Writing – Page 6 – alison may, amelia berry & ally sinclair

In which it is June and a number of occurrences occur

So the blogging every Friday without fail is going terribly well, don’t you agree? Apart from that today is Monday, but I think we can all agree that Monday is very nearly Friday give or take the odd weekend.

Anyhoo, this particularly Monday is also the 30th June, so I thought I would tell you about a number of things that have occurred this month. Hardcore readers, who’ve been with us since the beginning of blogtime, will recall that I do like a bit of a summer festival, not those loud, modern-musicky festivals that involve camping and reading preparatory Guardian articles about festival fashion, but rather those more safely middle-aged festivals where it’s considered acceptable to stop between events and have a nice warming hot chocolate and possibly a scone. This month I have attended two festivals of the latter sort, and one actual gig in an actual field to which I wore actual wellingtons. I shall relay my thoughts on all three forthwith.

1. Cheltenham Science Festival

The good people of Cheltenham are pretty much prepared to have a festival for anything. Jazz, literature, music, horse racing – they really don’t care – if you can put up a marquee and print a brochure, they’re totally up for it. The first week in June is the annual science festival, at which I took in talks and panels on the genetics of intelligence, animal communication, war and medicine, the maths of The Simpsons, animal senses, quantum mechanics, and saw somebody whacking ping pong balls with a chocolate hammer, all of which was quite interesting. It’s also very jolly to be at events about things I know nothing about, because new knowledge is always exciting. Did you know, for example, that there’s a sort of snake that has infra-red sensor things that mean it can spot a bat flying over head in pitch darkness and grab the aforementioned bat out of the air for its dinner? I did not know that, but now I do. Hurrah for knowing more stuff.

2. Worcestershire LitFest & Fringe

Worcestershire LitFest is in its 4th year, but this was my first time involved with the organisation. I hosted four events – a rather lovely author panel with equally lovely cake, and three novel writing workshops.

Me, Sue Moorcroft, Liz Harris and Christina Courtenay

Teaching writing workshops is always fun – it’s pretty much one of my favourite things to do, and I’ve not taught for a while so it was top fun to get back into it with a brand new group of students. Hopefully they enjoyed themselves at least half as much as I did, and weren’t too freaked out by the woman at the front of the room wittering on about Prince Charming and necrophilia. (Yes – they were part of the same conversation, but they were totally related to the point of the lesson. Totally. Sort of. A bit.)

Asides from leading those events I also got to attend a couple of others. My personal highlight was seeing Lou Morgan at 42-Worcester talk about her writing and particularly about writing YA. She was interesting and funny. Yay her!

3. Deacon Blue in a forest to which I wore actual wellingtons, but also took a garden chair to sit on like an old person might.

Now the young whipper snappers amongst you are now furrowing your perfectly wrinkle-free brows and asking ‘Who are Deacon Blue?’ Well they were big in the late 80s and early 90s and, I can now attest, are rather marvellous live. Your lack of knowledge probably means that you’re not even aware that if you ever have sufficient money in your kitty to buy a dinghy the only right and proper thing to call her would be Dig-ni-ty (which you would sing loudly and with gusto.) Trust me young people, your lives are poorer for this lack of knowledge.

So that was June. I trust you all had an equally pleasant month.

And before I go, a quick reminder that Sweet Nothing is currently 99p for kindle. That offer either finishes today or next Monday (I’m not 100% clear on how Amazon monthly deals work!) so if you want it, go get it now. Off you go…. For those of you who are still here, if you think you’d be interested in writing workshops where the tutor witters on about Prince Charming and necrophilia in between dispensing great wisdom then please get in touch and I’ll add you to my mailing list.

In which we meet my main character

A tiny wee bonus blog post this week as I’ve been tagged by Laura E James to carry on a little blog hop all about our main characters. Thank-you Laura, and let’s all say ‘Hello’ to Trix from Sweet Nothing. I mean, don’t actually say ‘Hello’ out loud whilst you’re reading. She’s a fictional character, which is just one of many many reasons that that would be weird.

Anyway…

What is the name of the main character? Is she real or fictitious?

