I took Snow by Orhan Pamuk back to the library after only one and a half chapters. I think it must be better in the original Turkish but as I don’t read Turkish I’ll never know. But I need a book to read during Nano apart from the non-fiction piled around my bed so I’m re-reading Tobias Hill’s The Cryptographer. It’s been a couple of years and I can only barely remember the plot but I’m mostly reading it for the language anyway.
Some people (writers) avoid reading fiction when they are writing but I’m always writing something. The theory is that if you read too much fiction when you are writing you’ll just end up emulating those writers and lose your own writing voice. I think the answer is to read as widely as possible and write as much as possible. And after all, nothing is created in isolation. Some people might like to think that their writing is unique but it won’t be, everyone is infuenced by someone, whether they realise it or not. And I think it’s better to be influenced by as many different sources as possible. It makes life more interesting an prevents stagnation.
Preventing stagnation during Nanowrimo is of utmost importance too.
Week two is always the most difficult, and for some reason, outside distractions always seem to heap themselves on me during this week, just when I think I’m getting into the swing of things.
I’m going to try and hit thirty thousand today. I’m going to unplug the phone, while I write, which I forgot to do yesterday.

The first two days of NaNoWrimo have gone better than I expected in terms of word count – I have managed to rack up over 7 thousand words, however I am mired in character building and character background, trying to get the voice of each character before I move on with the action. There is some movement forward in the story, albeit very slowly. I am trying to get as much written as possible so that when I come to edit it all at some point I have something sizable to work with.
Rather predictably, the Nano site is exceedingly slow at in the evening from about tea-time to bed time. In fact so slow that I just keep on getting timed out pages so I am updating my word count in the mornings. It’s not going to give a very accurate picture of my actual daily word count because half of one day will be carried over to the next day, but it averages out in the end. It’s just numbers, the main thing is that I am getting stuff down, printing it out and not reading through it too much. Difficult when you’ve written stuff by hand though.
Even though it’s just the first draft, I still find myself wanting to make it the best that I can as I go along, which is good in a way but might end up slowing me down. I have to constantly remind myself that it doesn’t matter if it’s crap because you can shape the crap into better crap later on.
But I can’t just spend every spare minute typing. I need thinking time as well for the novel to develop, so even though it might seem that the writing is standing still, its moving along all the time. You need to give yourself space to have eureka moments for the plot, which makes it more of an exciting journey.
And I’ve just got Orhan Pamuk’s ‘Snow’ out of the library to read during the month. I did want to get My Name is Red, but typically they didn’t have it.

writing groups

My writing space is full of old notebooks as well as lots of books that I think might be useful one day, but don’t ever read. I just can’t throw stuff awaay. Until very recently I belonged to a writing group. It was one of the (seemingly) last postal writing groups in the UK. It would take anything up to twelve weeks to get the package back again, in which time you’d have moved on and written other stuff and the piece you were so eager to get feedback on was either finished and sent off somewhere, or you’d decided that it was a pile of rubbish anyway. But somehow belonging to this group was a comfortable thing. You’d enjoy tunneling through the others’ drafts of work and thinking of ways it could be improved. And you’d appreciate the rather delayed comments about your own work too. Some of the people in the group were good at criticizing.
But gradually over the years the writers in the group whose work you most admired dropped out. Eventually the remaining people in the group seemed only to be interested in telling each other where they went on holiday and what they’d been doing in their garden. NO mention of books or reading. The comments you’d receive back on your work were sometimes one line from some of the members. They’d say things like, ‘I don’t understand this so I can’t comment’. Or, ‘You certainly have kept me interested. Looking forward to more.’
And I kept all these bits of paper. Five years’ worth of comments. The other day I went through it all and I couldn’t find one piece of paper I thought would be worth keeping. Even from the time when there were good people in the group.
And the lesson I have learned very slowly is that you have to be your own best critic. You can’t rely on anyone else. Putting stuff away and letting it fester for a few weeks or even months is just about the best thing you can do. You’ll know when you’ve finished with a thing. It will either feel right or it will scream ‘UNSALVAGEABLE’ in day-glow yellow at you.
Belonging to a writing group, whether it’s by post or online, isn’t just as simple as getting feedback though. I think when I joined my ill-fated writing group I was keen to assert myself as a writer in some small way. To have a captive audience. To know that my stuff was being read by another human being. And it’s different when it’s a stranger. Giving your writing to your family and close friends is a recipe for disaster. They’ll want to say the right thing and not offend you. You’ll suspect them of doing just that and grumpiness will erupt. But to have a real audience you have to just get your stuff out there. Send it to the right magazines. Send it to competitions. And if it’s a novel, send it to literary agents when you are sure it’s the best it can be. And in the meantime, while you wait for those inevitable rejection slips, read books. Read copiously. Read widely. Read stuff that gets a bad review in the papers. Read the one that didn’t win the Man Booker. Or the Orange. Read everything you can. Read short stories and novels and poetry. Read before you go to sleep and read on the loo. Read a book in the doctor’s waiting room, and shun those crappy magazines. Because if you don’t read, you can’t be a writer. Nothing, as they say, is created in isolation; but that doesn’t mean you have to be a member of a writing group.
NaNoWriMo is different. It’s about us all trying to get a novel written in a month, and you don’t have to upload an extract from your first draft if you don’t want to.

books to read

Ok finally this damn image uploaded properly. If you’re going to do Nanowrimo, then you just HAVE to read this little gem. It’s fun and irreverent, it makes you laugh and it will keep you motivated throughout the month long slog of getting those 50 000 words down on paper, screen, parchment, or whatever your chosen medium. I’ve read it twice. Last year I read it straight after nanowrimo which was a bit odd, but this year I read it at the beginning of October to get myself reaquainted with the madness that is nanowrimo. I will be reading it again at the end of the month, whilst I am on holiday, along with a Julie Myerson novel called Me and The Fat Man, which I am not going to upload an image for.
If you came here via the nano site, and you haven’t yet read a copy of Chris Baty’s book then I strongly recommend that you do. Pinch, borrow, buy or read over someone’s shoulder, just do it, you’ll not regret it and I think it will make you experience of nanowrimo that bit more fun.
If you have dropped in here from outerspace then visit the nano site and see what all the fuss is about.
The next book I want to tell you about is this:
As you can see from the imageof my copy, it has been very well read. I don’t know how many times I have referred to this book over the years. It is a series of essays on writing but you mustn’t let that put you off. David Lodge is an academian and an author and has a very accessible style of writing. Each chapter/essay begins with an excerpt from a well known work of fiction and he then talks about the theme he’s chosen which is relevant to that excerpt. For example, chapter one is all about Beginnings and he uses the opening paragraphs from Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’, and Ford Maddox Ford’s ‘The Good Soldier’.
It’s a book for people who read fiction and a book for people who write fiction. The range of different texts he uses to illustrate and complement his chapters is quite diverse, both classic and modern. You can dip into this book, according to whatever kind of fiction you might be writing or whatever element you might be needing help with, and there’s stuff in there that you might not have considered before as well, which could help breathe new life into a flagging manuscript.
So you’ve got the perfect mixture here, to get you in the mood for Nanowrimo.