April has been a mixed month for me, writingwise. The Easter holidays and a whole lot of personal stuff smashed into me, to the point where I stopped, reassessed, and changed my plan. Instead of getting stressed of my week of no writing, I counted out how many weekdays I had left of April, and bumped up my daily goal to 1200 words. Sorted!

As predicted, though (and not properly prepared for) I’ve been finding it hard to get back into the swing of my book. What I really need is a spare fortnight or so to read through the thing and think my way into it slowly, but, you know, I took a month off. I have so little available writing time (and less each week, the baby is tapering off on naps, damn it!) that I have to have precise, small, achievable goals and keep them up regularly or the whole thing will fall apart.

That said, today is the first day this week that I didn’t make my word count. I spent the morning at Pilates (which I am loving in a freaky sell-the-concept-to-your-friends kind of way), came back to deal with the baby, and when I finally sat down to write, I struggled to get any words down. I gave up just short of 400, utterly bored with my book and myself. And you know, that was it, my one chance for the day. School pick up and parenting took over.

But you know, no excuses I need to prepare more for Thursdays, obviously. Need to do more of that ‘pre-scening’ our Richard talks about, so that when I get my single hour at the computer I can actually produce the goods.

I’m starting to suspect that this book will in fact be looooonger than the other two, and that’s going to affect my scheduling too.

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Well, the manuscript has gone, winging its way towards the offices of HarperCollins by carrier pigeon. (they’re speedy these days!) Two books down, one to go. (and, not entirely coincidentally, I have figured out titles for the first few Nancy Napoleon novels, which is almost as good as having the books themselves written) March can officially begin, one day early!

I should be jubilant, but I’m too busy being sad about the result of the last Arsenal game – we beat Stoke 3-1, but it was poor compensation for the horrific injury that Aaron Ramsey received. He’s a nineteen year old Welsh player who has been doing so well for the first half of our season, and had (hopefully still has) a brilliant football career ahead of him, and one nasty tackle has left him with a leg so badly broken that it could be a year or longer before he’s back. Devastating for him, for the players, and for the fans.

I wasn’t around for the Eduardo smash, which happened before I became a rabid Gooner, but I’ve seen how important his return and recovery was to the other fans and players. Having this happen again, and to the adorable baby-faced Welsh one, is gutting. I feel particularly bad that I’ve been joking too much lately about the Arsenal tendency towards injuries. Really not funny this morning. Here’s hoping it’s not as bad as it looked (it um, looked pretty bad, apparently… I couldn’t bear to watch the video, but apparently there were no replays on the feeds because it was so awful). The poor kid has a long road of recovery ahead.

For less depressing sports news, how awesome is Kelly Kulick? This is the first woman to win a men’s Professional Bowlers Association Tour title in the US. Women making it at the pro men’s level of sports is a rare and wonderful thing, and Kelly has been all but ignored in the sporting media. Is it because she’s female? Is it because bowling isn’t regarded as a legitimate sport?

It’s worth reading the whole article, because these questions are asked and some answers are found, particularly when it comes to gender bias. Particularly charming is the sportswriter who says: “Rule No. 1 in determining whether an activity is a sport: If the best female in the world can beat the best male in the world, it doesn’t qualify.”

Niiiiice. So Kelly Kulick is singlehandedly responsible for ensuring bowling doesn’t count as a sport? Or maybe, just maybe, there’s something else going on there.

In other news, I am totally buying my daughter soccer boots this week. She’s 21 days too young to be allowed to play school soccer, damn it, damn it, but we’re going to do the best we can to keep up her interest until she is allowed to play. One long year away. Hopefully the soccer boot shop has pink ones – if it’s good enough for Nicky Bendtner, it’s good enough for Raeli!

I’ve been inhaling old episodes of Radio Free Skaro (Torchwood and children? That’ll never work. And why haven’t we seen the 456 on the promos? Have they not CGIed it yet?) in between current episodes of Radio Free Skaro, while drilling away on my manuscript formatting. Scrivener, it turns out, has all kinds of lovely features to allow you to compile a document for final submission, but it’s taken a while to iron all the bugs out, and even now that it exists in a single doc (120,000 words eeeee) I still have to go through the whole thing, page by page, to make my chapter headings and numbers and page breaks all – you know, be consistent and tidy and in some cases, bringing them into existence.