She’s called Trix and she’s fictitious. I’ve already told you that. Really, it’s almost like these are preset questions and there isn’t actually an interviewer sitting beside me hanging on my every word.

When and where is the story set?

Sweet Nothing is set in York around about now. I lived in York for four years and grew up not far away in Scarborough so it’s a city I know pretty well. The fictional Trix went to university there, like me, and, unlike me, never quite managed to leave.

What should we know about her?

Trix is great. She’s the sort of woman you’d want as your best mate. Caring. Intelligent. Funny. Borderline alcoholic.

She loves books, and cake, and wine, and her friends, and marmitey toast, which are all the main important things that one ought to love in life.

What is the main conflict? What messes up her life?

I’m sorry but if I tell you that I’m pretty much telling you the whole story of the book! OK – I’ll tell you this. Trix is pretty sorted in most areas of her life, but she’s not the best at romance. She’s not a sad chick lit singleton though. There’s not a lot of moaning about failed relationships into her pinot going on for Trix, not least because that would slow down the drinking of the pinot and suggest a worrying lack of focus.

She gets on fine with men. She has lots of male friends. There’s just one in particular that might be the problem. Hello Ben Messina.

What is Trix’s goal?

I think the achievement of a diet based solely on wine and marmitey toast. It’s a goal she’s not that far off achieving.

So if you like the sound of Trix, you can find out more about her by reading the book:

And now it’s my turn to tag two more ~~innocent victims~~ willing participants in the ‘Meet my main character’ blog hop. Next up are the brilliant and lovely Janice Preston – her debut novel, Mary and the Marquis will be out in July – and my equally wonderful fellow-ChocLiteer, Berni Stevens. As well as writing her own novels, Berni also designs all the Choc Lit covers so she’s responsible for the rather excellent redness above. Look out for their posts next week.

In which I go to a party and consider a political tsunami

Two weeks ago I confidently announced the Friday was blogday from now on. And then last week I failed to post anything, so I think we can all agree that that idea’s going well. I have an excuse though, which given my mother’s reluctance to write me a note excluding me from blogging duties*, I shall explain myself.

I was at a party.

Ok, so it’s not a great excuse. It’s pretty much on a par with taking a day off school to go to the Radio 1 roadshow, a common practice at my school, but another one I could never get my own parents on side with. Anyway, last week was the RNA‘s Summer Party which includes the presentation of the Joan Hessayon Award for new writers. As an award contender, I squeezed myself into my spanx, did my hair, applied actual make-up and made my merry way to London town. There were seventeen of us up for the award, which mathematically equated to a 5.88% chance of winning, and the winner was… drum roll please… not me. Ah well, never mind. It’s fantastic just to be a contender etc. etc. Cue much use of my excellent ‘magnanimous loser face,’ and many many congratulations to the very lovely and clever Jo Thomas who actually did win. Hurrah for her!

2014 Joan Hessayon contenders — 2014 Joan Hessayon Award contenders

Whilst I was glamming it up in London Town being all writerly and control-panted, there were European and local elections going on across the country. The results of those elections caused a political earthquake, or tsunami, or storm (depending on the natural force metaphor selected by your news provider of choice), which is a media way of trying to make the story that UKIP did quite well and the Lib Dems did quite badly sound significantly more exciting than it actually is.

If you look at the actual numbers – I know boring, but potentially actually informative – you end up feeling that rather than looking at a tsunami you’re looking at a moderately sized wave, and nobody ever uttered the phrase, ‘Look! A moderately sized wave – run for the hills!’

There are a few reasons for thinking that politicians from the main parties should dial down the panic levels in relation to the UKIP surge (and be warned – there are very few jokes in this bit, but there are a number of moderately interesting statistics). Firstly, turnout in the European elections is always low. This year, in the UK, it was around 34%. As a comparison the turnout in the 2010 general election was just over 65%, so there’s an awful lot of potential voters who simply didn’t participate in this election. Within the 34% who voted, UKIP secured around 27.5% of the vote – that’s less than a third of the vote from a third of the electorate, and it’s always wise to be a little bit cautious about electoral figures based on relatively low turnouts.

