I've decided...

...that I'll still write in November and edit in January and reward myself with a J2O for every 5k I write/significantly edit as if NaNo and JanNo were still going but I won't pressure myself to complete the manuscript/edit or feel bad if I don't manage the whole thing within the month.

I'm also still a SCBWI member, it's just being moved about a bit in the British Isles and there will be more RAs and ARAs as well as people with specific roles within that so it'll hopefully still be the same as it was, just in smaller groups instead of for the entire country.

I think I've realised that I'm still not alone, I've just gotta reorganise my head for a while.

The last...

...writing organisation is being restructured, so that's the third and final writing community that I joined is potentially gonna change beyond recognition/close, so I'm on my own with my writing again now.

The restructuring will be to make the region into smaller regions, so the organisation will still exist, but it doesn't seem like there will be much/any community between all the different regions.

I can see it from both sides and I'll stay a member until I make up my mind one way or the other, but there's no central community for my children's writing any more.

I love being a Scoobie!

I've literally just seen an email about something that's going on in SCBWI-BI for the next month and I've got a place that I didn't think I stood a chance of getting.  I don't know what I said or did to deserve the place but I'm sooo grateful for it!  That's two in the last 6 months and they have both come with incredible timing!

I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say so I'm gonna shut up now, but I've got a silly grin plastered to my face now lol

Thinking of self-publishing your children's book?

If, for whatever your reason is, you wanna self-publish your children's book, do yourself a big favour and read this blog post by a fellow Scoobie first.  She's got some great advice and you've got nothing to lose by reading it through... who knows, it might save you a lot of time and money.

 

First chapter of JanNo (re)written now!

I wrote two paragraphs for JanNo on 1st or 2nd January and was totally overcome with writers block.

I've totally got rid of those two very telling paragraphs and just finished chapter 1 in only a couple of hours, so I'm hoping to write at least one more chapter before I head to bed and I'm hoping for at least four chapters a day for the next 10 days so that I can still get it finished for JanNo.

I can't thank SCBWI enough for their gentle truths about those first two chapters and inspiration to start again but getting straight into the fighting without boring world-building telling to start with.

Just need to work out which is the right way to format a manuscript.  I know which I prefer and which looks better to me, but I want all my manuscripts to be industry standard not just my preference.  Not going to worry about that until I've finished JanNo though!

Learnt something new this evening!

Apparently what I was missing last night was something called "x meets y" and only needs to be a single sentence rather than the paragraph I was thinking!

Maybe "this manuscript is a British 11 by 12 meets Billionaire Boy" instead of going into why they are similiar!  I'm gonna read the 2 Kindle books I bought yesterday then try and come up with the correct x meets y thingy by the time I go to bed tomorrow.

I can so do this now and it's all thanks to SCBWI-BI!!

I'm totally scrapping the horror bit now, thankfully

Thanks to the SCBWI bods, I'm not putting anything in the novel that would give me nightmares.

Blood will prolly be involved quite heavily 'cos one of the MCs is a vampire but that's it now... nightmares successfully avoided thankfully!

Also, I've saved meself 25 chapters worth of planning too, in that it'll be a 75k word novel instead of a 100k one.  Hoping to plan out about 20-25 chapters a day so that it'll be all planned out before the weekend, then I'll go back to studying and slowly work on the writing whenever the mood takes me until the end of September, a month-long break during October then NaNo in November.

I can so do this!

What an incredibly productive day!!

After a slow start, someone in SCBWI reminded me to have chocolate and music to inspire and motivate me.

In 12 hours with the help of three mugs of drinking chocolate and Take That blasting through my ears, I've planned out a huge 27 chapters today and I'm now half way through planning the whole novel... not bad going I don't reckon!

I'm hoping I'll have another productive day tomorrow, as long as Steve doesn't mind supplying me with several more mugs of drinking chocolate and having me ignore him in favour of Take That again tomorrow!

Means I'll have totally finished the planning by Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning ready for enjoying Yule and Christmas and New Year with nothing to worry about!

