Weekend read: Heart of Time

One of my New Year's resolutions is to finally finish my fantasy novel, Heart of Time.

I started it during Nanowrimo in 2014, and managed to write about 70,000 words. But it's not even half finished, let alone edited.

Eona and her prison mate Lia are still trapped in a dungeon and they're refusing to tell me how they are planning to get out.

Until they do, I'll edit and upload the finished chpaters to Wattpad.

Here's a preview, please read and comment.

Heart of Time

Writing is addictive. Especially writing during "Nanowrimo"(i.e. the National Novel Writing Month). The goal is simple: Finishing a 50,000 word novel within a single month. If you have been following this blog for a while, you'll know that I successfully took part in Camp Nano this July, even managing 10k more than planned. However, I never actually got to the end of my novel, which is why I am taking part in Nanowrimo again this November. Another 50k should do the job, unless my characters suddenly decide to do more unplanned excursions to foreign horizons. Somehow, I totally get the idea behind Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, where book characters literally leap from the pages they were created on and develop a life on their own. Mine do just the same. All the time.

A fellow Nanowrimo participant made this amazing cover for me - check out her tumblr page

At the top of the right sidebar you will be able to track my progress throughout the month. Thanks to a large donation of German gingerbread, I already managed to write 2k on the first day of Nanowrimo. Let's keep the chocolate, gingerbread and dried mango coming!

PS. If you want to have a sneak peak at the novel so far, comment or contact me and I'll send you the manuscript so far.
PPS. It's not too late to take part yourself - it's not about winning - taking part is what matters!

Postcrossing

If you - like me - love to receive snail mail from all over the world, you might want to have a look at Postcrossing. It's quite a simple idea really, you are matched with random people from all over the world, send them a postcard, and in return receive one from somewhere else. A friend of mine has already sent more than 500 (!) cards, and received just as many (thanks to her for showing me Postcrossing). That's probably enough to decorate an entire room with them :)
Postcrossing is free, you only have to pay for your postcards and stamps. Even though I've only just started, I've already sent cards to Belarus, Belgium, Russia and Germany, and received my first one from the USA.
For those people who love statistics and numbers, there's a whole range of ways your postcrossing history can be displayed - in a map, in tables and diagrams - showing how long the cards took and what distance they travelled. Quite impressive, really. And I find it very tempting to follow my postcards and visit all those countries in person one day.

Mission accomplished

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I just wrote the final words of my Camp Nano novel! After 28 days of writing, planning and editing I have reached the finishing line three days early. Alas, the novel is not actually finished. There's so much that's still supposed to happen, so much that has been left unsaid/unwritten.

But for now, I'm done, I'm going on holiday. And when I return with new energy and new ideas, I might just continue writing, until the novel is actually finished. The other possibility is that I will take part in the big brother of Camp Nano, the National Novel Writing Month this november.

If you haven't read it yet, ask away and I will provide you with the twelve chapters that I have written this July.

Wanted: TEST READERS

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As you will know from reading earlier posts on this blog, I am currently taking part in the international project Camp Nanowrimo, which means I'm trying to write an entire novel (50,000 words minimum) in one month. Now that a third of the month is over, I am looking for your participation. I'm offering the chance to read my novel now that it's still in the process of being written. I will send you the latest chapters, and in return I would ask for some honest feedback - don't worry, you don't have to write a novel in return. I basically just want to know what you think will happen next - and then I'll avoid to take that story line. Predictable novels are boring!
Also, there might be logical errors that I've overlooked in my enthusiasm over writing this story. So, if you want to be a part of this amazing project, comment below or contact me on Twitter and I'll get in touch with you.
Thank you!

Update: Camp Nanowrimo

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After writing about Camp Nanowrimo before it had actually started, here's an update on how I've got on so far. My goal is to reach 50,000 words, the deadline being the last day of July. So far, I've managed to write every day, and my story is developing nicely. Yesterday, I finally crossed the 10,000 words line. To win (i.e. finish the novel on time) I need to write exactly 1,527 words a day, which is considerably less than I've written during the last few days. If everything goes as planned, I might actually finish early, which would of course be great.
I've just started chapter 2 of my fantasy novel, and the story is getting more and more dramatic. Yesterday, I almost pitied my main character for all the bad things she had to go through, but, as they say, it might only make her stronger.