Secondly, it’s very difficult to assess how much of the UKIP vote is either likely to translate into UKIP votes at a general election, or is suggestive of strong anti-EU feeling. Mid-term European elections are traditionally a repository for protest votes and dissatisfaction with the government of the day. A YouGov poll looking at general election voting intentions yesterday put Labour’s lead over the Tories at 7% (38 to 31) with UKIP down on 16% – significantly different from the European election results just a week ago. And we can add to that the fact that pre-election polls suggested a disjoint between voters choosing UKIP in the European elections, and voters who actually want to leave the EU. A YouGov poll just before election day suggested that 42% of voters who planned to vote UKIP, would actually vote to stay in the EU in a referendum on the subject.

All in all, that suggests that what we’re dealing with here is a significant protest vote, and the main parties have to decide how they deal with that. The answer to that question all depends on what they think people are protesting against. Is the appeal of UKIP that they’re anti-EU and anti-immigration? Or is it that people feel Nigel Farage is an ‘ordinary bloke’ rather than a media-trained slick politician? Some of those polling figures, combined with the fact that scandalette after scandalette during the campaign failed to dent UKIP support suggests to me that it’s probably more the latter than the former.

So here’s a crazy idea for the other political parties – less spin, less focus-groups, less trying to guess what the electorate might want and pretending to care, less trying to make Ed Milliband look like a ‘regular guy’ when he’s clearly the natural born leader of the political uber-nerds, and more saying what you really think and letting the electorate decide. The European election results suggest to me an electorate grown weary of politicians, tired of the disingenuous streak that runs through political debate, and which isn’t often challenged effectively by the Westminster bubble political press. So stop wittering on about which party leader has the best idea of the cost of a pint of milk, and try actually thinking something’s a good idea and then doing it. It really doesn’t seem that complicated. *Sighs wearily in the direction of Westminster*

So there you go – a writerly awards party and a little bit of electoral statistics. A lovely start to the day.

Comment your little hearts out and come back tomorrow when there will be a bonus blog post following on from Laura E James in the Main Character Blog Hop.

* At least I assume she’d be reluctant. I haven’t actually asked. That would seem like I was taking the whole endeavour far too seriously.

In which a fat girl climbs a massive mountain, is up for an award (and rants a bit about UKIP probably)

It’s been a bit quiet on the blog of late, primarily on account of how I have been On My Holidays in the Lake District where great rains did fall from the skies, but the hotel had a jacuzzi so I didn’t really mind. Due to the blog quietness there are now a number of things that I could witter on about and I’m struggling to pick just one. Therefore, with no respect to theme or any notion of coherence, here are a number of things that have occurred:

1. I climbed a Massive Mountain

Between the holiday rains EngineerBoy, who, when not engaged in manly engineer type activities, likes a bit of outdoors, made me go outside into the countryside and walk about. Here’s me at the top of a Massive Mountain (which EngineerBoy, quite wrongly, termed a small hill).

The climbing of the massive mountain was something of an effort, on account of how I am Not Thin. However, I made it, and I realised that actually despite the Not Thinness, I’m not that unfit. All the Zumba-ing and Bokwa-ing might actually be having some effect, just not on my overall girth. Ah well, I suppose fit is better than thin, although both would be even better still.

2. I have a new kitchen

And it is a thing of great wonder and prettiness, at least until the first time I spill something in it and stain the worktop. After which it will be ruined for all eternity, but for now there is much wonder and prettiness and baking.

3. Sweet Nothing is up for an award

See how I saved that one for third, so I could appear all nonchalant and not at all giddy about it. My debut novel, Sweet Nothing, is in contention for the Joan Hessayon Award. I’m not expecting to win. There are 17 contenders in total, so as the woman who wrote a romantic comedy about a mathematician, I have to acknowledge that 1 in 17 isn’t brilliant from a probability perspective, but I get a trip to London town where I will wear clothes that aren’t pyjamas and drink wine and get to do my best impression of a ‘nominated for an Oscar but didn’t win’ face.

