I’m doing NaNoWriMo! Again.

National Novel writing month logo a shield with crossed pens, a laptop and a cup of coffee on it with a viking helmet on top for some reason

If you’re a freelance journalist the timing of National Novel Writing Month sucks. The ideas of putting aside all paid work THE MONTH BEFORE CHRISTMAS to work on a novel which may or may not get published is something I’ve struggled to get over year after year.

In fact, when I logged on and looked at my profile at the end of October, I found three versions of the same novel with three different now-discarded titles and dismal word counts for each. It was a fascinating glimpse back in time but also kind of depressing.

This year, though, was going to be different. Previous novel is finished, edited and re-titled, and I now had a fresh new idea I was itching to try out. Plus a small posse of online buddies who were doing it with me. Bring it on.

I’m half-way through it now, and here’s what I’ve learned so far:

1: It doesn’t matter if you write a pile of crap.
The sanctimonious little chart on my profile tells me that I should have written 25,000 words by now. It also says that to make the classic NaNoWriMo target of 50,000 words I need to write 2,250 words today. Well, that ain’t happening.

I have all my best ideas while writing crap


I’ve often thought the emphasis on words can be a unhealthy – you write a load of old rubbish just to bump your word count and end up having to go back and unstitch it later. But now I’ve got the first novel under my belt I realise I have my best ideas while writing crap (and also while in the shower for some reason.) Also, the unstitching is actually an unavoidable part of writing a novel. I have a trifling 13,993 words under my belt so far and half of those are utter crap but, like the weirdo I am, I’m actually looking forward to going back and changing it. I like seeding in all the good ideas I had while I was writing terrible stuff.

2: Buddies really do help
I’m lucky enough to be friends with a few unpublished writers online, and we’ve been bolstering each other up with word counts and pep talks. This wasn’t the case for the first few years and it’s made such a difference knowing I’m going to report back to people about it rather than just sitting here writing into the abyss. I spent my whole journalistic career with editors breathing down my neck, and I now can’t work without deadlines and pressure – or with the mutual support of colleagues.

3: Once a Brownie, always a Brownie
Back when I was in the Brownies, I loved getting a badge and being part of a tribe but I have to admit I find the whole tribal thing a bit cringy these days. And I’ve always thought the badges on the NaNoWriMo site were a bit patronising. You get a badge on your profile for writing two days straight, one for a week… etc. Pathetic, right? So why was it that last Saturday I wrote for 15 minutes between 11.40 and 11.55 so I could log a word count on the site and get my “Updated My Word Count Seven Days In A Row” badge? God I’m sad. But if it works, it works.

LOOK! LOOK AT MY SHINY SHINY BADGES!!! I mean… not that I care obviously.

Some of my friends also prepped beforehand – putting together a day-to-day (or even a scene-by-scene) plan of what they were going to write, reading the pep talks on the NaNo website, going to write-ins. I’m not that way inclined, being more of a “splurge the words onto the page” kind of a writer, but it’s nice to know those resources are there if I should ever have a personality transplant.

All I know is that at the beginning of November I had the stub-end of a novel and, if I continue writing on the same track, by the end of November I’ll be well into the second half – even if a large part of it is drivel. So, cautiously and with a due sense of trepdiation, I’m calling NaNo 2019 a win.

Read more about my first attempt here

And more about how crazy deadlines can be motivating here

Fancy reading a book review of Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper instead?

Tweet me to chat about NaNo…

Why anyone who publishes a book is amazing

It’s easy to slag books off. I do it all the time – as a reviewer I see lots of not-very-good books: novels which are cynical imitations of another title which did quite well a few years ago, novels written to a formula, novels cranked out when the writer had a deadline but was struggling for inspiration. And everyone’s favourite punching bag, Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s fun to slag off books and as a wannabe author it’s encouraging – if this load of old twaddle can get published, so can I. So yes, I do it, I’m only human.

But it’s also deeply wrong and unfair, because every non-celeb person who has ever had a book published deserves huge respect for beating the odds. They have been through at least a dozen agonising and increasingly Hunger Games-esque stages to get there…

To get your book published takes faith determination and a rhino-like skin1: They had a Very Good Idea. You know, just like the one that’s floating round your head at the moment that would be an absolute best seller if only you could find the time to write it all down.

