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The Guppies hold a competition for the most rejections accumulated between the beginning of January and the end of March every year – and next year I am really planning to be in with a chance.
The idea is, of course, that each rejection gets you that little bit closer to an acceptance. As well as a tougher skin, I hope!
This year it’s not so likely – although I do now have three times more stories out in the world than I did this time last year.
Today I finished polishing four stories and submitted them to the Brit Writers Competition, so I am feeling very pleased with that – especially as I had completely forgotten the closing date was this week.
I also have eight other stories at different stages of development – and more competitions coming up in March – not to mention the two novels in progress…
As for the poetry clinic – well I am 13 poems and 373 messages behind  On the bright side I have learned a great deal from the process of reading and critiquing other people’s poetry. I would have liked to have written a little more new poetry myself, but I have been working hard on other things that in the end mattered more. I think I have to admit that I just bit off more than I could chew, this time.
The Writing Body Language course has gone much better. I am up to date with most of the reading, and a mere 338 messages to catch up, as well as four more written exercises. But it is already making a difference to my writing, and it’s been great fun.
So that one finishes on the last day of February…and I just signed up for another class starting on the 1st March.
Yes. Insane. But still having fun 
I knew it was going to be a challenge when I signed up to the poetry clinic. I’m not ever going to be a poet, although after starting out with a real deap seated fear of poetry – writing it, that is, I’ve always enjoyed reading it – I have come to enjoy a little paddling in the shallow end.
But I knew I needed to pay more attention to language for my story and novel writing, and this seemed like an interesting way of doing it.
I’m in an online class with some really good poets, and after adjusting I began to quite enjoy being the bottom of the class. The class ethos is to be kind and supportive too, and everyone is gentle.
Ryan always says there are experiences you enjoy, and then there are learning experiences. This is a learning experience.
So I’ve noticed that every time someone criticises one of my poems, I assume they are correct. And every time they praise something, I assume they are being kind.
Interesting.
When it comes to my stories and the novel in progress, I thought I was getting better at knowing which parts work, and which don’t. At having my own centre of gravity when it comes to reacting to critiques – and deciding for myself which I need to act on, and which are more personal differences of style and opinion.
Somehow this seems a bit odd to me. It’s actually more important to me to write a good novel, so why does that worry me less? I think it helps that with the novel I can see I’m making progress – and how much better my writing is than it was three years ago.
Another oddity is that my prose is always described as spare…but my poetry is far too wordy.
I suppose it’s always possible that last one was a good poem 
Ann
I am getting fed up, on a philosophical level, with those people who have a problem with disagreement.
With those who are so sure they are right, that they have some kind of superior access to knowledge about reality, and therefore don’t have to take account of anyone’s else’s opinion. Sometimes that group even includes me.
There are a great many issues in life where the facts are open to interpretation. The most rational of us act all the time out of emotion and instinct. There simply isn’t time to apply reason to everything – we all have to take short cuts.
A quick list would include religion and politics, for example, and current affairs issues like climate change and vaccine denialism. I know where I stand on most of these issues, I have quite strong opinions about them. Many of those opinions are based on my own reading around an issue – but I’m not a climate scientist, and I don’t have a deep understanding of biochemistry.
These issues do matter to me though, some of them at a personal level. I don’t doubt that they matter just as much to the people who are ranged on the other side of the argument, who have also done their own reading, and who are also not (for the most part) experts on the issues.
So where do we go from here?
Stalemate? You have your opinions and I have mine, so we agree to disagree?
That’s fine on personal decisons, but some of these issues are those that affect us all.
I want the right to be able to choose the way I die, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Baroness Campbell want to stop me from having that right.
Those people who are afraid that vaccines cause autism, or other damage to the young immune system want to protect their children. Those of us who are in favour of vaccination (not all and any, just evidence based vaccination with a clear benefit) want exactly the same thing.