I've installed a word count widget on the right side of this blog and will update it daily.

If you are curious and want to read an excerpt of the novel, just post a comment here or contact me via one of the networks shown in the tabs bar above.

Also, if you know are interested in designing a cover for the finished novel, take a look at this blog entry.

Camp NaNoWriMo - Writing a novel in a month

In July, I'm going on a journey - a virtual one, but a journey nonetheless. I will be camping for a whole month, with other online users from all over the world, and will be writing a novel in the process. This amazing event is called Camp NaNoWriMo (= National Novel Writing Month, it's usually in November. I took part in it last year, and will now do the more relaxed version in July).

"An idyllic writers retreat, smack-dab in the middle of your crazy life"

The aim: Writing something - a novel, a short story, a play - within 31 days. The length can be decided by the participant; my goal is (quite optimistically) at 50,000 words. To make the whole thing even more interesting, there will be virtual cabins, made up of eight writers each, who can support and motivate each other throughout the writing process. I am sharing my tent with three other German writers, and we are still looking for other campers (contact me if you want to join).

As you will have noticed, there is a lovely green badge at the top of this blog's right column, which marks me as a participant of Camp NaNoWriMo. You can get one of them too, should you decide to take part in this experiment (click here).

I am also fundraising for Camp NaNoWriMo - while the participation in the camp is free, the parent  non-profit organisation of NaNoWriMo, the Office of Letters and Light is trying to raise $ 50,000 (37.727 €), which will be spent on helping young people all over the world to tell their own unvoiced stories. The Office of Letters and Light organizes events where kids and adults find the inspiration, encouragement, and structure they need to reach their creative potential.

I have started a fundraising site, and would like to ask you to donate anything, even if it is just one dollar/euro/pound. To encourage donations, I will offer exclusive previews and excerpts of my book while it is being written. So please, donate, and be happy :)
Thank you very much in advance - and stay posted for news concerning my novel writing progress!

“I gave up everything”

[This is an article I wrote for university.]

Born in India and educated in Scotland, Tessa Ransford founded the Scottish Poetry Library in 1984. Now aged 73, she lives on her own in Edinburgh and still writes poetry every day.

I have rheumatism, so when I get up in the morning, I first do around 20 minutes of exercise. At the same time, I'm listening to radio programmes like “Start the Week”, or “Woman's Hour”, depending on what time I get up.

I have porridge for breakfast, but that's partly because of a thyroid cancer operation I had last autumn - I couldn't swallow hard things like cereals, so now I have porridge. I sometimes eat bread and marmalade, but I always end up throwing away the rest of the bread, because it is very hard to get through a whole loaf if you live on your own. It's not fair, the supermarkets say “Two for the price of one”, but you don't want two if you live alone.

After breakfast I buy the paper and go for a walk. I love listening to the birds while walking though the park. I do any shopping I need, come back, have a coffee, and then I write until lunchtime. I'm writing every day. At the moment I am working on a review of a book in which Scottish poetry was translated into German. But I don't get paid for this work. I don't make a single sou, in fact I lose money by being a poet.

In the eighties, I had my first two or three books of poetry published, and although they'd been reviewed, I didn't have anyone to talk to. I was a housewife, I didn't have anyone to get feedback from. In those days, even if you had poetry published, you didn't mention it to anyone. It was very isolated.

So in 1981, I started a workshop for people writing poetry, called the “School of Poets”. There were twelve of us. It was a workshop for people who were already writing, not for people who thought they might like to write. I called it “practicing poets”. People rather jeered at that, saying that any genuine poet wouldn't need any teaching. It was incredible what some said. But my reply was: “You don't know what you need to know until you need to know it”. You're always learning and experimenting. You're absorbing new ideas. So the interaction with other poets is vital.