I got halfway through the ms in a few solid hours, but was struck by the desperate need to move around and be active – this, coupled with the incursion of ANTS ANTS into the dining room which I usually work in, led to a mass tidying of over and under the dining room table, in order to clear space for Robie the Robot to do his vacuuming thing.

The good news is that my cleaning frenzy did throw up the copy of Power of the Daleks (I am so obsessed with old Doctor Who right now, I know my everyday state is ‘mildly obsessed’ but I’m in an active state right now, I suppose the obsessive bookbuying had to go somewhere) I had borrowed from the library and promptly lost. Still haven’t found our much-renewed library copy of Maisie Eats Lunch or whatever the hell it’s called, though.

I took advantage of the lack of sunshine to play soccer with Raeli! As part of my plan to incorporate more activity into my daily life, I promised her blithely that I would play soccer with her “every evening” which, I’m sorry to say, has led to far more “but you promised!” moments this week than is healthy for our relationship. Though you know, I *did* promise, and when she says that, I do haul myself outside to kick some goals with her. I love sporty Raeli! She’s so gung ho! She didn’t even blink when I accidentally kicked her in the face with the ball (I’m not good at this! I’m trying!) but then sadly came a cropper, tripping flat on her face. I had told her pink gumboots weren’t the most appropriate footwear, but she insisted. Possibly the fact that my own soccer kit is bright pink pyjamas and black leather boots compromised my believability.

Anyway. Only halfway through the manuscript. I was hoping to finish today! But on the bright side I do have a tidy dining room, a tired daughter and sore feet. Hooray!

It’s done! That is, it’s not completely done – there are various tasks to be done, such as the arranging of scenes into chapters, the collation of the non-Scrivener doc (clings to Scrivener) and a final read through, all of which will happen over the weekend. But the scene by scene edit of The Creature Court Book Two: Cabaret of Monsters, the part that requires the absolute full on part of my brain, is done, finally.

I’m happy with the book. I’ve addressed all the things that I thought were a problem from the first draft, and it’s basically as good as I can get it on my own, which is exactly where you want to be when it comes to submitting an ms to the publisher. Hopefully my editor (please let them give me Nicola again!) will find a whole bunch of new things, and I’ll have a nice break between then and now so as to be open to the needs of the structural edit.

Not yet, though. Not yet!

This is a big deal for me. Looking back over old posts, I wrote 90K of the book during the latter half of my pregnancy, and hit the 100K mark before Jem was two months old. I finished the draft somewhere between her being 10 and 12 weeks old. (seriously?? I wrote a comment on Lauren McLaughlin’s guest post the other day claiming that I hadn’t done much in the way of writing for the first 3 months of my baby’s life – how can I have forgotten this so soon??)

This is the first time I have written anything with a 0-6 month old baby to take care of, let alone a novel with a real publisher deadline! When Raeli was a baby, I retired my novel for most of the year, and only started back on my thesis when she was 6 (cough, 9) months old.

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Nine scenes to go.

Nine scenes to edit, one document to collate, eleventy zillion chapter headings to create, one novel to proof, four days to go.

I can totally do this.

Also, so far, staving off stomach bug. Wobbly, but not beaten.

I’m up to the last few scenes, the ones I was most worried about, the ones that have been quite deliberately left until last. And I’m finding that leaving them until last was the best possible decision, as it is allowing me to seed earlier a pretty major revelation that only came upon me when I wrote the final scene of the first draft.

Themes, themes!

I’m starting to get enthusiastic about Book 3. There is obviously no hope for me at all!

While I am picking up my darling 6 month old from daycare, check out this great post by Lauren McLaughlin about the combination of babies and novel-writing, and how being a mother made her change her writing priorities.

As the Snapshot 2010 interviews have been gathering steam, I’ve been working ferociously away at that other little side project of mine – the novel that’s due in to the publisher’s next week! Seven days to go and the family have all been struck down by some kind of lightning-swift stomach bug. I remain the only healthy one, which is in itself a terrible burden, but I also have a nasty taste in the back of my mouth…

All I can hope is that the insane numbers of antibiotics I am taking for the recurring throat infection from hell will be enough to keep the stomach bug at bay…

And oh yes, vomiting baby means one less daycare session this week than planned, possibly both if she’s still throwing up tomorrow.

