Writing workshop

My writing in the 50ks in 30 days challenge has continued steadily during the work week and I passed 20,000 words last night.

20K in a week. I'm pretty happy with that.

Although I'm drawing a lot of the story from my own life, things keep making their way into the story that didn't actually happen. The characters appear to be developing wills of their own, deviating slightly from the actual events, but I just shrug my shoulders and keep typing. While the story and action is flowing, I'm going to go with the flow.

For the entire manuscript, I now have 45,511 words and estimate I will be finished at around 75k.

No new writing today as yet for Hold the Anchovies (but the night is not yet over). I spent the day at a memoir writing workshop with the lovely Alice Pung.

And at the workshop I wrote the following about my birth:

I was anxious to see the world. I was supposed to be an Aquarian but I had decided that twenty-two minutes into Sagittarius I would make my appearance. Freedom-loving, independent and above all spontaneous: no quack was going to tell my mother my birthdate.

Mum was already in hospital with a kidney infection. Lucky! Because I didn't give her much warning. It was probably the infection that stirred me into action.

In the middle of visiting time, my grandmother clutched my mother's hand. 'You're having your baby.' She turned to my father. 'Tell the doctor.'

The doctor dismissed her claim. What would my grandmother know after giving birth five times herself? But they quickly realised that she was right.

Half an hour later I was born. Mum said I looked like a skinned rabbit. Three months premmie.

Years later I told her I was trying to teach her a lesson about being early. She never learned that one.

Afterwards, my father caught the train back to my Nana's house and ran down the street announcing my birth to all the neighbours. 'It's a girl!'

Alice commented that my voice is meta-fiction --- fiction that is self-aware. I guess it's like the Seinfeld episode where they start pitching the idea to NBN and turn their lives into a sitcom. Self-referential.

Anyway, it was a great workshop. Good company as usual and we did a number of various writing exercises but now I'm brain drained and wonder if I will get any more words out for my couple who keep rebelling against their author.

But it's cool if I don't. Tomorrow is a public holiday!

And you gotta love that.

It's my story....and I'll write it if I want to....

Well, I'm off to a flying start on the 50ks in 30 days writing challenge.

Sunday (got to love it when a writing challenge starts on a weekend), I hit a personal best of 7,409 words and today, despite the fact that I had to work, I still managed a respectable 2,828 words. So my total 50k wordage is 10,237 - only 2 days in and I'm already 20% into the goal.

I've set the total wordage goal for Hold the Anchovies as 75,000 and now have a total of 35,304 so I'm almost at the half way point of the story.

Once I decided that I was mostly writing about a period of my life, I pulled out my diaries, and wrote up a timeline. I think this is why the writing is flowing so well. I know how the story goes, the plot points, and how the story ends. I have snippets of conversation and dialogue written in my diaries, which provide a pivotal point for scenes. I have no opportunity to deviate from the timeline or the cause and effect of the events as they happened. I might throw in a couple of interesting and fictional customers just for the fun of it, but by facing up to the fact that this is my story, and yes, indeed I'm writing a sexual memoir, then I have given myself permission to just write. And as a result, the words are flowing.

On the last attempt of the story, I freaked out. It got too close to the bone and I thought it was the wrong thing to be writing...that I should be trying to fictionalise the actual events. But all names have been changed to protect the guilty. But stories come from everywhere, and I know they come from real life...this time, it's just happening to be coming from my life. My last five drafts have all been fiction, with a few incidents and adaptations from real life.

This time it is real...it is truth...well, my version of the truth. Perhaps the other characters in this period of my life would have a different version of the truth.

But then again...they're not writng the story.

Inspired by success.

Years ago, it seemed like it was only a crazy dream. Me? A published author? Sure I'd strung a play or two together and seen them performed, but aside from the very trashy novel that I wrote when I was 15, I hadn't written a complete novel. That was the first step.

And five complete first drafts of different novel-length stories, I call myself a yet-to-be-published writer. (I can't count the group anthologies). But there's a bit more involved in becoming published, and there's that big hurdle called submission. I've submitted to contests and magazines but have yet to put myself completely out there by submitting to a real live publisher. It's almost time.

For many years now, I have been hanging out in writing communities - online and in real life. And watching other people's success has inspired me and provided me with the perserverance to keep at this strange world of publishing.

