Monday 17 March 2008

Hurrah, Distraction Already!

Hello. I'm Clare Sudbery, and I'm about to start writing a new novel and ooh, look, here's something else I can do instead. ;o)

I have two novels under my belt, one (The Dying of Delight, Diva Books) published in 2004, and one (currently called Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex) which has just been sold to Random House in Germany. I'm awaiting the results of more negotiotions (UK, rest of world etc) from my agent, my breath meanwhile baited (sic) with a small wriggling maggot.

I've been meaning to start another book for ages. Apart from anything else, I finished DYWTPS (even that is too much typing, so I generally refer to it as DYW) over a year ago and the whole process of finding agent, publisher, etc is sooooo long and tortuous that another book would be the ideal distraction. But, you know. Life, work, illness, children, procrastination, yadda yadda.

The thing that has finally galvanised me is my second child (real one, with arms and legs - not creative issue), gently prodding me from the inside and scheduled to make an appearance on July 7th. After which I suspect my hands will be otherwise engaged.

So. This is my plan: To write the first draft of Novel III before June 21st, which gives me 14 weeks. I'm aiming for 100,000 words so I want to write 7,500 words per week (to give a total of 105k). I'm also frantically nestbuilding and faffing about with other things, but there's always spare time - right?

With my last book I spent 18 months arsing about with plot outlines and character descriptions before I finally started writing properly, and although I'm sure those things are useful, for me they were just very elaborate procrastination tools. And anyway, I don't have time for that. So after some agonising over the subject of this new one, I now have a simple two-line description (and oh, all right then, a fair few notes). I know the basic outline of the plot, and am going to jump straight in. No faffing, no fiddling, no rewriting halfway through. A whole first draft, which will then be put aside for at least 6 weeks, and then I'm allowed to take a giant red pen to it. Gawd alone knows when it'll get finished, as I like to rewrite and will no doubt do a full 2nd and 3rd draft before it's ready for public consumption, and there's the small matter of babies and other work... eek. But at least I'll have the raw material.

And you lot are going to cheer me on and shout at me when I flag and not let me use the excuse of writing blog posts when I should be starting work, right? Yes. Good. Thank you. And I will do the same for you.

P.S. I blog at Boob Pencil, and am also the founder of BloggersWithBookDeals, whose public face is bookarazzi.com.

22 comments:

Lane Mathias said...

Hi Clare and welcome.
I'm impressed with your plan and will be cheering you on along with everyone else:-)

Anonymous said...

Ha, don't be too impressed, I haven't actually delivered anything yet... ;o)

Helen said...

Hey Clare - welcome to the racers. I love your writing style - you made me smile. Now stop reading my comment and start writing book 3!

Rowan Coleman said...

Hi Clare - welcome to the racers. Good luck with your books Rx

Rachel Green said...

Hi Clare. Good luck with the new one.

Was I the only one who thought a year from finishing DYW to having it published wasn't actually very long?

Anonymous said...

You're probably right leatherdykeuk! Ah, how depressing. Doesn't make the waiting any easier though, and I'm sure people are right when they say the best cure for spending all your time waiting for the phone to ring or agonising over rejection letters... is to get on and write another one.

I'm an impatient bunny, which makes me rather unsuitable for this occupation. It's all so very slow.

Anonymous said...

And of course it'll probably be something like another year before I actually get to hold a copy in my hand...

Jenny Beattie said...

Hi Clare, Glad Liz found a space for you. Have you voted on date and venue over on http://novel-racer-meet.blogspot.com/ for the meet?

Jjx

Anonymous said...

Ah, good point JJ. Will do.

Sarah*G* said...

Hi Clare and welcome to the Racers.
Best of luck with your new book and being pregnant! You are going to be so busy after the birth I hope you can get as much done as possible before then. I am trying to write but keep finding other things. At the moment it is Facebook and takeing photos of my two darling angels/devils (depending on their behaviour)

Anonymous said...

Sarah, I can sympathtise!

I spent the morning pfiffing and pfaffing, writing blog posts, updating my site template, checking my email, etc etc... and then it was past lunchtime and I was hungry and I very nearly went away to eat stuff, but I told myself I had to write something first, and then it was going quite well, so I told myself it had to be at least 1000 words, and now I've written 1016 words, hurrah! And I'm allowed to have lunch. And then will have to go pick my son up, so, um... well I'll just have to write some more tonight. No excuses!

Marcie Steele said...

Hi Clare, welcome to the racers.

I've just finished redrafting book one and book two is done for now. But I am going to be back with book three again soon, along with Cal, so I'll be with 'racing' along side you. They're a great bunch to race with. xx

CL Taylor said...

Hi Clare! I've been reading your blog for ages (but silently lurking, saying nothing *bwah ha ha*). Sorry, my evil laugh is rubbish. But welcome to the novel racers. It's great to have you here :o)

Lucy Diamond said...

Oh Clare!!! How nice to see you joining the race. Catch me if you can... xxx

Rose Red Art said...

Hi Clare! Welcome to the Racers! :)

Anonymous said...

Hello everybody!

Cal, I do love it when lurkers delurk.

I now have a wordcounter thingy on my blog. Most exciting. Still stuck at 1016 words, but hoping to write some more right now...

Anonymous said...

Right. Have reached 3029 words (today's target was 3250) which is not bad for a first day! Think I'm allowed to go to bed now...

Fiona Mackenzie. Writer said...

Welcome Clare

We're very good at cheering each other on and there's even Lane's pointy stick...

Leigh Forbes said...

14 weeks?
You can do it!

I wrote a novel while pregnant with my third child. Impending birth-giving is a great motivation, I can tell you! It was about seven months before I could get back to it for editing...!

The very best of luck!

Anonymous said...

Yes Leigh, I'm anticipating at least 6 months before I have any proper editing time, although I owuld like to try and do at least a read-through before then.

My mum wrote a book when she was pregnant with me, which was part of the reason I thought it could be done. Although hers was for 8-11-yr-olds, so shorter... still, it was published.

Unknown said...

Just catching up here. Welcome, welcome Clare :-)

NoviceNovelist said...

Hi Clare, Welcome - best wishes with the writing! Look forward to hearing how it is all going for you.