CAMP NaNoWriMo 2020!

Hello, hello, hello Dear Readers! Happy Tuesday to all. I hope your weeks are looking positive so far and you're all safe and well.

So here's a question. Are you doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month? 'Cos I'm going Camp NaNoWriMo this month.

I know, I know, the NaNo Curse. It's true, as long-time Dear Readers know, that I've never managed to complete the OG NaNoWriMo successfully because every. Single. Time - every time, going all the way back to 2011! - either before I can start or within days of starting... something really awful happens to me. Sometimes it's horrendous illness or hideous injury. Sometimes it's even worse. After the last time I just gave up, honestly.

BUT. This is Camp NaNoWriMo, which is technically something different, right? It's July, not November. You can set your own word count and even work on edits if you want, without 'cheating'. It's got a different logo and everything!

And, just between you and me, I need the help. I've got a really special WIP right now that is truly and utterly different to anything I've ever worked on before, and I LOVE it. I desperately want to get it finished by the end of this year. But between researching and writing the dissertation for my MA, designing modules for and preparing to teach two writing courses on Creative Writing Ink from this week, and launching The Book of Snow & Silence (in addition to the world, you know, being AN ACTUAL TRASH FIRE) I've been choked on it for months. I haven't made any real progress since January. I just kept opening the file up, fiddling with a few lines, and then getting vapour-locked.

So: Camp NaNo. I decided to give myself a really small and manageable goal, not only to ease myself past my writing roadblock on this one, but because I know that the teaching is going to take up a big chunk of time going forward. I can't see myself writing anything good if I'm panicking over finding time for that AND hitting 3000 words a day.

I started July the 1st, and I'm pleased to say that not only did I not get a horrendous injury/hideous illness, or suffer a personal tragedy, but I actually managed to write some new stuff for the first time in months:

And that I've managed to keep it up and make steadily increasing progress:

It's good enough for me. I know that when the teaching starts, my daily word count might sag down again, but that's OK - so long as I can manage to get to my overall target by the end, I'll count this a massive success. Hurray!

You can start Camp NaNo anytime during the month, and (as I said above) set your own overall word goal - so if you've been struggling to get something started or wade out of the middle muddle, now might be the time to give it a shot. Or maybe you're already up and writing. In either case, feel free to add me as a buddy if you want.

Oh, and here's a new writing playlist I made, although it's super project specific and very heavy on the Enya, so if you're not into that, maybe give it a miss.

Happy writing, muffins!

THE NANO-CURSE STRIKES AGAIN!

Hello, Dear Readers - happy Thursday. I hope everyone's having a good week so far?

Today's big news is that as of right now the new SHADOWS ON THE MOON with extra content is officially on sale - so if you've always wanted to know what happens after the end of the story... get in there because this is your chance. And BAREFOOT ON THE WIND has not only been recommended on this amazing list of Spooky Reads For Autumn and Winter Nights from BookTrust, but shortlisted for the Highgate Wood School Book Award (in two different categories, no less) which is sweet and humbling at the same time.

Now, before I do anything else, I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who left comments, emailed, facebooked or tweeted me with mesages of support after my news about Finn. Each message meant something to me, and it did - and does - help.

With that in mind, I decided to let you all know that I eventually had to veto the idea of chemo for Finn. I was really desperate to try it - it's carefully calibrated to cause minimal side effects and might have offered Finn between another six months to a year of life. But then the vet brought up an issue which isn't negotiable - the treatment itself takes six months, during which time it's a rule that owners must 'avoid direct contact' with their pet, due to the toxic nature of the drugs involved. Which means: no stroking or cuddles, no letting them up on the furniture with you or to sleep on the bed, no kisses on the snout, no absentmindedly patting their ears when they lie with their head on your knee while you read. No bathing them or grooming them, even, unless you can do it with gloves on. 

Finn has literally never in his entire life been treated that way. Not when he somehow managed to roll in fox droppings three times in one day. Not even when he stayed with my mum for the first time and chewed the ears off her limited edition Steiff Teddy Bear. He sulks when strangers on the street don't stop to give him fuss. If I suddenly cut off 90% of physical contact with him, he can't be expected to understand why it's happening, and I honestly believe it would break his heart. It would definitely break mine. I can't bear the thought of turning away and refusing to give him the love and physical affection he'd desperately need during a period when he would feel very ill and anxious. I do want him with me as long as possible - but only if he's happy and feels safe and loved.

