To NaNo, or not to NaNo, this is the question...

So last year, for the first time, I decided to try my hand at the whole NaNo thing... I had an idea, a drafted plot and even lots of inspiration I'd bought together.... and then life, or rather work, de-railed everything by throwing at me a couple of cases to do some drafting of legal documents on that involved historical child abuse.... and that was it, the muse shut down, because my mind could not write a fictional story (which on route to a happy ending did have some abuse in it) when I knew it was horribly real for some people.

Now, the time is fast approaching when I have to decide whether to try again.........I possibly should, because I need to get myself back into writing to build my own confidence with it.  Then again I possibly shouldn't given that my finals are on 16th November.... and I will have to revise.

I'd just about talked myself out of not bothering when I came across this picture...

which started giving me some thoughts and ideas, at which the dreaded bunny pricked up his ears and joined in.....

Then over the last couple of days the radio has kept playing me this song.... which seems to want to lend itself to the story ....

And when I looked closer at the lyrics gave me even more ideas ..... and now I am not sure whether to just give in (with as little grace as possible) and start plotting much more seriously .... and *gulp* a proper f/f story.... 

Sirens by Nell Bryden

Last night I dreamt I was floating with you
The river so deep and the sky perfect blue
If we leave behind the dust in the sky
From the sound of Sirens the city will rise
Hold your hand in mine, we’ll swim against the tide
From the sound of Sirens love will survive

And when your heart is on the run
When its chains have come undone
I will always be the one to carry you home

Streets lie so empty, the lost avenues
The lights of Saint Vincent are too much to lose
If we leave behind the dust in the sky
From the sound of Sirens the city will rise
Hold your hand in mine, we’ll swim against the tide
From the sound of Sirens love will survive

And when your heart is on the run
When its chains have come undone
I will always be the one to carry you home

If we leave behind the tears in our eyes
From the sound of Sirens the city will rise
Hold your hand in mine, we’ll swim against the tide
From the sound of Sirens love will survive

And when your heart is on the run
When its chains have come undone
I will always be the one to carry you home

Midweek Music.....

Because I haven't done this for a while and there is the whole Olympic thing happening at the other end of the Country starting next week.... So I thought I would give you one of my favourite tunes about the venue :)

I don't usually do music classified as pop but I have a soft spot for very clever lyrics and Lily Allen can certainly write them (that and she's quite cute helps!)

Midweek Music - definitely no mumbling

It's pretty well established that I have music playing when I am awake (and sometimes asleep but that's more accident than design....).  One of the things I use music for is to clear my head of thought's I'd rather not be having, or to get me out of a particular mindset, or calm down for that matter.  Now as much as I will pretty much listen to anything, sometimes my brain just demands "loud" music... which leads me to one of my favourite bands.  Most people will only know of the last album (ok, possibly the one before two) as they've only really hit mainstream in the last 3 - 4 years... The first album of theirs I picked up was the second and I've been a stupidly obsessed fangirl ever since.

The band is Biffy Clyro... and these are a couple of my favourite tracks from more recent (and some would say more friendly) albums....

ok, and a couple from older albums...

Midweek Music

Today I have had the fidgets, and whilst I worked there was chair dancing and possibly even some singing along to the MP3 player as I drafted .... though hampered by the fact that I had to use the emergency ear phones as I still haven't managed to locate the usual ear phones after Hugo stole them last night... I've checked all his usual hiding places and can only assume that he (and possibly Gina) have eaten the damn things...

And because I have given in to the whole insomnia thing I finally got up the courage to read Hot Head (which was the book that I was holding off reading as I was worried that I'd not enjoy it as much as the hype said I should).

Anyway, today has been a folk-ish tunes kind of day so I thought I'd share a couple of the tunes that made the day go that little bit faster....

Midweek Musical Mumble...

I apparently have "a song"... who knew! 

Well not me anyway.  I've never been in a relationship that had a defining song (hell now I think about it I've only once been in a relationship with someone who has remotely compatible music tastes....... I wonder if this is something I should add to my criteria for the future...) so I've never really thought about this before.  I rang my sister earlier to tell her that after a week of playing phone tag/leaving notes on the door etc the courier delivering her birthday present had finally worked out where the "safe place" was to leave it.  Apparently she knew that I'd phone because her i-pod had just shuffled to my song?!

So I asked what is "my song" and it's apparently this one...

Apparently due to the line "There's only one way of life, and that's your own..." which she says sums me up quite well :o)

NaNo preparations and plotting...

Having read back yesterday's rather needy and pathetically whining post I was tempted to delete it and pretend it hadn't happened... but, after thinking some more I decided, no in fact I should leave it... if nothing else, it will perhaps serve as a reminder that I have moved on the next time she phones!