Climate change sceptics worry me a little. I’m not sure what they want really – unfettered capitalism and consumerism and a world without cause and effect perhaps. The rest of us want to live more sensibly in harmony with our environment.
It’s hard not to let one’s own emotional position through, isn’t it?
There are no easy answers. We can’t all train to become climate scientists, or pharmacologists – and even then we wouldn’t all agree. It’s impossible to judge by the simple rules that everyone trots out.
Take “cui bono” – thank you Cicero for that gift to consipracy theorists everywhere.
In modern capitalism there are always people who benefit, after all. The drugs companies make money from selling vaccines. Of course, the alternative medics may also make a good living being paid by those who sue the drugs companies for damages, or selling expensive and unproven treatments to desperate parents. Big Pharma is slated by the denialists as uncaring and only interested in profit – and yet of course, companies consist of people who have their own children, and who are not all uncaring. Some of these probably have their own children with autism – do we really believe they would simply stand by if they knew what they were doing was causing such harm? The level of organisation that would require could only be imagined by a thriller writer such as Dan Brown.
In the climate science camps, we have scientists who are accused of fixing their results in order to get published, of playing politics with grant applications and jockeying for power. Then we have the energy companies who are funding the climate change denialists, and using everything they can to win the argument, fair means or foul.
And it’s not like we can trust the authorities to make these decisions for us is it? Politicans, The World Health Organisation, the UN, the large corporations… Do we trust any of them?
Or perhaps we should create an algorithm that can work it all out for us automatically, totting up the number of scientists on each side and the amount of money each is paid and by whom, and balancing the whole thing out… I can recommend some software that can do that, but would have to declare an interest.
I think it has to be down to us. We have to learn to do this ourselves. We have to educate ourselves, so that we can consider more of the evidence. We have to learn to tolerate uncertainty, and the fact that there are no easy answers.
Most of all, we have to continue to disagree with each other. We have to carry on arguing – not just shut up shop and walk away from people whose opinions differ from ours. We can’t afford to close ourselves off from each other in our own little ghettos of belief. We have to stay engaged, and remain open to change. To stop assuming the other side is simply wrong minded and to read and consider material from all sides of the story.
Projects like this one from the Guardian can help, I think. Openness and transparency, and allowing everyone to look at the information is just the beginning, because of course it’s always been possible to twist anything out of shape – like the Devil quoting scripture.
Of course, if you think there’s another answer, please feel free to disagree…
to procrastinate…
Last night I submitted my entry to the Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger competition – the first chapter and a synopsis of my crime novel in progress – and it wasn’t actually due until next Saturday.
The really surprising part is that I’ve actually already written much more than the bare minimum required – as well as Chapter One I already have the drafts of Chapter Four, Five and Six, and the final CHapter, which so far doesn’t have a number.
So now the plan is to get the first draft finished by my birthday. That should be possible, if I write somewhere in the region of a thousand words a day…starting now…
Wish me luck, please
Ann
or so I was told, last year on my birthday.
Except we don’t really, do we? There are always lots of reasons why we put things off, and deal with all kinds of things that matter, maybe – but maybe they matter to someone else and not to us.
I’m more guilty of this than most. I’ve been neglecting an old friend of mine lately. I have my reasons, of course. I’ve got work to do, I’m doing various courses, I’m writing my novel, I’ve not been well… and she is hard work to talk to, at times. But still she’s a good friend and I felt guilty until today I did something about it, and now we both feel better – and it only took half an hour.
On a deeper level, it took being diagnosed with lupus to make me do something about learning to weave. I’d wanted to weave since I was ten and never got my turn on the looms at junior school, and watched my best friend weave a beautiful plaid scarf. I was given knitting needles and a pattern for a woolly hat. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that before – but it’s why my hatred of knitting lingers to this day.