4. There are European Elections coming up..

… in which I am led to believe UKIP are expected to do marvellously well. I find this disheartening for a whole range of reasons (some of which I banged on about previously here). The thing I mainly find disheartening though, is the quality of political journalism at the moment. It feels like nobody in the mainstream media is actually looking in detail at any of the party’s stated policies and pointing out the claims and assumptions that are simply untrue. There are some really good sites online that do this sort of thing (eg Channel 4’s FactCheck blog) but they don’t form part of the newspaper headlines or the nightly TV news, which is where most people get their information. It is all very weary-making.

5. And an audiobook

Back in writer land, the other excitement of the week is that the audiobook version of Sweet Nothing is now available to pre-order as a download from Amazon. I’m ridiculously excited about this. An audiobook sounds very much like something what a proper author might have.

So mountain, kitchen, award, elections, audiobook. Those are the things that are going on around here, along with a switch to Friday’s for my ‘regular’ blog day. At least I’m intending it to be regular, but you know what I’m like. Anyway how are things with you merry blog-reader?

In which I offer a little fable what I wrote

After managing to blog in both ranty and writerly forms last week I’m feeling a tiny bit light on inspiration today. So in the absence of anything to shout about here is a tiny little flash fiction fable what I wrote. It’s called ‘The Children of the Forest.’

The trees of the forest grow tall and strong, and the children of the forest play low in the hollow beneath the branches of the oldest trees. They are safe in the hollow, safe in the forest, where the world beyond cannot get in.

The elders of the forest are afraid of the world beyond. There is a story, whispered from mother to baby, from father to son. ‘Beyond the last tree,’ they say, ‘a dragon lives. And the dragon breathes only fire and loves only gold and eats only children who don’t listen to stories and who run and skip and play beyond the hollow, beyond the forest, beyond the very last tree.’

One day a small girl grew tired of the hollow, and yearned for adventure elsewhere. She was a clever little girl who had heard stories of the dragon and the fire and the world beyond, and knew that they were only stories. Stories couldn’t hurt her. Dragons weren’t real, so she ran and skipped and cartwheeled her way to the edge of the forest. At the very last tree she paused. She would be the first of her kind to leave the forest, and one day she would return with new stories to tell the children she had left behind. She took that last step into the unknown her head full of dreams and her heart overflowing with hope.

And the dragon ate her.

The End.

I do of course write whole big book-length things as well. You can find details of those here.

In which I offer a little whoop whoop for writerly firsts

Today is publication day for my chum, and fellow Truly, Madly, Deeply contributor, Nikki Moore’s debut novel, Crazy Undercover Love. In addition to offering a general ‘Whoop! Whoop!’ of congratulation in Nikki’s direction, the occasion also made me think about the string of firsts that writers experience in their career. There’s the first time you actually finish a manuscript, the first time you have the nerve to let anyone else read it, your first rejection, your first acceptance, your first publication.

Eachof those firsts feels like a goal achieved – yes, even the rejection. And each of them – yes even the publication – is followed by a realisation that there still an awful lot more road in front of you than behind and, worryingly, it does appear that quite a lot of that road is uphill. This can be disheartening. I remember being told by quite a prominent literary agent that being a published writer was like being on a treadmill. You have to keep going and keep going and keep going, a book (or more) per year every year without fail. This was 48 hours after I’d signed my first publishing contract. 48hours. That’s how long I got to wallow in the glow of thinking I’d achieved my ambitions before being reminded that ‘life’s a journey, not a destination’ and other equally discouraging platitudes.

So it’s important to take a step off the treadmill every now and then and remember to celebrate the distance already travelled. Take a moment to celebrate those firsts when they come along, and remember to take a moment to celebrate your first second novel just the same as the first first novel. And then you get back on the treadmill and you start again, remembering how damn lucky you are to be on treadmill of your own choosing, and a relatively civilised one at that. It has biscuits and twitter, which makes it a massive improvement on being on, for example, an actual treadmill which just has sweating and the constant danger of puking up a lung.

So welcome to the (metaphorical) treadmill Nikki. Hop aboard. You’re going to love it xx

You can buy Nikki’s debut, Crazy Undercover Love, as an ebook from Amazon, Google Play, iTunes or Sainsburys or pre-order the paperback here. Here’s what the blurb says:

When uber-feisty career girl Charley Caswell-Wright takes on the assignment as PA to the gorgeous Alex Demetrio, CEO of Demetrio International, she’s there under entirely false pretenses; to get her life back on track. Having lost the job she worked so hard to earn, she’s determined not to give it up so easily, especially when she didn’t deserve to lose it in the first place.