2: They had a Second Very Good Idea which gave the initial Very Good Idea wings. Boy goes to wizard school has potential, but Orphaned boy goes to wizard school where he discovers a dark link between himself and the powerful wizard who murdered his parents is the start of a seven-book series.

3: They found the time to write it down. Hours. Days. Months. In the middle of the night, getting out of bed at 5am, punching it out with their thumbs on their iPhone on a commute. Or even giving up their jobs. Despite all the crap going on in their lives, they found the time.

4: They didn’t give up when they got 30,000 words in and realised that the Second Very Good Idea actually doesn’t work at all unless they go back and unpick everything that happened after Chapter Two. Instead, they went back and unpicked. Or they replaced the duff Second Idea with a shiny new Third Very Good Idea which made it even better.

5: They wrote 60,000 to 150,000 words about Very Good Ideas One and Two (or Three.) It might not be in a genre you like, it might be too light and fluffy or too flabby and pretentious but they wrote the words down. A story now exists where there was none before.

6: Then they edited, going through the whole thing until they were sick of the sight of it, rejigging it, taking bits out, regretting it, putting them back in. They cut things they loved, sliced out whole characters and wrote entirely new scenes instead, all the while not truly knowing whether they were making the thing better or worse.

7: They then sent it to agents. Dozens of ‘em. They received rejection email after rejection email until they wondered whether the Very Good Idea was actually Utter Tripe Idea in disguise. Maybe they took too long writing it and nobody wants dystopian YA stories any more, or a major plot point has been wiped out by the invention of Google Maps. Or maybe they just wasted an immense amount of their time and passion on something nobody wants to read. This could happen, and does – all the time. But if it doesn’t…

More bashing into shape ensues

8: An agent actually picks it out of their slush pile of hundreds, is moved by the words, blown away by VGIs One and Two, and signs them up. More editing ensues. Author and agent eventually agree that book is in good shape. Hooray!

9: Said agent believes in the book enough to haul it all around town to different publishers, or even take it to a book fair and say: “Buy my client’s book, it’s great and it will make money for you.”

10: In order to get a book deal, the author then has to cage fight JK Rowling using only a copy of The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook as a weapon. Oh wait, no, that’s just a weird dream I had.

10: A publisher sees the book, likes it and thinks that this is a Very Good Idea, which will possibly make money for them.

11: The publisher then introduces an editor into the mix who undertakes more Bashing Into Shape along with the author who is probably feeling pretty bashed themself by now. Once they’re happy, they haul it around town to the booksellers and supermarkets, convincing them that the author has had a Very Good Idea and that they, too could make money from it.

12: It has been years since the author had the Very Good Idea but it’s stood the test of time, it’s on the shelves. Now the author, the publisher and booksellers all join forces to convince us – the reading public – that the Very Good Idea is worth spending the price of a cup of coffee on.

What a way to make a living!

Seriously, it’s ridiculous, but that’s the way it works in traditional publishing. So to get your book onto shelves and into people’s hands takes an astonishing amount of faith in yourself and your idea, extraordinary discipline and commitment plus a rhino-like skin to deal with all those rejections and edits along the way. So anyone who has ever, ever had anything published is an utter hero. I salute you. And one day, glutton for punishment that I am, I hope to join you.

I wrote a book in three weeks and it changed everything

A few months ago, I wrote a book in the space of a few weeks. It wasn’t a particularly long one – just 12,000 words and it wasn’t a masterwork of fiction poured from my heart through the filter of my amazing literary talent.

In fact if I had to define it, Everything You Need To Know: Kings And Queens Through The Ages is one of those fun books you give to people at Christmas and then spot in their downstairs loo months later. But hey – a book is a book.

A friend put me in touch with a new publishing company which was planning to roll out a whole Everything You Need To Know series and needed writers. I fancied a new challenge and after a couple of enthusiastic emails I had myself a tasty commission. There was one small problem – they wanted the book in three and a half weeks.

