NaNoWriMo: Day 7

I'm just within grasp of 30,000 words right now, but I've decided to stop now because it's been a long day and I want an early night.

My graph is looking pretty good though:

I'm actually at 29,117 words so just a little too far away to get to 30k in the next half hour. I'd hoped to get there by Saturday but I was in pain and uncomfortable at the weekend so I allowed myself to slow down. Luckily I have a good buffer to tide me over.

I'm pleased to think that in a week I've managed to write over half of my story and it's been trotting along at quite a pace. So far my main character, Selah, has met the mysterious John Mitchell and learned about the existence of 'Pig Kids'. She's also learned that she's dying and had to break the news to her parents.

Next up she's going to recruit her mother (currently nameless) to try and find where the mysterious John Mitchell lives. She's also going to go through some old boxes of files belonging to her grandfather; turns out he was involved in the creation of the Jennies which were used in the first litters of 'Pig Kids'.

That was a useful revelation because at the time I didn't know why Selah was so convinced there was a connection between herself and John Mitchell. Then he got on her bus and took a seat next to her, and now it turns out her grandfather helped with his conception. I love it when you get little breakthroughs like that.

Are you NaNoing? How's it going? Run into any sticky bits yet?

Silent Sunday: Walk

Johanna's Christmas Colouring Book by Johanna Basford

It's no secret that I love Christmas, so when I heard that Johanna Basford was bringing out a Christmas colouring book there was no doubt that I would add it to my collection.

It came out at the end of last month and Mr Click preordered it for me along with her other recent release Magical Jungle. Both arrived on Tuesday and after spending the whole day working on my NaNo project, he brought them home to me and I spent a fair amount of time flicking through the pages, stroking them and making cooing noises.

I love getting pretty things to play with.

I'll blog my thoughts on Magical Jungle some other time but last night I cracked open Johanna's Christmas and got down to some colouring in so I figured I should share my thoughts on it.

My copy is the UK edition which has a slightly different cover to the American edition, though the contents of both books are essentially the same. The UK cover has the same gold foil accents as we're used to seeing on the other Johanna Basford colouring books, while the American one has the wreath around the title picked out in red and green foil. I like the gold accents because they match my three other colouring books in the series, but there is something really festive about the US version.

Unlike the other three books this one doesn't have a removable dust jacket. It kind of looks like it has one but it turns out this is actually something called a 'French Flap'. The cover folds over like a dust jacket, but doesn't come off. This is kind of handy because you can use the cover to mark your place in your book if you want to.

Normally I take the dust jackets off while I'm working on a picture so that they don't get torn or damaged so I was a little unsure about how I'd get on with the cover of this book. Turns out it's fine. The cover is much thinner than the other books so it's not as bulky. I'm a little worried about the cover getting grubby if I take it out and about with me, but at least it's not getting in the way of my colouring.

Both Johanna's Christmas and Magical Jungle adopt a slightly different format with perforated pages so once your pictures are complete you can pull them out and frame them, should that be your kind of thing. The latter book doesn't have perforations all the way through, just the last few pictures in the book (instead of the large pull out picture which the earlier books had), whereas every page of Johanna's Christmas is perforated. The pictures in this book are also single-sided. There's a pattern on the back of the pages which you could colour in if you wished, but it's a sort of optional extra.

I was pleased to see the paper in this book is much better than Lost Ocean. As much as I love Lost Ocean I was kind of disappointed with the paper, which is thinner, bright white and doesn't have the same texture as the pages of Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest. Johanna's Christmas is whiter than the original two books, but it feels considerably thicker. When I coloured in the title page of Lost Ocean pressing too hard dented not only the page I was working on but also the page beneath. This didn't happen when I colouring the title page for Johanna's Christmas and I was colouring in poor light so probably did press harder than I needed to in some places.

I'm not sure how well the paper would react to pens or watercolours. From what I've seen online, it seems to get pretty good reviews. Thankfully a new addition to the latest books is a 'Colour Palette Test Page' at the very back of the book. I think this is a pretty good example of Johanna listening to what the fans want because I know people have been asking for this. I carry around an old letter from the Estate in my pencil box to test my colours on but this is far preferable because it allows you to see how the colours and tools react to the actual paper in the book. I hope we carry on getting the test page at the back.

Actually, it would be cool if future books maybe included some other things in the back, like tips and tricks, or perhaps a little 'how to' so you can learn to doodle like Johanna to add to the pictures she's drawn.

