Most exciting to me were rediscovering my collection of Enid Blyton books. At least half of these are in fact from my mother’s own collection when she was young, and then after I’d devoured all of her beautiful hardcovers, she bought me more (but in 1980s paperback style). I adored these books as a kid, and still have images from books like the Faraway Tree series etched in my mind.

My mother - obviously aware of my interest in Enid Blyton, who I never thought was politically incorrect - pointed out to me that they’re about to publish a bunch of new Enid Blyton books, adding to the Famous Five, Faraway Tree and Malory Towers series. And written, obviously, by authors other than Enid Blyton.

I’m really not a big fan of this kind of book. It’s not as if Enid Blyton didn’t leave enough for us to read - some 800 books, apparently - and I’m sure I haven’t read all of them. There’s a theory that publishing new stories will inspire a new generation of readers to discover the original Enid Blyton stories, which is certainly possible - but why not just promote the original ones? I think I’ll stick to them and I might just curl up with a couple of Secret Seven books this weekend and see if I still enjoy them.

PS: Here’s a note for the future. If I ever become a best-selling writer, and then die, and somebody out there wants to continue some series I’ve written in this way: I disapprove. Please don’t do it. Thanks.

Writing this novel is certainly more relaxed this way than under the pressure of NaNoWriMo, the way I wrote the first one. But something’s been bothering me as I write. Last year when I was writing under major time pressure, with the NaNoWriMo goal of simply getting 50,000 words down without worrying too much about how nice these words were, things were easier. But this time round, I’m conscious that I have more time to play with to write beautiful words rather than just bashing out the storyline.

What made me realise this problem a little more clearly was the first half of a guest post at Men With Pens this morning called How to Feel Consistently Confident About Your Writing. The post mentioned that typical experience I have when reading someone else’s work and I love their style, and think to myself “I wish I could write like that”. I often feel like my fiction writing doesn’t have a special style of its own, and doesn’t sound beautiful. Very occasionally I string a sentence or two together that I could class as “beautiful”, but it’s rare.

I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that I’m still not that great at re-working my drafts. I can get the gist down but then revising and making my writing really “sing”, as they say, is something I need more practice at. The second reason is, I suspect, that it’s just really hard to read your own writing as a stranger would. Even if I leave it for months at a time and read it again, it’s still clearly something I wrote and I can’t seem to detach enough from it to figure out if it actually sounds good or not. I’m not sure how to fix this, but I’m hoping that practice helps. Anyone got some good tips for me?

However, I’m pleased to say that until now I have never been arrested in connection to overdue library books. Heidi Dalibor has. Her library book problems had reached the stage where the library sent her a court summons, which she ignored (presumably she was too busy reading) and this week the police came to her home, handcuffed her and took her down to the station where she was fingerprinted. All for two overdue paperback books. Now I’m scared.

PS: In fact I’m more scared of my writing buddy who hasn’t yet received a copy of the second chapter of my new novel, which I should have sent her already according to our buddy system. I’ve got my long list of excuses ready, of course, and I have written about three quarters of the chapter. I just hope she doesn’t send the police around for this.

Angela Hoy of Writers Weekly wrote a post this week about the common themes that she found in the several hundred short story entries for this contest. Remember, every story has to be based on the given topic - that’s one of the ways they ensure you really do write it within the 24-hour time period - and apparently, this means that many writers end up writing pretty similar stories. Her post included a long list of themes or plots that were common across several or more stories, and the reason I’m cheered up is this: the themes from my story didn’t make this list at all. So if nothing else, it seems that my idea was somewhat original. Whether the idea is good or not is another story, but being original is certainly a positive thing from where I’m standing.

However, we are not giving up, and decided that our deadlines are there to help us make progress and the deadlines are structured to give us a little room for movement - so we gave ourselves a small extension. Technically, it is still Sunday in many parts of the world, notably across North and South America, and we’re going to be using that time zone instead for our deadline! Yes, we’re totally cheating, but it’s better than giving up entirely.

My goal for yesterday was to write the second chapter of my Bratislava novel. I have an outline for it and a couple of pages written, and I am fairly confident I know how the rest of it is going to sound. After I do a little paid writing this morning and take a good walk with a friend, I’ll be raring to go and polish it off this afternoon. I promise. I’ll report back here with a little edit to prove that I really do get it done.

But sometimes, you have those weeks where motivation for nearly everything is lacking. The Olympic Games are on - they’re a great distraction. The weather is warming up a little, so it’s substantially warmer outside than in my freezing house and it’s much more tempting to take a book outside than to sit doing any work. My desk is messy, full of piles of stuff I know needs doing, but I’m not sure where to start. I whittled some piles down this morning by discovering that several of them were full of bills that needed to be paid - I paid them, but you won’t be surprised to hear that this activity didn’t leave me feeling that full of inspiration. And then there’s all kinds of other stuff going on, personally, that doesn’t leave me with that much brain space for writing.

Surprisingly, I don’t really feel too guilty for neglecting my blogs, but I did feel the urge to mention some of this stuff here. The Word Wyrd blog linked to me recently on a list of “Ten great blogs for writers” (very flattering) and described this blog as being about “An aspiring writer shares what she’s learning as she goes along”. And this week, what I’m learning is not very much about writing, but about how many ways there are to not write.