So instead, he's on strong steroids, which will help to manage his symptoms for now, and some painkillers. He's perked up considerably, is enjoying short walks again, and is generally waggy and bright-eyed, which is what I want his last weeks or months to be like. It's his favourite season, and when I was able to watch him snuffling cheerfully through the fallen leaves, and then rolling around on the kitchen floor while I was drying him with a warm towel (another of his favourite things), I knew I'd made the right choice. The vet says that there's no way, with this course of treatment, to know how long it will work. So I just have to keep a close eye on him and make sure his comfort is my top priority.

OK, now that's out of the way - another update, this one on NaNoWriMo. As many of you know from the blog and twitter, I was gearing up for a massive NaNo effort this year and basically wanted to use it to both get my mind off worrying about Finn AND finish my current project if possible.

But the NaNo-Curse (which in previous years took the form of the NaNo-Virus and the NaNo-Slipped-Disc) struck again on Tuesday when I woke up in the middle of the night with a blinding migraine. The migraine didn't begin to ease up until late on Tuesday, and I still had a horrible headache, funny vision, dizziness and the ever-delightful nausea when I woke up yesterday morning (and everytime I started thinking about the words I SHOULD have been writing, my blood pressure went up and my eyeball responded with the kind of warning throb that made me strongly suspect it might just explode if I pushed the issue).

I'm feeling a lot better now, but still fragile and light sensitive, which means that squinting at either a backlit screen or even my own crabbed handwriting in a notebook for hours at a time isn't going to be a good idea for another day or two. And that's pretty much put the kibosh on all my good intentions.

Realistically, I know that I could still catch up if I went Hell for leather and really pushed myself over the next week. But I also know that my migraines tend to increase in frequency and severity when I'm stressed out - and I'm pretty stressed out even before bringing NaNo into things. I don't really want to turn National Novel Writing Month into Zolah Tortures Herself And Has No Fun Month.

HOWEVER. I was already being a NaNo Rebel, what with working on a WIP rather than a completely fresh manuscript. So even if I can't get to the official finish-line of 50,000 in November, I figure I can still be a part of NaNo and just try to write as much as possible this month.

I'm going to begin afresh this weekend - and my new plan is to try something a bit different for me, and write non-linearly. I'll pick any scenes from my synopsis that strongly appeal to me (without regard to where they come in the plot) start wherever I want to and finish when I run out of things to write. If I end up with a whole bunch of random scenes that need arranging into order and stitching into a whole, fine. If I end up getting carried away and writing from the middle to the end, fine. If I end up with a bit of a middle, part of an end, and some other random chapters that I need to sort out, also fine. Just as long as I end up with a nice fat chunk of words by December 1st.

I know some of you guys were tempted into NaNo this year - how are things going for you so far? Let me know in the comments. I'll update you again next week and we can celebrate or commiserate as appropriate. Take care, and read you later folks.

CHECKING IN

Hi guys - I hope you're having a good week so far (or if not, that it looks up from this point).

The Massive Reviewer Reward Giveaway is over and everyone except one person has their prizes, but if you didn't win there's no need for despair. I'm currently running another giveaway for three signed copies of BAREFOOT ON THE WIND on Goodreads, so anyone who couldn't enter the first giveaway for whatever reason stands a chance of winning there. Check it out.

More good news: this lovely review from Amanda Craig in the new SCOOP Magazine, in which she calls the book 'Beautifully written and imagined' and all sorts of other nice things.

Now for... not so good news. This week some results came back from the vet and gave me a diagnosis that I never, ever wanted to see. Finn has cancer. It's lymphoma, which is treatable (thankfully I kept on stubbornly paying his insurance premiums, year on year, even though they've gotten to the level of ludicrous and lately I've had to make some hard choices about paying the insurance vs. my grocery bill) but not curable. What that means is that he'll have veterinary chemotherapy, designed to ease any symptoms and make the patient comfortable without too many side effects, but not to actually extend his life if it will make him suffer. I might get a few extra months with him... but at the end of that time the cancer will come back and that will be the end of the road.

