Books, Writing & Identifications

As a followup to my last entry, this last weekend was a little rough, identity-wise. I lost my hubbie for a day yesterday - he and his family went off to Wembly to watch their football team not be promoted out of the Blue-Square league. He got home earlier than expected, having only been gone 10 hours and not the 11 or so. But through the long drawn-out Sunday spent with daughter and dog, I felt incredibly lonely and lost.

Do other stay at home women feel that way, I wondered? Just seeming to wait around - for kids to come home from school, for husbands to come home from work (or their more favourite destination - a sporting event), always awaiting somebody else’s schedule, somebody else’s royal appearance?

Recognising my jaded viewpoint on the world at that point, it also allowed me to work out that I felt much more valuable when I had something (other than a clean floor, or scrubbed shower) evidentially achieved. Something tangible, and which allows for creativity and the spending of hours with oneself to achieve something of my own - not my family’s.

For me, the answer came shockingly suddenly - my writing lately. So what if it was only a hard-fought battle with a first crummy little draft, and the whole thing will never see a shaft of light - not if I have anything to do with it anyway. But still, I created it, I spent 144 odd hours on the thing, and something grew in those hours - something which was my new identity. It might have been secret from everyone else in the neighbourhood - who still think I’m a bloody lucky kiwi gal sitting at home on her laurels (what exactly are laurels, anyway?) while her daughter goes to school. But for me - even if it’s all hush-hush, under the table stuff - for me it was a new identity, after losing much of myself giving up my fultime job ten months ago.

I am no longer surprised then, to find that even as I was circumstantially forced to turn down an offer to go back to my old working life again last week; that at the same time I was - perhaps subconciously - refinding myself by using my wallet, and a big amazon.co.uk order. Which arrived this morning, after lugging it from the post office. I’ve just added a fair few “reading currently” books to my library list at librarything. com but thought I’d publish the main ones here, with my intentions for them. Because I’ve started outlining and planning again, and it feels finally that I’m doing something valuable - for me. If only by half a day.

Yes, I know - I shouldn’t feel that domestic work, and teaching my brilliant child to read and write is any less valuable, and I don’t think that at all, but I am more than the sum total of mother and wife. I am someone who also needs a side of myself that is totally me, and therefore something I can credit as being totally me should I achieve something within it. Something I can plan for, and use many of my forty years of obtained skills and natural talents (tongue in cheek necessarily applied). Cleaning showers, and being patient with reading the same children’s book over and over again, is equally hard in their own ways, but…here’s what I plan to use to fill in that missing gap I suddenly found myself leaping over like some land-locked giant frog, last week again.

Outlining a New Novel 

First Draft in 30 Days by Karen S. Wiesner. I’ve already done the No Plot, No Problem book by Chris Baty, and it worked reasonably well for me, but in doing that first novel, I realised that I was lost without a very detailed outline to follow, and one which also allowed me to move away from it at times when the characters insisted (and boy, did they!).  First Draft in 30 Days talks about drafts but in reality they are very detailed outlines, and although many (Many!) writers tut-tut when people suggest they should outline, I’m afraid that my experience has shown me that I need that structure first up, before I can then go and break the backbone of it in actually writing. Call me anal…but for someone who never uses eyeliner, I still like a lot of outliner.

So, I’m going to give all these worksheets and the methods involved in First Draft in 30 Days a shot. I’m currently just entering into outlining for the Pod Novel II - the novel which will become my NaNoWriMo entry in November of this year. And over the last few days I’ve been blocked with any kind of inspiration on this one. But reading only the first few pages of this book today, after unpacking it from the amazon.co box, I found myself loading up the laptop, opening up freemind - a free opensource mindmapping application, and brainstorming a few of the elements of that lost story.

Whether I combine the practices which work for me, with the more freestyle no plot, no problem tips from that book, to do NaNoWriMo is a matter yet to be seen.

Rewriting the Old First Draft 

Also on my current reading list (apart from a Kathy Reich novel) is The Weekend Novelist Redrafts the Novel by Robert J. Ray. I want to read this by the end of June, so that I can apply any helpful concepts to my work in editing the first Pod Novel - which unfortunately still weighs heavily in my mind (and as far as I can see now weeks later, is full of flaws already).  

I found The Weekend Novelist an interesting read, although perhaps a little dry - but I did get a lot from it as a newbie writer. And I have similar hopes for this one.  

The Pod Novel i is to be edited late July after sitting (supposedly not thought about) for six or seven weeks. In my amazon package, I also got another editing book which is also on my to read list over the next few weeks. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. It has reasonably good reviews around the web for it, so I’m looking forward to learning from that also.  

On my Widget Bar on my PC I have the edit date set at 15 July as a reminder, but just before that I will re-read the following Writer’s Book, ready for the actual edit also. This one is one of my favourites. Writing the Breakout Novel (workbook) by  Donald Mass.

General ‘On Writing’ Reading 

Might as well be in for a quid and not just 20p. So add to my current reading list several other On Writing books, some of which are still coming to my doorstep over the next couple of weeks, but How to Write a Damn Good Novel (i and ii) look good reads by James N. Frey, and those two arrived in my package this morning.  

I’ve also got The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, and The No Plot, No Problem Novel-Writing Kit, which has some interesting badges and stickers and things. I’m not sure I’m the right type to try them out, but you never know what November might bring.

By the time I’m finished, I will have a highly defined listmania list at amazon.co.uk where it will become apparent to all that this wannabe writer is spending so much time reading about writing that she’s not actually writing. But they’d be wrong.