There are people who at times express surprise at how much I manage to do. Looking after a small baby, a school-age daughter, writing books, blogging, running a small business, etc. Sometimes they ask my secret, and I say ‘well, I’m a really bad housewife.’

Jeff VanderMeer has cued up a discussion on women, writing, guilt, and domestic responsibility, both at the Booklife blog and on his own (the really good comments so far are on his own blog). Rachel Swirsky also comments on the issue at her own blog.

I’ve commented over on Jeff’s blog about my experience as the stay-at-home-parent-who-writes, and I know how lucky I am to have a partner who sees my writing as an investment in our future rather than something which takes away from time I should be spending on, you know, vacuuming. I’m sure he would prefer I spent a touch more time vacuuming, since we bought the robot vacuum cleaner and all, but he has always been remarkably non-judgemental about the whole thing, and shared the chores.

There are so many potential issues/problems/complications tangled up in the concepts of Guilt and Motherhood, Guilt and Writing Time, Balancing Paid Work and Writing, Balancing Unpaid Work and Writing, that I think it’s impossible for any person to sum it up in an all-encompassing way. I always find it interesting to read other people’s stories about how they handle that difficult balance, though, and how they deal with their own expectations, and the expectations of others, which often have a lot to do with gender.

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Last night we gathered for a celebratory dinner with the Nano-chums, including partners and children and ended up being a 20+ group! Arranging the tables took some serious thought, and we ended up in three distinct sections: kids, parents, grown ups.

It was lovely to mark out our success (seriously only 19% of Nanoers completed, and we had something like a 60% success rate, how awesome is that?) and to include our long-suffering families (it being Hobart, most of the hubbies knew each other already). But the kids were all very excitable, and however pleasant the dinner was, it was kind of exhausting. There were no tantrums or injuries (never something to take for granted!) and they’re all great kids (heh especially MINE) but… pfeh.

After my third attempt to get from the restaurant to the car I confessed that – hell yeah, I made the right decision to not go to the Aurealis Awards. However wistful I might be about it – and I’ve been wistful about not going to this one since the last one, basically, when I had so much fun but knew I’d be babied up this time around – yeah. Sometimes just getting a meal leaves you needing a three hour lie down.

Speaking of the AA’s,  girliejones is rightly delighted that Twelfth Planet Press has scored seven nominations across the categories, and that every TPP project of the year received a nod in some way. She’s offering all the nominated works now with free postage (half postage overseas) for Christmas sales. If you’ve been meaning to pick up Horn for someone’s Christmas stocking (what else to do with evil unicorn fiction?), she’s getting low on copies, so grab one now!

Big day today – had horde of ravening NaNoites at my place from 10-2, munching biscuits and chocolates and grapes, drinking endless cups of tea and typing like maniacs. Special shout out goes to Melandering Abbott, who rid herself of her own children for the day and came along to be a support person and babywrangler.

I managed 2000 words.

After that we decamped to Mures for a further writing session, bolstered by fish, chips, salad, coffee and ice cream.  godieva hit 50K first, with me and Zarisson hot on her heels. With Clare Renshaw &  looneymoth happy with their not-trying-for-50K-that’s-crazytalk totals for the day, we all downed tools, ate celebratory treats and basked in general smugness.

I made 1000 words at Mures to reach the 50K which brings today in at 3000 words, by far the most productive writing day since baby Jem was born. It can, apparently, be done. Thanks to a great group of people. it was also one of the most fun writing days I can remember.

YAY US, AND YAY NANOWRIMO!

Almost there, almost there. You can tell when a group full of people have been doing NaNo too long, because the following seems hilariously funny:

- I always said they should make a reality TV show of Clarion, but what about NaNoWriMo?
- You could totally do that.
- Give twelve lucky people a chance to live in a big house with unlimited writing time and space, away from their real lives, the only down side is that they all have to produce 50,000 words, and obviously they’d all go insane. Screened live 24 hours on the web.
- Can there be a Big Brother style voice that gives them annoying writing exercises and tips like ‘write a scene with a robot zombie’?
- Does the winner get published? No matter how bad their book is?
- Ha, people would buy it anyway
- NaNoWriMo the Series: 30 Days, No Excuses
- Give them everything that writers say they need: hardware, time and space to do nothing but write, separation from jobs and family
- People would kill to get in there
- There would have to be catering, really good catering
- Do we vote people out?
(quick vote in room decides no voting people out)
- We want them to have to stay until the bitter end
- Maybe we evict them all as soon as they hit 50K
- So what, you end up with thousands of people watching an empty house with one person typing
- I’d watch that!
- Put all the books up on Lulu.com and they can all be published!
- Did you know that the average number of copies sold of a self-published book is 47? Or was it 9…
(conversation is derailed in order to discuss Harlequin Horizons)

Me: Okay the bad news is I’ve been here half an hour and written nothing, the good news is I know what I’m blogging about tonight.