I'm taking him to hopefully start that treatment today, and I'm praying that he will respond well to it and he'll get as much time as possible with the best quality of life possible before I have to let him go. My dad used to joke that Finn was his favourite grandchild, and he spent so much time playing with and training him that I felt as if he really belonged to both of us. They shared the same personality - mischievous, silly, inquisitive, clever, gentle and affectionate. Even Finn's occasional bouts of selective deafness and pigheaded stubbornness remind me of dad. Facing the prospect of losing him is... pretty bad.

Anyway, if things are rather quiet around here for the next little while, you'll know why. I'm still hoping to take part in NaNo - writing has always been a solace and source of comfort to me during the worst times, and I will definitely need something else to think about. I'll try to check in again at least a couple of times as November progresses and let you know how it worked at the end of the month. Anyone else who is doing NaNo this year is super welcome to add me as a buddy over on the website.

Any good thoughts and good wishes you might have spare, Dear Readers, will be much appreciated. I think Finn and I will both need them.

NEW ARRIVALS!

Hello, my little macaroons! Happy Wednesday to everyone, and thank you for joing me today. I'm delighted to say that I have pretty pretty pictures to share - because in the last week not one but TWO delightful parcels have arrived for me bearing gifts.

What was in package number one, you ask? Why ask no further, because it was THIS:

 

 

The final volume of the Candlewick Press hardback editions of The Name of the Blade Trilogy! A rather lucious jade green this time, with a scale effect and copper typography - and matching green binding with copper foil and endpapers.

And yes, that's a jellyfish in the silhouette. If you've read the book you know why, and if not then you'll just have to buy this and find out won't you?

But even better than that!

Together at last. My fourteen year old self, if she could see this, would be actual-facts-ugly-crying. I nearly did myself. The trilogy is now officially completed and it's so beautiful!

But wait - there's more. ALSO in the post last week was THIS:

Yes, that's a glimpse of the long-awaited sequel/short story/epilogue of Shadows on the Moon, which I hope will satisfy fans of the book at last. But this book, too, is part of a set, so it seemed only right to do this:

Look what they did with the back covers there - isn't that clever? It's almost like the tangle of thorns transforms into a swirl of hair in the same gust of wind the sweeps the cherry blossoms across from one book to another. Gorgeous!

Frail Human Heart will be out in the US at the beginning of November. This new and improved version of Shadows on the Moon will be out here in the UK at the same time.

Once they're both on the shelves... I'm sure not what'll be next for me. I'm out of contract now - I have no new books due out for the first time in a decade. I'm still working on the book I got my Arts Council grant for, and I'm hoping to make a giant leap in progress during NaNoWriMo this year (yes, I'm going to give it another bash, no, I never learn, and yes, I will keep you all abreast of my progress - in fact, why not join up too and friend me here?) but I don't know when or if that will be published. I have some other news about my future which I'm hoping to share soon, but I need to get official confirmation first. Apart from that it's all wide open, which is both scary and exciting. 2017 is going to be an eventful year, I think!

Read you later, cupcakes!

NaNoWriMo. SORT OF.

Hello, oh lovely readers, and welcome back! As our blog title for the day suggests, this year I'm attempting to participate in NaNo. Sort of.

Due to all the personal and health issues I had this year I never got around to running or even attempting to do my own International Creative Writing Month (sorry, anyone who was looking forward to it!). In May and July, when I'd normally have set that up, I was just about managing twenty minutes or maybe half an hour of computer activity per day before a headache set in, and that was while wearing sunglasses. It just wasn't going to work. But I still feel bummed about it. So when I sent my edits for Frail Mortal Heart back a few days shy of the end of October, I thought - why not try NaNo this year?

I should... probably have known better than to do that, really?

Well anyway, I knew that I couldn't actually sign up to take part as an official NaNo-er because the book that I'm working on in November is the Beauty and the Beast retelling I talked about here, usually referred to on twitter as #BaBBook. I've already written a chunk of the book and that means it's not eligible to be a NaNo novel. But I did intend to stick to the rules otherwise and commit to writing a certain amount each day in order to get to a certain word total by the end of the month. My goal was to produce ten handwritten pages of notes six days a week, for a grand total of 240 pages by the end of the month (I didn't count the first Sunday of the month because I was spending that day with my nieces). That would significantly progress BaBBook and give me a shot at getting a first draft finished early next year. All good.

