How many words per day?

Over the years, I've collected rumours about how much writers write. I used to think this was for inspiration. So, what has inspired me? In 'On Writing', Stephen King says he writes 2000 words a day so (get this) completes an 180,000 word novel in THREE MONTHS. I was at the Brisbane Writers Festival in the early noughties (or maybe the late nineties) where Matthew Reilly (on a panel with Kim Wilkins who writes so many books she needs two selves and is also Kimberley Freeman)... anyway, Reilly said sometimes he writes more than 9000 words a day when he nears the end of a novel. But, he added, he wasn't exactly writing anything literary so didn't need to worry about characters.

I haven't read any Reilly but King does (ahem) the odd memorable character and Freeman/Wilkins is frankly pretty amazing. And a writer who really worries about characters (or, if 'worries' isn't the right word, someone who creates truly authentic, memorable characters) is Joyce Carol Oates, who apparently writes from 8-1 every day and in that time has quite possibly written more books than I've read.

I'm in my forties and have published one novel, word count about 60,000 words. I've been writing all my life, so (leaving out the unpublished stuff under my metaphorical mattress i.e. on my hard drive) that's 1.5 words per day. One of my literature lecturers once said that Ernest Hemmingway wrote 500 words a day, so he could concentrate on quality. I write 1.5 words per day, so I can concentrate on deciding whether or not to get my hair recoloured, on whether the calories in a piece of cheese are worth it, on what to wear out on Friday, on Facebook, and on picking off bits of nail polish.

On a positive note, today I've written 600, which is well above average. Even more if blog posts count. If I ever meet Stephen King, I'll have to ask.

A morning in the writing life of an anxiety-struck second novel novelist.

This morning, I planned to work on my WIP. So far, instead, I have:

1. read a chapter in "Writing 21st Century Fiction";
2. showered;
3. considered creating a blog post concerning why my thoughts seem to be coming out in lists;
4. created, instead, an unpublishable blog post about plotting or pantsing, during which I (mostly) discouraged myself with the reminder that it's very possible to fail at either;
5. created a mental list of possible titles for my WIP (ranging from 'Burned' to 'Strawberry Jam and the Homesick Soul'--my attempt at the worst possible title, because after that, the right one will sound right... right?);
5. written, as an exercise, a paragraph of my WIP in which the action takes place completely in reverse (thank you, Martin Amis, for ''Time's Arrow");
6. replaced all my original commas in this post with semi-colons;
7. stared out the window at my view of hills, pock-marked with new housing development, and wondered about the death of the semi-colon; and
8. rehung my collection of cardigans so that all like-colours are grouped together.

Thus does 'Strawberry Jam and the Homesick Soul' come to life. Or not. Meanwhile, life will be a lot easier next time I'm wondering where all my yellow cardigans are.

Dear blog, it's me again!

I just realised you must be wondering what I've been up to, where I've been. I might get into more detail later, particularly if I can't think of anything new to write. Meanwhile, here's a tidbit.

Varanassi, India. New Year's Eve 2012/13.

Hello blog!

I've been 

1. thinking that I really should get into this blogging, and

2. wondering if you will help my writing, or

3. end up consuming too much time, and

4. thinking, again, I should give you a go, and

5. wondering how on earth to track down my old password, and yet

here I am.

Wish you could let me know a bit more about yourself, but hopefully I'll learn something over the next little while. Meanwhile, it's nice being back in touch. I'll try not to be such a stranger.

cheers,

Kimberley.

Dear Tooff Fairy

Dear Tooff Fairy

J ate his tooff. He didn't taste it. Does that make it okay? He's a very lovely boy who hardly ever uses his teeff to bite anything (except food) so we think his tooff should be pretty valuable. He promises to give it to you later if it turns up (anywhere). Please let him have $2.00 anyway and he will be especially careful not to swallow his next one.

love from

J's Mummy.

Getting back into things

I'm back in Australia! Have been for a while, and it's taken a while to sort all this out again. So this is just a testing post really. Back with more later (I hope)

mange tout

I'm going home. Back to Australia.

I've been conscious of wanting to leave before the days get too short so it's odd to be asked to leave the day of the equinox. Looking out my front window this morning, I had that feeling of I get when boarding a plane on my way home after a holiday. While I'm away, time seems to stretch out into a new type of life. By the end of a week or two I am in a new routine and home seems to be something belonging to someone else. Then I get on the plane, and walking through the door, finding my way to a seat, buckling in with my book and water bottle within reach, gaing out the window, all these things that are so much a pattern and a part of regular life that they connect me back to everything that's normal and un-holidayish and the time away seems to fold in on itself, to concertina. We've been in London for over a year and our holidays have been going elsewhere. And I'm looking forward to going home. But standing at the window I felt again the way it felt when being here was really new to me. When I noticed the variations in the colours of green leaves on the trees.
 

I notice so much more about things when seeing them for the first time, or the lst time. Colours seem truer when they are strange. Time seems longer in a new place. What was that book where a man, given only a short time to live, stretched that life out as far as he could by sleeping in a different room every night?

Things I've noticed about London:

• people wear parkas, even in summer
• the angle of light is so different. You seem to have a shadow even at midday. It's as though the sun rays brush against your skin instead of bursting through. Greens are yellower. There are birds called magpies but they don't seem to swoop.

Bit of a waste though, to report that I've finally worked out what mange tout is. It sounds so exotic. Turns out it's just snow peas.