A very short blog post...

...in which I decide that a flying motorcycle will do. For anyone who's perplexed, this is an update on my previous post, discussing writing stories for young children and flying motorcycles. Or, better yet, flying bicycles, because let's face it, a motorcycle might not be on a young child's wish-list!

And another update, generally: I'm dispensing with the 'writing' label. It's getting ridiculous. This is what the blog was supposed to be about, at its core, so I guess that, by default, my posts will be about writing and books, unless I deliberately label them otherwise.

Freelance work?

I've been giving a lot of thought to what I'm going to do after I graduate in June/July of this year. Obviously, the ideal would be to write full-time, for my novels to get somewhere, etc. Of course, this is unlikely and my chances are slim. Still, I'm persisting. But while ECHOES is out on submission with agents and I work on first drafts of CLOCKWORK and HALF, something's got to pay my rent, right?

So, I thought, I could do several things:

I could hang every single hope on the manuscripts, and not consider that practically, nothing but me is going to pay rent, bills etc over the next few months. Erm, no.

I could pretend that I'm going to have the sanctuary of university life forever. Sadly, I no longer do this kind of pretending very well. I used to be an excellent pretender as a child. I wove the most elaborate and wonderful lies out of nothing. The prize of my collection is probably when, at the age of nine, I invented for myself a magnificent purple motorcycle that could fly, and made my best friend cry when I told her I took an overnight trip to Africa without her. I was, in every sense of the word, a "dreadful little storyteller". It's not really surprising, then, that writing fiction is to me what tea is to the English.

I could apply for every possible summer job available. Of course, while this is a great idea, doing it is impossible until these jobs actually start being advertised, so I'm going to have to wait a while for that.

Or, I could find freelance work as a writer. What better way to do what I love, while making some money and working flexible hours? (Fixed hours, with exams on the horizon, are just impossible) So I've applied for some freelance writing work, notably a job writing stories for very young children. While writing a 50 to 70-word story may not sound difficult at all, let me just say, writing for young children is hard. Every single word has to count, and you have to choose every single one carefully. You have to be witty and yet not ironic, you have to be simple without patronizing them, and so forth. 

I recently got back an email from a lady in charge of the work, and she asked me to send her an outline and a few sentences of a possible story, for the editors to look over. Then they'll decide if they want me to write a few of these stories.

Now the question remains: what story shall I tell? Will flying motorcycles do?

Clockwork

Am not terribly inspired blog-wise today, sadly. Instead, I'm generally ticked off, haven't yet cleaned and need to, and feel a little bit like I'm under a microscope and all my cells are being dissected wrong.

So, instead of rambling at you today, I offer the first few paragraphs of my new novel, at the moment tentatively titled CLOCKWORK. I began this yesterday, in a burst of inspiration courtesy of a steampunk-ish art print (more on that later), and I don't know where it's going to go yet or whether it will, in fact, go anywhere, but I suppose that's the exciting part about writing! 

Here it is. Think of the story pitched as 'an unlikely bargain is struck between a girl with a clockwork heart and a boy who finds things.'

I climbed out of the taxi and wished the week would end. Now. This very instant. It had been, oh, interminably long. And full. Things had moved so quickly. On Monday, I’d killed my grandmother because she had asked me to. On Tuesday, I’d attended her funeral. Wednesday, I’d learned that she had left nearly all her money to my uncle Robert, better known to high society as Lord Fallow, and I was now on the cusp of penniless. On Thursday, Lord Fallow had informed me ever so politely that he wished ‘his dearest aunt and niece’ to leave our home, now his. And just earlier today, Friday, I’d given Lord Fallow’s valet a broken nose.

It really wasn’t my fault. What kind of man loomed around kitchen corners in the half-light of dawn and didn’t bother to shout out in warning? With no other implement handy, I had grabbed the nearest frying pan and hit him. Full in the face. The end result of which was a hefty doctor’s bill in Lord Fallow’s hands, a wounded valet, and a demand that I leave the house immediately.

What was more, my heart had stopped four times in the week already. Not once, not twice, not three times, but four. I’d never known it to wind down so fast. It was obviously time for drastic action.

I closed my eyes as the taxi left. If I listened hard, I could hear it, the sound that kept me company late at night. The ticking, in my chest. Tick, tock, tick, tock, on and on it went.

I opened my eyes and turned to look at Great-Aunty Rose, the only real family I had left, who stood unsteadily on the pavement next to me, her umbrella in one hand, her gloves in the other and her pistol in her handbag. She was never at her best on her feet. Old age and everything. Her expression was pursed and prim, and her merry eyes gazed reproachfully at me. 

