Writing the November Book in a Month Novel

I have been going to do it for ages but November 1 rolls around each year and the calendar is usually full of the stuff of living and the preparations for Christmas. Usually it is a time when less writing gets done, not more.  Which goes to prove that  “ if you fail to plan, you plan to fail” as someone once wrote in advice to writers.

Fail? In the past, I didn’t get started.  November 1 is too late to decide what to write about. This year I am ready and I am clearing my life’s decks for a good solid month of writing.

Why am I going to cancel just about all social activity, cease house work  and hope it rains so I won’t have to water gardens?

Because I need a deadline.  I discovered that deadlines make it possible because without one, it is easy to let other stuff push the writing out of the way. So I am making it known that I am hibernating  in the writing cave during November, rather like the French novelist who told his friends to “consider me dead until October” whenever he was about to write a book.

By November 1, I will know my characters,  I will have exercised my ‘what if’ muscle and will have mapped out their journeys with enough flexibility to allow for surprises.  I might know the outcome, but once the journey begins who knows what will happen?

On November 1 at 6am  I will write the words… “…

But that would be getting ahead of myself. Let the planning begin.

I dare you.

A Random Act of Kindness

I walked out to turn off the sprinkler and was stopped in my tracks by the sheer delight of seeing a Willie Wagtail perched on the rim of a flower pot singing its little heart out as it took a bath.   

The garden had enough water but there was no way I could rob the bird of its pleasure so I sat on the porch chair and watched and listened and waited for it to finish. I am sure it knew I was watching.

It preened, it shook its feathers, it danced and sang;  it stayed, singing beneath the shower for so long that I wondered if it would be too wet to fly, but fly it did, disappearing into a rose madder sunset.

I remained sitting, gazing at where the bird had been and I was glad I had noticed, that I hadn’t just turned the water off and deprived it of its pleasure. My reward was the wonder of sharing its joy and while I watched, I was really there in the moment, just me, the bird, the water and the sunshine.

Margaret Catchpole and the Sand Mandalas

I watched the monks in their orange robes toil for long hours creating colourful Sand Mandalas. On the last day their work was swept up to become a pile of sand to be poured into the river to remind us of the impermanence of all things. How many of us would write books if we knew they would be shredded the day after completion?

As I wait to hear those magic words–your books are ready–I have wondered how fate decides who will be remembered and who will be forgotten. I have thought about that issue a lot during the months I was writing Margaret Catchpole’s biography.  Margaret Catchpole  was just one of the thousands of women who arrived as convicts at Port Jackson in those first decades of colonial settlement of Australia and she is one of the few that history has chosen to remember. The first person who wrote about her, the Reverend Richard Cobbold, is remembered as the author of Margaret Catchpole. Now, one hundred and sixty-seven years after the Reverend wrote the fictional story of her life, I have written her true story, as true as available evidence allows. Will someone, one hundred and sixty-seven years into the future, remember me as the author of Margaret Catchpole? Will there be readers searching library shelves for either of those books? Will they read and wonder what life was like in 1797 or in 2012. Or will our words be dispersed to the elements like so many Sand Mandalas?  

Margaret Catchpole

The deadline is fast approaching, my new book will soon be launched. I guess I will miss the presence of Margaret Catchpole having lived with her for so long. I hope she will rest easy now that her story has been told, now that her identity and her history has been returned to her. Here is a short precis  or her story.

The moon rose late on the night in 1797 when Margaret Catchpole rode John Cobbold’s horse to London. Did she steal it or borrow it? Did she act alone or did she have accomplices? Horse stealing was a capital offence in Georgian England. Did she risk her life for love, friendship or freedom? 

Margaret Catchpole was just one among the thousands of convict women transported to New South Wales but she was the only one whose name has rarely been absent from print since the day in August 1797 when she stood before the Bury Summer Assizes and heard her death sentence announced.

Through the eleven letters she wrote to friends and family in Suffolk, presented together possibly for the first time, Margaret Catchpole–Her Life and Her Letters investigates and reinstates the life story of the woman whose identity became so blurred she was thought to be a myth—or someone else.