I have 26 scenes left to edit, half of one to write from scratch, and then it’s hitting the export button on Scrivener to turn the ms into a real girl again, and reading through to check that it all makes a vague kind of sense. It should be doable in the time. If I don’t get struck down and spend the next week throwing up…

The doctor, on my second visit to see about the recurring throat infection (which is, we have since figured out, more in the way of a vicious but sneaky throat infection that laughs in the face of antibiotics) asked me if I was working harder than usual, or over-tiring myself. I just sort of looked at him with my head tilted on one side. Honestly, how would I tell?

Nearly there, nearly there. March is a month of milk and honey, of podcasts and blueberries and novel-reading and quilting and resting my brain in preparation for the novel to come: the dread Book Three, which I will be attacking in April.

All I have to do is survive to the end of the week, and everything’s going to be Fine.

I’m working away at my scene-by-scene edit of Cabaret of Monsters. Reached the halfway point of this today, which very much puts me on track for submitting the book at the end of the month. I’m getting to that lovely point where I’m not only marking progress and feeling confident about getting the job done, but am having some genuine moments of inspiration. The books I’ve been reading lately are so good they have been pushing me to lift my game.

Raeli and I are constructing a paper theatre, themed around the Nutcracker Ballet. I have been taking pics for photoblogging later, but for right now it’s a fun activity that we have been doing in fits and starts all week. Her glueing skills are truly impressive – I have the answer to what they’ve been doing at that school! Despite Kaaron and Margo’s fears, we have not yet been eaten by the demon that lives inside the Nutcracker doll. Possibly because we haven’t cut him out yet. Actually I’m not sure where he is…

The dread school holidays are at an end, and we have entered a new era: Raeli the school girl. No longer flirting with two days a week of kindergarten, she is now doing it hardcore, 5 days a week. She started in her new class yesterday and as we hoped, took to it like a duck to water. Ask me again how awesome it is to have a daughter who thrives in social and structured settings. Believe me, I don’t take this windfall lightly.

Meanwhile Jem is likewise thriving on her two half days a week of daycare. The main carer is lovely and genuinely fond of our girl (she is so the best behaved baby in the group – high five! baby five!) and Jem not only loves the playtime she gets there with other babies, but also sleeps and feeds well there.

Yep. Not taking that one for granted either. My working mother’s guilt has been halved if not quartered by the fact that my kids obviously benefit from having time in structured surroundings that have nothing to do with me. Hooray!

For the first time since Jem was born and the whole ‘oh that’s right, babies are hard work’ bubble burst directly over our heads, it feels like we are approaching sustainable normality.

Of course, once she starts crawling, it’s going to be a whole different kettle of fish. And then there’s the stress that sets in every time she readjusts to needing one less nap per day… but for right now, work can be achieved during short, frequent bursts of activity between the hours of 8:30 and 2:30. I’ll take it.

(oh and in case anyone missed it, Arsenal beat Liverpool in a long, unpretty but successful game this morning. After a truly awful week of football, this was a very cheering thing. Man U’s draw and the losses of Chelsea and Spurs only make it the sweeter… when I announced, 70 torturous minutes into the game, that we finally had a goal, Raeli replied “hooray, you and me have a goal!” She’s such a fair weather fan. When we’re losing, she barracks for the ref)

Feeling wrecked at the end of a long day, and a longer weekend. My honey and I have both dabbled in the life of a solo parent and found it not to our liking. Soooo much better to be able to swap out when the children are driving you crazy. I’m definitely happy to have my family under the one roof again.

(I ate an entire schnitzel lunch one-handed today, because Jem wanted joggling. This is what the second parent is for!!)

Meanwhile, Edit Boot Camp brought me 46 scenes edited in 3 days (yes, the 46 shortest scenes, that’s not the point) as well as several new ones written. The total so far for Get Book Finished month is:

Not bad at all.

I read a chunk of Siren Beat at the Republic Bar today. It went well, though it was a smaller crowd than usual – the poets spurned us for a fancier gig! The girls held up remarkably well – Raeli had just got in from a four hour drive from her Nanna and Poppa’s house on the north west coast, and Jem is, well, a six month old baby. There were no screaming fits from either of them. Bonus.

I enjoyed reading the story – I’ve tried before (for a podcast) but felt overly selfconscious trying to find Nancy Napoleon’s voice. And then, you know, three weeks of throat infections. Today it just seemed to work, the right amount of deadpan, sarcasm and pathos. I managed to stop reading before I got to any of the smutty parts, which was a good call because blushing is embarrassing. Still, it was fun – maybe I can have another go at that podcast.