After that, through meeting those other poets and realizing the emptiness of the literature scene for poets, I founded the Scottish Poetry Library in 1984, and we got some funding and got the project started. I felt, no one else is going to give up everything for this, so I did. Lots of people contributed wonderfully, but me, I gave up everything. Everything, that's what it took. I don't regret doing it. There's no point regretting things.

I ran the library for 18 years, until it moved to the building it's now in, and then I retired. My work wasn't for nothing, it succeeded, the Poetry Library has got a huge amount of money now and it's doing really well.

I got an OBE for the work I did with the Poetry Library. It was very exciting. I felt that it was important to accept it because of all the work other people had done to make it possible, it wasn't just for me. It was in Holyrood Palace, and Sean Connery was getting a knighthood the same day. I was in the same building with the Queen and Sean Connery, and the captain of the Scottish Rugby team.

You can almost see Holyrood from my window. When I first came to this flat, I wrote poems looking out of the window for a year. “Shadows from the Greater Hill” consisted of poems from different seasons and different times of day. Since I had the operation, I've used the view over Arthur's Seat once again for inspiration. The painter Cézanne painted this mountain Mont Sainte-Victoire over eighty times. Well, Arthur's seat is my Mont Sainte-Victoire. It's so close, you can almost touch it.

After writing, there's lunch. I like rice, tea, marmite and butter. I love butter. I always put lots of butter on my bread and lots of butter in my cooking. I don't care about cholesterol. I think that's because we were short of everything when I was a child during wartime. I try to have salad and fruit often. I used to have chapattis for lunch, but now I have pancakes.

After lunch I check my e-mails, and usually work until 5.30, if I don't have the grandchildren here after school. I have eight grandchildren, six boys, two girls. The eldest is 25, she's a professional dancer and singer, the youngest is seven. They are all amazing.

My father was a Royal Engineer. After the First World War, he was posted to India. That was what happened in those days, it was quite normal to go to India, and he stayed there for 25 years.
I think it was a big culture shock for me coming to Scotland having been born in India, but I was only a child. What made me realize that it must have been pretty traumatic was when I came back again, having spent eight years in Pakistan, when I was 30, and then I felt the culture shock consciously - that, what I must have experienced unconsciously as a ten-year old. I was married to a church of Scotland missionary, and went with him to Pakistan. I learned Urdu and Punjabi by using index cards. 300 sentences written on little cards with a bamboo quill. In one of my books that comes out this year, there's this poem called “Don't mention this to anyone”, which uses some of the Urdu model sentences we had to learn.

I consider myself Scottish, and I want independence for Scotland. I want it badly. Desperately. I remember being in the Poetry Library once and this man in a long black coat came in. It was a cold winter's night, and he walked around the library without saying anything. But then he came to my desk, slapped a book down on the table and said: “This is the best poet in Scotland.” And I said, “Oh, that's interesting, where are you from?”, and he replied “London”. And that's just typical! I mean, I was so furious, I was livid, but I just smiled and said: “Thanks for coming from London to tell me who the best poet in Scotland is.”

After writing all afternoon I look at the news and have supper. I don't eat much meat. If the children are coming, I might get some to make a stew, but not for myself. I make things like macaroni cheese, risotto or fish pies - simple food. I used to cook for four children, so it had to be simple.

A person I would love to invite to dinner is Lynne Truss. She wrote this amazing book about Tennyson, “Tennyson's Gift”. I read it in hospital and it kept me alive. She's incredibly witty and funny. We'd have lots of laughs. So I would have her and Maggie Smith. She's got that bitter edge, and I like people like that. I don't like people who are too goody-goody.

If I'm not going out in the evening, I read and watch the telly and do my knitting. I decided to take up knitting again when I had the thyroid operation, because I had to rest, and with not being able to dash about, I thought it would be nice to do some knitting. So I knitted a big scarf. I asked my daughter, who's a midwife, what to knit next, and she said that they're always looking for little squares for the premature babies. So I'm knitting squares for premature babies now. It feels nice, I like doing it. I'm contributing to the future.