As usual, Fate, the Muses, and the Writing Gods laughed at this plan of mine. As soon as I opened my draft document to look at the chapters I'd already written (I'd planned to skim-read them to get myself back into the correct voice and mood) I began to get a sinking feeling. I hadn't looked at this piece of writing for a month, since I'd been focusing on the aforementioned edits for TNotB #3, and it seemed that the distance had thrown some serious problems with the opening of the novel into sharp relief. I'd been feeling pretty good about those chapters and now I definitely was not. They just weren't up to scratch at all.

Fine. OK. Don't panic. The first day was just going to have to be re-writing so that I could fix this and move on feeling confident. And I know that goes completely against the NaNoWriMo principle of pushing on regardless, but I just *couldn't* OK? I had to get my ducks in a row first because otherwise the very important section I needed to write next was going to be weakened by the feebleness of what came before.

So I put in what felt like a fruitful day's work revising those chapters and getting them up to a standard that felt solid enough for me to move on, and was feeling OK about things until I got to the end of the document and realised there were pages missing there. Pages I knew I had written. Nearly a full chapter. What was going on? Had I failed to save at the end of my last writing session a month ago or something or... or... Oh. My. GOD.

I had been working on the wrong version of the manuscript.

I have two computers now - a slim laptop that travels with me, and a heavy old PC replacement that lives in my Writing Cave. I also have a flashdrive which I ferry back and forth between them, updating whatever computer I'm using with the most recent version of #BaBBook. And obviously at the end of last month, I hadn't updated the file on the Writing Cave computer with the newer version from the flashdrive. No wonder those chapters hadn't seemed good enough. They were from the middle, not the end, of September.

ARGH.

The urge to trash the room, rock 'n' roll style, was definitely rising, but after a few moments of deep breathing and staring at the calming picture on my wall, I was able to get it together. There was nothing to be done but print out the pages that I had revised, update my computer using the flashdrive and then hastily leave the room in order to watch classic anime until the urge to sacrifice myself on the alter of an elder god and then rise again as a eldritch tentacled monster of vengeance had passed.

Today, then, has been spent looking closely at the correct version of #BaBBook and inputting quite a lot of the changes that I'd made to the older version of the book's opening onto that, since many of them are still good. Two days of NaNo (during which I should have written twenty new pages, remember) down and not much to show for them, except a slightly more polished version of the first few chapters. And also a strong feeling that the last chapter, which I wrote at the end of September, needs to go in the bin and be completely rethought because it just feels rushed and wrong. Dammit.

So. Hopefully I'll get on that tomorrow and manage to construct a lead-in to the next part of the book that feels right and works. And then Thursday, I will actually start NaNo. Right?

Right?

*Sigh*

PROJECT: NORMALITY

Hi everyone - happy Monday (which I know sounds like some kind of cruel joke but... we can hope, right?).

Right now the biggest struggle in my life is to try and find some sense of normality. The problem, of course, is that my normality is gone, and it's gone forever. There's a part of it - a part of my life - missing now. A huge, important part. Everything I do, every step I take, is tip-toeing around the edges of that hole, and trying not to fall in. That hole is where my father used to be.

I think it's only when you lose someone who is so important to you that you realise just how much of 'you' is actually made up of 'you and me together'. Bereavement is like that moment in Star Trek or Star Wars where someone screams 'Direct hit! Hull breach!' and you see debris - chunks of the ship, and maybe even crew members - spiralling away into the cold darkness of space, lost forever. That debris is made up of your sense of safety, in-jokes, comfort, silly little routines, the sound of a beloved voice, a familiar smile, a certain smell, happy memories and sad ones. The remaining crew might get the shields back up and save the ship, but that debris is gone. The integrity of the hull is gone. If they make it back to safety they're going to need to weld a whole new bulkhead onto the ship, and fill her up with new control consoles and chairs and carpets, and replacement staff. She will never be the same. Even if she's sound, she'll never be entirely the way she was before.

So I'm struggling to find normality - but in the same way that you might feel helplessly homesick for a home that's fallen into the sea. I can never get back to it. Not really. I have to build a new normality. A bridge across the hole, a new bulkhead, a new 'home'. And a part of me resists that; a part of me wants the hole there, wants to be broken and unsound, because filling the gap with anyone or anything else feels unfair to my father, who deserves to be mourned to the fullest of my ability. To begin to recover would be to begin to let go of him, and that feels like the worst thing in the world.