Mr Dreamy CEO is her only chance of clawing back her career – and her reputation. So she has to keep things strictly professional… boy, is she in trouble!

And as always, you can buy my debut novel, Much Ado About Sweet Nothing, here. Go on. It’s Shakespeare’s birthday week and it’s based on a Shakespeare play, so why not? I’m assuming you do all theme your reading according to the random high days and holidays that are marked in tiny print in the corners of your diary, don’t you? Next week, for example it’s World Health and Safety Day. I’m sure there’s lots of fun stuff out there we could read for that…

In which I consider what’s in a (genre) name

‘So what do you write?’

‘Books.’

‘But what sort of books?’

‘Er… well…. erm…’

That’s a conversation I have at least a couple of times most weeks. I usually end up saying I write ‘Romantic Comedy,’ but usually follow the claim with a rambling disclaimer about the consistency of the funny and the frequent absence of hearts and flowers, and because of those disclaimers it’s not a terribly satisfactory description. So what might be my better options?

Chick Lit?

Wikipedia describes chick lit as ‘genre fiction which addresses issues of modern womanhood, often humorously and lightheartedly.’ That’s probably as good a description of what I write as any, although I’m quite interested in issue of modern manhood (oo-er missus) as well, so why aren’t I 100% comfortable with the term?

I think it is simply the mental association that I have between between the term chick lit and ideas of pink, glittery covers with pictures of shoes on them. And having just typed that sentence I now feel an overwhelming need to add a disclaimer making clear that there’s nothing wrong with a pink sparkly cover – but somehow they don’t quite float my boat anymore. Perhaps it’s time to revisit that assumption though. It does seem clear that pink, sparkly, shoe covers are somewhat out of vogue. I quick skim of the chick lit bestsellers list on Amazon shoes that there’s still a fair amount of pink, but substantially less sparkle and hardly any pictures of shoes, so maybe I need to update my assumptions, woman-up and come out as a proud Chick Lit Author.

Or I could tell people that I write…

Women’s Fiction?

Women’s Fiction or Commercial Women’s Fiction (for those writers who want to make clear that they’d like to get paid at some point) are popular terms in the publishing industry, and encompass rather broad church of stories and authors. They’re terms to which I have only one objection. It’s the word ‘Women’s’. And actually it’s two objections. That is to say that my objections to that one word are twofold. Firstly, why on earth are books about love and family and emotion only for women? Men deal with all those things and it seems plausible that quite a few of them might be interested in reading about that stuff too. Why on earth would we want to create a banner across the top of our books that says ‘Men not allowed’? And secondly, I get the sense of an sneaky little implication that this isn’t quite Proper Fiction. It’s just for women, bless their sparkly pink stilettos. It saves their fluffy little brains from the effort of trying to read the Real Books. It irritates me in the same way that the Women’s section in Sunday newspapers irritate me. I feel like I’m being shepherded away from the real news to look at some nice soothing pictures of dresses. Again, that might say more about my tendency to make assumptions that anything else.

So Chick Lit/Romantic Comedy/Women’s Fiction writers of the interweb help me out! What sort of books do you write?

And if you fancy finding out what I actually do write, you can buy ebooks and actual paper short stories here.

In which I scrape the layer of dust off the blog and finish a book

Ahoy there, good morning, merry greetings and hello. I have been away from the blog of late due to having got myself into something of a pickle with the writing of novel 2 and ending up having to spend the last six weeks ignoring all activities that weren’t actually writing the sodding book. The sodding book (possibly not its final title) has now been sent off to my lovely publisher, Choc Lit, and I’m permitted to not think about it for a while, or at least until they send it back and tell me to have another go.

So, here I am with an unfamiliar sea of free time rippling in front of me. All sorts of excitements await. When I’ve finished here, for example, I am going to put some laundry in and then – and this is an exciting one – I’m going to wash my hair. Never let it be said that I don’t know how to live.

