All because of Aaron Sorkin: how the West Wing changed me

The internet is aflutter with excitement about Aaron Sorkin’s new television show, The Newsroom. All kinds of questions are being asked: how will Sorkin write a Republican protagonist? Where’s Bradley Whitford? Will The Newsroom air anywhere besides the US?

Here’s what I’m asking: will it change lives?

Because The West Wing changed mine.

For a long time, my friends in London had been telling me I should watch it. “It’s all about politics,” they’d say. “You like politics.” They were right. Once I gave in, the show took over my life. And something surprising happened in me as I watched: I fell in love with the English language.

As a child and teenager, I wrote prolifically -- in French, which is my mother tongue. When we moved back to the UK, and English became my dominant language, I did not feel so inspired. French, I was convinced, was superior. It was beautiful. English was not.

But that was before Aaron Sorkin convinced me otherwise. His mastery of the language awoke something in me that had been dormant for years. “Oratory should raise your heart rate,” says one of his characters, and that is exactly what his words did for me.  I began to devour novels. I began to itch to write again.

Sorkin assumes an intelligent viewer, and yet still teaches them a multitude of things. He doesn’t shy away from difficult or controversial issues. And in the language itself there is poetry, too, and rhythm:

“Nice job on the speech,” says one character to another, Sam Seaborn, in the third season.

“How did you know I wrote it?” he asks her.

She quotes some of its phrases. “We did not seek, nor did we provoke… We did not expect, nor did we invite…”

“A little thing called cadence,” Sam replies, and you get the sense that Aaron Sorkin is winking at his viewers through those lines.

Sorkin is also skilled at developing complex and memorable characters, avoiding, for example, the liberal temptation to paint all Republicans as evil.  Life is not black and white, and nor should fiction be if it is to be believable.

Josh Lyman – deftly played by Bradley Whitford - is one such character: arrogant, brilliant, and deeply wounded. He is also at the center of a will-they-won’t-they storyline which kept many viewers hooked; I wanted my writing to do that, too. The restraint which Aaron Sorkin showed in not getting Josh and his assistant Donna together too soon – and the resulting tension - is one of the defining features of the show. I wanted to create characters as compelling as Josh and Donna; I wanted my stories, like Sorkin’s, to reflect the complexities of life in general and romance in particular.

So it was that walking home one summer Saturday after a morning of French teaching, an unexpected thought occurred to me: wouldn’t it be fun to tutor Bradley Whitford?  And that was the start of my first novel, in which someone very much like me teaches French to someone a little like him, who inspires her to move to Washington DC and (many years later) become a Senator.

Given the source of my inspiration, it was perhaps inevitable that politics would provide the backdrop to the story. My friends in London had been right: this wasn’t a new interest. I chose Sociology in my last two years of high school and almost studied Social and Political Science at University. I was once passionate about that stuff. And The West Wing prodded at that, too. Prodded and poked and awoke the beast.

And of course, I had to visit Washington, and the city stole my heart. Maybe it was the majesty of the monuments or the colors of autumn: we don’t have the deep, deep red of the maple tree in Europe. Maybe it was the surreal sense of stepping into a fictional world that had seemed only to exist on screens and in my imagination. Maybe it was eavesdropping on high-level conversations in classy restaurants. Maybe it was the abundance of literary events and of bookshops with names like Politics and Prose. Maybe – most likely of all – it was the fact that my writing feels intricately bound up with DC and the corridors of political power. Hard to tell. But I knew I wanted to live there.

Writing, by then, had become a serious passion; I began to dream about studying it full-time. And when I dream, I reach for Google. I typed in “MFA” and “DC”, omitting “two birds”, “one stone”. And it came up with American University, a place which not only offered exactly what I needed in terms of the course but which also –  oh, happy day! -- was rated number one nationally for its political involvement.

I applied but wasn’t accepted. Would Donna Moss have let that deter her? No, she would not. I worked on my admissions essay and sent in a better writing sample the following year, and this time it was a yes.

