Wife, mother, Poet, Writer, Art Installationist, Stand Up Comedian, Dog Enthusiast. Spending most of my time being creative in a variety of sometimes quirky ways!
I have suffered in my life, I have had wonderful things occur in my life. Concentrating on the wonderful things makes it easier for me to live a great life.
In writing, as in life, gaining encouragement is an important thing to help a person keep going. Of course, we must encourage ourselves too, because the internal messages we tell ourselves can be crippling, and easily kill off an idea, no matter how good it is.
So I say thank you, to the people who have let me know they’re following along with the progress in my Cosy Murder Mystery novel, the first in the proposed “At Talloola” series with amateur sleuth Meredith Webster. Having you with me, as I work my way through this first book is certainly greatly helping me!
Books take time, particularly when a writer is used to writing poems, and is accustomed to being able to get a poem written, edited, and done within a day, when it goes well. A novel, no matter how good it’s going, is going to take at least a month.
Anyway, thanks, and I can promise you, a novel will happen. By the end of 2021, Winds of Death At Talloola, will be written, and if not published, at least available to be read in pre-published form.
Writing a novel isn’t an easy thing to do. To have a piece of writing your could call a novel, you have to have written at least 50,000 words, and preferably longer. For general fiction novels you would be looking at 75,000 to 120,000 words for a book.
A Cosy Murder Mystery, which are what I am currently writing, ‘should have’ somewhere between 50,000 to 75,000 words, is what my check on google tells me. I can do that, can’t I? This moment of wondering if I can do it, is a problem, because if I’m not careful, my mind will decide I can’t actually do it, and the 30,000 words I’ve managed to write so far will be a waste of my writing time.
I don’t want to have to just scrap those words, and the ideas I’ve had for the current (first) novel, and the almost twenty further novels I have planned. By planned, I mean book titles a a brief idea about the murder, who, what, or how … I don’t want to ditch it all! And I have to admit, I’ve fallen in love with the idea of writing these books, and I have a lot of affection for all of the characters I have, and the setting.
If I stop this writing, my main character, Meredith will get cranky with me, and so will some of my other characters. I get the idea many people in Talloola (my town I created), are looking forward to have lots of interesting things happening around town!
So I am going to do this, and to help me, I know have a friend who has been helping me get the words written, by asking me to send 200 words to her every day. I haven’t been able to do that every day, and then she put up the number of words she wanted me to send. Then of course, along came Christmas, and this novel writing thing went by the wayside, in favour of getting presents, and then visiting for the ‘season’.
But my friend, Michelle, can=me up with a plan, and told me what it was. I thought about it, briefly, and said yea, I can and will do that. So the plan is that I will send Michelle 500 words every day, and if I miss a day, I will send extra to make up for it. This plan begins on the first of January, and will continue for all of the month.
So, by the end of the month, I’ll have 15,500 more words written for my novel, on top of the number I already have for my partly written first book. So, my current word count is around 31,000 words. Add 15,00 to that and you have 46,500 words, and that is more than half way through!
So Michelle and I will have a writing session, talking about what is there, what is needed, how it’s all going, and what needs to come next. It should be a useful discussion for sure! So when/if I get this first book in the ‘At Talloola’ series of Cosy Murder Mysteries, written and published I’m definitely going to thank Michelle in the book, as well as a couple of other friends, Cathy, and Jill! Oh, and Alex too, of course.
This road is the sort of road my main character may drive down, as she works. Talloola is very much a country town, many miles from the capital city of South Australia.
Alex is a member of my writing group, and so is Michelle. Alex is the one who gives group members writing prompts for the writing exercise at the group meeting, and then for homework. These prompts have been excellent for getting ideas for this book, and for poetry writing too. Prompts seem to help connect with hidden spots in the brain, and very interesting things can crawl out!
Having this group, and the group members there who are interested in how my writing is going helps to keep things going, and Christmas has been a distraction from this novel. I’ve written blog posts, at least one, about life getting in the way before. But life is what you need, so you know lots of different things, to feed into what you write!
Twas the night before Christmas and in the house A creature was stirring, that cheeky small mouse The presents were piled up under the tree With credit available, it feels like they’re free!
But nothing is free, not in our time Five finger discount’s not real, it’s a crime And that little mouse, is thieving for sure Nibbling on goodies bought from the store
It’s a wee little creature, you might call it cute But the droppings it leaves, they’re not so beaut! What if Santa got sick, from mouse poo on his bickies And all of his reindeer got crook, went on sickies?
A terrible Christmas, caused by a mouse, Pooping on food it stole from my house! My very best Chrismas would be rodent free, With no little surprises from mousie, for me!