First: Marley Gibson. I met Marley online in around 2000 or 2001 when we were both hanging out at Red Dress Ink and writing chick lit. Marley has since found success with Young Adult writing and her first two novels were released two weeks ago, writing as Kate Harmon. I'm looking forward to reading it, and will be putting in my order to Amazon now.

Secondly, my real life friend Roby, who will have three fantasy novels coming out in 2009 with Pan MacMillan. I was there when she got not quite 'the call' but 'the-we're-very-interested-call' and could share directly in the excitement with her. Roby has been generous enough to share her journey with me and the rest of our writers group, including anecdotes from lunches, the pitfalls of editing etc and the full manuscript. Very exciting!

This is Roby, after finding out that Pan MacMillan wanted to speak to her.

Lastly, I became friends with Rachel Charlton/Rhian Cahill when we both did Nanowrimo last year. The novel she wrote during Nano has been requested after a publisher did a surf-by of her blog and read an excerpt of a different novel. How cool is that! So Rach/Rhian has encouraged me to get my work out there:

So I'm out of the writing closet (not that I've exactly been in it). I have a new blog which will focus on writing and excerpts from my work and you can visit it here.


Eventually I will have excerpts all five novel-length stories on the site, plus the occasional collage poem, and featured products from my Cafepress store.


It has been so inspirational sharing in the success of my writing buddies. It shows me that it's not just a far-fetched fantasy that only happens to the lucky ones. It happens to real people. It happens to the people with dedication, perserverance and talent! And I plan to be one of those people.

Available in the Writers' Zone in my Cafepress store.

Back to the editing!

Another first draft complete

Woohoo! Another first draft finished and Cinderella gets her 'sort of' happy ever after, at least the best happy ever after that she can hope for in the complex love and family circumstances she is now in.

After ditching the false beginning which was all about Sleeping Beauty who suffered from narcolepsy (and never made another appearance in the story), I have replaced it with the original short story that started it all. And this is my final first draft word count:

68,572 / 68,572 (100.0%)

Today, I've been editing 'I'm with the Band' and looking through magazines for words for a collage gift that I'm making for a friend. I will post a picture of the gift once it is finished and presented.

My last short story has been doing the rounds of the office and I've been getting some very interesting and encouraging feedback. It's very appropriate for my co-workers to read it as it is set in a call centre, and we work in a call centre. But I've got to hang out for another four weeks to find out the competition results. The results are in, but will not be announced until the writers' group AGM. Best not to think about it.

So with the completion of Beyond Happily Ever After, that makes five first drafts in various stages of development. Time for some editing!

Finished 'I'm with the Band!'

Whoo hoo! The first draft of 'I'm with the Band' is complete! I finished writing it on Monday (the day before I was due back at work) with a mammoth writing effort of 4,314 words for the day.

This is the final word count:

110,173 / 110,173 (100.0%)

So my estimate that I'd be finished at 103,000 words was not quite right - the story kept expanding.


And this photo above indicates how I felt at the end of the writing marathon. Although the cyber dancing girls did come out to celebrate and did high kicks, and splits, and somersaults. Thanks Sandie and Rachel.


I'm still amazed that these two photos and the acoustic Moving Pictures tour in 2005 inspired a whole novel. The imagination is a wonderful thing!






The feeling I wanted to capture for the story was about a woman feeling 17 again, being transported back to her teenage years by the reunion of her favourite band. I even managed to slip in a cameo for the author when the band plays a gig in Coffs Harbour.


So this manuscript will be set aside for awhile as I complete my 100 word a day challenge with Beyond Happily Ever After.

53,592 / 60,000 (89.3%)

When I've finished Beyond Happily Ever After, I will have completed three first drafts in less than 3 years. So somehow, somewhere, sometime I need to fit in the rewriting, editing, reworking that is required to polish these drafts to submission standard.



And submit, submit, submit.

My Writing Journey

Rachel left a challenge on her blog to talk about our 'call to writing'. The following piece I composed a year ago as a homework exercise for my writers' group.

Once upon a time I wanted to be a writer. I dreamed about it. I envisioned it. I talked about it. And occasionally I wrote.