Note: the novel's not actually steampunk. It's urban fantasy, set in the future sometime, during the reign of Queen Victoria II. Yes, you read right. A re-Victorian age.

A somewhat guilty diversion...

...into fashion. Yes, I said it. I used the dreaded F word. Fashion. There. *breathes immense sigh of relief, now that the word has been uttered and gotten off my chest*

I recently discovered a steampunk-oriented blog called STEAMED! and it's fantastic. I didn't think of myself as really into the clockwork, gears and Victorian fashions and art that seem to characterize steampunk, but I've discovered now that I love it. I want the clothes, I want the art, I want the books, I want it all. I'm not entirely sure how I came across the site, except that I reckon it was through reading author Gail Carriger's blog (her novel Soulless and its sequels are steampunk/urban fantasy) and she mentioned she'd done an interview with them. The long and short of it is, I discovered STEAMED! and it was there, on that website where I discovered my love for the aforementioned clothes, art and books, that I discovered steampunk-oriented clothier Clockwork Couture.

Oh, boy. If I had the money, I'd probably shop them out of stock. Some of the shoes/boots are to die for. Most specifically, this is to die for.

These boots.

I think I'd sell my left leg for them. The black ones, not the red or purple. Or maybe I'd sell my left arm. (But please, don't take me up on these offers.)

Guest Post from Steve: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Hi, its Steve again. Hope you're all keeping well.

Ender's Game is my favouritest book ever. SO good I'm risking Sangu's wrath by making up words in her blog. Its the first and best of a series of books by Orson Scott Card that feature mostly the same character and universe.

Usually, I enjoy books that make me feel clever when I can predict whats going to happen. Or at least tell myself that I knew. But Ender's Game has a brilliant twist at the end which I have no intention of telling anyone here. It completely and utterly fooled me, but in a way that made the book completely endearing (instead of "aren't you clever for outsmarting me *places book in bin*").

It also creates a very clever and believable universe. It is based around a war with aliens, and Earth's search for brilliant children to be commanders of the future. The most brilliant of these (until you read Ender's Shadow) is the eponymous Ender Wiggin, who is fast-tracked to the top of the school in record time. The 'school' is "Battle School", where children are taught military history and tactics, along with the physics of space battles.

It leads to a hyper-competitive, violent environment, that Ender and a very small number of allies rise above. But the brilliant part of the book is the very end, and I can't recommend enough that you pick this book up and read it.

:-)

The Lonely Writer

A nostalgic hearkening back to another stereotype: that of the isolated, lonely writer. On a more serious note, though, there's a little bit of merit to that stereotype. I know I said that if writers were isolated all the time, they'd never get great ideas. But the truth is, that's the inspiration part. When the actually work begins, writers almost always work alone. It's hard to get chapters written and dialogue to flow when you have distractions coming at you from every angle. As promised, this is a sort-of follow-up to my post about editing a novel. This is how I write.

This process varies from book to book, but as someone who has written several novels that never got anywhere and started several others, this is generally how it goes.

• An idea slips in, insidiously. They're sneaky things, ideas. Sometimes you're inspired by something you've seen or read or heard. Sometimes you have a dream and snag on to one delicious element of that dream. Sometimes you just have the idea and for the life of you, you can't tell where it came from. Sneaky. See?
• The idea stews for a while. The core idea for ECHOES stewed for all of a few hours before I got writing, but, it must be said, I'd had similar ideas and started a book with a vaguely similar premise a few months before. So maybe that's why I got writing so quick. Some details were already fleshed out. With HALF, the idea stewed for months before I got writing properly.
• The writing begins. Cue frustration, tears, despair, excitement, pride and the nearly irresistible temptation to tear out your hair. Cue long wanderings off to your friends'/parents' bedroom to have a chat, just to procrastinate writing a dreaded scene. Cue long days where you do little but write, and your friends call you an antisocial git. Cue more frustration, tears.
• I send chapters to a close friend or to Steve as I finish them. Sometimes they have good things to say. Sometimes they're lukewarm. They often have suggestions. This not only helps me fix mistakes, it also provides the encouragement some writers need to keep going on bad days.
• While writing, I keep going back over what I wrote the previous day, or week. I compulsively reread, tweak, edit. I find that I can't just write a full first draft without stopping and editing as I go along. It hurts me physically to think that the previous scenes might not be what I want them to be, so I have to fix them before I can move on.
• My OCD kicks in, and I change the font about six times, desperate to find one in which every letter, speech mark and italic looks good. [Note: they never do. There is no perfect font. Fellow OCD-ers, cry.]
• I hit a roadblock. It always happens, whatever book I write. I give up. I decide I'm rubbish, the book isn't good, and it's useless pursuing it. I close the file and turn away, angry.
• I find that I can't stop thinking about the characters, or imagining a wonderful scene that I was going to write for the end of the novel. I find that when it's quiet or I'm trying to get to sleep at night, I can hear my characters having conversations. Sometimes, they refer rudely to me as the 'giver-upper'.
• To shut them up, I go back to writing. Sometimes, if I'm lucky and the story simply has to be written, like ECHOES insisted on being, I'll finish the first draft. I'll collapse back in my chair after writing the last sentence, and feel rather weak and drained and stunned. Did this really happen? Did I finish a book?  
• At this point, I celebrate. Usually by eating, sleeping, and rather guiltily returning to the university essays and dissertation I've neglected for weeks. Sometimes if I'm lucky, I get to celebrate with a drink or dinner out. Not often, though. The one stereotype I do fall completely into is that of the struggling, penniless artiste. Tragic.

