July is editing month

Our 50ks in 30 days challenge ended on Monday, and it feels strange no longer to be writing under pressure. A staggering 1,749,046 were written during the challenge and I'm proud to be on of the motivators of the challenge (along with my partners in whip-cracking and mirth, Sandie Hudson and Rhian Cahill). It is great to see others achieve and push their writing boundaries.

I have emailed our gorgeous winners certificates out (so now everyone who made 50ks is officially certified) and ordered the badges so we can wear them at the RWAus conference in Melbourne in August, and display our tenancity, our creativity and our insanity.

My head is now all over the place as July is editing month for me. I'm working with two different critique partners so I'm switching between working on Diary of the Future and I'm with the Band. My first 3 chapters of I'm with the Band have insertions and deletions scribbled all over them, and I'm about to add these to the computer, to keep myself on Writer Island for another week. And in between thinking about the characters of each of these stories, the guys from Hold the Anchovies keep making guest appearances in my head insisting that I finish that story. Because although I'm at 80k, I haven't reached the end yet. As the story starts with a pizza-fortune telling, I would also like to end it that way to bring it full circle and to show Lisa's emotional growth, but I'm not quite sure that Lisa has grown as much as she needs to as yet. And in hope, I have updated the status bar in the right hand colum with a projected word count of 85,000 but they may expand according to the character's moods.

Except for the cold weather and getting home in the dark after work, I really like July. It's the month I cash in my enforced savings plan by getting my tax refund and then make the annual pilgrimage to the Byron Bay Writers Festival with my writing buddies. Just a couple more weeks of the day job and editing and writing...and then I'll be lapping up the festival atmosphere. Can't wait....

50ks challenge comes to an end

I started June with a commitment to write 50ks in 30 days.

I hit 50ks on the 23rd June, so I took a couple days at a slower rate, and then pushed through to see exactly how much I could write in 30 days.

My grand total as of 10 minutes ago is 65,040 words. Woohoo! The story is not yet finished, although I'm sure there are going to be lots of words that will be left on the cutting room floor.

It's been exhilirating, exhausting and revealing. Literary revenge has been very satisfying and the writing has been cathartic. Seriously who needs to pay for therapy when you can write? There were times that I dredged my memory banks, and there were other times when I gave my imagination free reign.

But most of all, I was bouyed and motivated by the wonderful support of my fellow 50k challengers. What a great bunch of writers!

And no matter what word count we each achieved, we are all winners!

Tomorrow is a new day, a new financial year (three cheers for the tax return) and a new month!

Tomorrow is the beginning of an editing challenge, a commitment to finish Diary of the Future and submit it, and the annual pilgrimage to Byron Bay Writers Festival.

But first tonight, I need sleep.

My Brilliant Pizza Career

My current work in progress is Hold the Anchovies, which is based on My Brilliant Pizza Career.
I won't mention which company I worked for as I don't want to suggest that their stores are a hotbed of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll but that's where I got my education.

And it's interesting reliving it. At least on the page

So far I've written 33,799 words in 15 days - add that to the 25,067 I wrote for Nano 2004 and I have a total of 58,866 words altogether. Not bad - not bad at all. I've pulled a few non-identifying photos from my photo album from that era.

Below is a 'pizza' made by my mother for the owner of the store. Look closely, the whole thing is made of icing. It was a farewell delivery.

I could not have done the job without my faitfhul companion Helga, my 1966 VW Beetle. She was famous amongst my pizza customers, and had a certain infamy amongst my fellow staff for breaking down. I loved Helga- she was my independence and my freedom and I was sad to say goodbye to her when she finally packed it in. (this pic and song is from my 1986 diary)

Thought I would include a photo of me from that circa. This is taken at a post work party, actually the farewell party that the cake pizza was made for.

More pictures of Helga - this time with my sister and cousins posing as car models. I don't think they got the car ad job.

I worked for the pizza place for a couple of years, but my brilliant pizza career ended not so brilliantly. My second delivery to the same customers late at night -- but I never made it back to the store. A drunk idiot coming through the red light made sure of that.

Helga was off the road at the time. Almost as if she knew something. I was driving mum's car - the yellow one. Lucky I'm a survivor.

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.

I'm so excited

I'm excited. Despite the fact that the year seems to be flashing by...it means that I'm one day closer to going to Byron Bay Writers Festival (programme announced today), one day closer to the Romance Writers Conference and a week in Melbourne and gulp....one day closer to starting 50ks in 30 days (our June writing Marathon challenge) Gulp, actually, that's only a day away and I haven't achieved everything I wanted to in May.

I'm excited about Byron because not only do I get to spend fabulous quality creative time with my writer friends, I get to catch up with my pal Jen, who I have not seen since she moved to Melbourne in January last year. Collage poetry will be happening!

I'm excited about the RWA Conference for obvious reasons and it is years since I've spent time in Melbourne...14 years to be exact. I'm still hoping that I'll be able to scrape up the funds to see Wicked the musical while I'm down there.

And now 50ks in 30 days starting Sunday. Today I was re-reading the first 25,000 words of Hold the Anchovies and I realised why I stopped writing it. It's not that there wasn't a story...quite the opposite. There's a story there alright, although it doesn't have a happy ending. It's my story. And I think in that first 25ks I got a bit too close to the bone, freaked out and stopped writing. (And isn't it at the point that you freak out that you're supposed to keep on writing) Yes, parts have been fictionalised... but so much of it is the absolute truth, so during June I need to find a way to access that story again and to stay with it. To stay with my truth, and not shy away from exposing my soul, my heart or my vulnerability.

I'm also excited about having fire again, and the cat is very happy curled up in front of the fire. It will make a big difference to being able to churn those words out. It was starting to get very cold here at night, and I was going to bed early (shock, horror) just to stay warm. But now the room is a pleasant temperature, the fire is burning and I hope that my creative fire will continue to burn throughout June.