Voices in my head

I had a bad writing day yesterday; like in the old days. Voices in my head telling me it was all crap, asking why I was wasting my time. It would never be any good... And when I read back what I'd written, why, sure enough, the voice was right.

I buckled for a bit. It was a bad morning. Then I realised I just had to tell it (the voice, my editor, the devilish creature, whatever the hell it is) to bugger right off. My goal isn't to write a perfect manuscript but to get the story in the right order.

Husband took me to a newish Japanese canteen a few doors away where I inadvertently ate wheat noodles (I thought udon were rice noodles...)

Then I got a tuk tuk to Starbucks in soi 49. It was lovely and cool in there and I settled into a sofa to try and write.

It was tough, I won't lie. I people watched; checked out Twitter and Facebook and I wasted at least ten minutes taking these photographs of the plant shadows on the blind.

But I wrote until I was 25 words short of today's aim, 4000 words. No matter how hard I tried those 25 words wouldn't come.

I will try and make up for it today.

More on mentoring

I thought it was about time to come back and tell you about the mentoring process as I’m experiencing it with The Literary Consultancy. I'm far enough into the process now to see some of its results.

I can submit up to ten thousand words, six times to my mentor. She (in my case) will report back within two weeks (usually around a week in my experience.) You can find further details of what the mentoring deal includes here.

Someone once said to me that I was brave submitting a first draft to anyone to look over, but the truth is, it’s not a first draft. I write the ten thousand words and then I edit them. They aren’t finished, but not are they as rough as a first draft either.

My first ten thousand words were ready to go as soon as the agreement was made. I had been working on these for such a long time that several friends were concerned I was only ever going to have ten thousand, fully polished, words. While I waited for the first report to come back I worried. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to write another ten thousand words in six weeks; I worried what the report would say. The report came back with a good balance of positive and critical comments.

I did manage to write the second ten thousand words and I sent them off after the six week interval. I worried again. This time I worried that the first section had been a fluke. I thought that my mentor would come back and say ‘Oh, what happened? The first section showed promise … what happened to these words?’ The second report came back and instead of the above, there was a good balance again of positive and critical comments.

I was beginning to believe that I could get the words down. I had written two lots of 10k of words… I could probably write another 10k, couldn’t I?

However, the third ten thousand words were much harder. I really needed the growing belief that I could do it. The novelty had worn away a bit and it was hard slog. I had quite a few personal issues to worry about. It was Christmas and I was going away with my family but I would have to work while on holiday as I was a behind with the words. I sent off the third section with a covering note saying that I had struggled with these words. My mentor wrote back saying that the process is flexible and next time to take a bit longer until I am happier. That way, her comments are extending me rather than correcting things I already know. When the report came back she had included lots of positive and critical comments and told me that in general, it felt underwritten. This was a crucial comment that helped me understand my pattern of work.

Bitterly disappointed that I’d let myself down, I sat down to write the fourth ten thousand words. Somewhere during this writing, I discovered that I had two distinct heads (metaphorical heads, silly!) The reason I hadn’t been able to get the third lot of words into order was because I had creative head on and in order to polish, I needed editing head and I simply hadn’t recognised that. As long as I knew which head I needed to sit down with I was able (mostly) to conjure the right attitude. I also realised that I always need to return and flesh out … hence the underwriting.

So here I am two thousand words into the fifth ten thousand words. I know what’s coming in the story but I have absolutely no clue as to how I am going to get there. BUT, I have a developed a relaxed attitude to this, a faith almost, that it will happen. I hadn't had any idea either how to get from one word to one thousand words, but that had happened and more.

It’s like being an alcoholic, one day at a time or in my case, one scene at a time.

Why why why? And what?

Since September/October I’ve been in a regular habit of blogging nearly every day but since Christmas I’ve been a very bad blogger.

I’m not quite sure why. It’s not for lack of material. I’ve started lots of posts - I know because I write them in Word first – and then thought ‘Oh deary me; they won’t want to know that.’ And then I haven’t posted them.

Sometimes I think this blog get a bit confused – it has a bit of an identity crisis. It isn’t quite sure if it’s an ‘I live in Thailand … Isn’t that different?’ blog or an ‘I am trying to write a book’ blog. It is definitely an ‘I am trying to write a book’ blog but … well … I do live in Thailand…

It started life because I wanted to join the Novel Racers but honestly, the writing angst drivel of that first year, makes me wonder why the comments didn’t dwindle dramatically rather than build slowly.

When I am writing well, (producing words rather than producing high quality prose!) I don’t have much to say about the process. And I am obsessed with visuals … funnily dressed Thai promotional people or impressive decorations.

So why do you come here? What do you like? (I can’t promise it’ll mean a change in my posts but at least I’ll know whether to have a full blown identity crisis or not.)