Open The Door

 

My fourth book is called Open The Door and it is a little different. It was a book that came as a new idea, not something that was already drafted or put in notes before. It was a fully freestyle creation from NaNoWriMo 2019. I did exactly what I was supposed to do according to NaNoWriMo rules: I showed up every day and wrote a certain amount of words.

In one way, it was a bit uncertain – will I have enough ideas, will the story fit into the word count and time frame, will I not run out of steam halfway? In the other way, it was liberating. No notes to go through, no limits. I allowed the characters to develop and do their own thing. I am still amazed by how well it worked.

I believe that the template was already in me, it wasn’t sweated over late in the evenings, staring at an empty page.

I knew I wanted to write a different story than before. But I still used references from my own life, mainly to modelling, ageing and (my old-time favourite) Japan. My first three books were about young people, about their uncertain lives, choices, and love lives. I wanted to move on to someone grown-up. I was experiencing motherhood and noticed that I was becoming invisible and that I was changing. I was thinking about the next stages of my life – what will happen after the big chunk of intensive mothering is done? When the little people become bigger and more independent? I will still be needed but in another way.

Another thing on my mind was the relationship between women. I was tired of the age-old formula of love between a woman and a man. The reality of married life might have had something to do with it, I’m not gonna lie. What if my heroine started to question her sexuality? I believe that it happens to many older people. Being brought up in the traditional notion of a nuclear family, seeing how society functions, reading books and seeing movies and TV dramas that always occupy themselves with the relationship between men and women, many of us follow the clues and question things later or never. I wanted my heroine to fall in love. But I wanted a different love. So I gave it to her.

In some ways, Open The Door may seem too easy. Nice, comfortably living people deal with very mild problems. There is no struggle, no drama. On the other hand, there are the subtle questions of life that come when we have the luxury to think about them. What do I want? Where do I belong? What will I do with the rest of my life?

And there are troubles and losses, too. Rachel’s life is far from easy when we meet her. Is it too ideal? I don’t know. This is how the story came to me, I am just a narrator. I wanted a nice story about nice people, who have a good life, home, and security, who can do a bit of soul searching. I probably needed it, because all of my past stories were about finding one’s roots, purpose, home, relationships, and building a career. I wanted to look at the next steps. In 2017 NaNoWriMo (I participated every other year and focused on editing etc. in the year after) my story dealt with very serious issues. It is still waiting for its next stages and it wasn’t easy to write, although, just like Open The Door, it asked to happen the way it did. So yes, this book is about the next chapter in life, it brings us more mature characters who are a long way from knowing everything. Because we are never quite done, are we?

Open The Door has Rachel, a thirty-six-year-old model, as a main character. She is a single mother and we find her worrying about her career prospects. She is well past the average model’s age. She has done well until now, but the clues about her ‘not getting any younger’ are slowly coming. What can she do next?

One of the problems with success is that you may have only one skill and some jobs don’t offer much progress. You are either in or you are out.

Rachel is well aware that many girls from the industry ended up married, the best of them were trophy wives, admired as much as they were in their modelling years. Finding a well-to-do man might be the best option. As luck would have it, Rachel is currently dating a man who would fit the bill perfectly. Only that he doesn’t mean much to her. Nor did any of her past relationships.

Rachel is slowly spiralling into a period of worry and change. She still manages to keep a brave face in front of her sixteen-year-old son, but how long can she keep going? Watching her son’s first love and comparing it to her relationships, she sees a void and doesn’t know how to find the right direction.

Instead of transforming herself into a professional housewife, Rachel manages to revive her career. Just like finding out that she has exceptional hands shortly after becoming a mum and saving her modelling career years ago, she discovers the blossoming market of older models. And it isn’t all. Love comes to her, too. In a very different form than she had expected. Donna, the mother of her son’s girlfriend, becomes her favourite person and it takes a while to understand that what Rachel feels is what she is missing. There may be a reason for her low interest in dating men. There was a lot to discover for Rachel and it was such fun being on the journey with her.

Creative Time

 

Horrible weather, shortening days, noisy fireworks – yes, we could be quite miserable. But it is the prime plotting time of the year. From October onwards, it is easier to sit down by the computer and weave stories.

For me, this year is about the nitty gritty of finalising a project. I’ve been the writer with a drawer full of stories. They had ‘The End’ written at the end, which made them real. Everybody can start a story, right? How many of us finish it? The projects waited their turn. I am the type of person who doesn’t like to see unfinished things. I take the stories out in turn and I am turning them into books with covers and numbered pages and real life. One by one they fly out of the nest.

My fourth book reached the stage of proof copy and during the last few weeks, I was slowly reading it through, making notes. Editing is a slow process and it is hardly ever truly done. I have to decide at some stage that the text is as good as I can make it and I have to let it go. Otherwise, I could sit here forever, agonising over comas, word choices, and – my nemesis – past perfect or past or past present tense goes here???

Monday was a day with no bookings in my real job, a relatively low level of stuff to do around the house and, a silent hurray, the first day of school after half term. I was fussing a little, but eventually, I was sitting down, checking my notes, and making changes, mostly in agreement with my inner critic. It is tedious work. I need to make sure that I don’t omit anything, don’t make additional mistakes, keep the flow of words right and generally improve the story. It isn’t as much fun as other stages of writing, but I am now at the stage where I polish the gem, I can see how it reflects light, where the spark is, and how the jewel will look in its final form. It is slow but extremely rewarding.