And with lupus and hypothyroidism, I had a lot less energy than most people, so I had to learn the skills of prioritising what mattered. I found it pretty easy to give up on housework, and apart from a hellish few months when I was so ill I couldn’t read, I always had a book or dozen on the go. But mostly I prioritised working for the business, and looking after Ryan (while of course he was pretty busy looking after me), and all kinds of duty stuff, and with my spare time and depleted energy did a bit of embroidery.
It took someone else to point out I was neglecting my own dream, and to get me writing again.
We only have one life. Probably
What do YOU want to do today?
What are you waiting for?
Ann
Sorry, this isn’t the definitive answer. It’s not even the definitive question. Perhaps a better question would be, How not to write a novel.
There must be hundreds of different ways, as many as there are novelists, perhaps – and a few undiscovered ways. I’ve read about hundreds, always in the hope that one would give me the magic key.
If there is a magic key, I haven’t found it yet.
But I am in the middle of writing two novels at the moment, and I am looking forward to working out which way of writing suits me better.
The novel I am writing from NaNoWriMo is currently a formless mass of 62 thousand words, waiting for another twenty thousand or so before I start the scarily large task of finding some kind of structure in there, and rewriting. It won’t just need some minor redecorating – it’s going to be major underpinning, perhaps a new roof, and certainly the plumbing and electrics leave a lot to be desired.
Then there’s the crime novel that started out as my Assessment piece for the Open University course, and is now being polished to enter the Crime Writer’s Association Debut Dagger competition.
It’s currently about fifteen thousand words, and it has a strcuture. It has a beginning, I’ve written the final chapter, and while the synopsis needs a lot of work cutting and polishing for the competition, it is a very good working plan to write the rest of the novel by.
I’m not sure which method will work best for me, but it’s going to be interesting to find out. Will I get bored with the predictability of the novel already planned out? Will I be overwhelmed by the chaos of eighty thousand words and no idea where to start the rebuild?
I’ll just keep writing, then
Ann
Of course the major goal for the year is to get something published. Anything, even a poem would do….
I very nearly chickened out of the Open University Writing courses, because of the poetry element. Then when that part of the course started, I froze and couldn’t write even the simplest haiku, until taunted with bad poetry by a friend until my competitve streak kicked in
After all that fuss, it is somewhat ironic that the kindest and most encouraging rejection letter last year, was from a poetry magazine.
So the second goal, which is likely to be somewhat easier, is to collect a lot more rejection letters this year.
I made a good start on that this morning, when I posted an entry to the Ambit 200 words competition, two to the Mslexia Short Story competition, and another short story to Riptide
I have two short stories I am working on, and an idea for a crime story that I want to write.
And then there’s the novels. I don’t know how I ended up writing two novels at the same time, but there you go.
I’m currently working on my entry for the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger competition. I have the Prologue already written, and I am part way through writing the novel, so I think the synopsis should be reasonably straight forward. The only problem is I am really unhappy with my first chapter, so that will have to be rewritten – and before the 6th of February.
The other novel is supposed to be on the back burner. It’s the one I started for nanowrimo though, and it is callingt to me – it keeps putting ideas into my head while I am trying to ignore it and working on other things. That may be counterprodictive, I’m not sure – I’m hoping it will just mean that when I return to it I will have a good head of steam built up and it will drive me quickly through the rest of the first draft – I reckon I need another twenty thousand words or so.
Oh, and I also have a vague idea for a third novel, that I must do some thinking about, so that will be my nano novel come November…
I’ve also just received the first email about an Online Poetry Workshop I registered for, with Bill Greenwell at Exeter University.I’m not a poet, but just felt that it would be good for me to pay a little more attention to the way I use language, but now I am feeling a bit nervous as I will have to come up with ten new poems over a period of ten weeks. A silent scream just won’t do it here, but I haven’t worked out how to insert noise here yet, so count your blessings
Oh, and did I mention I’d promised Sarah Arrow some blogs for her new project, Birds on the Blog…
I’m not sure that I’ll have time to do anything other than write this year
Sorry, Ryan
Ann
(I’m not quite sure why Zemanta wants me to include a picture of the epic of Gilgamesh…or of John Keats? Is it trying to frighten me into silence?)