Not letting go? Well, yesterday I watched Pacific Rim on DVD. It's the sort of thing that my dad and I would have gone to the pictures together to watch, a few years ago, before he got really ill. It's the sort of thing I'd have bought for the two of us to watch together on DVD, after he couldn't go to the pictures anymore. All the way through it, I kept thinking 'I hope there are DVD players in heaven. Dad ought to be watching this'. But when I got to the end of the movie, I still had this gleeful sense of anticipation, and I realised that even though I'd never forgotten that my dad is gone, some part of me was still looking forward to taking it around and watching it with him. That revelation resulted in an hour long crying jag and a really bad headache. Over a silly, glorious film about monsters and giant robots.

Normality. I would like some, please.

Well, that's it for my random ramblings. Onto some actual updates:

I've finished my Akira short story for the Things I'll Never Say anthology and submitted it. It's provisionally entitled 'Storm Clouds Fleeing From the Wind' and although I have no idea if there'll be edits to come, the editor has told me she loves it, so that's good. There's no listing on the Candlewick Press website or on Amazon for the anthology yet, but I'll keep an eye on it and let you know when that goes live.

I mentioned on Twitter and Facebook that I was intending to try and do a modified NaNo this year, in honour of my father to finish the final book of The Name of the Blade. There's about 40-50k left to be written, and my dad loved this trilogy and believed in it so much. It seemed like a good thing to attempt (more struggling for normality). But, as usually happens the moment that I mention an interest in NaNo participation, life got in the way. First of all, when I go back from WFC, my mother had a whole pile of things that she needed me to do - forms and phonecalls and all kinds of unpleasant stuff relating to my dad's passing away. This did not put me in a writing mood.

Then, just as I was getting on top of that, I was struck down, quite literally, by either the NaNo-Virus or the well known 'Convention Crud'. I'm not sure which, but it was an absolute lulu of a bug, not quite bad enough to be the flu, but enough that calling it a cold feels like an insult to me. I personified 'death warmed over' for nearly a week, and only just started to feel like myself again this past weekend. A glimpse at the calendar tells me it's now probably too late to try for NaNo in any meaningful way. So... maybe next year.

But that doesn't mean that I don't want to get back to work. So instead of NaNo I've decided to launch Project Finish This Durned Book. Which involves me re-reading the incomplete draft on paper, marking it up with the Red Pen of Doom, revising the Word Doc, and then going on from there. As with InCreWriJul earlier this year, my goal will be to spend about two hours each morning writing like a fevered pen-monkey, and then spending the rest of the day typing those notes up into my first draft. Even on days when I can't find the time or the motivation to do the typing up, I'm hoping I'll be able to manage the scribbling. Writing has always been my sanctuary and my centre, and I know that getting back into the habit will make me feel stronger and more myself.

Even if Project Finish This Durned Book goes swimmingly, I don't think I'm going to manage to get this manuscript ready to submit in time to hit my deadline, which is the end of the year. What I really want to avoid is being so late that it delays the production of the book in any way. I don't want to do that to you guys.

I'm having lunch with my lovely editor next week. Mostly she wants to see how I am, but I'll be talking to her about potential new books, too, because talking about that makes me happy. Once I've seen her reactions (horrified or intrigued? Who knows!) I might be able to start giving you some more solid hints about future stories. We'll see.

Wish me luck with both my projects, Dear Readers - the book one and the normality one. See you, most probably, next week.

INTERNATIONAL CREATIVE WRITING MAY

Hello, hello, hello - and happy Tuesday to all!

Whoa, so I guess my blog title kinda gave it away there (if you hadn't already worked out what the 'InCreWriMa' I hinted about last week was). It's International Creative Writing May - partly inspired by NaNoWriMo and partly inspired by Kaz Mahoney's genius SpringKazNo which I somehow managed to TOTALLY miss until about a week ago, when it was too late to join up, dammit.

No, that's not really accurate. It's not 'somehow' managed to miss. It's 'missed because the end of March and all of April this year have been kind of a no-go zone as far as writing is concerned'. This is why I put a progress metre for Katana up there, because I hoped it would motivate me a bit.

Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

I don't really talk about it much on this blog, but I'm a carer for my dad, who is disabled. You might remember that earlier this year I switched from a thrice (thrice, what a nice word, I should use it more often) weekly posting schedule to twice weekly. This was because my dad was moving onto a new form of treatment which would would take place at home and I knew that this was going to take a lot more of my (ha ha) 'spare' time.