All it took was a punishing deadline and the will to ignore my family

And so I was off, researching up a storm. I spent hours in my local library scouring biographies for light-hearted trivia, trawled Wikipedia for leads then disappeared down a wondrous rabbit hole of historical blogs and academic papers. In the process I became an expert on things I’d never been remotely interested in before. I found myself watching The Crown saying things like “Of course Princess Margaret’s been on a bus” or “ooh look, it’s the Poltimore Tiara!”

And as I worked, the words just came – lining up gleefully on the page as I discovered each treasure trove of trivia. It was tons of fun. Of course when this happens it’s usually a sign that the work will need some serious editing later on but the fact remains: at the beginning of the month there was no book – three and a half weeks later, there was one.

By then I was knackered – I’d been doing all my regular freelance work alongside it so had been working until 2am for weeks – but also kind of exhilarated. Because after spending years in limbo with my own novel, tapping out the odd paragraph between commissions, I realised I could write something long-form (well long-ish), and write it fast. All it took was a punishing deadline and the will to ignore my family for set periods of time.

And so, in the weeks that followed I came to a decision. For years I’d been struggling to fit my fiction writing around the demands of a fast-turnaround freelance job, plus the needs of two small children and a raggedy, untidy house. As a result my novel has inched along slowly, sometimes lying neglected in my Dropbox for weeks. It’s time to make a change, to take a run at it like I did with Kings & Queens.

And so from the end of last year that’s what I started to do.  I dropped all freelance work except book reviews – I could never give up book reviews. And while it was incredibly painful it was also a huge relief because for the first time in years I was prioritising the career I wanted.

Having time to concentrate made all the difference

A few months later, I have finished editing the manuscript of my YA crime novel, The Girl Who, and have started sending it to agents. Having the time to concentrate on this project has made all the difference. I know I’m privileged to be able to do it, that I have a husband in work who is able to shoulder the financial burden for a while – many others don’t have that luxury. It’s no wonder the world of writing is so inaccessible for so many – there’ll be a blog on this in the near future as I have a lot to say about this.

Sadly, things did not end well for poor old Kings & Queens. Despite the punishing deadline it’s now languishing in publishing no-man’s-land, like an ageing heir awaiting an abdication, as booksellers didn’t pick it up. But still, it could be the most important book I ever wrote, as it gave me the confidence to carry on.

Book review: The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober

Around three years ago, my former colleague and friend Catherine Gray told me that she was a recovering alcoholic. For about two seconds I couldn’t have been more surprised – and then our whole history suddenly fell into place and I went ohhhh…

It explained why, after working like mad to build a career she clearly loved, she started Cover image of the unexpected joy of being sober by Catherine Grayrolling in late and taking Mondays off sick. It explained all the mysterious bumps and bruises and injuries. It explained why the features team used the words “totally Cathed” as a euphemism for steaming drunk. And now I understood why, on our way out of a work Christmas party, I’d had to stop Cath jumping into a limo full of men on a stag.

It also showed me something else – how easy it is to ignore something that’s going on right under your nose, and how ill-equipped the modern working world is to deal with it. And if I’d known, what could I have done? “Nothing,” Cath told me – and of course she was right. When someone wants to drink it takes more than a concerned boss to stop them.

What eventually did stop Cath was her own decision and the sheer strength of mind to follow it through – after a lot of false starts and endless soul searching she found her own personal way to get sober and did it. I’m in awe of her for this achievement – but even more so because she’s shared it in a book: The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober.

The adventures don’t stop after she quits – they just change

I’m not usually a big fan of sober-lit – so many rehab memoirs focus on fabulous drinking stories until we’re actually a bit disappointed when they quit. But this one is different: Yes, there’s a fair few celebrity snogs and drinking den adventures but she also shares the process she went through. The times she tried and failed, the things which worked for her, the things which didn’t. Like a good magazine journalist she pulls in statistics and facts to support her argument. And she does a great sales job on the sheer joy of sobriety that waits on the other side.

Because Cath’s argument is that life just gets better and better after you stop drinking. That it’s worth going to bed at 1am if you’re up in time for a hangover-free sunrise. The adventures don’t stop after she quits – they just change. She travels, she makes friends and discovers new things about herself. The sheer joy of her life shines through in her writing, in an honest and totally non-preachy way. It’s also entertaining – even when she’s describing her lowest ebb she does it with wit and humour and without any anger or frustration.