I was consumed by the relentless pace of the city. I was out almost every night of the week, at the theatre, the cinema or opening nights at work. I was gathering writing material, experiencing life, and dumping the events and memories into a filing cabinet into my mind, unsorted and unexamined. Rarely writing anything down.

My journal entries were sporadic and did not live up to my intentions. Looking back, I regret not keeping a log of the theatre productions I attended. The files in my filing cabinet have become damaged and incomplete and sometimes I can’t find the key to unlock the memories.
I made many excuses not to write. I was too busy. There were not enough hours in the day. My hand could not keep up with my thoughts. But they were all just excuses. I could choose to write anyway.

Ten years ago I made the decision to learn to be a writer. I moved to Adelaide and enrolled in a Professional Writing Course. I knew that I could no longer be distracted by the constant stimulation of Sydney.

It was a start. I learned about style and structure, editing, character, outlining, writing short stories and novels. But the course was the highligh of my week and my daily life was falling apart as I took on the mind-numbing ask of preparing loan documents for scanning at the Westpac Mortgage Centre. I applied for jobs in the theatre and arts industry and was constantly disheartened by the parochial and condescending attitude of the reigning arts administrators.
So it was time to sell up and move back to a friendlier town before I tied myself to the Glenelg tram line.

My father had moved to Kempsey and said we should join him. We looked at the map before bundling our possessions and drugged-out cat into the car, and decided we would end up either in Port Macquarie or Coffs Harbour.

And then I was offered a job in Nambucca so I moved. The job fell through. I wondered what the hell I was doing in this town with no job and no prospects. Until I joined the Nambucca Valley Writers Group.

A few months later I started work in Coffs Harbour but by the time I moved north, I had bonded with the writers of the Nambucca Valley. By tackling new writing exercises, I learned that I didn’t need a writing course to learn how to write. I just needed to do it.

Here I am, three complete first drafts, one nearly complete first draft, and one started novel later. Since joining the group, I’ve written more than 340,000 words and created more than thirty collage poems. I’ve learned that ideas will always come if you just take the time to write. I’ve learned that writing every day keeps the muse happy and your writing world just below the surface ready to access with a stroke of a pen or the tapping of the keyboard. I’ve learned that there is no better high than a creative high – when the words are perfect and the characters are alive and you are inhabiting a world of your own creation.

Postscript: since writing this piece I have joined RWA and attended the conference in 2008. While I don't strictly write romance, all my stories have a girl and a guy and usually a happy ending. But the theme of all my novel-length pieces so far is 'finding yourself through some form of creativity'. Which is exactly how I'm living my life.

Cumulative word count is more than 400,000 words (see sidebar for breakdown) and the well of creativity is never dry.

In the last 12 months, Nambucca Valley Writers Group has expanded exponentially. Last Saturday, we added another 4 members to our group. We now have members in Coffs Harbour, Taree, South West Rocks, Melbourne and even one member who spends six months of each year in Vanuatu. Yes, we have become international. And this year, we celebrate our 20 year anniversary.

Gardening and writing

Every time I pick up a tomato and cut it open now, I despair that I failed horticulture miserably. You don't know what you are getting anymore. The tomato might look fine on the outside (although that seems to be pretty rare) but on the inside....ugh, another wasted vegetable in the bin.

I went to an agricultural school. I learned how to milk cows. My father grew vegetables. Why did I pay so little attention? Was it because I always was escaping to fantasy worlds?I was transported by the written word to places that I could only dream of, places that only lived in my imagination.

I am a gardener. Just a different sort.

I plant the seeds deep in my subconscious. Sometimes the seeds have floated in on the wind, and I'm not even aware that they have landed in my garden bed and implanted themselves into the soil until the first sprout of an idea. I fertilise the idea with characters, settings - turn it around in my subconscious until it starts emerging from my imagination as a scene or a story. Other times, I am conscious of the seed appearing, and I may even brainstorm it, picking the right conditions for the seed to flourish and become a story.

So I have chosen to be a gardener of stories and I enjoy it. Enjoy the whole imaginative process from the time that the seed is planted to when it emerges as a beautiful flower or tree. Yes, it's hard work. But I can see something as a result - a product of the labour. I may not be able to eat it, but I can savour the writing, enjoy it, share it with others.

Growing tomatos, on the other hand, looks like hard work. And once the tomato is eaten, it's gone.