What none of us - me, my dad, or my mum, who is obviously also involved - realised was just how much there was going to be to this new system of home treatment, how many hours we would need to dedicate to training for and learning how to do it, and how much time the treatment itself would take up. It took us all completely by surprise, and for the past six weeks or so I've been desperately scrambling to keep up, trying to convince myself that I *can* do this, that it'll all work out, and we're doing the right thing. Basically, my whole family has been in crisis mode, and although I've been trying my best to keep Katana #2 ticking over, I haven't made nearly the progress that I hoped I would have by this stage.

Now I feel like I've reached a bit of a crossroads.

My dad is doing brilliantly on his new treatment, and has more energy and positivity than I've seen for absolutely ages - years. That makes me very happy. I think we're getting on top of all the stuff we need to learn and I'm no longer feeling constantly overwhelmed, tearful and depressed.

At the same time, though, I'm coming to an understanding of how the new routine is going to work, and there's no getting around it: my writing time has been drastically cut down. I'd estimate I've lost about half the hours I would previously have spent writing, and that's not going to change much from now on.

I've still got way more hours to play with than I did back when I was doing an office job, and I managed to write three books back then. But if I don't adjust and learn to work around this, it's going to have a big impact on my productivity. So what I need now? Is something to kickstart me into getting words down on paper again.

Dear Readers, I really want us to write together.

It doesn't matter if you feel like writing poetry or short stories. Novels or synopses. Blog posts or entries on Tumblr. Just so long as you write something - anything creative - you're welcome to take part! If you want to use this as a way to help you finish the novel you have on deadline, that's brilliant. If you want to use it to start creative writing for the first time ever? Also fantastic!

Pick a target for yourself. Something realistic and achieveable for you, something that you can hit with a bit of effort. Nothing feels as depressing as failing right away because you pushed yourself too hard. But once you've picked that target, stick to it. Because nothing feels as good as pushing through, working hard, and reaching your goal. And when I said realistic? I meant it! If you don't think you can realistically manage to write more than five lines every day? THAT IS 100% A-OK for InCreWriMa too! On the other hand? Don't be too easy on yourself either. There's more satisfaction in going the extra mile than in never putting on your running shoes because you're afraid of blisters.

The really important thing about this is that we're going to do it together. It's supposed to be exciting, and fun, and motivating, and part of that is being around to help and support each other. Every Thursday in May I'm going to do a check in post. I will be completely honest with you about how many words I wrote in the preceding week, if I struggled or had a great time, and how I'm feeling about the book. I might even do breakdowns as to how many words/pages I managed each day, if you're interested in that much detail.

I hope you guys will be equally honest in the comments. If you caught a cold, felt awful, and wrote two words the whole week, we'll offer encouragement and reassurance. If you blew past your target and wrote pages and pages more than you expected, you'll get high-fives and cheers.

At the end of the month, we'll all do a review and round-up of what we've accomplished. And any commentors who checked in on every single IntCreWriMa Thursday (that's five, from May 3rd, to May 31st) will be eligible to go into another giveaway prize draw and maybe receive special surprise presents. My surprise presents? Rock. You want to be eligible, trust me! Especially since the giveaway will be open to everyone, from the brilliantly coloured beatles dwelling on the hot, eastenmost rocks of Timbuktu to the tiny dwarf Artic rabbits hopping around on the snow of the polar icecap.

I'm really excited about this idea, Dear Readers, and I hope you are too! But don't get too excited; take some time to think about whether this seems like fun to you, and what a REALISTIC target would be. Don't rush in and commit yourself too fast. I don't want anyone to put undue pressure on themselves or to take part if it's not right for them just now. I don't want to see any comments pledging certain amounts of words per day, or anything like that, in the comments today. The first check-in post will be Thursday this week. That's when I'll tell you my target and ask for yours.

I would like to know what you all think, though! Let me have it in the comments :)

A NANO CONFESSION

Hi everyone - and Happy Friday!

Today, I have a confession to make. A confession which will already be fairly obvious to anyone who's checked my NaNoWriMo profile and seen my current wordcount.

I fell off the Nano wagon. *Sob*

No, I'm not really that upset, to be honest. After the catalogue of woe I've endured the past week I feel lucky just to be alive. Getting stressed out over Nano would be a bit silly.