Yay me!

You can all breathe a sigh of relief now, because...

I've just written the final word in this year's NaNo novel and it's finished at exactly 51k words too.

No more anger or frustration or questions... just another MS in the "To Edit" folder now and after only 12 days too, including a couple of day-long breaks in writing.

Feeling so proud of myself now and I'm gonna use the rest of November to edit my other MSs in the "To Edit" folder now that I'm in the writing zone.

Need to ask if a parent/tween combination on SCBWI can have a read of a couple of chapters to make sure I don't scare the tweens is all now... you watch me forget though!  lol

4 chapters written so far

Already half way through today's target, but Steve's just gone to put our lunch in the oven so I'll read my emails and forums and SCBWI while I'm waiting for it otherwise I'll be half way through a chapter when it's ready and I'll have to stop which will put me in a bad mood.

Gonna start on chapter 24 after lunch though so I'm a third of the way through and hoping for being up to chapter 35 by the end of the weekend.

Just renewed my SCBWI membership

$80 a year is pretty steep but so worth it for what I couldn't get anywhere else!

Something I posted to SCBWI this morning

Question for the writers here and it's not a SpaG or pondering for a change.

The hubby is a computer programmer and I've just asked him about how easy or otherwise it'd be to create an app that takes the best bits from yWriter and Scrivener etc but taking out the bulkiness and complexity of Scrivener and using the simplicity of yWriter to come up with a programme aimed at children's writers.

He said it'd be easy enough to programme it, but it'd need a database of ideas and characters and scenes and stuff.

So, other than ideas, characters and scenes, what else do my fellow children's writers want in their ideal writers block beating planning and organising piece of software and do you want to be able to write the manuscript within the software or keep it separate like with yWriter?

How easy would you want it to be to add your own ideas to the database? Would you just want first name suggestions or surnames too? Would you want a different programme for each age range (PB, early reader, easy reader, early chapter book, MG, YA) or would you prefer to just have one piece of software and you choose the age you want the software to use?

Would you prefer it to be a free trial first (with limited usage available) then a small fee at the end as an upgrade to the full version if you decide to keep using it or a slightly more expensive full version right from the start?

Any thoughts welcome!

So come on, reply to this post and give me the information you want in the app... everything from idea generator to synopsis writer, character names to scene creation.  This is your chance to get involved in a totally new idea!

I'm liking yWriter more and more!

I thought yWriter was a fantastic programme anyway 'cos it helped me remember character names, make notes of phone numbers and stuff as well as planning out each chapter.

SCBWI explained about how scenes were used in Scrivener et al so I thought I'd give it a go in yWriter.

So glad I did 'cos I planned out a whole novel in 5 days and I didn't forget to put in anything I thought of and I could make sure I tied up all the loose ends instead of forgetting about them!

If you're a writer who frequently suffers from writers block and you've got scraps of paper all over your computer with ideas that have come to you just before you fall asleep, get yourself yWriter... you won't regret it!

Gonna try out the synopsis writer bits of it today... I tried when I first downloaded it but because I wasn't using the scenes, it couldn't give me as much detail as possible, understandably.  Now that I'm using the scenes part though, I want to give it another go and see what happens!

I've reached the half way point now

Just finished planning out scene 3 of chapter 27 of 55.

It's tough going thinking up so many ideas and for the first time ever I'm planning it scene by scene instead of chapter by chapter, so I've got to come up with even more ideas than usual.

Hopefully having everything planned out will make it easier to write and stop the dreaded writer's block I usually have with MG and YA novels, purely because they are so much longer than ECB's!

Couldn't have planned out so many chapters without the help of SCBWI though - especially today!

Need to come up with some more words that the bullies can call KT though!  I've got a few, but I'm not comfortable with using them so am on the lookout for some others for KT who is in the bottom set for every lesson except music... can you help me out pretty please?

Grammar

I used to be good at the names of things and their descriptions and usage but since getting brain damage in 2002/2003 I've lost the ability to recognise which are verbs, adverbs, nouns etc.