So the current patch of ground is Beyond Happily Ever After and the story is growing:

52,491 / 60,000 (87.5%)

Soon I hope it will blossom.

What's in a name?

Yesterday was the first day that I didn't write at least 100 words. I wrote 91 words and these were words added while I transcribed my longhand onto the computer. But as 'I'm with the Band' is nearly finished (at over 100k), I need to work out where the missing pieces are. So I started a spreadsheet to record the details of each scene. Still working on the writing just in a different way.

This morning I woke up with the characters of Kirsty and Luke in my head from the film festival novel, Making the Cut. So already I've written two scenes with them, the first of which will insert somehow into the existing first chapter so that antagonist and hero are introduced early on. The only thing that concerns me is that the majority of the story is told from the point of view of the heroine, except for the scenes with Elizabeth, Bilby Creek's matriarch, and these new scenes are from Luke's point of view. Which means that I will probably have to rewrite some later scenes from Luke's POV. (I need to CUT words not ADD words). Anyway, my renewed and sudden passion for this story means that the first three chapters should be rewritten very soon and submitted.

So far, it's been a really good Easter weekend. It's just me and the cat. And Thursday night I watched a Clark Gable movie Comrade X, which I hadn't seen before. It was a movie made in 1940 so he's in prime and he's hot! I followed that up Friday morning with Homecoming. In this one he was a little older (made in 1948) but still it was nice to watch two of his movies that I hadn't seen before. Of course, I saw Gone with the Wind when I was 13 and have liked him ever since. It doesn't matter to me that he is always Clark Gable no matter what role he plays.

I've also reached the point where I need to change the names in 'I'm with the Band'. I cannot possibly have a couple named Kat and Matt, and another couple Maddie and Freddie. It wasn't purposeful, it just happened that way. Plus the band name needs to change as well. So I've been playing around on some generators on the web: Rate my Band, Band Name Maker plus others. At the moment, Eloquent Beast is sounding good to me for the name of the band. Names may change to Nelson (for Freddie, because he's a bit pretentious and probably renamed himself), and Jake instead of Matt. And perhaps the singer will change to Ben. I find naming male characters very difficult. Common names are too common and I will come up with a name and then think of someone I know with that name and dismiss it. Uncommon names or unusual names often seem too pretentious or 'soap-opera-style' and often position the character in the wrong age group. Mind you, I have no problems using these names for minor characters: I have one sleazy guy in I'm with the Band called 'Hunter' and he is definitely on the hunt. Still, progress is being made and that's all that matters.

I've been busy writing....

Well, I finished Book in a Week with 7639 words - not quite the 10k target I wanted but at 76% I'm very happy with that and I think I only have three scenes to write of 'I'm with the Band' and the first draft is finished. The total word count is now over 99k and the zokutu word meter is still not updating!

Happily, I have written the final scene, so I know exactly where everything's heading and there should be no deviations or wild tangents.

Considering I gave up caffeine the same week as the BIAW, I think I did very well, and I'm sure that my health will be better for it. I've gone past the stage of caffeine headaches but this week, I had a major sore throat and ended up having a day off work, and then a day on alternative duties (i.e. non-speaking) when I returned. Today I had a pesky migraine but I'm starting to feel better now, especially as the next two weeks are four day weeks, thanks to Easter, and then I have a week off to write and edit to my heart's content.

I joined the 100 words a day challenge which started on 1 March and I have written every day since (which sometimes doesn't even happen during Nanowrimo). It's a habit that I do want to instill every day so while some times it has meant taking my notebook to bed and scribbling out the minimum before turning off the lights, my minimum word count any day so far has been 132 words. Haven't written anything so far today and I'm not counting blog posts.

I'm really enjoying watching Dexter at the moment. It is such an intriguing show and Michael C Hall does such a fantastic job in making the audience complicit with his actions. I've reserved the novel from my library - it will make an interesting read. Meanwhile the entire first series will replay on Austar on Easter Monday. Can't think of a better way of spending it. Dexter and Easter Eggs!