And that's the first draft. Or, in my case, the 'sort of first draft', because I do a lot of tweaking as I go along, which no doubt slows the process down, but it's what works for me. I know of writers who rattle out their first draft without ever looking back at a single page, and then go into editing full-throttle.

The time frame: anywhere from a month to about six. The 'sort of first draft' of ECHOES took me four months to write and complete. I started late September and finished mid-February, but I'm taking into account a few weeks in this time frame where I wrote nothing whatsoever.

And then, I edit. Properly. Compulsively. Painfully. But that's another post, because otherwise this one will get exceedingly long, and I'll be guilty of neglecting my dissertation yet again.


Finally, an exciting bit of news: I've just had another request for a partial of ECHOES. I just sent off the first fifty(ish) pages to the agent in question, and I'm very excited to see how she responds to them.


Picture above photographed by Simon Howden. One day, I'll take a picture of my own desk. It's not nearly so tidy.

Touching on new projects

In the interest of a) not losing my newest book ideas and b) an attempt to gather some responses to these ideas, I thought I'd touch on a few of my ideas for new projects/future projects. Are these good? Do they sound like they'd work? Do they sound too much like something else already out there/are they too outlandishly new? 

I don't know about the majority of writers, but I know some wrestle with these questions all the time. Sometimes, we need somebody to tell us when we've got a really brilliant idea. Other times, we just need to let those ideas stew for a while, and if one of them just won't let go, that's the one we start writing.

Bear in mind the 'titles' below are simply fillers until I think of titles that really fit the story.


Illegal; a story set in a dystopian future Bangalore, where the paradoxical protection of culture, science and tradition has led to a city nearly devoid of love or humanity; where a young girl meets a time travelling boy and falls in love, the greatest crime of all.
[Have just begun the first draft.]

Swan Song; a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. When David's young wife dies, he can't move on and he can't bear it. He spends his days playing his piano, playing songs of such sadness that when Sephy Gray walks by his house and hears his music, she cries for the first time in years. She takes David to her husband, the strange, mysterious Harry Gray. A story about the line between the dead and the living.
[Early draft in progress.]

Wings; a retelling of the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus. A heartbroken father and his young son move back to the village the father fled years ago, only to lose themselves in the kind yet prejudiced village life, where magic is a word to be afraid of. The father can think of only one way to free his son: to fashion him wings, to take him away...
[Early draft in progress.]

The Clock Keeper; a boy who sees the future before it happens, and a girl who loves to plan weddings. When the boy asks her to plan his wedding, they embark on a strange and perplexing journey.
[Outline stage.]


There. A brief reference to ideas. To be honest, in the practical sense, ideas are useless without a story. But they can be unbelievably thrilling.

List Day

With my unfinished dissertation hanging over my head and Half at a standstill, I thought I'd go the easy, relaxing route with a blog post today. Lists. Three, to be precise. Great books that I think everyone should read or at least give a go; some of the best and most original story ideas I've ever heard of; and a list of some of my favourite fictional characters. I hope the first list, at least, gives people some fantastic stuff to dig into. I absolutely love having new, lovely things to discover, so I hope you do too.

