Maggie Stiefvater blogged a little while back about time management, and particularly how it’s possible to juggle writing with parenthood. I never know what to say when people comment on how I write books while I have small children to look after. On the one hand, I’m constantly thinking of my failings, of the long gap between books, of how long it has taken me to get here. On the other, I don’t want to sound flippant, or imply that anyone can do it, that there’s anything particularly special about me. I don’t want to sound all judgy about anyone who does find it impossible. Some days it is impossible, and who am I to say what someone else’s possibility looks like?

What I should say, but never think of at the time, is this: it’s hard work. Raising children is hard work. Balancing any kind of paid work with raising children is bloody hard work. I’ve learned a lot about my writing over the last five years since my first child was born. I’ve learned not to be precious about how and where I write. I’ve learned how to get it done, one achievable goal at a time. I’ve made it to a really important rung on the ladder – selling books to publishers – and am working very hard on the next one – writing books to deadline.

As Maggie says, having children isn’t an excuse not to write. I’d like to add that it can be, however, a very valid reason, whether you’re talking about five years or two weeks. This is particularly pertinent to me because the school holidays started today.

(more…)

Bought today:
3 black garments to be worn under red velvet jacket [note to self, check that red velvet jacket still exists]
1 black (non-nursing) bra to be worn under black garments [note to self, provide snacks for baby at launch]
1 red satin snood for hair
1 pearl hair tie
4 assorted animal masks/ear and nose sets, to adorn one picky five-year-old and a baby
1 toy dragon to entertain baby during shopping expedition

Still to buy:
Bobby pins
Eyebrow pencil for the drawing-on of whiskers

Still to make:
A tail (lion) at five-year-old’s request, presumably to go with the mouse ears.

Sound of my daughter purring, wearing cat’s ears with her school uniform and a black furry bowtie:
Priceless

It’s all starting to happen.

I finalised the launch details today with the Hobart Bookshop, and came away with some pretty posters to stick up to advertise the event. The details of the event are here and I’m hoping those Hobart residents out there who read this blog will be coming along to say hi and join the party. Chris and Janet at the Hobart Bookshop always put on a good launch, and it should all be done just in time to go have dinner somewhere lovely in Salamanca, even if it is a Thursday night.

I was going to say it’s a school night, but apparently there are school holidays about to descend upon us (yes Melander, I know you warned me, but I thought it was late June, not the bit of June that is still barely clinging to May!) and so those of you with small children like me do not have to feel guilty about bringing them along. We may have to feel guilty about what wreckage our children perpetrate upon the kiddy corner of the bookshop, but let us not count our regrets before they happen…

Is it odd that I’m more concerned what my children wear to this event than what I wear? When I think about what to wear my brain goes all tunnel visiony and panic-ridden. I have a baby, I live in t-shirts and track pants these days, I’ve forgotten how to dress up! Raeli went as a mermaid to my last book launch, and I’m now kicking myself I didn’t buy little girl cloche hats from Etsy for this one. It’s probably a bit too close to the even to get them sent out now. Still, one never knows when a cloche hat will come in handy. I’ll just put flowers in Raeli’s hair and drape beads on her, and Jem can come dressed as a cat. Or a tiger. Or a wolf cub. All these things are appropriate to the story…

I’m delighted that Craig Wellington will be launching the book. I’ve known Craig since I was a wee child and now he’s terribly important – a theatre producer, performer, comedian, public speaker and writer among other things, and has become a bit of a local legend in Hobart circles. Having him on board brings a lovely sense of occasion to the event, and apparently this is the first time anyone’s ever asked him to launch a book, which is very surprising to me. Glad I could correct it now!

I’m also working away on a few little publicity projects which should come to light over the next week or two. Watch this space!

3rd of June, 5:30pm, Hobart Bookshop, Salamanca Square. Come along!

So April went pretty well, with me getting back into the pace of regular writing. The first week of May… well, I wrote 6800 words or so, which is not shabby at all, and yet falls short of the 7500 I was aiming for. 700 words, that’s not much, right? Except that these things are hard to catch up on and then you get left behind, and…

Looking back on the week I can see my errors. I did great for several days, not only knocking off the 1500 word target comfortably, but also burning through to do lists, which incorporate necessary tasks, housework, exercise, Pendlerook business, other writing/editing, and those things I’ve been putting off for weeks or months. I’ve discovered a few rules of thumb, like that if I don’t factor in exercise I don’t exercise, and that if I want to actually complete a day’s to do list, it has to be a) realistic and b) not have more than 10 items on it.