Margaret Catchpole–Her Life and Her Letters is one woman’s eyewitness account of floods, hardships and the loneliness of the early settlers, recorded by this remarkable convict woman whose voice speaks for the many forgotten ones whose hard labour built the foundations of European Australia.

I invite you to read her story and make your decision about her place in Australian history.

A Letter to LJ

Today I received a Christmas Greeting from you.  Just a wobbly signature on a purchased card. No longer do I get pages filled with news.  I wish I had kept all of your letters. I think our letters would have encircled the globe if they were laid end to end.

So many years of letter writing, the black line of ink that travelled from you to me and back would stretch for miles out of sight if we could untangle it from the pages.

Your letters became less frequent as your illness diminished your confidence and ability to write.  And now you are unable to do the smallest things without help. I feel guilty that I have so much of what you have lost. Even if I could give some back to you, you are not able to receive it. I don’t want to tell you that I am having a good time, when for you every move is an effort. My calendar is full. My life is busy. I treasure days I have at home at home when I see no one. I will write to you about the weather and complain about the television but I don’t say too much about what I do.

I will tell you about my dogs, the garden, what I have written and what my girls are doing. I miss our sharing and your visits here. But I won’t say these things to you when I write today.

Because by telling you how much I miss the things that we shared I might make you more aware of how much you have lost. I wish you the peace of Christmas, dear Friend.

Loss

Panic! This morning the computer wouldn't start. Considering I have a book in there almost finished and hadn't saved yesterday's work to the external drive, the feeling was like finding the dog missing and the gate still closed, car gone from the garage or of being lined up at the checkout with an overflowing trolley of goods and finding your wallet missing when you know you had it 40 minutes ago whe you paid for coffee. I guess we have all experienced that scary moment of amnesia when you try to remember when you last saw the car or the wallet and in my case, what's inside that box that I haven't copied and what did I write yesterday??  That feeling of loss, the blankness of memory as we try to recall actions done on automatic pilot. When did I last see the dog, did I lock the car, the blind rushing back to the coffee shop hoping the wallet is still there becomes a trauma if the situation isn't resolved quickly. On my second day in Ireland I went to the loo at Glendalough, walked back to the car and discovered I had left my shoulder bag hanging on the hook in the cubicle. That bag had everything in it, cards, money, driver's licence!  As you would expect, it was no longer in the cubicle. I hurtled into the visitor's centre to report it missing and found that someone had handed it in. I think that was a greater shock than finding I had lost it. Moments like that restore one's faith in humanity.  Lost people are a different matter. I can't imagine how that feels. So at this Christmas time let us all be mindful of how we part from our friends and family, turn off the automatic pilot and look at them, see them. Let us all hope that the missing people find their way home. Happy Christmas.

Getting Started

Hello! Is there anyone out there? I can’t see you but I’m told  that you are there. I guess I will just go with the idea ‘I will see when I believe or blog’ as is the case here.  I don’t know much about blogging so I will need your help. If you are not too busy. My name is Laurie. My sign is Leo. I was born in the Chinese year of the Wood Dog and my passion is writing– history and biography at the moment, but I deviate to crime fiction occasionally which is a kind of history, especially when the crime has already been committed.

Procrastination is my Achilles Heel. Do you know what I mean? Have you noticed that getting around to it sometimes takes longer than doing the job. Are you a procrastinator? Being a writer and a procrastinator is a double whammy. Even starting this blog is an example of procrastination. I have been telling myself I should have a blog ever since I saw that movie Julie and Julia. How long ago was that? Anyway, here I am and I’m pleased to meet anyone who is interested in writing, especially if you are writing his—story or her—story which is what history is at its best, the story of ordinary and extraordinary people. Do you have a favourite historic person? My person of interest at present is Margaret Catchpole who was not who she is said to be. But I have to stop procrastinating and get on with the writing and let you get on with yours…maybe when I check in next we can talk about how to give procrastination the push and the problems of writing history, the kind people enjoy reading.