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....

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.

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.

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.