Time for the second draft

To write a whole novel is an achievement in itself, so pat on the back for me. But that’s not the half of it. While I was on holiday I read the whole thing, from start to finish, for the first time since penning “The End” a few weeks back.

And I’m happy with the overall idea, but it still needs a whole lotta work, so here comes second draft time. A couple of buddies, one a fellow writer, have read it through too and now’s the time to cobble together all that feedback and get cracking on making is super duper. I also have a bonus reader whose feedback is coming shortly.

While it’s very easy to pick up on the old typos and sentences that don’t make sense – and there are a few of those – it’s harder to see the bigger picture. What I do know is that I need to do more showing rather than telling, add sub-character motivations – why are they in the book? – add more “rapist wit” and make my main character Ronnie a bit more likeable. At the moment I think she’s perhaps a tad unemotional and a bit arrogant. She’s no push over but it does need to hurt a bit more when guys kick her to the kerb.

And I also need to decide which city to set it in, am torn between two, as well as bring more of Ronnie’s background into the foreground. I also need to decide whether to spell a character’s name Millie or Milly. Sooo many inconsistencies to sweep up.

Oh, if you haven’t guessed I’m writing chick lit. I’ve read a lot of this genre over he last couple of months – all in the name of research, crime is more my bag – and my aim is to be a bit different. I’m not sure if I’ve quite succeeded in that in the first draft but the second will be better.

Every chick lit book I’ve read, without exception, has finished with a happy, loved up ending when the girl gets her guy. And you can usually tell which guy that’ll be from the first chapter. Predicatble, snore, snore. There’s no happy ending in my book. That’s not to say it’s a miserable ending either but I’ll say no more about it.

Also, upon my research, I haven’t found a book that really makes me laugh. Bridget Jones had me rocking in my seat and the only other book that made me chuckle because of the author’s blunt observation of world is 50 Ways To Find a Lover by Lucy Ann Holmes. So I want to make my readers (if I ever have the pleasure of getting any, it’s a way off yet) laugh out loud. Now, I’m no comedienne so this will need work on my part but you can’t beat a good belly-rumbling laugh, the kind that makes your ribs sore, and that’s what I want to achieve.

Looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me, eh? Second draft here I come…

Sorry this blog post is late…

Cripes, I haven’t written a blog post for a couple of weeks! I’ve just been reminded of this fact by my mother who is a regular reader; it means we don’t need to speak on the phone much  ‘cos she already knows what I’ve been up to. So, if there’s anyone else out there wanting to avoid their folks – start a blog is my advice.

Anyhoo, I’ve been swamped with work and writing and I’m still struggling with my sleeping pattern so want to snooze in the middle of the day and don’t feel an eency weeency bit tired at bedtime.  And that’s why I’ve been a bit lax on the blogging front. That said, I’ve penned 70,000 words now and with another weekend writing session pencilled in at the end of this week, my first draft should be ready by the end of the month, hoorah.

It’s now only 17 sleeps until my hollibops in Spain and I am very much in need of a break, some proper sunshine and a chance to re-establish some kind of normal sleeping pattern.

The main reason I want to finish the first draft of my book by July is so that my buddy AJ can read it while we’re away. That way I she can give me instant feedback and I’ll be able to hear her laugh – or not as the case may be – at the funny bits. A few select others have been chosen to cast their eye over it too, my mother not being one of them. She read one of my short stories recently and the only thing she could say about it was that it wasn’t double spaced. Give me strength. Him mum, by the way! (I know she’ll be reading this)

Anyhoo, back to the book. I’m at the stage where I really need to print the damn thing off and read it on paper. My eyes are glazing over with the amount of time I spend at the screen and I want to physically hold my book in my hands so it feels more real. This will in no way be the finished article, but I’ll be the best part of the way there, at least.

So, what else am I gonna do in Spain? Very little, to be honest. I plan on spending the days being horizontal, soaking up the sunshine and occasionally dipping my toe – maybe even my ankles – into the sea. (Obviously I won’t be horizontal for that bit). I am going to set a holiday reading record and try and plough my way through five books in seven days and I may partake in the odd logic problem too.

The evenings will be spent tucking into salted seabass, paella or steak tartare, washed down with white wine spritzers. There may be a few mojitos consumed at Nikki Beach and a spot of shopping in Puerto Banus and that’s just about it. Me and AJ have our little holiday routine and I’m looking forward to starting it. Relaxation is the name of the game and as tempted as I am to take my Macbook Pro with me, the mean machine will be staying at home. No internet? For a whole week? Nooooo.

Not a good day

I hate death, I hate funerals, I hate public speaking,  I hate poetry and I’m not a great fan of emotions. So, yesterday was not a good day.