Of course the most important thing of all when it comes to colouring books is what's in the pictures. This one is a lovely blend of patterns, scenes, animals and objects. There are some familiar pictures in there, a hare, an owl and a deer which are similar to previous books except this time they've got a more festive feel to them. There's a lot of presents, stockings, candy canes and robins. In fact, there's a bunch of robins hidden through the book. I found most of them on Thursday night as I scanned through it but I'm looking forward to keeping a proper tally of all of the ones I've found as I colour it in.

I was a little worried that all I would have to colour in this book would be red and green. Through these colouring books I've learned to experiment with colour (particularly colouring things in using colours they're not) as well as to limit myself to a specific palette. I did wonder whether my colour options might be somewhat limited, but there's a nice mix of realistic and whimsy in here.

I've seen some complaints at the lack of Santas and Elves. Apparently Johanna doesn't enjoy drawing people and I can't fault her choice. The book is filled with plenty of other festive pictures all of which definitely evoke a sense of Christmas. It's not that I don't want to see pictures of Father Christmas, it's just that there's so much more to the holiday than just a jolly old fat man. And while he might not be represented in the pages, it's clear that he's there in the background; not only do we have his sleigh, we have a fireplace scene complete with bulging stockings and a nibbled biscuit.

While this is a shorter book than her other colouring books (it clocks in at 37 images to colour), it's definitely worth adding to your collection if you enjoy Christmas, colouring or both. I'm planning on using it to wind down of an evening while we watch Christmas films, what better way to give yourself a little mental break whilst still doing something festive?

The Countdown to Christmas...

Is it too early for Christmas stuff?

Most of the fun of Christmas for me is the build up. I love starting to build wish lists of things I want to get my friends and family members, I love to start reading books set at Christmas, I love planning where the Christmas decorations are going to go, I love making Christmas music playlists and mix CDs.

And above all else, I love the beginning of our traditional Countdown to Christmas Movie Watch.

I've blogged about this before, but basically we have a massive list of Christmas films or DVDs which we work through in the run up to Christmas, we've also got a bunch of 'Not Quite Christmas Films'. These are the films which feature Christmas in some way (but it's not the whole plot) or they're set at Christmas but are generally a rom-com rather than a Christmas film, or the films which we associate with Christmas in some way because they're always on TV at Christmas, or they were first on at Christmas. We have 50 in total.

And we're aiming to watching them all before we got to Wales.

It's a bit of a tall order.

And we're late starting. Normally we'd begin on the 1st of November but we had to finish Series Nine of Criminal Minds first.

But we've kicked it off now, starting with When Harry Met Sally, picked at random using a random number generator. I think it's a great one to start with because it's filled with all the beautiful autumn colours, sort of easing us into the Christmas Countdown gently.

Plus it's good background noise to NaNo to, since it's totally familiar to me and I can tune in and out of it.

So, how do you begin your Countdown to Christmas?

How I wrote 15,000 words in a day for NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo has become a bit of a regular thing for me. Each year seems to follow a similar pattern now.

Somewhere around June I say to myself 'I won't do it this year', then the plot bunnies start creeping in and before I know it we're into August and those little guys are breeding like rabbits. There's something about the onset of autumn which puts me in the mood for it and before I know where I am, I'm surfing the forums, planning plot twists and compiling lists of character traits.

During NaNoWriMo the aim is to write 50,000 words of a novel; its focus is on quantity, not quality. You're writing a first draft to get the story out, all the other work comes later. In order to hit your target you need to average 1,667 words per day and that's one of the tricky parts.

I managed to get 15,000 words on Tuesday, the first day of NaNo, so I thought I'd share some tips for how I did it.

Be Prepared!
Just like Scar in The Lion King, you need to be prepared. And that preparation can take many forms. You might want to have detailed character studies, plot points, research background events, or you might be more of a 'pantser' (i.e. you write by the seat of your pants).

You might think that if you're a pantser you can't really prepare, but preparation isn't just about preparing what you're going to write. It's about making time to write, freezing some easy meals so you don't have to cook, cleaning the house before the start of the month so you can let your standards slip a little over the month, and letting your friends and family members know what you're up to so they can prepare too.