I swallowed my pride and admitted my difficulties with grammar since coming out of ICU in 2002/2003 to SCBWI and I got 3 URLs to go to so that I could download things that described what each of the grammar words meant and gave some simple examples.

This page had exactly what I was after... just need to read it every day until my brain remembers my GCSE English and it's all sorted then.

It's things like this that make it so worth the annual fee!

Cornerstones

Just heard back from Cornerstones about KISS that I sent them yesterday and the email was really helpful!  I know where I've been going wrong with my novels so I'm going to work on what I've learnt from that email with all my novels while I'm saving up the £763.33 for the report and 6 hours of mentoring... that's more than I get a month in benefits and with nothing being taken out at all, no bills or shopping or anything.

Other than my bills and groceries and occasional Namehog stuff, I'm not spending anything else until I've saved up for the Cornerstones stuff.  I'm going to give Steve my debit card and tell him to hide it somewhere that I can't find it.  The only time I'm going to use my debit card is for Namehog stuff every few months.

Nothing else.

Every spare penny goes into my secondary account from now on so that I can save up that money I need.

2017 is going to be my year to get an agent.

SCBWI is the first step, Cornerstones the second... everything else will just have to take a back seat for now.

Wot I've lernt

I used to think that my manuscripts were the best things ever written.  I didn't need to edit them because they were already perfect as they were.  I didn't need to be in a crit group because they couldn't be improved upon.

In short, I had mis-placed confidence in my manuscripts.

SCBWI has gently encouraged me to not be so precious about them and that editing really was worth doing.  They've encouraged me to join a crit group and to take the feedback on board - they've given me constructive crits instead of the put-downs I was dreading.

I've learnt from other people's writing and I've learnt how to improve my own writing by reading the feedback.

It's not cheap to join SCBWI, but it's so worth it within the first few months so I really don't mind paying the annual fee and I recommend it to anyone who will listen!

I've learnt about new agents and publishers as soon as they go public with their opening.

I'm one of the first to know about slushpile challenges and competitions and limited opening submissions.  I've learnt about agents and publishers to go with and when really big agents and publishers are open for a new author to take on.

I've learnt that it's OK to cry when you're rejected and I've learnt to submit to the next one on my spreadsheet as soon as I get the rejection email.

I've learnt that it's OK to admit that you aren't perfect and that you need help... everyone does at some point and SCBWI is the best place I've ever found to help to get you to be the best you can be.

If you write or illustrate for children, get thee to SCBWI and they will help you to be the best person you can be!

Review of "The Moon Laughed at Me" by Katie Woolhouse

I know Katie from SCBWI and couldn't wait to get my hands on her book when I found out it was published and ready to be bought!

This is a cute little picture book about the main character, Izzy, going to the park and playing with her friends.

The first couple of pages are confusing for me though... at first I thought Izzy was a little girl, then a cat then back to a little girl again and there are a few inconsistencies with SpaG that kinda distracted me from the story... sorry, Katie!

If you've got a young child who seems to have never-ending energy then get this book 'cos that describes Izzy (the MC) to a tee!  They even go back to the park in the dark because Izzy can't sleep and wants to go and play with her friends again!

It ends up as Izzy going back home and falling asleep though.

Nite nite Izzy!

Ideas for early chapter books please?

Fancy trying my hand at writing an early chapter book, but I'm totally out of ideas!

I stole the idea of a spiral staircase from D on SCBWI, but don't know what else to include in it now!

I had loads of ideas spinning around my head when I first read those two words, but the brain damage has totally made me loose them all now  :-(  Should have written them down before I got the permission to use it!

Just nudged another couple of agents

I queried a couple of agents back at the end of June this year, but haven't heard anything back from either of them, so SCBWI recommended that I sent them an email to see what's going on.

I got an automated email reply from one of them giving another email address to send it to because she's on honeymoon atm.

Third person correctly hopefully!

Keep your fingers and toes crossed for me!  :-)