I’ll be moving to DC in August. Perhaps to embark on a whole new chapter of my life complete with best-selling novels, a part-time voluntary job at the Democratic Party, and my very own Josh Lyman. Or perhaps just for a two-year adventure. But either way, it’s because of Aaron Sorkin. It’s because of The West Wing.

4BT (because sometimes three just isn't enough)

1. The pigeon on the roof opposite my window looks like he (she?) is doing handstands.

2. All the way home I hope that the new edition of The Writer magazine is waiting for me in my postbox, and it is.

3. Seeing "The Iron Lady" a while back sent shivers through me but also made me realise that the 80s were a fascinating decade, whose magnitude I was too young to understand but would now like to. It turns out that next term I get to study 80s literature as one of my options.

3. A brand new photo of my brand new goddaughter smiles up at me from my iPad.

The stationery-loving writer: planning my novel with Post Its

I've been pondering how best to plot my second novel for a while now. Not as in what the story should be but as in how, physically, to write down what should happen. Some authors use index cards. Some use computer programs like Scrivener. 

Some, of course, don't write anything like that down at all: those authors are known in the trade as "pantsers", as in "fly by the seat of". That was how I wrote my first draft, which consisted mainly of one plot line: Louisa, who's an evangelical Christian, falls for Aaron, who isn't, and whom she consequently is not advised to date. There were occasional references to the primary campaign they were working on - mainly to move them from place to place and give them temptations like beds in hotel rooms - but that was it. 

But I called it Primary Season for a reason. (Apologies for the terrible and unintentional rhyme there.) I didn't want to write just another doomed love story, fun as those are. I wanted to explore what it might be like to work on a primary campaign in the - gasp! - Democratic Party as an evangelical Christian, and I wanted to do that from several angles. I also wanted to write a book that the kind of women who miss The West Wing might enjoy. 

This means that I need more than one plot line. (Every novel does, in any case.) I need to weave in various scandals and debates and ad campaigns and press leaks. And I am not (yet?) skilled enough to be able to hold all those things in my head and mesh them together without the use of coloured Post-It notes. 

Not only are there the plot lines to bear in mind, there's also the timeline. Aaron and Louisa's non-relationship needs to move along at a realistic pace, and needs to somehow fit into the schedule of primaries and caucuses and town hall meetings. It all becomes a delicate balancing act. 

I also want some kind of system that shows me clearly which scenes I have already written, and which scenes I still need to write. 

I could not come up with a system that did all of those things at the same time, in a clear, visual way, preferably not involving a computer. The nearest I'd come was this graph-like structure: 

That works quite well as a general outline, and I may still use it, to show the main plot points and the fluctuations in the Candidate's numbers as well as in Aaron and Louisa's non-relationship (which would be in a different colour, just above the yellow Post-Its.). But it doesn't help me with the kind of detailed outline that I need - scene by scene - and it also doesn't provide a way for me to easily see which scenes still need to be written. 

Cue a Google search of "planning my novel with Post-Its". I discovered Julie Cohen's blog, and her solution seemed to work well for me. Best of all, she was doing it with Post-Its and paper. But she didn't have a timeline that I could see - and she didn't have the issue of needing to separate finished and unfinished scenes.

Then - possibly in a midnight epiphany - I remembered this pin I'd liked on Pinterest. (The idea, and the picture, comes from jenhewett.blogspot.com.) If I adapted the model a little, I could use a left hand page for scenes written, and the facing right hand page for scenes yet to be done. Once I've written a scene, I move the corresponding Post-It from the right hand side to the left hand side. 

And as for the timeline, each set of 2 facing pages of my Atoma notebook can be used per month of the campaign. Why an Atoma notebook, I hear you ask? Because you can move the pages around. So if it turns out that I have more scenes in August than will fit on the two pages, then hey presto, I just add a page to August (without having to calculate how many pages I think I might need and then panic when the system threatens to break down). Plotting needs to be flexible - which is why I like Post-Its; they're so easy to move. 