This story was drafted in 2019, had a bit of a rest, and came back to me this year. Considering that it is much shorter than my previous two books, I thought it would be an easy journey and I would finish it swiftly. But I didn’t rush it, had to fit it around other things in my life that had to be done, so I am still not finished and I most likely won’t publish two books in one year. Doesn’t matter. Time is the least measurable success in the writing journey. Rushing words isn’t wise.

I finished the fixes on Tuesday and then the book went to sleep. Time issues, as usual. I will give it one more read-through. And then, the world will be ready for my new story. I’ve found out that editing is easier when things change a little. After the first draft, a simple read-through with lots of notes and changes is the best option. When the story feels done, printing it out and seeing it on paper brings out many things that the screen doesn’t reveal so well. After that, reading aloud, however mad I may seem, is another trick that brings out repetitions, sentences that don’t work, and some last, cheeky typos. After all of that, I usually grow tired of the story and don’t want to read it again. So I take a bit of a break. This year, I was lucky, this time came just around summer and since it was our first European trip in a while, I could simply go and have a holiday. Then there were a few weeks of mad working and no chance to write at all…

I sat down to formatting, ordered a proof copy and had the read-through that culminated in this week’s work. Even though I have printed the story before, seeing it as a book and reading it as a book brings it again into a new light and makes the process easier and smoother. We are writers at the end of the day – we love working with books. I hope that the next print will be a proper book, ready to find its readers and that the hard work that had gone into creating it will be appreciated. My line editor (yellow bird) and critique partner (white bird) whose photo adorns this post will eagerly await feedback for their hard work.

The NaNoWriMo Month is here

 

Last year, I concluded that participating in NaNoWriMo would be impossible. I had only recently begun working, everything was new, and getting used to days dictated by work, family and household responsibilities had seemed too much. I was very certain that in a year I will get used to my new rhythm and be ready to participate. Ha!

Enter November 2023. 11 years since my first NaNoWriMo, which I completed every other year. NaNoWriMo has helped me to commit and complete. The intense month of writing had led me to other months of re-reading, editing, proofreading, formatting… Lock-down and NaNoWriMo are the two things that helped me on my way to not only be but also call myself aloud A Writer. Lock-down because I could write without interruptions of visits, travelling, children’s parties, and errands… NaNoWriMo because it is a good challenge.

Last year, I hoped to write a blog post a day and complete that. Impossible. Also, I hoped to get better at networking and promotions. No, didn’t happen either.

The funny thing is, I wasn’t that busy last November. It was just the adjustment from a homemaker and writer to a self-employed parent and writer. I am lucky, my work grew, I gained regular clients and I got busier. I am busy now. I don’t wait around, my diary is filled with appointments. And my other responsibilities and chores didn’t go away either, quite the opposite. So this November, I am in an even worse position to start the novel-writing month. Throughout the year, I didn’t master my fear of networking, marketing, and actually putting myself out there. I had a good excuse. This November, it will be my project. I will not do a daily word count. Instead, I will show up.

When I finished my first novel, I developed a routine of morning writing. I am a morning person anyway and I figured that waking up a bit earlier gives me an opportunity to work undisturbed, get writing done, and move on to my daily tasks with a good feeling of having achieved something before getting out of my pyjama.

I have great respect for people who will sit with their creative work late at night and plough until they really must go to sleep. I can’t do that. If nothing else, motherhood ended my evening activities. Evening classes, movies, dinners out, nothing is attractive enough to beat a cosy lying down in bed. As well as the early morning, in the early evening, when everyone is fed, dishes are done, and the child has been washed and read with, there is a small window where I can do something for myself – read a book, watch a movie or a TV series, anything. It took time to train my husband out of the expectation that I would watch what he wants and when he wants. He arrives at this stage much later than me. And because I like early starts, I have to go to sleep earlier, too. By nine o’clock, I want to be in the dark, with my eyes closed, thank you very much.

I can’t bring myself to switch on the computer and work at that time of the day. Evenings are tiring and I crave quiet.

Two years ago, I changed my routine and shifted my practice to early morning. Instead of writing first, I do my yoga and meditation first. Again, great. Whatever I do first in the morning is the winner. Because my practice had to be fitted into my day, I was worried that I would make it into a chore, or strip it to very bare necessity. Some days, I could only sit, breathe, and meditate for twenty minutes and felt that because I had had a long walk and had been active in the garden or around the house, it didn’t matter that I didn’t have more practice. I didn’t focus so well.

Moving my practice – the thing that is the very essence of me – to the prime spot of the first thing of the day was something that helped me when I began working. No matter what else happens in my day, I know that I have already practised. But it shifted the writing time to later. And sometimes, writing for the sake of writing – the NaNoWriMo style of writing – stays undone. I still edit, proofread, finish, and produce books. Book number four is on its way very soon. But new ideas are only glimpses in my head and scribbles in my notebooks. Their time will come. If I have learnt something in life it is that slow and steady is the way to go. We can want everything now, but it doesn’t mean that everything now is good or achievable or better.

So let me just get on with things. And you do your things with grace. All the best if you are chasing the word count this year.