EDIT: I totally forgot to include the part of the conversation where celebrities tape encouraging messages and writing tips to be beamed into the house – and Nathan Fillion opens buttons on his shirt to encourage high wordcounts (writers who don’t meet their day’s target are sent to the naughty room so as not to see Nathan opening the button on his shirt)

- so the house is only open to women and gay guys?
- no, but if straight men aren’t inspired by Nathan Fillion they will just have to dig deeper and use the experience of watching another man undress in their fiction. Grist for the mill! Grist for the mill!

EDIT EDIT: I also forgot the part where someone pointed out that there is always one who managed to complete NaNo in the first 3 days and I announced this was no longer a theoretical exercise and had become a murder mystery waiting to be written…

First, take a moment to admire the shiny word counter above. Is it not bee-yootiful? I am so relieved that I took this NaNovember to write the beginning of Book 3 – I already know a lot of things that will change about Book 2 because of it (and my fingers are itching to rewrite Book 1 – sadly TOO LATE, TANSY)

This morning was surprisingly lovely. I had a doctor’s appointment (my long-delayed post-baby check up) and decided to meander through town for the rest of the morning so I could meet my honey for lunch.

Oh yes, I was in TOWN. Town being the centre of Hobart, now a place so distant, rare and exotic to me that it instilled the excitement of a shopping weekend to Melbourne. (I have never done this) I trip-trapped through Pumpkin Patch, resisting the gorgeous $50 dresses (really SO beautiful, I was very restrained) but managing to stock up on lovely baby things on the grounds that Jem isn’t old enough to appreciate her first Christmas, so all her presents should be indulgences for meeeee… (cough, and Raeli-sized shoes and hats were on special)

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Every now and then I have to stop and remind myself “…with a three month old baby.”

For everything. It used to be “…with a newborn” and then we were counting week by week, but somehow now we’re at “…with a three month old baby.” (she’s three and a half now, but who’s counting)

In the last month and a half or so I have completed major edits for Power and Majesty, my first adult book with a major publishing house in, um, ten years. (I was busy!) I wrote several new scenes for said book. I finished the draft of book 2. I have written nearly (tomorrow!) 40,000 words. I am (ha, just barely) keeping up with the demands of a small business.

“…with a three month old baby.”

When I express frustration about how I’m not writing as fast as I’m used to, or not getting enough done, or dropping any of the dozen balls I have in the air at any one time, someone whether it be my honey or one of my very good friends, reminds me that, you know, there’s a baby there. And she’s entirely dependent on me.

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Have you noticed that I’ve been blogging rather a lot lately? For some reason, the unreasonably high output demanded by Nano seems to demand that I also write lots more in other places too. Odd, really. It’s like my writing muscles have expanded so much that one skimpy little novel isn’t enough for them.

Justine Larbalestier talks here about why professional writers don’t wait around for some fickle muse to show her prettily-permed head – which resonated with me, as I’m really not a muse-type, I prefer to anthropomorphise my stories themselves, usually as a bunch of self-deluded thugs who bash me over the head with their beautifully-dressed characters and drag me back to their cave.

But something else that hit home was at the end of her post where she reiterates that the advice she is giving is really for those people who see writing as their job.

This is important because almost all writing advice, particularly the advice about the physical process of writing (rather than, say, how to make your characters more 3 dimensional or whatever) is geared towards people who see it as a job. Not necessarily the job they have now, but the dream job that they aspire towards and are training for.

As Justine points out, NaNo is a really good chance for people to try on the professional-writer-pants and see how well they fit. Not being a NaNo writer doesn’t remove your potential pro writer credentials (many pro writers blink rapidly and have to have a lie down at the thought of 50K in one month), but regardless of your word target, it is a chance for people to step out of their everyday life structure and focus on writing as an exclusive priority for a month.

For many people, it won’t work out. Not because they can’t physically produce that many words in that time (though many can’t, and end up dispirited because of it), but because that kind of full on, brain-in-writer-mode obsession is actually not for them. Hell, there are plenty of people who can comfortably participate in and win at NaNo without actually viewing the writing of fiction as anything other than a pleasant hobby. Yes folks, there are people out there writing novels as a social exercise, or just to see if they can!

But there is a huge difference between writing for pleasure and writing as a job. Many writers make the transition at some point in their lives. Some start out from the beginning as if it’s a job (I was pretty much doing this from age 13). Some never plan to do it as anything more than recreation. Until I started reading fan fiction and joining a narrative RPG, I didn’t understand the concept of writing for fun, with no ambition to turn it into career-based works. But while several people have made the transition from fanfic writing to original writing with great success, many people just write fanfic or play narrative RPGs for the same reason that others quilt or cross-stitch or scrapbook. Because it’s fun.

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And thus a singularly unproductive day can be transformed into an incredibly productive one…

I am tired, so tired, my brain is just a little broken and one of my characters just developed a new lover interest (dude, seriously, did you need more?) which surprised me but explained so very much.

A very good character is turning villainous, and I have villains to redeem, and a touch more backstory to unpeel and then quite frankly I can just type random smut for the rest of the month because I will have achieved what I needed to this November.