OK, onwards and upwards.  Today has been one of indulgence on my part, I went for coffee and gossiping and then have spent the afternoon reading (finished A Bit of Rough by Laura Baumbach, and then someone re-tweeted a link to MLR's free read for today, which was Cheating Chance by James Buchanan... have now moved on to Roughousing (sequel to Bit of Rough) because I am a completest and my OCD tendencies kick in strongly at times like this and I will buy all books in a short series in one go, even if I've no idea if I'll like the books)

I have also been plotting for NaNo.  I think I am pretty much set on the contemporary M/M story... I have the main character's bio's outlined, I have pictures to represent them and I have relevant song lyrics and other inspirational things all ready to put up on the wall in the kitchen above my lap top tomorrow.

My plan is to write first thing in the morning before I go to work.  With the clocks going back tonight and the dogs not understanding the whole concept of an extra hour in bed I shall be up at silly o'clock for at least a week till they sort out their body clocks, I am guessing I can get at least a couple of hours in between walking them and having to get ready for work... providing I can avoid being distracted by the wonders of the interweb.

So that's it, all set, I think, I hope..... oh except one small thing... trying to work out whether to write first person from just one character's pov or whether to use third person and then I can have both points of view, and anyone else's whose passing for that matter.  I can and have written in both before, but in first person I have only ever written female characters and I wonder how difficult it will be to write a male character first person.. oh well, I've, oh 2 days left to work that one out!

Coundown to NanoWriMo.... planning

It will be November in just over a week (which reminds me, must buy my sister's birthday present) and the start of NaNo - 50,000 words of "novel" in a month... I signed up for this why?

Okay, so anyway, today I have been planning.  Whilst I have 2 stories on the go at present (part 2 of Guardians of Hope - YA fantasy(ish) and In Between - againYA, but contemporaryish) these have parts written so I can't use them.

I sifted through the voices in my head, asking if anyone had any strong desire to be heard during November (yep, that's as far as planning on a story gets - I write what I'm told... it works for me). Anyway they came through with three potentials to chose from.

- A contemporary M/M story for which my inspiration some of the lyrics from song Keep Yourself Warm by Frightened Rabbit. 

- A fantasy story involving a rare male Dryad who when reaching his majority and the obligation to bind with another refuses the spellcaster's daughter and is subsequently locked out of his tree and will die if he can't find a mate of his own choosing and get back into it.

- A re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood - involving an all to knowing grandmother, a lonely werewolf, an overbearing tree surgeon and a stroppy twink in a red hoody.


I have a few issues with all three so not sure - the first could prove difficult to write if my characters take me where they are indicating and could cause some triggering issues of domestic violence and eating disorders.  The second I am not sure where it's going at all, save for it's going to involve some fun world building.  As for the third I'm not sure if i can get to the word count and am struggling over setting (being in the UK I write in settings I'm familiar with if I am basing them in the real world - the UK has no wild wolves, big game is not freely roaming the countryside and hunting with dogs is illegal).


So whilst I stew over that I am going to turn my kitchen table round to face the wall and find some inspirational photographs, lyrics, maps etc to pin up on the wall above the lap top.

Mood music

It is Sunday, and I am distracting myself from the fact that I have to go back to work tomorrow and the possibility that my desk is going to look like an explosion in a paper factory, not to mention the 400 odd e-mails I will probably have to wade through.

So instead of worriting myself silly over it I have spent much of the day lost on the Discworld as I read the latest book - Snuff..... I have been a huge Discworld fan since I was handed the first two books back in about 1985 - yes I started "nerdhood" at an early age!

Aside from that I've been burning a CD of music to write to during NaNo, and in doing so I got to think a lot about the songs that inspire me.  It also reminded me why Biffy Clyro are one of my favourite bands - not just for the completely mad as a box of frogs lyrics they use either...

So, here you have one of my favorite tracks (not my all time favourite, that goes to Christopher's River which paints a very vivid picture for me that I may write about one day)...

It's all just fantasy to me.....

One of the assistants at my “Plot Bunny Breeding and Rearing Centre” (aka one of my readers, who selflessly permits me to bounce ideas off her and who gets to read my scribblings for small bribes of chocolate/alcohol), raised an eyebrow and muttered at me today “you don’t subscribe to the write only what you experience yourself school of writing do you?”

Well, er, no, definitely not, in fact, can you imagine anything more boring? I can’t. 

My usual writing involves elements of fantasy, though I can write contemporary, but even then chances are (hum, ok, actually, not definitely, say about an 80% chance) that it’s not going to be anything I’ve any personal experience of… this is what research is for surely? (and research can lead you to do some very strange things… *ahem* drinking a bottle of beer and then spending 20 minutes sucking on a vibrator covered with a strawberry flavoured condom before going to bed because I wanted to describe the taste in a character's mouth the morning after for example)

Ok, so you can’t research some of the things that my head comes up with as, let’s face it, they don’t really exist (I’m talking marauding big cats, colonies of elves protecting the Peak District and intermarriage of races causing strange and magical powers here…. If anyone has evidence of these things, please send it this way!).  Yes, there are usually some myths and legends (preferably local ones) wound in, and I’ll happily mix in some fairy tales and a smattering of historical knowledge, but much of it does come from my head and for me that’s part of the fun of the writing.