As you know, I did try to push on despite the Nanovirus (with the pounding head, achy joints and sore throat) that struck me on November the first. In fact I did so well that I was ahead of target and gave myself Saturday off. But on Sunday I started to feel really ill again, and not the kind of illness that you can write through. I draw the line at taking a notebook into the toilet with me. Ew.

Despite feeling like death warmed over until Tuesday evening, I was still prepared to press on with Nano, adding words to my daily target to try and catch up. I was determined to start bright and early on Wednesday morning, motivated by getting to announce my news about The Katana Trilogy (aka Big Secret Project).

Then, as I was about to get into bed on Tuesday night, I crouched down to pat my dog, caught my foot in his bed, slipped, and felt an explosion of burning pain - like a red hot wire being ripped out of my spine and dragged down my leg. I couldn't sleep all night because of the pain in my back, which kept throbbing no matter how I arranged myself. I was on the phone to the doctor first thing the next morning. Those close to me know this is a last resort; I really hate going to the doctors. But I couldn't sit up, and was in pain even when I was walking. I was scared I'd done something really serious.

Turned out I'd done something medium serious - a prolapsed disc, which is when one of the discs of soft, cushioning tissue between the bones of your vertebrae bulge out and press into the nerves of the spine in a not-good sort of way. Not permanent but definitely very painful until it subsides.

Trying to sit upright in a normal position is agony. I'm typing this lying flat with my knees propped up by a pillow so that I can lean my laptop against them, and that's the position I'm more or less stuck in for a while. The only breaks are to eat (standing up) and take my dog for his walks. The pain is starting to ease off a little, although I'm not sure how much of that is actual progress and how much is due to the strong anti-inflammatory, muscle relaxant and painkilling drugs my doctor prescribed (these drugs make me feel a tiny bit drunk aaaaall the time, so please excuse any mistakes in this post based on that and the fact that it's hard to type in a horizontal position).

Given all that, I was forced to accept that I'm going to have to give up on hitting any kind of meaningful Nano target this year. It's a little frustrating. I'm SO keen to work on the second book of the Katana Trilogy. Everytime I think about all the cool stuff I get to write I want to clap like a seal. But I can't risk making my back worse, because that's just going to add to the delays. So for the moment I'm mainly watching American TV programmes on iTunes (I <3 Castle) and napping, and daydreaming about the feel of a pen in my hand and a notebook on my knees (yes, it's sad, I know).

Anyone who's been following this blog for a while will know that this is only the most recent in a serious of hilarious comedy pratfalls that I've been through (dislocating my toe while walking down the stairs was a good one) and might wonder if I have some heavy Karmic debt that I'm paying off or something. I can only wonder that myself, since I haven't managed to get through a year without some form of injury since I was about twelve. But never mind! My motto is that it could always be worse, so make the best of what you have.

With that in mind, I hope everyone has a great weekend - and I'll read you on Monday when, barring mishaps, I'll hopefully be answering some reader questions about planning and world-building :)

RETROFRIDAY - SUGAR & SPICE...

Hello everyone! Happy Friday to you all!

I'm a bit dazed and confused that it *is* Friday already, but despite the attack of the Nanovirus (and the pouring rain) I'm pretty cheerful. I'm slightly ahead of my NaNoWriMo target, I'm starting to feel a little better, and most importantly Super Agent LOVES Big Secret Project Book One. Yippee!

So it's time to bust out the RetroFriday goodness, and drag a post from the archives which you may not have seen before or may find interesting to re-read. Given last week's ranting about the problems of Mary Sue in our sexist society, it felt about time to pull out some of my earlier thoughts on the topic. And so I give you:

RetroFriday: SUGAR AND SPICE

Today, as part of my random, FF-is-eating-my-brain programme of entertainment, I present a post on what I think is wrong with the way our society perceives and enforces gender roles. To read the article that inspired this blog post you can click on this link.

In summary: This very clever lady used Zoë-Trope favourite Wordle to create these. 

 

The first one is a Wordle made up of the terms used in advertising boy's toys. The second is made up of terms used in advertising girl's toys.

These toys were marketed at boys and girls between the ages of six and eight - very young. But not too young to already be assessing and questioning their place in the world and who they should be. In fact, this is exactly the period when children are assigning themselves the gender roles that they may carry for the rest of their lives.