Obsessive compulsive much? 

I had fun tonight. Step 1 is to take each plot strand and break it down into scenes (and believe it or not, this whole process helps me think up new scenes, too, since it helps me to see a logical sequence of events). So, below, we have one of the storylines that I will be threading through the novel. Mostly, it's a campaign-based storyline - hence the blue (for Democrat!), but there's also a bit of Aaron-and-Louisa (in purple), and Louisa-on-the-campaign (in light green). And where there are two Post-Its (thank you, Julie Cohen), it's to show that two of the plot strands are being developed at once in a scene. 

When I've done this for all the various strands (assuming Viking Direct Belgium get their act together and finally deliver the next lot of Post-It notes, since I need more colours), the fun (and the headaches) will really begin: threading them together and pacing the various stories so they fill the months required.  

If you're really lucky, I'll write another post, complete with a photo or six to show off my efforts. 

Oh, and then, all I need to do is write the thing. 

3BT: sleep, writing, chats

1. I slept for almost nine hours. I have not felt this physically well in a long time.

2. Beautiful new notebooks and The Three a.m. Epiphany make for new enthusiasm about working on my writing.

3. A long overdue cuppa with a friend, and some nice Facebook chats with others. This is what I feel the Internet ought to have been invented for: real contact with actual people.

2011: this was the year that...

I remember, at the of 2010, looking back and thinking, roughly, "meh". It had not been that much of an exciting year, following as it did almost exactly the same pattern as 2009 had, but without the added challenge of moving countries and starting a business from scratch.

I thought my assessment of 2011 might be similar, but, on reflection, realised that this year has been different, in subtle but perhaps significant ways.

This was, after all, the year I met Rob Lowe, and consequently wobbled briefly in my devotion to Bradley Whitford, because when a person is that good-looking and that charming in real life, it can tend to confuse you. I quickly recovered, though.

This was, not unrelatedly, the year that I discovered the Hay Literary Festival. Okay, my meeting with a slightly-famous-author did not turn out to be the key to fame and fortune and a lifelong literary friendship, but Hay was fun, and inspiring, and educational, and there were lots of books, and I want to go again, and again, and again.

It was, however, the year in which a literary friendship did begin: my creative-non-fiction friend Sylvia is a lof of fun and hugely inspiring. And there were other new people in my life too: people like Brian and MA - both DC friends that began online and moved closer to the realm of reality this year.

This was, returning to the subject of meeting famous people (famous to me, that is - for which read people having to do with the West Wing), also the year that I met Richard Schiff, who was reasonably nice to me when you consider that I lost all power of speech and reason and the ability to form intelligent questions like "so do you prefer stage or screen?" It was the year that I failed to meet Elisabeth Moss, though (straying briefly from the West Wing for a second) I did, as a result of attempting to meet her, get Keira Knightley's autograph. It was the year that I met Melissa Fitzgerald (who plays CJ's assistant, Carol), though I hesitate to put her in the same category since meeting her felt less like star-spotting and more like making a new friend.

It was, of course, still not the year when I met either Bradley Whitford or Janel Moloney, but I'm guessing you've worked that out, since I might have mentioned it by now if I had. A lot. Loudly. With many exclamation marks.

It was also the year when I finished my first novel (although "finished" is a relative term - I'm not sure that you ever really finish - it seems you just stop). It was the year when I started my second - Primary Season is its current working title - and I will, at some point, write a blogpost that predictably will compare this experience to having a second baby - it's not that you love your first any less, but you have less time to devote to it, and less time to devote to the second because of the first, and a tiny part of you is already thinking of the third. Anyway, I digress.

It was the year that I did my first real campaigning in America (unless you're counting the few phone calls I made trying to convince people to vote for Martha Coakley way back in January 2009). I did phone banking and door to door canvassing, and I would have done voter registration if the good people of Pasadena hadn't been scared off by the prospect of drizzle (don't get me started).

it was the year I self-published my little eBook on language learning, Conquering Babel, which has sold, oh, forty copies or so, and started blogging about language learning to build a platform in my attempt to take over the world as a language-learning guru.