Before all that though, there’s some bloggy bloggy blogging to get blogged, which is tricky because my brain is still stuck in the imaginary world of novel 2. That’s one of the oddities of writing as a job, as opposed to being a lollipop lady (or lollipop gentleman) or managing a premiership football team. Writing is a freakishly blinkered affair. You invent a whole world, and people it with people (at least in my case – you can of course people it with elves or dragons or sentient lever arch files – the choice is yours), and then you live in that world for however long it takes to transfer that world and that story from brain to typing fingers to screen to page. That means that once the manuscript is done with and sent away, you find yourself in something of a lull. It’s what fellow Choc Lit author, Janet Gover, describes as the post-book meltdown.

With all the other jobs I’ve had the periods of stress usually came when there were too many diverse things to think about, competing for time and attention. With writing, at least when you’re in the final lead-up to a deadline, there is only one task: Write the sodding book (still not the final title). That single-mindedness is, for me at least, what leads to the meltdown. At the moment I’m at the crawling into the light stage, and I keep catching sight of all the things I’ve been putting off for the last few weeks: the form that came in the post at the start of March that I haven’t filled in yet; the piles of laundry that need putting away; the things in the back of the fridge that I’m not sure I can throw away without breaching the federation’s Prime Directive. All these things will need dealing with, before I regain the power of sufficiently complex thought to write you a blog post about something more interesting that the fuzzed up state of my brain.

Hopefully, that will be next week’s task, alongside starting the next book and doing it all again, obviously. I shall see you all there.

And as always, if you want to buy any of the lovely things I’ve already written, this is the place.

In which I am Truly, Madly, Deeply excited about publication day

Today is publication day for Truly, Madly, Deeply an anthology of short stories all written by RNA members. I’m absolutely delighted, over the moon, bursting with pride, and a range of other cliches besides, to have a story, Feel The Fear, included in the anthology. And so, along with a whole lot of other authors I’m blogging today about the inspiration for my story.

Feel The Fear is a story about a girl, a boy and a great and fearsome beast. You’ll have to buy Truly, Madly, Deeply to find out which of those three ends up with which. It’s a story I wrote originally fo

r a competition, a competition that I won, and for which I was given a little cup, a fact that I hardly bang on about at all. The brief for the competition was to ‘Write a short story featuring an animal.’ I considered a range of animals – dogs, cats, baby orang-utans, wild salmon, and hummingbirds (which are after all the five main sorts of animal) – before deciding on the great and fearsome beast.

But actually, cool though the beast is, that’s not actually what the story is about. The story is about fear. And that’s often the way. You can describe what a story’s about by describing who’s in it and what they do, or you can talk about what it’s really about. The theme, if you want to get all highfalutin about it.

‘So what’s your play about Mr Shakespeare?’

‘Well there’s this boy and he loves this girl, but then he sees this other girl at a party and there’s a bit of flirting on a balcony, but then it turns out she’s the daughter of his arch-enemy, which is awkward, but he, like, really really likes her. But then he murders her cousin which makes it, like, double awkward. And then there’s some business with a priest and some potions, and the boy thinks the girl – the second girl, not the first, she actually wasn’t that important at all, sorry – anyway he thinks the second girl’s dead, but she’s not, and then he is dead. And then even though she wasn’t dead, in the end she is.’

‘Er, thanks but no thanks Mr Shakespeare.’

Take 2:

‘What’s your play about Mr Shakespeare?’

‘Love. Doomed love.’

And so you see I’ve digressed from talking about Truly, Madly, Deeply and ended up on Romeo & Juliet, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Rom and Jules would score high points on the True/Mad/Deep scale, I’m sure, especially the ‘Mad’ bit. I mean, if you like a girl, don’t murder her cousin. It’s just bad manners.

Anyway. Truly, Madly, Deeply is out today featuring great stories and at least one fearsome beast. You can buy it in paperback here, or you can buy the ebook edition, which has 11 extra stories, here.

We’ve also got a handful of copies of the paperback to give away, so why not enter here.