I also got a new mobile phone and an ipod last week. While the mobile phone is purely functionary and I really cannot be bothered playing around with all the extras, I love my Ipod. why did I buy some other brand before? Don't know but maybe it had something to do with the expense a couple of years ago. I love that i can just plug it into my computer and it will select 240 songs at random, so I never really know what I'm going to get. And then browsing itunes and discovering albums from bands I love that I didn't know existed. Certainly puts the collection of CDs offered in the shopping centres up here to shame. But it could get expensive. So there will be no new songs at the moment. Maybe they can be a reward for when I finish the first draft!

Easter cards available at my cafepress shop.

A long weekend

Today is Leap Day, a bonus day for the year and the best thing is I don't have to be at work! Yes, it's a three day weekend for me and another weekend of solitude so I hope to achieve a lot.

One of the good things about today and the rest of the weekend is the ability to control my auditory environment. I haven't been kidding lately when I've told people I want to go to a convent so I can take a vow of silence. The day job has times when fifty voices or so just build up on top of each other and I feel like my head is going to explode with all the noise. The voices rise and fall, but when everything is talking at once, it can be absolutely pandemonium. At the moment, all I can hear is the clock ticking, the rush of the wind, the birds singing, the house creaking and the occasional car driving by. It is so peaceful. I can invite extra noise in when I want to - music, television, telephone - but for now I am revelling in the relative sounds of silence. And also enjoying not having to speak.

I've updated the blog for Nambucca Valley Writers Group, added a couple of slides shows, a section for our accolades (we're a talented bunch), and the previous winners of our writing competition.

I finished my short story and entered it in the Writers Group contest. The trophy spent the first year in my home, displayed proudly after I won the inaugural contest in 2006 with a collage poem. But then last year I had to give it back. I wonder if it will make its way home to me this time. (I know - the competition is tough!)

I'm still toying with the story about the mobile phones so I may end up with a collection of futuristic stories, nightmare scenarios of the future when we are taken over by technology.

I'm considering signing up for the RWA BIAW (Book in a Week) which commences on Monday, just to get my butt kicked a bit and finally finish the first draft of 'I'm with the Band'. I'm hoping that another 10,000 words will see the first draft complete. (Current word count is 89,597)

I am definitely signing up for 100 words for 100 days through my teenlit list. I really want to instill the writing every day habit. It's almost there but I do miss the occasional day. And I guess the days where I spend time processing ideas in my head but don't commit anything to paper don't count. But they should! Because sometimes it means that the story or scene will come out of my head and onto paper almost fully formed.

Shirt and other writer products available at my Chickollage store.

I've been neglecting my collage poetry and as I want to put together an anthology, I need to spend more time than that.







As they say, so many words, too little time! Now to make time stretch....

Flirting with short story ideas and heavy metal

Following on from last week's post where writing a short story is like having a fling, while a novel is like a marriage, it seems that I can't even decide who I want to have a fling with. The idea that had been flitting around my head like a manic moth bashing it's wings against the light globe is still there, but I'd also opened my computer file labelled 'ideas' and found 1. a love triangle between a man, a woman and a cat and 2) a file labelled 'Notes for a screenplay' about working in a call centre.

So I have been flirting with all three ideas during the week, committing at least to a date with the cat triangle and writing some more, and then a date with the call centre story- The film idea would have been very expensive as live action and I alway thought it would work as an animation - but as I don't draw.....it's been on the backburner. But of course elements that could be very expensive in a film, don't cost anything in a short story because it's just narrative, description, action and dialogue. No actors demanding huge salaries needed. And no special effects. It's all in the words.

So, yes I was being fickle, unable to decide which idea I wanted to commit to, and playing around a bit with at least two of them, as I got to know them better! A convesation there, a look here, trying to start a fling in the wrong place....I still wasn't sure what to do. False starts, deleting, backspacing. In my imagination, I even believed that maybe just maybe I could write all three short stories in three weeks. It's still possible ...there are now two weeks left to go before the competition deadline.

Rollerball, Devil's Kitchen, 9 Feb 2008

I had a false start on the call centre story. I wrote quite a bit of it, but it seemed to start too late in the story and didn't show enough of the evolution of the call centre worker from human to machine. It has been inspired by my many customer's who ask me if I'm a real person.

My Left Boot, Devil's Kitchen, 9 Feb 2008

Then Saturday night, Robbie and I went to a music event. He was filming and I was taking some photos. Well, it was heavy metal and I'm not a fan of that type of music. Yes, I saw Black Sabbath when I was 13 but that did not light a pathway for my future music taste.