It was my nan’s funeral (not this nan, my other nan) and while I never had a particularly close relationship with her, seeing my dad cry always gets the waterworks started.

Stupidly, I’d agreed to read a poem out at the funeral and while I dislike public speaking and poetry with a passion, I didn’t feel I could say no. I knew my two brothers would never agree to doing it and while my 14-year-old sister was up for it, it was a slightly different experience for her.

She didn’t really know nan, not during the good times anyway, so had less of an emotional attachment, and she’s also a little drama queen – loud, clumsy, and fearless. So, while I saw this reading as an act of torture and humiliation, lil sis saw it as her stage debut and was a tad disappointed that the Vicar didn’t let us use his microphone. Lights please…

I know what I’m like when I read in public, I do it way too quickly in a bid to get it over and done with and, in my haste to finish the words, I forget to breathe properly and end up gasping for breath. Not good. Add emotions into the mix, a weeping dad and a family I was supposed to make proud, and I was bricking it.

Anyway, we both did a decent job, thankfully, and it was over pretty quickly. Lil sis got the worst of it really, as I got to go first (less time for nerves to get the better of me) and I was reading the poem that rhymed, much easier that her wordy prose.  I am so mean.

Anyway, that is the first and last funeral reading I will ever offer to do. Been there, done that and have no intention of getting the T shirt.

PS Why is it that relatives who exclaim: “Haven’t you grown, you must have been five years old the last time I saw you,” expect you to recognise them? Totally clueless!

Read on

I would say that I am a big reader and that I read lots. However, my reading material is somewhat limited to crime fiction and I wouldn’t ever describe myself as well read. This little test thing, therefore, may prove a tad embarrassing and I’m doubtful I can beat CK’s score. Here goes:

Here’s what you do:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2) Italicise those you intend to read.

3) [Bracket] the books you LOVE.

4) Reprint this list on your own blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien (I have watched the films)
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (I have watched the films)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible (skimmed it at school)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 (Little Women) – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (read a few of them at school/college)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (I have watched the film)
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden (I have watched the film)
40 Winnie-the-Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery (I have watched the film)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan (I have watched the film)
51 MISSING
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold (on my book club’s list!)
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 (Bridget Jones’s Diary) – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens ((I have watched it on TV)
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – A. S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens (I have watched the film/s)
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker (I have watched the film)
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 [The Faraway Tree Collection] – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas (I’ve watched the film)
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Hmm, 14/100 is a bit poor, although this reading list isn’t really my bag. However, I have seen the film or TV adaptations of lots of these books or know enough about the stories not to have to turn every page. That’s good enough for me.

Essay writing hell

Okay, so the hell has begun. My CIPR CRT (Critial Reasoning Test) questions were issued on Friday and I have less that one month to knock out two 3,000 words essays on public relations stuff. Shit!

Yes, I may have been appointed deputy editor of two newspapers when I was 21 and yes, I was in the editor’s chair aged 25. But, aged 28, I still remain as academic as a goldfish.

The practical stuff I can do. The theoretical concepts bullshit I cannot. The CIPR Diploma course has helped me a lot though – I can talk the lingo a bit better now and I’ve learned a lot about people’s experiences in PR, working in different environments and tackling different issues. But the theory stuff, looking at models and evaluating and critisising theorists is beyond me. And, quite frankly, incredibly boring.

So, I am giving up my spare time in April (within reason – my sporting activities will remain permanent diary entries) to research and write these damned essays. I know it will be worth it if (when??) I pass and I certainly don’t want to tackle it a second time. So it’s important. But it’s a case of the more I know I have to do something the less I want to do it.

Anyway, I’m gonna try and get my head down. Saturday was spent at a CIPR tutorial which was half helpful, half a waste of time – plus I got drenched walking to Euston choo choo station – and yesterday I almost sent myself to sleep reading The PR Handbook before pulling on my trainers and kicking some arse on the volleyball court.

A girl at work did the CIPR Diploma last year and it concerns me slightly that she took two weeks of annual leave to dedicate to her essays. I’m reluctant to give up my holiday entitlement for this academia and my work commitments won’t allow it. So, if by April 25 – when I aim to hand in my scribblings – I look like I haven’t slept for three weeks, it’ll be down to the stinky study. Wish me luck.

Reading phobia

Why is it that the more you have to read, the less you want to? I have to wade through chapters and chapters of my PR text book for this CIPR Diploma I’m doing and it’s given me a phobia of reading.

I’m finding all manner of excuses not to do it and have just one week to go to read fifty million pages, catch up on the Media Guardian and PR Week news and do my PR homework. Aaaarrrrggghhh!

I’m half way through Patricia Cornwell’s latest crime thriller which I usually dip into before visiting the land of nod, but I feel too guilty to pick it up knowing I should be reading the PR Bible.

Must do better!