My preparation included booking November the 1st off from work. This might be a little bit extreme (especially if, like me, you're getting low on your holiday allowance). I like to start bang on midnight so this allows me to stop up late and not worry about being unable to function the following day. I also stocked up on yummy snacks to help keep me going and motivate me.

Plan to Write
This probably sounds a little bit weird. If you're taking part in NaNo you're obviously planning to write, but I mean you should plan when you're actually going to do your writing.

You might want to get up half an hour earlier to get in some writing time before the kids get up, take a tablet to work with you to get in some words during your break, or have your tea a little later and use that time of day to write.

You should also plan for the time when you won't have as much time to write. You lucky Americans have Thanksgiving to contend with. Others might have birthdays, family get togethers, work trips or other important things to do. So while you might need to aim for 1,667 words per day, there might be days you can't write so you need to write more for others.

Write When You Can
This is where my 15,000 comes in.

I know that I always do best when I start strong. By getting in 15k on Day One I'm able to coast for a week if I need to. It gives you a cushion in case there's a day when you just can't write. And if you can write every day, then that word count is just going to keep on growing.

If there is a day when you finish work early and you'd usually get home then head online to catch up; spend half that time writing. Forego your Saturday lie-in and write some more words. Take advantage of the weekend or a holiday and stay up late writing.

How I got to 15k
Firstly, I started bang on midnight. I'd aimed to write until 2am but I couldn't keep my eyes open (since I'd woken up at 4am that day). Even just getting an hour's writing time in meant I was able to hit my day's target before I went to bed.

I woke up early and hit the keys before breakfast. This is something I could probably do on a workday, but I've not been bothering with it since, maybe I will if my buffer drops too small though.

Since I had Tuesday off work I paced myself. I aimed to write in bursts of fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, giving myself a break in between times so I didn't get burned out or sprain my wrists. In between writing I did laundry, grabbed a bite to eat, messaged Mr Click, hung out with Tara and joined in a NaNo chat.

Speaking of which, the NaNo chat was good fun for keeping me motivated through the day as well. I was ahead of most of people in the room so there was an incentive to make sure that I wasn't overtaken by anyone. I'm pretty competitive so this was a good motivator. Plus people were bouncing ideas off of one another and generally revelling in the NaNo buzz.

Those words all came from one Word Crawl. my little crawl on the NaNo forums has helpfully put together a Harry Potter Word Crawl extravaganza. There's a word crawl for each year of Harry's time at Hogwarts and from the first one I got a little under 15,000 words. I did a couple of activities from Year Two to get me up to a nice round 15k.

The word crawls are my favourite thing for challenging yourself because they give you different activities which help to keep you motivated. It's like a competition with yourself. After each activity or task in the challenge I made myself take a little break, sometimes only five minutes or so but all those minutes added up over the course of the day.

At the time of writing this, I'm steadily making my way through the Year Two Crawl. I'm hoping to finish it tomorrow or Saturday and I'm optimistic that once I do I'll be sitting on the other side of 25k.

Why not share some of your strategies for upping your NaNo word count?

Currently...

Getting ready...

... to write a little more on my NaNo project.

I took the day off work yesterday and got in a whopping 15,687 words. I was aiming for about 10,000 and it came through surprisingly easily so I kept going for 15,000.

I'm just aiming for 2,000 words today since I've been at work all day, but this is how my NaNo graph is looking at the moment:

Missing...

... my Hogwarts robes.

I actually found a simple pattern for wizarding robes. Now I'm wondering if I'm just quirky enough to be able to pull off wearing full blown wizard robes every day. I would totally do it, I don't think I've ever been so comfortable wearing a skirt.

I did wear my Ravenclaw scarf today and I'm thinking I need to get a matching hat on my needles.

Wanting...

... to get some colouring in done.

A couple of months ago Mr Click ordered me the two new Johanna Basford colouring books, Magical Jungle and Johanna's Christmas. They just arrived yesterday so I'm planning on dipping into the Christmas one very soon.

Stopping...

... writing this blog post right now.

Because I have 2,000 more words to write on my NaNo and they're not going to write themselves.

Are you NaNoing? How's it going?

Books 83 & 84 of 2015: New England Witch Chronicles by Chelsea Bellingeri & The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

By the beginning of December last year I was struggling to get caught up on the Reading Challenge as I'd fallen behind a little. It was about this point that I made the decision to just read what I felt like reading this year, I didn't like the pressure of having to find a book that ticked each of the criteria on the list and then feeling like I wasn't going to be able to complete it right at the end.