Then I pointed out that there is a correlation between what I write and what I read, which lead to some boggle-eyed amazement… whilst I read anything that is put in front of me, if it’s a work of fiction then despite its designated genre it is pretty much guaranteed that in one way or another, to me, it’s going to be fantasy…

Just looking at some of my more frequently read books……I am never going to be part of a sweeping historical drama, nor will I go to school in a 1940’s boarding school, I won’t be a sword wielding hero (heroines are very few and far between in epic fantasy – there are some authors who write them brilliantly but still not enough!), I won’t be a private investigator or detective, pretty sure I won’t be a murderer or other major criminal.  I will never be involved with werewolves, vampires or any other paranormal creature you can think of, I won’t be in an M/M romance, and most probably not in a M/F one for that matter …

If my life were a book there’d be a few interesting moments, but the rest of it might as well be blank pages of boredom!  No, my imagination is a much more fun place to play.

So now, I shall go feed the plot bunny responsible for the new set of voices that arrived in my head the other night, which are telling me the story of a far too knowledgeable grandmother, an abandoned, lonely and insecure werewolf, a dominant and brash tree surgeon, some uncaring parents and a young twink with an attitude problem, a chip on his shoulder that is big enough sink the Titanic and a favourite red hoodie…….

This song title reminds me of writing.... the truth is mundane, something beautiful is infinitely preferable.

Waxing Lyrical...

Too tired tonight to post anything of angsty complication or the like.  Work has left me brain dead - save for the 2 hours I spent in our LGBT Diversity Group meeting this afternoon (in which we celebrated that our Stonewall submission had gone in safely and reminisced that the group is nearly 3 years old now (we also laughed at the positive feed back we now get - as opposed to the initial reaction when the group was set up, which our chairperson said was in effect several senior bods saying "What, your going to let the firms gays and lesbians frolic in the boardroom and eat cake on work time"... and yes, sometimes we do have cake, not so much of the frolicking though)

So, instead, I thought, I would post the song whose lyrics have given me one hell of an earworm and a cast of characters which I am hoping to scribble out my head for NaNoWriMo

The song is Keep Yourself Warm by a  (very) Scottish group called Frightened Rabbit (who are rapidly heading up to be one of my all time favourite bands, particularly to see live).  The lyrics that caught me are (at least i think they are, online says differently, but with Scott's accent and the speed it's hard to be sure)...

The flashing white lights been turned off, you don’t know who’s in your bed

It takes more than fucking someone you don’t know to keep warm

Do you really think that for a hearts beat you’ll find your love in a hole

No you won’t find love in a, won’t find love in a hole

It takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself warm

It's the end of the world as we know it....

Tonight I was going to have minor angst over actually doing NaNoWriMo this year - if only to get rid of one of the erm, 5! WIPs I have on the go at the moment... but then I got distracted.

As I pottered round the kitchen trying to check my e-mails whilst not burning tea or tripping over the dogs I noticed a tweet, REM announcing they've called it a day...

Ok, yeah, just another band, but hell, this is the first band I ever got into, and I mean in a big way, as in total fan girl, but then again they've formed a major part of the soundtrack to my life for probably a little over 25 years and their music has helped me over some totally shitty times in my life.  They are the band who started me on my obsession with lyrics.  Even to this day the album "Murmur" is my driving album. 

I know that it was kind of inevitable it would happen some day, but I'd hoped to see them live again before it happened.

So, I shall go reminisce and leave you with one of my favourite tracks

Aural Stimulation

As someone who spends a lot of time reading and a fair amount of it writing, it’s not unexpected that I have a bit of a geek thing going on over words.

For me it’s not just the written word, spoken, and particularly sung, words get to my emotions very easily.  I have a thing for accents too, particularly Scottish accents; and the speaker or singer can be either male or female.  If the accent is right I will just melt a bit (or have to stop the car, shut my eyes and just listen in the case of a radio interview yesterday). This could also explain why a lot of my favourite bands are Scottish (other Celtic languages do the same thing, but not to the same extent).

I can’t abide silence and have music playing pretty much the entire time I’m conscious, whether it’s the radio on in the background, cd’s in the car, or my mp3 player which I listen to the entire time I’m working. In fact I frequently find myself side tracked from working to type out lyrics to the songs I’m listening to.

 I find inspiration in the lyrics, particularly those which tell a story or at least hint at a story.  It doesn’t have to be the story that the creator of the lyric intended, my mind can spin the story so that I can actually see the scenes play out in my head.  Two of my current WIP’s came about through three or four lines in a song and in one they form the background to the way one of the characters acts.

Sometimes though, I just end up with an ear worm.  Today that earworm has been The Doves song There Goes the Fear.  I have yet to work out why.