Things didn’t get problematic until Thursday, a day when I only have about 3 hours at home, and those hours with a baby, which means one naptime. Trying to pack a whole 10 item to do list into that day was a mistake. Deliberately cutting short the amount of writing I had to do that day, to make it up on my much friendlier Friday (in which I have five hours at home before the school pick up, with baby, and at least two naps) would have been fine if I didn’t also have to do items for Friday. 2000 word Fridays are possible if there is nothing else to get done. I was aiming for 2500… plus STUFF.

Btw in case it’s not obvious, ‘nap’ as a unit of measurement is roughly an hour to an hour & a half when the baby (not ME) is napping and I have time to do things without my attention having to be shared.

(more…)

Weird to think that April was the first time I had touched Book #3 (which may or may not be called “Saturnalia,” publishers are hoping for something a little more X of/and X to match the first one… we’ll see… ooh how’s “Ides of Saturnalia”???) since NaNoWriMo last year (November, of course) in which I whipped out the first 50,000 words of this sucker.

By the time April rolled around, I was keen to get going, though a touch alarmed at my utter lack of an ending. At the end of this April, I am still no closer to an ending (well, okay, I have a bit of an ending, but not an ENDING ending, I definitely know what the climax will be) but I have a lot more meat on Saturnalia’s bones.

It’s only 20,000 words, but it was a key 20,000 words. And, you know, past the halfway mark, presuming the book doesn’t get delusions of grandeur. All good things.

At this stage I’m planning/hoping to have the whole thing wrapped up sometime in June, with enough time to redraft, polish, and make it awesome instead of merely ‘there.’

Third books are extraordinary things. You have to pay off everything that has come before, but also ideally it is a creature in its own right. I am hoping that each of my books has individual identities, but I’m pretty sure this one has lots of twists and turns coming that no one knows about. Which must be soooo fascinating to read about given how I’m not actually giving any information up at all.

The good news is that I got in a sex scene I wasn’t expecting, between two characters who definitely weren’t supposed to do that, but I can hardly blame them, as they had time to kill, and who wants to read half a chapter of two people waiting around? Not me! I’ll be interested to see the outcomes & ramifications of that little incident, I can tell you! Yes, writing a book is actually much like reading one, only it takes a lot longer.

I’m still building structure and plot and even a little extra world under my feet, so not yet at that exciting running downhill fast part of the book, but hopefully I will get there soon.

The writing part itself is getting harder, as in the physical act, because even as the book sucks me in and is inspiring me greatly, my baby has learned to crawl and is attempting to nap less, which means my 8:30-2:30 work day is shrinking into occasional bouts of 45 minutes or so at a time. All this and I have discovered that actually I really like having a clean house (and it does make baby crawling less stressful to have tidy floors) which SUCKS because as soon as the baby goes down for a nap my brain is all ‘yay, now we can CLEAN’ which I suspect means there’s something deeply wrong with me.

I have no idea when my edits for Book 2 are going to turn up, and I want to get as much of Book 3 as possible drafted before that happens. I’m trying for 30,000 in May given that 20,000 in April worked out so well. May and June especially will be all about Book 1, which will be fairly distracting…

Then, come September, though there will still be editing and proofing and all that stuff to do for 2 & 3, I will be able to write something new. Even possibly to sell something new, as I’ll be trying to sell on proposal first. I’m also putting in grant applications this year for a Nancy Napoleon novel, since I adore her and the timing is pretty good for some more Hobart Noir. New projects are afoot, haharrr. This writing thing is pretty awesome.

So no, as it happens, April Tansy does not grudge March Tansy that month of time off and getting her head together at all! Apologies to those of you hoping for a slapfight. I seem to be juggling things reasonably effectively right now. Though April Tansy is still snickering about the fact that March Tansy entirely failed to plan for those school holidays right at the beginning of the month. There are some in June too. TAKE NOTE, FUTURE TANSY!

Jem is growing up. In the last week she’s gone from slithering over soft toys to flat out crawling, head high, getting into everything. Which is awesome and exciting, but it’s amazing how fast in parenting the ‘oh wow’ moment goes to ‘oh shit’ as you realise that your child is gradually developing the superpowers they need to evade and thwart you.

I managed a pretty good writing week, but I’m relying very heavily on those three naps a day and it’s hard not to be aware that, you know, things change. One day you wake up and they don’t need three naps any more, then not two, and then they stop napping altogether, and then you’re royally screwed.

Still, there are compensations, such as the five-year-old agreeing to feed spoonfuls of vegie mash into her baby sister so that both parents can eat their dinner while it’s hot.

