker twists.

W O R D S

Do I startle you?
I can engulf you,
I can make your tongue swell,
Swivel dance do twists unthinkable slither upside down,
Into the grooves at the roof of your mouth,
You’ll take me to your grave,
Til Death do us part, my sweetheart,
I will be etched into your cold slab of stone,
Immortalised there,
Forever

4,000 Words

Following my blog post about the author workshop I’m thrilled to be participating in, I received an email yesterday outlining the work we’re going to be doing to work with Lionel Shriver. Basically, the most pressing thing to do is come up with a piece of writing that is 4000 words long and submit it to her so it can be evaluated and critiqued.

I know, it sounds simple enough really, doesn’t it? It sounds like this is the most work we actively have to do within these workshops, aside from critiquing others’ work and really buckling down with all the fiction writing activities. It’s exciting and I already have loads of pieces that amount to either just below 4000 words or over. All I’d have to do is tweak it up a little and then submit, let her read it, and go!

But that’s just a little way too terrifying.

Writing 4000 words within two weeks is pretty simple and easy. That’s plenty of time. I have no issue with that. But coming up with 4000 words to submit to a real live – award winning author – FROM AMERICA is scary, to say the least. It’s incredibly daunting and I don’t even know where to start.

Giving her the first 4000 words of my novel is slightly embarrassing, as the protagonist is a womanizing jerk and in the second chapter there is a drunken bathroom scene in which two teenagers get a little too excited with each other (to put it that way). But it’s the most recent writing I’ve done and I have to admit I’m a little  bit in love with it. I am proud of it. But to give her something else feels odd, as I don’t feel my other writing is as good as the novel I’m writing right now. The piece we submit can be anything, on any theme, and can be complete, or a work in progress or something entirely different. Just as long as it’s fiction.

I think I am struggling. Being intimidated by author power-status is a little bit unnerving! Especially when you get to meet them!

Disney Joke

I told you I was a big fan of bad jokes. And this one’s so spectacular that it has a little wordplay in it too!

I came across it in my advent calendar today, and it tickled me silly, so much that I kept it so I thought you could read it too:

 

 

Q: What song did Cinderella sing as she waited four months for her photos to come back from the chemist?

A: ‘Some day my prints will come!’