For Week 48 the book was one written by an author with your same initials. The obvious choice here was Charlotte Bronte. I have Jane Eyre sitting up on my bookshelf, but I wanted something shorter, less heavy going and I was determined to go for something off of my Kindle.

In the end I selected New England Witch Chronicles by Chelsea Bellingeri. I should add that the cover below does have the author's name down as Chelsea Luna, but my copy is under the name Chelsea Bellingeri.

I think that I pretty much picked this by sorting all my Kindle books into alphabetical order by author and scanning through all the authors whose surnames began with the letter B. In the end, out of all of the books on my device, I think there were two with the initials CB. I don't remember exactly how I picked this one to read; I suspect this was the shorter of the two, that's how I seemed to choose most of my Reading Challenge books last year.

This book is about a teenage girl, named Alex, whose seventeenth birthday brings some weird dreams at right about the same time a girl is murdered after apparently messing with witchcraft. It looks like there might be a witch hunter in Hazel Cove.

It clocks in at around 343 pages but I managed to get through it surprisingly quickly. Part of that was because it was a fairly easy read. It's aimed at teens and I was able to just switch off my brain and lose myself in it, which was exactly what I needed for my book of the week. I got through this in just four sittings.

On the whole I enjoyed it, though I couldn't help but be reminded of Twilight in places. I think it was inevitable with the supernatural elements; you can't help but draw parallels when these things crop up in teen fiction now. But also the Peter/Alex/James love triangle too.

Another, and rather surprising, comparison that I found myself drawing was between this book and the Kathy Reichs books. I think it was because for a large chunk of the book Alex is trying to figure out what was going on, then someone was out to get her which led to her being attacked during the last eighth of the book. It's the classic Tempe Brennan formula.

I wasn't entirely satisfied with the ending. It builds up to a point and then breaks off to make way for the next book. It's a good hook but I would've liked a little more resolution, especially as I wasn't sure I was going to go on to read the next book (spoiler: I haven't yet).

I followed this up with Week 49's book: a play.

I had a lot of choice here. I've got plays left over from my various OU courses (should I have fancied a reread), I've got a couple on my Kindle, I've got some I've picked up in random bookshops and haven't gotten around to reading yet.

Once again, time and energy won out. I looked for the shortest recognisable (to me) play on my Kindle. I went with The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare (because 127 pages). Interestingly, it was first published in the First Folio text, one of which currently resides not a million miles away from where I sit writing this review. Neat, right?

It's in a similar vein to Hamlet, but it's a sort of mix of tragedy and comedy. Leontes is convinced that his pregnant wife has been having an affair with Polixenes, leading to the latter escaping the country. Things generally go downhill from this point. But it's okay because it's kind of funny too.

I really enjoyed this. I always remember at school everyone groaned when we had to study Shakespeare, but I've always loved it. When I was fifteen, the only thing I wanted for my birthday was a copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare. I carried that (massive) tome everywhere with me (including a school trip to M&Ds) and it still resides upstairs on my bookcase.

My greatest dread was always that moment when everyone would be assigned a 'role' in the text and we'd have to read it aloud. I was going to say that certain types of writing sound better when they're read aloud, but I think that's inaccurate. You could read the list of ingredients off the side of a cereal box and it could sound beautiful. It's about the way you say the words, the way you feel them in your mouth, how you play with the letters on your tongue. I think I have some synaesthesia thing going on with my relationship with words (and that's probably another blog post entirely).

In short, bored teenagers reading Shakespeare aloud, does nothing to make the text feel beautiful and exciting.

Which is why I've always much preferred reading these books alone.

Basically what I was getting at here is that I loved the language and I really didn't have any trouble following what was going on or was being said. Sure the language use is pretty archaic in places, but in others it's fairly unchanged all these years later.

I was reminded of The Duchess of Malfi and The Tempest in equal measure. The former because of Hermione, the woman who is powerless against the forces of the men in her life; the latter because of the abandonment of Perdita on the beach and her being raised by the shepherd. I'd love to see it performed on the stage to see if how I was picturing it is accurate to a performance.

Bits of it were quite funny. I especially enjoyed seeing the famous 'exit, pursued by bear' stage direction. I always like it when I get to see things which have become part of the cultural consciousness firsthand, it makes me feel like I'm in on the joke now too.