This year, after many years of thinking about it but never actually committing, I decided to do NaNoWriMo. That is, National Novel Writing Month. The idea is that you sign up, and then write 50,000 words in the thirty days of November. That could be a finished novel, but for most writers it's a decent chunk to get started editing.
I thought this would be the perfect year, as I'm not working and after a fairly hectic October I thought I had November pretty free. I got a new computer as an early Christmas and Birthday present (9th February, thanks for asking.) so I was all set to go.
It didn't quite go to plan. My sister's partner was away for a large chunk of October, and my mum was making weekly trips to London to help her with her new baby, and that continued into the first two weeks of November, meaning that I was stuck at my mum's helping out her wheelchair-bound husband. No computer to write on, and because she's having major building work done there wasn't even a table to sit at with a notepad and pen. Because of that, I got off to a very slow start with my NaNoWriMo and left myself a mountain to climb in the last two weeks.
But I got there! I managed to write just over 50,000 words, and in true Liam style I finished at 10 pm on the last night, clocking up over 10,000 on the last day alone. It was like being back at University!
My story still needs an ending, a lot of work done on the beginning and big chunks of the middle, and it needs a whole lot of editing. It's currently in a pretty rough first draft. But as a good friend of mine told me, the first draft is just you shovelling a load of sand into a sandpit, so you can build a sandcastle later.
In my story, Mabel has lost her best friend, Genevieve. Genevieve, or Genny, has always been obsessed with gateways to magical worlds, and Mabel manages to find one and goes through it, looking for her to bring her home. Along the way she meets Siobhan and her family, who take her in and look after her for a few days. Eventually she'll end up in an enchanted mansion, which is empty by day, but there's a masquerade ball every night.
One thing that really helped to keep me going when I was starting to struggle is this fabulous aesthetic collage designed for me by Lia at
LostInAStory. I gave her a few details about what I was writing and she came back with this, which I think is pretty much perfect. Go check out her excellent blog please. I've ordered myself a print of this through Boots Photo now, and I'll be framing it and putting it on my wall.
There was also a fantastic online community around NaNoWriMo, that gave me a lot of support, particularly on Twitter. Too many people to name, and I'll only forget some of them, but thank you all! You are wonderful! If you think you've got a novel in you but you've never tried to write it, I highly recommend starting during NaNoWriMo, just for the encouragement you get. Whether or not you reach the 50,000 word target, just starting is a huge achievement.
I'd like to share an excerpt of my story with you. It's just a first draft, so there may well still be mistakes in there still. This is the first time I've shown anyone what I've been working on, so any (kind) feedback would be great. This is Siobhan telling her two children and Mabel a bedtime story.
“Come in and listen, if you like,”
Siobhan calls out to me. The children are squeezed into a narrow bed
together, under a window with purple wisteria flowers hanging down
across it. Siobhan is sitting on the end of the bed, and there are no
chairs, so I sit with my back to the wardrobe and listen while she
tells a story to the children. “Right, since we have a guest with
us tonight, I’ll tell you the story of Queen Mab of the Fairies.”
“Is everyone comfortable?” she
asks. We all assure her that we are, while Conor wriggles his way
further under the blankets. “Alright then. Queen Mab was a fairy,
in fact she was the midwife to the fairies.”
“What’s a miffwife?” Conor asks.
“A midwife is the person who helps
mummies to have babies, dear.” Siobhan explains. “She’s usually
a very clever woman, who knows a lot about medicines and how to help
people.”
“Like a witch?” Elspeth pipes up.
“Well, not unlike a witch, petal.
Many witches also practice a bit of midwifery, but not all witches
are midwives and not all midwives are witches. But one thing that
they both have in common is that they see a lot of life and a lot of
death. Midwives are there at the start of life, and all too often
they are also there at the end of it.”
“Like” Elspeth starts, but Siobhan
quickly interrupts her.
“Yes, love. Now can I get on with
the story?” she says kindly, and I wonder if there was a third
child at some point in their past.
“Now like all of the fairy folk,
Queen Mab was tiny. In fact she was no bigger than a little agate
stone. She was beautiful though, as all of the fairies are, and very
proud of her beauty too, so they say. She had a little wagon she used
to ride around in, pulled by a team little atomies.”
“What’s a tommy?” Conor asks.
“An atomie is a really small thing
that pulls fairy coaches, love.” Siobhan explains. This seems to
satisfy him, though there’s a look of puzzlement on Elspeth’s
face. Siobhan quickly moves on. She had a little insect to drive her
wagon, a gnat, all dressed up in a grey frock coat and a top hat, and
the collars on the atomies were made of pure moonbeams.”
“How did they work?” Elspeth
asked, making me smile. She’s inquisitive, she’ll go far, I think
to myself.
“They worked very well, dear.”
Siobhan tells her, a little brusquely.
“What was her wagon made of?” She
asks.
“Well, it was made of an empty
hazelnut, by a squirrel. Squirrels have always been responsible for
making fairy chariots, for as long as anyone can remember.”
“I found one.” Conor adds. “Last
autumn, daddy and me, we were walking in the trees and I found a nut
with a big hole through it.”