I hoped you liked my poem, I have much experience of unwanted rodents inside the house, more in the past, but still one in the house every now and then …
After this weird Covid crisis we’ve all had, all around the world, can we safely get together for a Christmas get together with family? I hope we can. I live in South Australia, not many world travellers around where I live, and Covid has stayed away, mostly.
But all it might take is one person not to be careful, and wham, Covid might strike. That frightening thought is there, hovering just out of sight. Famous people have caught it, and lived, well known people are being vaccinated, so they may go on living, health workers, and other essential others are being vaccinated …
And on various websites, and other social media outlets, other people are talking about risks, and who deserves or needs to be vaccinated, and who shouldn’t be vaccinated. When the time comes, if it comes, for me to make a decision about being vaccinated, I will go with the best thought out way, and go that way. Science, evidence, feedback from my medical people, that is what my decision will be based on.
I’ve looked at the most up to date words about my Multiple Sclerosis medication (Gilenya), and Covid, and it seems I’m not really any more at risk than the general population, so I will continue with my social distancing, and hand washing, and stay well, I hope.
But we have to make it through, and beyond Christmas and the New Year first, and hey, I still have some presents to wrap in time for Christmas Day!
I wish everyone best wishes for the festive season, and I hope you have a safe and lovely time!
As a so-called ‘novelist’ I am not writing my current novel every day. I’m not even writing more of it every second day … Life, as the title suggests, is a pest, and gets in the way of my novel writing. But life is certainly a pleasure too, and it gives me things to write about.
Any kind of writing is useful for a novelist, or wannabee one, which is a more truthful title for me, I’d think. I have part of a novel written, a third of it, and that’s it. So I am a wannabee novelist, or I could say I have a novel in (slow) progress. I am only human, and being only human is a good thing to be, for a novelist, because of course, humans, that’s what I must write about.
Whether my characters are aliens, dogs, or cows, they are really humans in another form. In my novel, there are definitely humans. The dogs in the story are dogs, not humans, although I can only give my human interpretation on what the dogs may be thinking, or with the reasons for what they are doing …
Anyway, life, that is the main reason for the slow progression of my novel-in-progress. Or really, to be truthful, I suspect the desire isn’t strong enough to break through, and I allow the bits and bobs of life interfere, and I do those rather than settling down to write more of the novel. Am I lazy, or am I just easily distracted?
Hmm possibly yes to both of those things, at times anyway. Or it may be I am afraid that I can’t actually write this proposed book, a Cosy Murder Mystery, a genre I haven’t written in before, until I came up with this idea for a series of such novels. Since then, I have written several short stories using some of the characters I’ve come up with, and using the same setting too.
I like these people/characters, and I like the town I’ve come up with. It’s fun writing about them, I just can’t get stuck right into getting this novel written. I have people who want to read this first novel, and I don’t want to let them down, but by not getting the first book written, of course I am letting them down, and I’m letting myself down too.
Boo hoo to that, poor me … But by confessing to my ‘sins’ regarding this, can I maybe shame myself into just getting the writing happening again. Well no, I doubt that is the way I should go, I need to be happy to be writing the best book I can, and I know when I do actually get some more of this novel written, I enjoy doing the writing.
And of course, I do have other things I have to do, and today, earlier, I was working on the Mallala Crossroad Chronicle, which is a newsletter I put together and publish every month. This newsletter and producing it, are things I am rightly proud of, I have been told many times by those I respect it is a good newsletter for the town of Mallala.
And I live in my house with others, my husband and our dog, and both have things they need from me, if I am to be a good member of the household, which of course I want to be. Because, as the headline for this blog post indicates, life is a pleasure as well as a pest. And being a good person is a huge pleasure, whereas being a good novelist is an unknown possible pleasure …
One of my reasons for wanting this Cosy Murder Mystery novel to work is because I like the idea of being well known as the writer of such a series. But of course without even having the first book written, I can’t be famous for writing such a series. And as I’m typing these words, I’m aware of the other things I want and/or need to get done today … Pest or pleasure, life and living have needs, chores, fun things, and responsibilities.
That is enough self-analysis, time to get back to one of my other things I need to do, and there will be a pleasure there too, as I’ll be getting myself another cup of coffee, to help me get on with the December issue of the Mallala Crossroad Chronicle … I’ve done the front cover, and many of the other pages are in their proper place, and it’s looking good, with Santa and the local Mallala Lion members from their recent Christmas dinner.
And on that note, I offer my readers greetings of the season, stay safe, stay well, and have a fine time!
