Recently, I came upon a neat phrase to use on those people who refuse to hear the fact that there has been net emigration of central Europeans from Britain, because all the waiters in their local Pizza Express come from Warsaw: "Data is not the plural of anecdote." But it reminded me of how a writer friend wanted her ancient-Persian heroine to start up a cottage industry making dyestuffs in her kitchen. "But it wasn't done like that," said the friendly expert at the British Museum. "The evidence is that dye production was on an industrial scale, and they wouldn't have employed a woman anyway." My friend's plot was dying (not dyeing), about her: she couldn't possibly do something that was "wrong". No doubt the general picture of the expert was true, but it's hard to believe that at the domestic, individual level, no "industrial" things were done; just because the only remains after Armageddon will be the McVities factory, I suggested, doesn't mean that no one ever set up a small business making cakes in their kitchen. My friend's plot was restored to health.

And then few weeks ago, Jerusha Cowless suggested that to find the energy in a passive, put-upon heroine, without being anachronistic to a period when women weren't suppose to be act-ors, it would help to research the period more deeply.

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Well my Twelve Days of Christmas challenge floundered right around Christmas Eve. The bottles of plonk sitting under the stairs, and the obscene amount of food that we buy every year and then wonder why, lured me away from the laptop.

Still for a novel that I began in July of last year, and which had only reached 17,000 words by December, I found that the fact that I'd laid the gauntlet down to myself spurred me that much further on. I managed 15,307 words in total over 5 days which is almost as much as I'd done in 6 months!


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We writers need all the support we can get on what can be a lonely journey. No wonder we join writing communities and writing groups, sign up for writing classes and follow writer’s blogs. It helps to know that others like ourselves are out there, rooting for us, encouraging us, teaching us and supporting us. The tribe of writers is a vast one, spanning the globe and almost every age-group and circumstance.

So as we embark on this new year, I thought I’d write about the resources which have been most helpful on my own writer’s journey. Perhaps you’d like to add your own.


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An account of a lift attendant

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The Winter Solstice has just passed. The darkness of winter is slowly and almost imperceptibly giving way to the light. This is the true New Year.

No, I’m not going to bang on about writerly resolutions. Instead, I’m thinking about new beginnings. And when they’re necessary, writing-wise.



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I thought it would be tough to meet today's wordcount target of 5,000 words, but as soon as I got into the flow of the story, it flew from my fingers onto the keyboard. And I thoroughly enjoyed today's challenge - from dealing with switching viewpoints as well as timeframes, to developing my characters further, and finding new sides to them.

I beat my wordcount challenge once again, but this time by 14 little words. So total wordcount today was 5,014 words, and I punched it out in roughly under 4 hours, averaging at over 1,000 words an hour. I still need to speed it up a bit, although sometimes that raises the inevitable question of speed vs. quality.

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I re-engineered my previous schedule, and started afresh today as the fourth day of Christmas with a target of 4,000 words. I knew it would be tough, my biggest daily wordcount challenge so far, and that I'd get little time or peace to do it. So I started with my hour's lunch at work, twenty minutes while I waited in the reception at my local GP practice, finished off with 2 hours uninterrupted tonight, and I've done it! And in fact, I've not only met my wordcount challenge for the day but I've exceeded it.

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After failing to gain a foothold yesterday, I feel I'm getting back on track. I managed 2,037 words tonight and whilst I procrastinated at the beginning, I soon found my pace. So although I've the challenge so far has seen me slip and the stutter, I've managed in total 6,575 words in the last 8 days, but I'm roughly 4 days behind where I should be.

My plan now that I've found my pace again is to treat tomorrow as Day 4 of the challenge and to attempt 4,000 words. It's a big leap from what I've done, but I won't get any words down unless I set my sights high.

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I tried to get a foot hold, but I'm obviously wearing the wrong footwear tonight. Only managed 441 words and god was it painful! I'm tired, and just not feeling it tonight, so I'll try again tomorrow.

Last week I embarked on a wordcount challenge which I called the 12 days of Christmas challenge. The main crux of the challenge was to write 78,000 words in 12 days right up to the twilight hours of Christmas Eve.

I'm sorry and both glad to say that I failed to get past day 3 of the challenge. I had a very good reason why I stopped at day 3 - an agent interested in seeing the full manuscript of Delve. Woo Hoo! And so for the next two days, I set about turning the nuts and bolts on my manuscript to give both Delve and myself as a writer the best chance possible to secure representation.

I do not know if this latest development will help me to achieve my Christmas wish, but what I do know is that since I've subbed the full manuscript, my determination on the wordcount challenge I'd set myself has slipped and now I'm skidding down that slope.

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