When someone you know writes a memoir, the first thing you do is check out any references to yourself*. The second thing you do is agonise over whether that ambiguous statement in chapter 42 was actually about you and whether, if that is the case, you should apologise. The third thing is to feel an odd sense of pride that a person you know has clawed into the depths of their own experience and created something wonderful and life affirming out of it. And, even though you’re not their mother, and nor did you actually help with the book in any way, you still feel curiously proud to know them.

The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober is out now

Follow Cath on Twitter @cathgraywrites

*My wedding was in it! Luckily it’s the one she enjoys. She and her friend were pretty much the life and soul of the party.

In which I get a short story in print!

At the beginning of this year I nearly gave up writing fiction for good, and here’s the reason why: I wasn’t actually writing any fiction.

I spent a lot of time writing about writing fiction. On Twitter and Facebook. To fellow aspiring-author friends, on the NaNoWriMo forums, even on this blog but it had started to feel fake. And every time I sat back down in front of my work in progress it took me longer and longer to get my head around what I was doing.

I’d add in whole paragraphs of exposition and then realise that I’d already written the exact same thing half a page later, but two years ago. I’d obsess over weaknesses in my characterisation which possibly weren’t there, or try to impose a new sub-plot wholesale. I was writing for half an hour, once every few weeks and that just wasn’t enough.

Publishers don’t care which particular dog ate your homework

There are, of course, lots of excuses. Freelance work, poverty, pregnancy and a little boy who spent a lot of time in hospital when he arrived. Not to mention the huge existential who-the-hell-am-I-now crisis of motherhood. But publishers don’t care which particular dog ate your homework. They’re probably not even going to bother reading your homework unless you make it really, really good.

So I got to the point where I became embarrassed every time someone asked me how my book was going. I didn’t feel like I could write any more. I should just throw in the towel. But writing fiction is something I’ve really wanted to do pretty much since I first learned to write. I really, really didn’t want to quit.

And that’s when I saw BBC Radio 4’s Opening Lines competition online. The deadline was in a week’s time so I set myself a challenge, write or die. Finish a short story or shut up about fiction forever.

So I did it – and I also really enjoyed it. The story was, of course, not a winner (winners here: all awesome.) But I finished it, and it read OK. A bit breathless, a bit too much action for a short story, but I wasn’t completely ashamed. And as I wrote I felt more and more certain that this was what I wanted to do with my life.

I’d ignored short story competitions before, thinking that any time spent writing something that wasn’t my novel was time wasted. But that experience made me realise my mistake. Time spent writing is time spent learning, practising and weeding out any bad habits and weaknesses. One of the most common bits of advice bandied around by published authors is: write every day. I think I’d add: write thoughtfully. Twitter and Facebook or anything else throwaway don’t count.

Write every day. Write thoughtfully

But the timing did suck a bit when I first heard about the Kindred Agency’s We Need To Talk project. It was a short story competition open to media types only, with the theme of difficult conversations. Problem was, the deadline was two days after my wedding.

It was crazy, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I carved a few hours out of my hectic flower-choosing, waxing and fake tanning schedule and spent it tinkering around with a very worthy domestic violence story I’d had cooking in my head for a while.

The result was godawful. Two days before my wedding, I ditched it.

Then I started writing about what was on my mind. An insane bride so obsessed with having the perfect wedding and the perfect life that she’s driven her best friends away. I even named some of the long-suffering characters after my friends – until they developed some pretty serious flaws (not related to my real friends) and I had to rename them all.

The result was 2,000 words of pure silliness but I had done it. I submitted the story and, to my huge excitement, it was selected.We need to talk

So in September this year, my first ever fiction story appeared in print. (Buy it here! Buy it, buy it!!) After years of reworking and moulding other people’s words and stories with every paragraph overseen and edited, I’d written something that came straight out of my brain and with a few tweaks it appeared in print. My actual name is actually searchable on Amazon! It was such a joyful feeling.

And no, I’m still not making any progress on my novel. But is my writing progressing? Yes. And that can only be good.