(more…)

One of these days I will alert myself to the impending school holidays early enough that I can arrange my work schedule around them, in order to spend quality time with my children without the slightest hint of resentment that, you know, I’m not getting my words written.

This is not that story.

Honestly, in all my planning to take a break in March and get writing like a calm, controlled maniac in April, how did I fail to notice that the Easter holidays started on April 2? Also that the Easter holidays are not in fact the 5 days that people with jobs (such as my honey) get, but last for nearly two weeks. Okay, a week and a day. I did say nearly.

I managed to escape my mummification today in order to drop in on the (inset witty name I have forgotten) writing group down at Mures. While I didn’t get a lot of work done, it was awfully nice to talk about writing, read through some of my ms (boy I used a lot of words in my sentences in November) and generally get my head into the right space for my real return to the novel, on Monday. Oh, school sweet school.

Raeli and I continued work on the Project From Hell, aka ‘oh wouldn’t it be lovely for me and my daughter to make a paper theatre together, all we need is glue and a stanley knife, what could possibly go wrong?’. It looks extremely dodgy but will hopefully be serviceable enough to stage a lopsided paper doll version of the Nutcracker ballet. No one has yet been hurt.

When in doubt, I pull my girls into a heap on one of the extraneous beds in the house (I am now thinking I will have to design my new study around the queen sized bed, I don’t want to give it up, it’s so snuggly for reading on) and read stories with them. Well, I read them. Raeli takes turns reading & being read to. Jem mostly chews on them. It’s an eco-system of sorts…

Tomorrow we’re going for a repeat attempt at an Easter at my Mum’s place, in which no one is taken to hospital or passing gastro to anyone else. There may be brightly dyed eggs, and someone might fall in the creek. No writing will get done.

Monday, Monday, Monday. How I long for you.

I couldn’t sleep last night, which bugged the hell out of me. Serves me right for going to bed early in order to get up for Arsenal v. Barcelona, I think. I ended up getting up at 2am and writing, on the grounds that if I didn’t get any sleep, I would be too trashed to make the most of my one child-free afternoon for the week, so I might as well get some work done.

There are no children awake at 2am. I might have to remember this for the future.

I spent a couple of productive hours reading through my doc and figuring out the big middle section of my plot, and then tuned into the game which started out promisingly enough, and then collapsed in a big messy heap. Oh dear, I actually said that out loud, didn’t I? The heap was in fact constructed mostly of Messi. That man is horribly good at what he does – if he ever loses the mullet for a better haircut, he will be diabolical. Shame he felt the need for some show diving in the first half.

Where was I? Oh, that’s right, writing.

It occurred to me this morning that I really need to get this novel written fast, so as to get it set firm in my head how it ends before I start hearing responses to Book One that might divert me from my purpose. Also that it might be good to have a purpose.

Hmm I’m at the point of tiredness where the whole body starts to ache.

It further occurred to me that people are reading review copies right NOW, the book itself comes out some time in June, and really that’s not a lot of time to write 70,000 or so new words. And to find a purpose. Well actually I’m pretty sure I found the novel’s purpose around 4am, but that may have been a particularly strong yawn.

Why does it have to be school holidays… Mama wants her pillow…

Writing. Writing good. Must write more writing. I may have written the novel’s full capacity of sex scenes already. That’s a bit depressing. Also, pulling an all nighter just to produce 800 words is a touch depressing, even if they are awesome plot-heavy words and also the most I have written since last Thursday.

Zzzz

So, April has arrived. That means that Saturnalia: Creature Court Book Three needs to be well underway. My current plan is to write 20,000 words per month, which is my favourite sustainable level of writing – unlike Nano’s 50,000, it allows me to do some other things at the same time!

20,000 words a month means 1000 words a day on weekdays only. Factoring in weekends is still a new concept to me – it’s a little counter-intuitive when you have kids because your first thought is “oh, my honey is home then, this means tons of time to myself” which is of course entirely wrong. Weekends are nice. Having days when you don’t have to work makes for a better, more intensive working week.

Given that the 50,000 words I produced of this book during last Nano turn out to be actually pretty good (I KNOW, what were the odds?) I should have a half decent draft by the end of June.

Today, Raeli and I started bailing toys out of the playpen – Jem is going to need it stat, as she’s well and truly on the move. One of the essential writer’s accessories is a baby who is not currently choking herself on fabric scraps.

Tomorrow, I write again – I seem to have set myself up to do a sex scene next which is awesome- nothing writes up faster! I wasn’t going to have one that early in the book, but as Kaia said this morning, my characters have probably spent my entire “fallow month” in bed with each other anyway, so I might as well let them get on with it.

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.

(more…)