Books

1. Daphne du Maurier, Frenchman's Creek
2. Daphne du Maurier, The King's General 
3. Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades 
4. Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
5. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
6. Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
7. Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
8. Gail Carriger, Soulless
9. Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart
10. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Ideas

1. Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. Literary detectives who can wander in and out of fiction at will, and change classic stories. Brilliant, brilliant concept.
2. The Time Traveler's Wife. The time traveller concept has been done innumerable times, but this is one of those situations where the execution of the idea is the cleverer concept than the idea itself. There's a certain spark and magic about the way Niffenegger uses involuntary time travel and two perspectives to tell an emotional story.
3. The Graveyard Book. This owes an awful lot to The Jungle Book, but I think the idea of a little boy growing up in a graveyard and being raised by the dead and undead, is a fantastic one.
4. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Multiple worlds, armoured bears who believe their armour is their soul, and, above all, daemons. Daemons are a physical manifestation of a person's soul, and they take animal form and have personalities and voices. When you have a daemon, you're never alone. They have to be one of the loveliest and most gut-wrenching concepts in fiction. Who doesn't want one?
5. Andrew Davidson's The Gargoyle. A burn victim receives a visit from a woman who claims she knew him in their past lives, and then proceeds to tell mesmerizing stories about love. Great idea.

Characters

1. Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights
2. Silas from The Graveyard Book
3. Owen Hunt from Grey's Anatomy
4. David Tennant's incarnation of the Doctor from Doctor Who
5. Hermione Granger from Harry Potter
6. Phedre from the Kushiel's Legacy series of novels
7. Artemis Fowl from Artemis Fowl
8. Ty from Stolen - a worrying one, considering he's a kidnapper
9. Just about every character from These Old Shades, with special mention for Rupert Alastair and Anthony Merivale
10. Honor Harris from The King's General

Anybody agree or disagree? Any lists of your own?

What Would Hadrian Say?

An absence of a couple days, I see. Sorry about that. Have been rather preoccupied and under the weather, and Steve paid a surprise visit last night!

We went to Hadrian's Wall today. We've been wanting to do this for a while, and as neither of us have been to Scotland yet, we thought it might be fun to set foot on Scottish soil and say we've been at last. Hadrian's Wall is en-route. It took us about an hour and a half from Lancaster, and it was remarkably hard to find. Not surprising, in the end, because it turned out to be little more than a parking lot and a low stone wall. 

I love low stone walls. Yet somehow I expected a little more of this great relic of Roman/British history. A grand fort perhaps, or the ruins thereof? A graveyard to mark the lives lost in defending the wall from who knows how many invaders? Maybe we only went to the small bits of the wall, maybe there's a grand structure somewhere else. If not, Hadrian must be turning in his grave...

That said, the rare sunlight over England and the countryside looks gorgeous, doesn't it?

Very little to add re. books and writing. I've done very little and am rather ashamed of my lack of progress this week. I've achieved close to nothing. I'm hoping to finish my dissertation chapter tonight, and write another one tomorrow. Or at least finish both by the end of tomorrow. That will make me feel a little better about this week and work.

A further note about Hadrian's Wall: this photo. Erm, why? Why tease me with mention of a fort? Magic invisible fort?






 If anyone is British, unsure about the elections, and reads Glamour, there's a great article about the elections in this month's issue. Clear, concise, and clever. It made things make sense for me, and I can't even vote.

Manchester United lost to Chelsea today. Steve wasn't pleased. My brother, however, will no doubt be over the moon.



Update on Monday, April 5th: My brother was over the moon. He snickered as he offered Steve his sympathies.

I'm a sucker for Greek gods

I've managed, by and large, to recover from my sleepless night. I caught a few hours in the late morning and am now looking forward to an early night. 

Have just been into town with Lindsey, where we dropped into a bar for a drink or two. Minor hitch in this plan: apparently, I managed to walk all over Asda, town and the bar with a hairband stuck to my back (well, below my back actually) and only realized it was there when a group of older men with tankards of beer decided to ask me if it was deliberate. My face went so hot you could have scrambled eggs on me.

Steve's started a blog, and has a few posts up already. It's focused on sport and his opinion of current sport news and updates, so if you like that kind of thing, do see him. He manages to make it sound interesting to me, which is a feat, because I'm very un-sport-y. So I reckon someone who likes that stuff would love it.


I've decided to attempt an experiment in writing Half. There are certain things I absolutely love, and I've decided to include them all in the novel, and see if they work together. If I could read my ideal book, it would have all of these things, so I thought: why not write something with all these things I love? Can I make it work, even if they seem incompatible?

So into my slightly dystopian premise, I'm planning to infuse:

• Sherlock Holmes
• Greek mythology
• Clothes/shoes
• Slightly Victorian language
• A sexy love interest and an electrifying romance
• A man who growls. I love men who growl. See my previous mention of my love for Kevin McKidd. He growls, in a nice way.

I've loved Sherlock Holmes and Greek mythology ever since I discovered them, separately, as a child. I've never been able to really use that love in my writing yet. Obviously, the book will not at any point be about any of that list. It will just include them. Can it work? I suppose we'll have to wait and see...