Finally, look out on twitter for the #TrulyMadlyDeeply hashtag where there’ll be links to lots more author blogposts about the anthology, and come join us at our virtual launch party on facebook for virtual champagne and fun and games all day. I’m hosting the afternoon session between 1pm and 5pm, and Laura E James will be there all morning, and Rhoda Baxter takes over hosting duties for the evening.

In which I crawl blinking into the light and try to do a shoulder stand

So as discussed in last week’s blog I have just undertaken a little writing hermitage in order try to break through the great Novel Two Impasse of 2014. I didn’t quite manage the 25,000 words I was aiming for but think I ended up on around about 22,500, and more importantly I got to the bit where you get to type The End. I didn’t actually type The End. I never do, personally, and weirdly the discussion of whether you should is something that can get writers quite astonishingly hot under the collar. Some are adamant that you should mark the end of your manuscript with the words The End. Others are definite that the definite article is unnecessary and one should simply type ‘End’. Others still declare that you should never mark the end of a manuscript in either way – if it’s not clear that the story is finished, they opine, then your ending isn’t good enough. I hold to a fourth school of thought – one that says, ‘Oh ffs, you know you could have sent the bloody thing off about eight times in the time you’ve spent debating whether to type The End.’

Anyway, I digress. The point was that I got to the end of the final chapter. Unfortunately, the end of the final chapter isn’t anywhere near being the end of the book, partly because first drafts are always horrible (at least for me), but mainly because I’m about 20-25,000 words short of a full length novel. Now if this was going to be another digital only release, that wouldn’t necessarily be a huge problem. Ebooks can almost be any length you like, but a print book has to be economical to print, and realistically that means it needs to be somewhere around 100,000 words. Less than about 80,000 makes for a very slim volume, and more than about 140,000 leads publishers to worry about the commercial viability of such a tome (at least in women’s fiction -some genres, like sci-fi, tend to run a bit longer.) Now some of those words will come from adding depth to the first half of the story. There’s lots I didn’t know about the characters when I wrote the earlier chapters, that I’ve learnt as I went on, and that all needs layering into the early sections, but even then I think I’m going to be a bit short, so that means I need to feed another subplot into the novel. I have a very clear idea of what that plot will be, and now it’s just a question of writing the thing. So all in all, after last week’s bonkers level of word production, I need to do pretty much the same again this week. Happy days.

The other main work-in-progress chez Alison is the ongoing project to decrease the general Alison-girth. I won’t lie. Recent attempts at weight loss have mainly fallen down as a result of the combined problems of a) a deeply sedentary job, b) IBS leading to a tendency to mainly eat beige foods (bread, pasta etc), and c) cake being really really nice. However, last Friday I weighed myself and discovered that a line in the mental sand had been crossed. I was 95.3kg. (Yes – I weigh myself in modern money. I find it oddly less emotive than stones and pounds.) Anyway 95kg is A Lot. It’s nearly 15 stone, which is also A Lot. It basically means that a person my height needs to lose 5 stone which, again, is A Lot. Those of us who are not naturally skinny minnys often have personal mental cut off points for what is Too Fat. The transition from a size 18 to a size 20 is a common one. Something about being ‘out of the teens’ in dress size terms can be a tad depressing. Well I just hit mine. 95kg was a shock. So 1300 calories a day – there’s an app for counting it and everything. Zumba or Bokwa four times a week. Yoga once or twice a week. And the exercise regime is for life not just for diet time. Because coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes are Bad Things are one should not inflict them on oneself.

Which brings me to the shoulder stand. I went to yoga for the first time in six months on Friday, and my friendly local yoga instructor has starting incorporating a shoulder stand section in her class. This is a new development. Not a problem I thought. I can do a shoulder stand. Shoulder stands are easy. Only it turns out, they’re not if you’re nearly 15 stone and really out of shape. I incurred the humiliation of the of the yoga lady offering me a big cushion to put under my bum. Now I know that yoga isn’t supposed to be competitive and all that, but the only other person who needed a cushion under their bum was about 80. Not great. So since Friday I’ve practised my shoulder stand at home every day, and now, with a bit of a comedy rocking motion to get started I can just about do it. First main achievement of Operation Reduce Girth and Improve Health achieved.

So that’s me for this week. Basically – more words, less girth. So what’s anyone else been up to?