It was the year, for better or worse, that I discovered Authonomy, where my first novel, Inevitable, is currently in 28th place, meaning that sometime in the first half of 2012 it should land on the desk of a Harper Collins editor, who may or may not offer me a contract, which I may or may not accept.

It was the year when I did (and loved) my first Gotham Writers' Workshop course. It was the year when I was accepted to American University to study for an MFA in Creative Writing (whether or not I end up going is anothe rmatter). It was the year that I did NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month - the challenge of a 50,000 word first draft of a novel in thirty days) for the first time. So I suppose it was a year where writing featured heavily. It has so become a part of my life that I didn't even really notice. It doesn't feel shiny and new anymore, yet I keep going, and for someone who normally moves onto something new after the excitement fades, this is a good sign.

It was the year of my first internal American flight and also my first visit to Portugal, where the coffee, let me tell you, is delicious, and tastes exactly like Spanish cafe con leche, to which my mind often turns as I sip on a Belgian coffee that I wish I could enjoy.

But, wait! This was also the year when Starbucks opened in Brussels, which has considerably reduced my homesickness and irritation at missing trains, and thus my general levels of grumpiness.

It was the year of weddings, too - four, and yes there was a funeral too, and that was incredibly sad. It was the year of the last Brighton Leaders' Conference. It was the year I started swimming again. It was the year in which one of my multiple twitter accounts gained considerable momentum, hit 5,000 followers and kept going. It was the year in which for the first time an article of mine was published in a magazine you can actually buy in WHSmith - Writers' Forum.

It was another year in which I failed to keep a diary, though, so I'm forgetting a lot, no doubt. I'd like to think that next year I will be disciplined enough to fill in a few lines a day in my five-year diary thing that I bought, full of good intentions, at the beginning of 2010. I think I actually might this time, because I am expecting great things of 2012. But that's the subject of another post, another day..

Living the dream: in the beginning...

One day there will be a new blog, and it will be called something like claireindc.wordpress.com, and it will document the beginning of the journey, and the beginning might turn out to be yesterday.

Or it might turn out to be the day I borrowed Emily's laptop to watch a Friends episode but instead ended up watching the DVD that was already in there, Season Two, Episode Five of a little TV programme called the West Wing and thinking "you know what, this is actually really good".

Or maybe the beginning was moving back to Belgium: maybe there's something in the air here, writing stardust or something  Here was where I wrote my first poems, my first "novels". Here was where people began to talk about me as a writer and believe in me when I was far too young to warrant that kind of title or that kind of confidence.

Or maybe it's not the dust, or the water, or anything about my childhood. Maybe it's the chance I got to write articles that reminded me there was far more to my love of language than a passion for correct grammar in three languages.

Or maybe it's the fact that I moved here with no big agenda, had no television, and one July had no social life either, and the only two things that kept me busy were work and the West Wing, and one day, walking down the street after a lesson with a Russian diplomat I thought, "wouldn't it be fun to teach Bradley Whitford French?" and suddenly, there was my novel.

Who knows, really, where it began? But yesterday I got an email, the email I've been waiting for, except I thought I was waiting for a letter, and I thought I was waiting till March. It said, "It's the Director of the MFA program at American University. I wanted to touch base with you personally and let you know that you've been accepted into the program starting fall 2012."

At this point, I don't know much. I don't know if I will get the scholarship I need to make this feasible. I don't know if it's God opening a door, or just me shoving at it really hard.

But I reserved some blog domain names just in case. Just in case I get to write about living in DC, studying creative writing, and campaigning for the Democrats. Just in case, in other words, I get to live my dream and tell you about it.