Monkey Butt Wrench, Devil's Kitchen, 9 Feb 2008

The night was interesting but long and so very very loud. Five different heavy metal bands performed (as pictured). I took many photos using both my film SLR camera and my digital and got some interesting shots, but really could not get into the music. I think the sound quality had a lot to do with this: I can't really see the point of having a vocalist if the instruments are going to be revved up to the max, to drown out any possiblity of hearing the vocals.

I'm not going to attempt any kind of review, because I'm not the band's audient. I don't listen to this kind of music as a rule. And I never really got the head-banging stuff.

Boozehag, Devil's Kitchen, 9 Feb 2008

Between bands, I recommenced writing the call centre story. The next band would come on and I'd get up and take some photos and return to my chair to find it missing. (Guys from the first band -Monkey Butt Wrench - kept nicking it when I vacated it). And then I'd keep writing during the next break. I wrote the whole first draft of the story. There's some more to add as I need to ensure I cover everything in Maislow's Hierarchy of Needs, but I'm pretty happy with it.

The Black Stars, Devil's Kitchen, 9 Feb 2008

And I've discovered that I can write anytime I wish. Mind you, if it had've been at a blues gig, then I quite possibly would not have had the same outcome. Or I would've been writing something completely different.

A fling or a marriage: the writer's choice

At lunchtime on Friday, a woman walked past me, arguing on her mobile phone. I started thinking about how we're all supposed to be in instant contact with each other now, at the end of a text message, if not at the end of a conversation. I watch my call centre colleagues walk out the door and immediately turn on their mobile phone and I wonder why. My mobile phone stays in my bag usually switched off. I spend enough time on the phone at work, I don't want to spend my lunch time on the phone. I I don't want to be so easily reached. Doesn't anyone appreciate solitude anymore?

My brain started buzzing and the idea for a short story started to flit around my head. I could feel those endorphins being released as the idea became stronger, and I'm allowing it to keep flitting around like a moth trapped in a jar, until it's ready to appear as a short story. I'm thinking it will be sci-fi, which will be a completely new experience for me. I haven't written a sci fi story since I was 12.

I have less than 3 weeks to write this story. Nambucca Valley Writers Group's annual writing competition is on again and the deadline is screaming towards me.

I don't write short stories very often. I wrote Beyond Happily Ever After twelve months ago which won 2nd prize in the Mid North Coast Writers short story comp, but have not written any shorts since then. There's a big difference between writing short stories and novels. The writing is much more precise, there is no time for ramble and there is not much character development. A short story is almost a moment in time. A slice of life. It doesn't explore a character over a period of time.

But I think writing a short story is like having a fling. You can flirt with different possibilities, you can try things that you would never commit to in a longer piece because - 'we're only going to be together for 3000 words' and you can fall in love and live in those lustful, first stages of love.

There is no commitment because you're in and out of there in 3000 words. Writing is fast, editing is fast. A couple of weeks (or less) and you can move onto the next idea.

Writing a novel is like getting married. It's a big commitment. You not only have to be in lust with your characters, you have to have a deeper love for them, a love that will sustain you through the ups and downs of the author-character relationship while they laugh with you, talk with you and often betray you. You've got to be in it for the long haul and prepared to live with these people for a long time.

I never used to be into commitment. More than a decade ago, I would have described myself as a serial monogamist. In love with being in love. Chasing the thrill of the first passion. But that changed when I met my partner.

So it is interesting that in my writing I choose the commitment. I choose situations that are going to hang around for a long time and characters that I want to spend a lot of time with. And when I reach the end of a novel, I find it hard to let go. Because they've become like friends. And why not? I've spent so much time with them.

So my question to you is:

As a reader or a writer, what is your preference?
Novels or short stories?

Writing Workshop

This weekend I did a writing workshop with my writers' group. The workshop was led by Peter Matheson, a dramaturg and was about storytelling. There was a lot of emphasis on character building and planning, which is in total opposition to the way I usually work. I admit it - I'm a pantser - I fly through a first draft by the seat of pants, rarely planning any further ahead than the next scene or the next couple of scenes. I choose a situation or a concept i.e. Diary of the Future I started with the idea of being able to write the future in a diary and have it come true. With I'm with the Band, I started with wanting to capture the feeling of being 17 again through the reunion of a favourite band. Making the Cut started with an idea of a film festival in a small country town, the characters came after the situation. The character for me only comes after the writing starts.