Also I continue to feel wistful at the distinct lack of smut in this book. It’s as if the characters are busy worrying about their plot or something, and that’s just ridiculous. The secret steampunk subplot has yet to reveal itself but I think it’s still simmering (ha) just below the surface.

Can you tell I’m punchy? It’s so past my bedtime, and I had two desserts tonight. Woo!

Hee C who is handwriting her novel in an exercise book made it to 4 pages and got so excited at the best daily amount she’s written all month that she then made it to 5 and had to be forcibly removed from the exercise book and sent home to put herself to bed. Yes my dear, writing is an addiction, what do you think I’ve been up to all these years?

(her eyes are kind of Bright and Shiny oh yeah she’s got it bad, officially no longer a civilian I think)

Sleepy now zzzzzzzz oh and now the baby wakes up, no zzzz for me, lalalalala

I hit another wall today (possibly I have enough walls to construct a whole cottage now). My first attempts at leaving the house to write in public with Melander erupted into continual chaos and I think we were both relieved when we closed our laptops and accepted that keeping our children from killing each other and chatting about motherhood was going to be the best we could achieve that morning.

(Writing at Kidz Biz the adventure playground – good idea in theory, but not with child-friendship dramas, their constant need to be fed or cuddled better, and far too many people I know turning up there.)

Also I started to get that weird spacey ‘I didn’t have enough sleep last night’ feeling round about lunchtime. I counted up the hours I got to sleep last night and figured out a) last night was better than usual and b) maybe the problem is not enough sleep last WEEK?

Nap attempted this afternoon. Nap failed.

C is coming over soon, in the hopes of inspiration. I plan to drill my words out then and peer pressure her into doing the same. No talking. Have talked too much today!

My honey is lying on the bed reading Jeff VanderMeer’s Booklife and occasionally emerging to ask pertinent questions about my career like ‘you got paid for your last two contracts, right?’ It’s nice that he’s interested.

Raeli meanwhile is soaking up robot pop culture – the Iron Giant, followed by an Astro Boy marathon. She spent the morning interacting with other kids so I’m perfectly happy for her to veg out all afternoon – though she is drawing while she watches TV, heh. I used to do that. I was multi-skilling as a toddler.

Gah, baby is waking up (rocks chair, sends her back to sleep)

I’m catching up on the Alan Davies “It’s Up For Grabs Now” football podcast, which is awesome (especially the Alan Davies impersonation of Arsene Wenger – priceless) but sadly this is last week’s episode and features Alan’s list of the 6 players we need to stay fit all season if we want to have a chance at winning the league… including Robin Van Persie, sob! If only our players were not so fragile.

Brilliant writing day, with various people turning up to Nano with me – I ticked along with a reasonably respectable word count but things just took off plotwise just as my last guest left and I ended up 800 words over today’s goal, the most ahead I have been all months! Ah, angst, don’t you love it? Also I ended up accidentally poisoning someone which was most definitely not planned. Oops.

I only stopped writing because a certain little madam woke up, and I have still not figured out how to type and breastfeed at the same time (this is a lie, actually, it’s just a personal choice to not make her feel more neglected than is obviously inevitable)

Despite the temptation to do nothing but chat all the time I am loving this writing with other people thing. Makes me feel more like this is a real job and not just this random typing hobby.

Thanks everyone who replied to the podcast post on LJ, I am downloading heaps of stuff right now.

Some time ago, round about the time that LJ feeds stopped working for a week with no explanation, I switched to a Bloglines account for my non-LJ reading.  girliejones complained at the time that she wouldn’t be able to see what I was reading. So, here’s some linkage of the best blog entries I’ve read in the last few days:

Justine Larbalestier talks about stereotypes in fiction and how to transcend them, with particular reference to the protagonist of Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s brilliant Dairy Queen trilogy. (I have the third volume on my to read shelf, have been hanging out for it for months and cannot bring myself to pick it up, I think because I’m so sad this is the last one).

And if that interests you, check out Kaia Landelius reviewing the first volume of that series, over at Jumbled Words.

Jonathan Strahan starts blogging at Tor with a post about the editor’s responsibility to stretch beyond his own instant responses to fiction, and consider the wider audience. With bonus shout out to the Last Short Story crew, which includes your truly.

(speaking of Last Short Story, I should be whiling away this last hour of the afternoon catching up on the end of my reading but as you can see, I’m not, sometimes I even procrastinate my procrastination…)

Laurell K Hamilton posts with astonishing honesty about the breakdown of her first marriage and the relationship between that marriage and her Merry Gentry books (note – spoilers for Book 10 apparently though I have to say it wasn’t a thing that surprised me and I’ve only read the first 3 or so)

Sarah Rees Brennan reviews some of her recent romance reads – and makes them sound awesome, I have to say!

Agent Kristin covers the Harlequin e-publishing/self-publishing/vanity press announcements, and then reports on the angry response, culminating in a RWA-Harlequin smackdown.

Still on romance, Jessica at Romancing the Blog discusses the at times uncomfortable relationship between romance fiction, feminists and the cosmetics industry.

Finally, in the single link not relating to writing or editing, Laurie at Body Impolitic on blackface in fashion.