By this age I was already rejecting my mother's desire to dress me in sensible jeans and dungarees and begging for pink, flowery dresses. By this age the boys I knew were already wearing mostly blue and bright red and camoflage colours, and saying things like 'Ew, giiiirls!'

These behaviours all seem perfectly natural - until you realise they're not.

Until the age of around eight or nine, boys and girls have precisely the same hormones running through their veins. If you took a group of boys and girls under ten and dressed them in the same grey sack and cut all their hair to the same length, you would be unable to tell boy from girl, even if they spoke or hugged you or danced around the room.

There is no pink gene on the X-chromosone that automatically makes little girls crave flowery dresses and ribbons and baby dolls. There's no blue gene on the y-chromosone that automatically makes boys crave fast cars, swords and buzz cuts. There's definitely no 'Euw, giiirls!' gene that requires boys to treat girls and anything that girls might be interested in with disdain and contempt.

And yet these are all behaviours which are so common, so normal, so 'natural' to us that we not only don't QUESTION them? We get all het up and bothered if kids *don't* conform to them. Like, for instance, when this American blogger helped her little boy's wish come true by allowing him to dress as Daphne from Scooby Do at Halloween, and dozens of people descended on her to say that she was a bad mother.

It's not that either of these Wordles presents any bad words. There's nothing wrong with a child of either sex liking dresses and babies or dragons and heroes. The problem is that the companies creating these toys, and the people marketing them, are making an assumption that girls - and only girls - are vitally interested in fashion, perfect nails, babies, love and hair. And that boys - and only boys - are interested in battle, power, heroes, stealth and beating people.

Which is only true if we make it so, by pushing a narrow, reductive take on what male and female mean onto children and telling them 'this is what you are'. There is simply no reason for young children to be treated or act differently based on their sex, other than the fact that we, as a society, want them to be different.

What a terrible thing to do to a child, right? How awful to bombard them with films, TV shows, music videos, books and toys and toy catalogues (not to mention unconscious assumptions on the way that children should develop and behave) and try to force them to conform to unnatural, artificial ideals of gender, without any good reason.

What are kids, especially kids who don't enjoy the roles arbitrarily assigned to them based on their reproductive organs, absorbing from this?

Looking at these Wordles makes me think of all kinds of other things that worry me. Like the commonly held idea that boys don't read because not enough 'boy books' are on the shelves, and that the dominance of women editors and writers in Young Adult and Children's publishing is somehow hurting boys and preventing them from becoming readers. The arguments about this are summed up beautifully in this article by YA author Maureen Johnson - and the comment trail is particularly interesting.

Why is it so impossible for us to expect a boy to read a book that has a girl main character? Why is the idea of reading about a girl so disgusting to boys that, apparently, they won't even go into the bookstore because they have to pass by books with girls in them? What are we teaching boys - and girls - about the value of their role in society by encouraging this, and by placing the blame on female authors and editors intead of a society that raises boys to look at girls (and anything that may be considered to be 'girly') with contempt? Especially since we're also raising the girls to believe that they must conform to 'girly' behaviour and interests in order to be 'normal' and 'natural'?

It's not normal and natural.

Babies, love, perfect nails and romance are awesome. So are battles, dragons, flames and heroes. What I want to know is, why can't both sexes be interested in both without being shunned by our society? Why, 500,000 years after modern man first emerged as a species on earth, are we still trying to play by the strict rules of a hunter-gatherer society that died out with flint axes and stone circles?

And will people like me still be asking this question in another hundred year's time - or a thousand?

BLLLLEUUURRRGHHHHLLL...

...as I said to someone on Twitter. No, seriously. That was about the height of my wit at 7:30 this morning, and I'm afraid I've not moved on much since.

Yesterday was the first day of Nano, and it brought with it just over 2,000 words of Big Secret Project Book Two (YAY!). It also brought with it a strange bug which has given me a fuzzy head, achy joints, an extremely sore throat, and this creeping red rash on my face and neck (BOOO!).

And I need to try and hit my Nano target again today. Folding after just one day would be too pathetic for words. But since I'm still feeling like the grey slimy thing that one of my cats left on the doormat, those are about the only good words I'm going to be capable of, I think.

See you on Friday - when hopefully I'll look and feel and WRITE less like a grey slimy thing and more like, you know, a person.

*Waves feebly*

*Totters away to wWriting Cave*