Archive for the ‘NaNoWriMo 2008’ Category

The world is my teeny-tiny mollusc

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

I have just this week been radically re-evaluating what I am capable of. [But see NaNoWriMo counter - Ed]

I told you all that I had passed my MA, making me a BaMaMa, which is just stupid. Well, last week the University finally got around to sending back the dissertation, all 15000 miserable last-minute-scribbly panic-welded words of it. But for insane, possibly-involving-vast-clerical-error reasons of their own, they marked it A+, 75%, jolly well done and thank you.

What? What on earth? [And, I repeat, see NaNoWriMo counter, for the full brain-wrenching paradox]

I assure you people, the dissertation was shit. I knew in my bones it was shit and I would just about scrape a pass, mostly out of the pity and embarrassment of my tutor’s hearts, and I’d have to bury it in the Council compost heap when it came back, after two goes through the shredder, naturally. And I had good reasons for knowing it was shit. I was grieving for my lost baby, I had been very ill and I can see now I panicked and went back to work [full-time work! Reed, you ARSE] far too soon, I hated the subject I was writing on, I procrastinated by reading and reading and reading and S was beginning to panic for me as bloody hell, I was leaving the writing part late, I typed the whole thing out in a last-minute frenzy [there's a king-sized typo in the Introduction that swallowed a whole sentence. How unsurprised I was to see it there].

The only people I have told about the A-freakin’-+ so far are my bestest friends, some colleagues, and the internets. No, not any family. Why have I not told family? Well, frankly, for their own safety, for they will say ‘I knew you’d be fine, I really don’t know what you were making such a fuss about’ and a red mist will descend and then eight police-men will be holding me down and prying the shattered remains of the twelve-foot solid oak dining table from my bare hands.

[Which somehow makes the NaNoWriMo belly-flop A-OK, does it?]

So. Well. So. There you have it. Hmmm

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Dear dear Helen, Lilian, Archie, Sol and David,

Hello! Have you ANY idea how lovely it is to find the internets haven’t forgotten you as you so richly deserve to be forgotten? Any idea at all? I think I shall cry real pearls and sneeze opals. It’s that lovely. And then we shall all have tea.

Anyway. This year’s novel is a fantasy [Oh, so very true, in so many ways - Ed (you didn't think you'd get her back without me too, did you?)] about, well, stuff. Politics, ambition, sibling rivalry, loveless marriages of state, nations on the brink of war, assassination attempts, journeys across two continents and woolly mammoths [In a word, and I use this word judiciously: Overambitious].

Progress on novel so far: Me tearing house apart looking for marvellous, fabulous, glowingly wonderful notes I made last year, listing really cool names for all the characters, complete with etymologies. Tolkien would have been so proud. Have I found the notes? Have I buggery. Am I saying ‘Never mind!’ and yomping cheerfully onwards? Am I buggery.

Also, my NaNoWriMo word counter isn’t updating properly.

It’s day 3 and I’ve lost the will to live. Go me.

She’s back.

Saturday, November 1st, 2008

My God, look at the dust in here. Look at it. I can’t even see the colours of the upholstery.

It’s disgusting.

We’ll have to redecorate.

*Whistles through teeth*

Someone mentioned the old blog to me a couple of weeks ago, and it dawned on me I’d been away for nine months. Nine whole months.

Normally, when a woman goes off to concentrate on ‘higher things’ for nine months, she comes back cheerfully brandishing a whole extra tiny person and a very smug expression. Well, I had a go at that, and it went very badly wrong, and I was rather ill for a while. Then I started a full-time job before finishing my degree, the which I think is absolute proof I had lost my tiny mind. And then term started again and I had handed in my dissertation and the NHS suddenly remembered my existence and lumbered back up to offer me some more invasive physical tests and maybe another go at this tiny-person-making business. Yes, I said. Why not. I can’t be unlucky every damn time, can I? Can I? Just give me a moment to consider how to explain further medical absences at work.

And naturally I decided to do NaNoWriMo as well. What the hell.

NaNoWriMo 2008

NaNoWriMo 2008