If this was somebody else’s problem, I’d have a long list of tips to give them, and have pretty much given myself a lot of advice too. But sometimes it just seems like waiting for the next, fresh week to start might be a better option. I owe my motivation buddy a first chapter by Sunday, but that’s still five days away, so there’s time for the motivation to kick in again before then. Fingers crossed.

If you haven’t tried it (and especially if you otherwise sit in the car for a long commute) I heartily and thoroughly recommend a few commuter trips on the train and bus to inspire some good fiction writing. Getting on the train works for me on so many levels that I can even feel a bullet-pointed list coming on:

• I see (and eavesdrop on) all kinds of people. On the commuter train headed into the city centre in the mornings there are all kinds of workings; the teenagers and school kids are there in the afternoons on my way home from school; on the bus I find immigrants and students studying English here, some of them my own students, and I’ve even met a bunch of librarians who take the same bus. You don’t get to hear how these people talk, what they talk about, how they dress or how they move their hands - all important fodder for writers - from the inside of your car.
• I get a chance to read more. I’ve noticed the decrease in number of novels consumed since I’ve been driving the car to work. Train and bus time is a bit like going on holiday, in that it’s a guilt-free chance to get my nose stuck in a book.
• And I listen to podcasts on writing and books - something I miss most at the moment because there aren’t that many other moments when I have a good block of time to listen to my favourites. Sometimes I put them on in the kitchen when I’m cooking but it’s hard for me to listen properly and still follow a recipe correctly!
• When I’ve got a story or a chapter to edit or proofread, I can do this surprisingly well on the train - as long as I get a seat. Perhaps there’s so much noise around me that it helps me focus on just my tiny world in front of me, those few pieces of paper that I’m trying to perfect.
• Finally, call me weird but I also adore the walk through the city or through the central train station when I transfer from my train onto the bus in the mornings. The city is alive, and people are heading in every direction. I can sometimes even buy my copy of the Big Issue if a vendor is standing near the art gallery. When I don’t get this injection of city life I really miss it.

Come the hot summer months I’ll no doubt be complaining about the suddenly longer walk home from the train station (it’s only ten minutes, but when the temperature hits the century that sure feels like more), or about Transperth buses that don’t come on time or don’t stop because they’re already full, but if you hear me doing that, just point me back to this post and remind me how good the journey is for my fiction writing.

Recently I’ve really enjoyed reading a bunch of novels I’ve got from the “Humour” section of the fiction books in my local library. In theory, I dislike the way my library divides up all the fiction into weird categories including “Family Sagas” and “Romance” because most of the time I really have trouble figuring out where a book I’m looking for will be found. Yes, I check the catalogue then and find it, but I don’t see why it would be so bad to just have all the novels together in alphabetical order. However, having the “Humour” section separately has led me to indulge in a few great books, with my favourites being several by Mil Millington, like Love and Other Near-Death Experiences and Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About.

These experiences have left me wondering: could I write a funny book? Could I write a fluffy, funny novel that is simply fun to write, for NaNoWriMo this year, without having to worry too much about whether it’s actually a good novel or not? I’m not even sure yet if it’s a good idea, but I rather love the camaraderie of NaNoWriMo and the badges I get to put on my blog, and that general flurry of craziness. So it’s something to think about - I still have almost three months before I have to decide for sure.

That decided, I knew I needed to find another way to get myself on track and motivated. I already know I work better with deadlines, and especially so if somebody else is keeping an eye on these deadlines. That’s where the wonderful Katrina comes in.

Katrina’s been a friend of mine since I was about 12 years old and recently, for the first time in a long time, we started living in the same city again. She’s gone to study Arts at uni this year and like me, sometimes has trouble getting what she wants done on time, so we came up with a plan to help each other help ourselves.

Basically, Katrina now has a list of the basic chapter outlines for the rest of my novel (remember, I wrote the first chapter already) and that includes a list of dates by which I’ll be sending her a good draft of each chapter. And these dates have also been programmed into my funky Remember the Milk reminder page. Setting up this outline and the deadlines associated with it has already got me inspired, as well as made me see the whole project in a very manageable way. Basically, I’ll need to write a chapter per week, approximately, with allowances made for planned holidays and so on.

In exchange, Katrina’s sending me a list of deadlines she has for all her university assessments this semester, and it’s my job to check that she sends me drafts of essays and reports when she’s promised herself she will. She’s studying some fascinating stuff like European Studies, Philosophy and Classics so I’m looking forward to reading what she writes. But more than that I’m looking forward to her checking up that I write what I say I’ll write, too.

I don’t plan to keep up daily blogging here - I think three or four posts per week are about what is important to me here, to keep me on track with my fiction writing - but I have enjoyed finding out that it’s possible. Of all the writing activities I do, writing for this blog is my favourite of all, usually even more than writing the actual fiction it refers to!

In other achievements this month, I see I’ve got my Google Page Rank (2) back which I lost when I transferred this blog to its own domain from Blogspot. That was a nice reassuring moment, and something I hope to build on as more of you lovely readers keep following the Becoming A Fiction Writer blog.