Have a totally unedited ramble. I’m sitting in Starbucks waiting to go and see Marian Keyes talk about her new book, and get said new book signed. I am buzzing on far too many coffees, and the novelty of being out without a tiny Ted bouncing up and down in his pram trying to shout at passersby. If you’ve ever wondered what goes on in my head on a day-to-day basis, this is it.
RIGHT.
I am doing NaNoWriMo this November.
Correction. I am DOING NaNoWriMo.
I have failed a Camp and missed an actual NaNo because, you know, baby. I think of myself going into hospital on that final night, knowing that I realistically wouldn’t be leaving without a baby in my arms, packing a chunky notebook and some pens into my bag among the tiny hats and mittens. “I might be bored!” I thought, optimistically. “Surely I can at least get a few thousand words down while I’m waiting for my induction!”
(See Teddy’s birth story for the reasons why I found my notebook and pens three days later and laughed very darkly and bloodlessly to myself).
I tried to do Camp in April, but it was a bit of a disaster. I was far too unmotivated at the time – I started a whole new project as well as trying to finish some old ones, to deal with my current attention-span-of-a-gnat, but it didn’t help. I still didn’t get anywhere near 50,000 words.
But! November. November is coming closer, and I’ve got a good feeling about it.
Baby and childbirth and the like aside, November has always been a crazy month for me. It’s usually full of gigs, trips abroad, and work stuff. And yet I’ve never once failed a November NaNoWriMo, once I’ve started it. I’ve done 20k-days. I’ve done 10,000 words in three hours on November 30th. I’ve never failed. And I’m not about to start now.
And yes, it’s another crazy month. At least, the first bit of it will be. It’s Ted’s birthday on November 1st, and we’re going to be in Disneyland Paris for it. That’s the first few days of writing time essentially scuppered. Even though I haven’t got any gigs lined up for this year, there’s still going to be the usual Teddy routine of baby groups and play dates and walking round and round Chorlton in circles to get him to have a nap in the pram. He’s still going to be at the age where he needs constant supervision and entertainment: I’m not going to be able to sit in a soft play and let him run wild, or sit him down with some crayons while I type away on the laptop. Maybe next year. Realistically, that stage probably won’t come until the year after next. Or never: already I can’t quite see Ted being the kind of kid who will sit quietly with a colouring book!
It’s not going to stop me though. I’ve already booked in for my own private writing retreat: in other words, me and Ted are heading up to my mum’s house for a few days while Kev works. I’ll be throwing a delighted Ted in my delighted mum’s general direction while I scoot off to Durham to park myself in my old Caffe Nero haunt (without which I’d have never learned a single bit of German vocabulary, best working environment I’ve ever been in) and write like the wind. This will serve the dual purpose of getting me some writing time, and giving Mum and Ted some alone time. He already loves her, but I want them to get more time on their own together so they can build up to having Teddy and Grandma’s Excellent Adventures when he’s a bit bigger.
Then when we’re home there’s also the fact I’m back at work two days a week. You’d think that would be an impediment to writing time but it’s actually helpful: I can go into town a couple of hours before my shift, hole up in Starbucks, and crack out a couple of thousand words.
It’s all perfectly doable.
If. IF.
If I can think of something to write.
Oh my goodness, I’m so uninspired. I’ve got two giant projects that desperately need finishing – The Hummingbird and the Timepiece, my last successful NaNoWriMo project, is crying out to be finished, the main characters left in a limbo-esque loop of unrequited love. I’m 50,000 words into it and I still haven’t introduced one of the focal characters. Much writing and editing is waiting for me there.
My diary-type novel from the point of view of an uprooted French teenager is coming to its end after no less than nine years of being in some form of progress, but the main character has currently shut me out of her head and I can’t get back in. The new book I started for Camp, about a twenty-two-year-old unwilling to grow up and forget her obsession with Disney, is languishing somewhere on my hard-drive, the main character tossing her hair and pretending not to know me.
Throughout all my works-in-progress, there have been guest appearances from a metal band of my own creation: Karin Cluster. In some books they’re just mentioned in passing – say, a secondary character has a one night stand with the keyboard player and the main character has to watch them run past in their underwear in the morning, or even just that there’s poster of them on a character’s wall. In others, they provide a big plot point – a MAIN character sleeps with one of them and causes all kinds of repercussions. There’s a tiny voice in my head saying they deserve their own story.
Maybe this is the year for that.
Karin Cluster actually came about when I was trying to write something for my best friend: we’d just started our heavy metal jaunts around Europe, and I wanted to make up a funny little story about what could happen to us if certain coincidences happened to happen. All names changed, an entirely new band created, of course, that band being Karin Cluster.
Then, funnily enough, the events of the story I wrote… actually happened. Not everything, not every single detail. But enough that I was freaked out and shut down the project, a bit scared of what I could conjure up. It was just too creepy: my main characters (expys of me and my best friend, of course) were invited onto a tourbus by a roadie. The roadie even had the same name as the roadie who actually invited us onto a tourbus a few months later. That wasn’t the only similarity, but it was the weirdest.
Throughout my other projects, I’ve hinted enough about Karin Cluster that the bare bones of their backstory has formed in my brain, and I’m pretty sure I could get an actual novel out of it. One that’s not quite so autobiographical, at any rate. But can I put enough passion into it that I can get a full fifty thousand words out of it?
I think this calls for some planning.
And do you know what planning calls for?
NEW NOTEBOOKS!!
…I sense a trip to Paperchase in my future.