At least, I hope that’s what 2010 will be…
This year I’ve become a guppy – and am happily swimming around the pond and flapping my fins
The Guppies are a chapter of Sisters in Crime, a kind of support group for fledgling crime writers, and guppies is a fond term for the “great unpublished”
Actually, a surprisingly large number of those in the pond are now published, and there’s lots of support and encouragement for those of us who want to join them. I’m in a critique group, and in the Mystery Analysis group (must get on with reading that Carl Hiasson novel) – and when the time comes there are groups focussed on the activity of finding agents and publishers.
First, to get the novel written…
And while I’m mixing my metaphors, I’m also one of the new birds (in some excellent company too) on the wonderful Sarah Arrow’s blog site – Birds on the Blog
I’ve started out by writing about my experiments with blackberry vodka and chocolate truffles, but will mostly be focussing on my main interest, writing about creativity and the fun of learning new things. My superpower, after all, is a high tolerance for getting things wrong.
And then, on January 10th, I seem to recall signing up for an online Poetry Workshop, with Bill Greenwell at Exeter University
What was I thinking?
Ann
I’m proud of having achieved this year, and three things to aim for next year.
I’d love to know your threes for the year too, if you’d like to share them.
So this year – I finally earned my honours degree, I completed the 50k words for nanowrimo, and I made it to the top of Seaford Head.
Next year – well, there’s one very specific target that I would really love to reach – and that is to get a story published. I’d also like to finish my novels in progress, and continue with the walking programme.
I’d also like to say a very big thank you to lots of my friends who supported me through all this. Of course Ryan, but then, he really has no choice - it’s part of his job description. But thanks to Flo,Yas and Catherine, Suhad and Rosemary for keeping my spirits up when I was low. Thanks to Robin, too, another person who listened and encouraged when I was in the doldrums. A very big thank you to Anna and Diane and the surprisingly evil Dag for helping me get through nanowrimo. And another to Sally and William, the evil twins, whose kicks were needed to get me started in the first place.
Ann
Every Christmas I make a few small presents, just because I think it’s a nice way to show people I appreciate their friendship. Usually, it’s something I’ve embroidered – just a card or an ornament for the tree. Luckily, Germaine Greer isn’t on my Christmas list
This year, I spent so much time writing for nanowrimo, I didn’t have much time for embroidery, so I decided to make chocolate truffles. I was also motivated by the terrible quality of the chocolate santas I bought last year to go in the little christmas stockings and mittens – they looked pretty but tasted revolting…
Well, this year, the chocolate tastes amazing – but isn’t so pretty on the outside. Not for the superfical, these…
Ugly on the outside – but they do taste rather good.
Top left are almond – - they taste a little bit like a dark chocolate toblerone – but I was a little too heavy handed with the almonds. Next to them, just rolled in cocoa, are the chili chocs. I took expert advice from my Facebook friend, Carolyn and used half a teaspoon of tabasco. When I first tasted the ganache was still warm – but now they are chilled they really do have some chili kick! Chocolate brazils used up the left over dipping chocolate. Bottom right, with tiny dried blueberries on top for identification – are the ones made with my blackberry vodka. Again, these have much more flavour when chilled – really quite fruity. And bottom left, especially requested by Ryan, are the mint ones.
Now all I have to do is make sure some of them last until Christmas. I caught Ryan having another of the blackberry vodka ones a few minutes ago – apparently it offended his sense of correctness that there was an odd number of them left. This was very strange as after we sampled, there were twelve….and now there are ten.
Ryan does love the mint ones, as expected – but the surprise hit was the blackberry vodka. If I have time I might make some coffee ones, and maybe some orange.
Or I might just have to give in to the pressure and and make a second batch of the blackberry ones…
Ann
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