One-hundred-thirty-nine ...

I've decided to put the number of days left until the deadline as titles of my posts. Figure that will keep my eye on the ball and the pressure on. Unless V.S. comes through for me and starts harassing me.

So I had my monthly meeting with my mentor last night. As usual I left feeling on fire. I had submitted my latest chapter, which was a pretty rough draft, but even so I was told there wasn't many things to pick on. Some awkward sentences (I'm using a lot of parentheses and sub-clauses - like I do in most of my writing - which sometimes can get things in a twist by the time you get to the other end of the parentheses) but nothings that isn’t easily fixed. My mentor usually picks exactly the things I feel I've not quite got right and that is a good sign. According to my mentor.

In my mentor’s mind my deadline is ambitious but with the month off to write it should be doable. Suggested I find someone to swap novels with to edit entire draft come September (anyone reading this and might be interested let me know!). Praise for the line-by-line writing, pathos, humor, characterization, hooks, pace, the seamless transitions from internal reflection to external action - the usual stuff - made me skip home, ready to work my laptop to the bone. I’m good at this. And I don't even realize what I'm doing while I'm doing it.

Writing (and being a war correspondent) is the only thing I've ever wanted to do. Tell stories, make stuff up, invent lives, it's the only thing I'm any good at. I started making up stories before I could write. I remember my grandparents being amazed when I was 10 that I could write with such detail and insight. They were probably also a little sad I had such insight, and already tried so hard to recreate the story.

I’m working on two chapters at the moment – one J and one M. I asked my mentor to pick one for our next meeting and unfortunately it’s an M one. M is one of my main protagonists, the person the novel was supposed to concentrate on when I first started thinking about it, the most psychotic of them all, but she’s the only one I can’t quite pin down. Maybe because she’s too much like me (yes, I realize the implication of just having used the word psychotic in the previous sentence and then saying she’s like me) so every time I think I’ve got her right, she does something that I wouldn’t do so it feels weird. Therefore I’ve decided to completely change her – she’s now so not like me. Apart from the psychotic bit.

Fun though! I have to research some vaudeville stuff for this chapter and got these books

out form the library last week (one can only trust wiki so far!). The cover with the naked lady is actually a book about the cabaret so not really relevant to my story but who can resist borrowing something like that?! 

Kick Me. Hard.

An abysmal weekend. From a writing point of view.

What started off as a well-drafted plan with time for everything I needed to do, and some downtime too, quickly evaporated as the allocated time got sucked into various black holes. Mainly of nothingness.

Even with the declaration of the deadline and even though I actually want to write I’m finding it hard to motivate myself right now. Don’t get me wrong, as soon as I sit down to write I do write and I write for hours. It’s just the sitting down bit that isn’t quite working out for me. My head is always overly active with this, that and the other and it takes a lot of effort to keep it silent so anything which can distract me from it is welcomed in with enthusiasm. So you’d think writing would be a positive distraction.

And it is. When I get around to it.

So what did I do with my weekend?

     Saturday

• Being the disorganized mess I am (I can’t stand the chaos I create but at the same time I am unable to not wreck everything as I go along) I needed to sort my domestic situation out. And I can’t concentrate when my surroundings are in such disarray.
• Errands.  
• Met a friend for what initially was meant to be a 2-3 hour afternoon coffee but ticked over into cocktails and dinner.
• Watched Seven Psychopaths (finally).

Sunday  

• More sorting out of mess made (the extent to which I mess things up is well beyond an hour of returning things to their rightful places).  
• A 15k run (I need to run more, for my insanity and also so I can get back into my clothes I spent the winter eating myself out of fitting into) followed by spending 1 ½ hours (yes NINETY minutes) trying to get Nike+ to add the 15k on to the 22k I’d already run earlier in the week (still not working).
• When I finally admitted how futile that was, I listlessly poked at some impact case studies (work) and dealt with some work emails.
• At 9.30pm I was so fed up with myself I sat down and edited a chapter I’d previously thrown out but have now decided to use after all – so luckily I come out at the end of the weekend with 2000 words despite my best effort (though really more like 0 since they were really already written).

So. Not. Impressed.

One of the reasons I got a mentor was to have structure and so it’d motivate me to write more. Paying someone a hefty amount every month ensures I do at least produce what I hand over for comment - roughly 5000 words. 5000 words is about the length of my chapters, and I do write more than that in a month, but it’s nowhere near enough if I want to finish this damn thing. And I do. I fucking do!

Conclusion – I need a kick in the ass. Anyone like to volunteer? 

Declaration of deadline

So. I’m a bit weird.

Like I don’t like even numbers. So I count stuff. Like I can have one cocktail (which anyone who knows me knows would never happen) or three but not two. And if I have one cocktail of something and then two of the something else I may have to have another one of the one I’ve had two of to make it three and count it one and three. Not four.  (Until I get drunk and lose count). And my tattoos – I have four and one that’s been covered up but I still have five tattoos. Until the day I get the next one, then I won’t count the cover-up any longer. But still have five tattoos.  And one covered up. Five and one. On top of this, I don’t like order – I find what I need and make sense in chaos. And I’m a little obsessive compulsive. Like last year I went from the idea of running 500k in a year to piling up 1503k. Because I got completely obsessed with seeing the kilometers increase.

And what’s this got to do with writing? you ask.

Well, I’ve set a goal to finish the first draft of my novel by September 10 2013. This is not an arbitrary date picked out of one of my fabulous hats – oh no! This is the last day of my planned writing retreat and also the last day before I’m getting locked in the office to play with the REF for three+ months. I reckon there’ll be no time for writing then, but second drafting should be ok.

But how am I going to do this? I guess I'm hoping I'll be able to trick my little obsessive brain into overdrive and for every day I write, or for every 1000 words or for whatever it’ll take the obsession to finish this one step closer to just that. But the tricking of the brain is difficult. I’ve tried to get obsessed with running again because right now I don’t quite have the flat stomach of last summer .And despite my strong adverse reaction to the idea of spending lots of time at work, 11-13 hour days are sneaking back in. So I'm slightly worried about how to turn the obsession on. Which is why I figured blogging about it might help. Or not. At least it will fuel my procrastination - because I need more of that for sure. Although I’d like to think a structured one but alas not always). 

So it’s going well so far [she said sarcastically]. I’ve spent the evening running and then writing this blog post in between a bunch of work emails. Never mind I have a deadline to send a chapter which is not quite finish to my mentor (another incentive which has worked well so far) tomorrow. Please brain, let the obsessive compulsive need to add more words kick in!