I have tried plotting and planning it all out in the past. Kissing Toads was more or less planned out with a chapter outline but new chapters kept popping up and stuff I hadn't planned on kept happening throwing the immediate trajectory in a new direction. And that one took the longest for me to write - 4 long years. And why? Because I'd lost interest. For the most part, I knew what was going to happen. As a writer I want to be surprised by my characters as if I'm reading it.

So yesterday when I took a photo of a woman that I'd never seen before and tried to build a background based on her as a character, I was falling back on cliches. Because the character was not organic for me. Perhaps if she'd been in the middle of an action or a situation, my imagination may have been triggered more but I just had this face smiling at me with her too pink lipstick and overdone make-up.

Today I took Kat from I'm with the Band to the workshop. We did an interesting exercise as we interviewed each other's characters. Nothing really new came up for me during the interview, but the perception of Kat I gave to others was interesting - much more passive than I intended. And the word groupie kept coming up. Middle-aged groupie. It's pretty sad really. She doesn't intend to be a groupie. She considers herself to be a huge fan, not a groupie. And when Alex invites her to sing with the band for a song or two, then she's 'with the band' not a groupie. It's her friend Maddie who's the groupie - in fact, she's such a groupie that if there was a show created called Australian Groupie (instead of Idol) she'd probably take out the title.

Certainly much to think about now. I'm still a fan of the shitty first draft (as Anne Lamont calls it) or the 'vomit' or binge writing as Peter referred to it over the last few days.

During the 'Twelve Days of I'm with the Band' I not only added to the manuscript but I also examined some of the previous writing and rewrote certain scenes, making them stronger. I'm over the 88k mark now and I need to stop the dialogue - the characters spend too much time talking, for some reason (probably a symptom of being a muso) they don't like sleeping much, but if it keeps up I'm just going to start jumping from scene to scene and only writing the absolutely pertinent stuff. I don't need to eavesdrop on everything they say and do. Do I?

Day 18 of 12 days of 'I'm with the Band'

82,985 / 90,000 (92.05%)

The word count and percentage are going up but the bar remains the same - I don't know enough html to change it.

Although I'm getting closer to my estimated total word count, I'm not sure that I'm getting closer to the end of the book. Hopefully, I'm not finding new scenes to add. Matt and Alex had been planning a glamour makeover and photoshoot for Kat, but now she's gone to the hairdresser herself and had her long hair cut and coloured, so I guess all she'll need now is a makeup artist. I've been flicking through Cleo's and Cosmos looking for an image of Kat's new hair and everyone has long hair again. When did this happen? When did short hair become unfashionable? Kylie still has short hair.

So on Day 18, I reclaimed my writing room. After decluttering it back in September, my laptop then died and we hauled out the old computer to connect back to the net. It had a monster monitor which took up all of my writing desk and I seriously debated buying a new flat screen for it to give me more room to work. A few weeks later the laptop was fixed, I went wireless and I stopped venturing into my writing room, and started using the laptop in the loungeroom in front of the TV (which was very unproductive). I'm pleased that we didn't buy a flat screen for the old computer, it completely carked it a couple of weeks ago, and now I have my writing room back. The computer has been banished (we'll retrieve the info from the backup hard-drive off it and the monitor which still works will be donated to a local which refurbishes computers) and I have space again.

Yesterday, we were debating the spare room which is filled with stuff including a big desk, entertainment unit, TV, a full bookcase and is the dumping ground for the clean washing. We want to turn this into a guestroom/entertainment room so need a sofabed for it. But the desk was taking up a huge amount of space. The desk is now in my writing room and has enough surface area for my scanner/printer, laptop, collage files (the coloured drawers) and a collage workspace.

Note: I'm still in the stage of this collage of 'where does this picture go?' so not a single image is fixed to the cardboard.

I'm happy and Dorkus is happy that I'm spending time out here again with him.

Dorkus now has his own myspace page and his goal is to round up more friends than Lucy Pig. Can you be his friend?