“Very good, Conor. That was probably
an old fairy chariot then.”
“But” Elspeth starts.
“Yes?” her mother asks her,
sharply.
“Never mind,” she says, and
settles back down in the bed.
“Good.” Siobhan says, happily, and
rearranges herself on the bed.
“Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Queen
Mab wasn’t just the fairies’ midwife. She was also responsible
for bringing dreams to sleeping people. She’d ride across their
faces while they slept, and they’d end up having the most wonderful
dreams. Or if she didn’t like them, maybe she’d bring them
nightmares. There was one little town she liked to visit every night,
and she’d ride her little wagon through every bedroom in the
town.”
“What town was it?” Elspeth idly asks.
“Goatham, it was Goatham, dear.”
“The one down the road?”
“Yes, Elspeth, that one. Can I
continue?”
“Yeah,” she says, playing with her hair. I have
to try hard to stifle my laugh, getting me a look from Siobhan.
“So Queen Mab used to love riding
her wagon around Goatham, and she’d bring different dreams to all
of the people there. There was a priest there, in those days. He
wasn’t a popular man, it was one of the rules of the town that
people had to give the church a tenth of whatever they produced, and
people generally weren’t happy about that. He’d been given a
young suckling pig one day.”
“I thought they had goats in
Goatham. Isn’t that how it got its name?”
“Ellie!”
“Sorry, mummy.”
“He’d been given a little suckling
tithe pig. Queen Mab used that pig’s tail to tickle the priest
under the nose as he slept. Night after night he dreamed of a
different parish, in a different town, until eventually he decided to
follow his dreams and he moved away. He left his church empty, and
all the people of the town were mightily pleased about that, and they
all decided not to advertise for another priest. There was a young
woman lived in that town, a really beautiful girl no more than
sixteen. When Mab rode her chariot over her forehead she dreamed of
love and kisses. She’d once kissed a young soldier, a handsome
young man who was stationed in an army camp just outside of a town,
and mostly it was him she dreamt of kissing and loving. Not always,
for she was still young, but mostly.
“But Queen Mab, she had a taste for
mischief. She knew that the girl wasn’t just dreaming about her
soldier, so Mab also drove over the forehead of a young goatherd who
slept on the hills just outside of the town.”
“See!”
Elspeth sits up and exclaims. “Goats.”
“Yes, dear. Though it’s quite
possible for a whole town to have both goats and pigs. Or have you
forgotten how many animals we have in our own backyard? This goatherd
also dreamt of love. In fact, he dreamt of kissing the very girl I’ve
just told you about. He’d seen her when he’d been in town, and he
thought that she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. One
night he woke up in the middle of the dream, and he knew that he had
to make it come true. He left his goats alone on the hillside, and he
walked down to the town, to the young girl’s house. She woke up
then too, and looking out of her bedroom window she saw the young
goatherd who’d come to see her, and she fell in love with him there
and then. She ran down to open the door for him, and they kissed each
other, just like in their dreams. He didn’t stay long, for her
parents were in their beds and there would have been strong words
had, and probably more, if her father had caught him. But after that
the young girl would often take herself walking up in the hills, and
she’d often happen upon the goatherd while she was there, and they
spent many a happy hour together up there with no one to see them but
his goats.
Queen Mab didn’t just bring dreams
of love though. She liked to visit the army camp while they all
slept, and she’d drive over their necks and they’d dream violent,
bloody dreams. They’d dream of marching victorious over
battlefields, over their slain enemies. They’d dream of winning
sword fights against enemy generals. Their dreams were dreamt to the
sound of war drums banging in their ears, which would wake them up in
the cool night of the camp. They’d curse Queen Mab, or say a prayer
to her, and fall asleep again, back into her dreams. Mab knew the
soldier that the girl had dreamt of, and she would ride her wagon
over his chest. He’d dream of her, but in his dreams she was in
someone else’s arms, sharing kisses with another man. His dreams
made him jealous and angry. One day, after a restless night, he went
looking for her. He found her with her goatherd, in a lonely valley,
and he took his sword and he killed the goatherd. Then he demanded
that the girl gave him kisses instead.”
“Did she?” Elspeth asks,
intrigued.
“No, of course she didn’t. She was
heartbroken at the death of her love. She ran back to town and told
her father everything that had happened. Her father went to the boy’s
captain, and the soldier boy was punished. He was whipped soundly and
thrown out of his regiment. He had no work, no money, and ended up
walking from town to town begging for food.”
“What happened to the girl?”
Elspeth asks, yawning. “Did she fall in love again?”
“No, she never did. She went off
into the hills and looked after her love’s herd of goats. He had a
little cottage tucked away in that lonely valley, that’s where she
buried his body and that’s where she lived.”
“Wasn’t she lonely?”
“Only for a little while. Nine
months later she had a little baby. She raised her son on her own,
named him after her lost love, and as he grew up he learnt how to
care for the goats with her. And the best thing about living together
in that little cottage in that lonely valley is that Queen Mab never
found her, and never plagued her dreams again.”
thanks
Liam
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