My favourite part was, after all my loving detail of teenage corpses, kraken invasion and character deaths, when I walked away from the microphone, Raeli announced in a loud clear voice: “That was a lovely story, Mummy.”

Yeah, it’s probably time I stopped assuming she’s not paying attention to grown up stuff, isn’t it…

We couldn’t stay for the second half of readings at the Republic, because my well-behaved baby was on the verge of falling apart, and there’s only so much luck-pushing one can, well, push. But it was a good afternoon.

1. I have a guest post up at Justine Larbalestier’s blog, talking about how reading has become a luxury rather than a necessity. I may be trying to do more about that shortly, but my priority right now should not be reading, it is EDITING.

2. The hardest thing about revising this manuscript (Book 2 of the Creature Court, Cabaret of Monsters, for those of you who have lost track) has been that although I knew generally that there was lots to be done, there was no real way of marking my progress for several months. This is no longer true. I am at the flat out working stage, I have 180 scenes in the book, and I have to revise 7 each day in order to meet my deadline. It’s a struggle, but it really helps to have a quota to hit each day instead of just stabbing in the dark.

3. I saw the first glimpse of my cover yesterday. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m very happy with the direction it’s going in. The most important frock in the book is being pictured!!!

4. We had a map drama today – do you have any idea how hard it is to proof a map? There is just so much information going on in it! Today I realised in horror that one of those details I’d been taking for granted (and thus not checked on recent versions) was now in the wrong place, and had a major panic attack until my honey fixed it with magical computer handwaviness. He is still juggling a new computer’s quirks (he’s had it less than 24 hours) and ended up having to redo the correction several times after the application kept closing down unexpectedly! Much deep breathing on my part.

5. I had to open my Nano doc for the first time since November and realised when I saw it that – HEY I have 50,000 words of my next novel already written. How awesome is that?

6. I’m still reading at the Republic Bar in North Hobart this Sunday from 3pm. Come, listen to me talking about tentacles, buy a copy of Siren Beat. You may even have a beer if you are very good. I am taking antibiotics for my re-occurring throat infection so let’s hope I don’t sound too much like Marlene Dietrich… oh, wait. That would be a good thing, right?

7. My honey is taking Raeli off on a grandparently visitation for TWO NIGHTS starting tomorrow. Yes that means I’m at home by myself with the baby, but more importantly it meants EDIT BOOT CAMP.

Watch this space. I’m going to be busy.

January’s over! Yikes. The end of the school holidays is fast approaching, which is good. I’m not nearly as far along with my rewrites as I wanted to be by this stage, but we can just call that another case of imaginary productivity.

There had better be nothing imaginary about my February productivity. I’m setting myself up for success the best way I can. When I haven’t been able to work, I’ve been building up anti-guilt points, playing with Raeli and setting up activities for her so I don’t feel so bad about disappearing into my laptop in the coming month. My honey is taking off the last week of the school holidays, which means he can entertain her and do the quality time thing while I indulge in reckless abandonment.

And of course there was the other work, the stuff with more immediate deadlines – proofs on proofs, and the last stages of correcting and redoing the maps. Not that I was actually doing the maps, but the last couple of weeks meant several meetings with Mum – the maps themselves were gorgeous but we’ve been juggling the sizing of text and my honey had to come to the party with electronic support and corrections too, managing to save Mum a lot of re-drawing time!

Meanwhile I’ve been reading my book 2 and notetaking and playing with Scrivener, and essentially pre-rewriting. The big work is all going to be done in the last month, though. I’ve worked through the fear and the paralysis stage (don’t know where to start! so much to do! make write better aargh!) and now there’s just the good stuff to do. I’m actually looking forward to it. I can see the shape of the book it’s going to be, and it helps that I’ve spent chunks of January immersed in the minutiae of book 1 – it’s amazing what themes and quirks you can slip into a book without realising it, and it’s only by being forced to read it line by line that you find those clever bits that really need to be elaborated on in later books.

It’s a trilogy I’m writing here, not three books, and it really is the first time I’ve done that – Mocklore was three standalone books, only becoming a trilogy of sorts in the final hour (and besides the wench is dead). I always wanted each book to expand on the previous one, making the story bigger and wider and sometimes changing the way you read the early books – but I’ve lived with Book One for so long now that it’s hard to let it go.

Final proofs are final. It’s gone. No changing it now. Further in, further in!

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