NaNoWriMo: Where I wrote

Apparently I now go to America in November; it's just what I do. (Since next year is a Presidential election year, I expect the pattern to continue.) In 2009 and 2010 I thought vaguely about NaNoWriMo and what a shame it was I wasn't going to be able to do it. In 2011, I came to my senses and realised there was no reason I couldn't write while travelling. That the writing might make the travelling both more fun and more purposeful and the travelling might make the writing more inspired, more grounded in the city where I seem to keep setting my novels.

So I went to DC, and I wrote.

I began my novel in Peregrine Expresso in Capitol Hill.

The next day, I took a train to Philadelphia, and I wrote.

I went back to DC, and I slacked off for a bit, but then I went to a Write In at Yola in Dupont Circle.

It was my first Write In, and I loved the experience, despite the two girls having a very noisy conversation, oblivious to the fact that everyone, but everyone, around them was studying or reading or trying to write a novel in a month. I met some super friendly people and scribbled for a happy hour or so before meeting a friend to go to see the Capitol Steps.

The next day, I had grand plans to write in the Pain Quotidien on 6th and Penn after church, but NatWest scuppered those plans by blocking my bank card and causing me to spend hours and lots of dollars on the phone to sort it out.

But then, the day after that, I finally, finally made it to Politics and Prose, for an event with Erin Morgenstern (whose successful novel, The Night Circus, started out as a NaNoWriMo novel). It's a wonderful place - with a name like that, how could it not be - and they have a coffee shop downstairs where I sat with another WriMo and scribbled my way to a writer's high.

The next day, I went back to Peregrine Expresso to see my new friend who had offered to marry me and my cute British accent so that I could have a visa. (Note to any immigration people reading: I'm pretty sure he was kidding.) While I was there, I wrote a little more, before heading to the DNC headquarters to do some phone banking. (Because, you know, if there's one thing I love more than phones, it's cold calling complete strangers who probably won't understand my aforementioned accent.)

The day after that (we're on 9th, if anyone is following), I got a few words down in Café Milano in Georgetown before my salmon and fennel dish arrived...

... then I paid a pilgrimage to the soon-to-be defunct (sniff) Barnes and Noble and its Starbucks, where I sat at a high seat by the window...

.,. and then I walked back to the hotel, dropped off the books I had accidentally bought in Lantern Books, and popped into another Write In, this one at Panera Bread at Dupont Circle (you'll note from the fact that the trees in front are not autumn colours that I borrowed this photo from Google Images). I had trouble with the ordering system, but made it downstairs with my orange juice and my cookie eventually. It was distracting down there: there was a Spanish lesson going on right behind me - it was hard not to think, "hey! When I move here, I could do my lessons in Panera Bread!". (Immigration people, if you're still reading, I of course will only do this if I have a visa that allows me to engage in paid employment.)

The people who were writing there were of a talkative disposition, which ordinarily I wouldn't have minded, but I didn't have very long, because owing to the distractions of Georgetown I'd got there later than I'd meant to, and I had to rush off after an hour to go and hear Umberto Eco at the 6th and i Synagogue. I was glad I had some moral support around me though, to ease my distress at having penned the words "she was drowning in his blue eyes".

By 10th, I was hitting my stride, and mourning my imminent departure. After an afternoon at the Newseum and a yummy dinner at America Eats with possibly the most delicious pecan pie I will ever taste, I joined the write in at the now familiar Starbucks on 3rd and Penn. (It's close to We the Pizza and to where the Hawk and Dove - sob - used to be; i.e. it's where I would hang out all the time if I worked on the Hill.) Amazing Starbucks, complete with a real-looking open fire in the very quiet and studious upstairs part.

I was just hitting my stride after a twitter break (ahem) when they kicked us out of there, though. I wrote a little more downstairs and then headed back to my hotel...

where I made up my quota with my newfound determination, or possibly to avoid packing, and thus the thought of leaving.

The next day, I boarded a plane to LA, just like Josh Lyman did all those years ago to go and get Sam. I fell way short of my word quota that day, but I did manage a few pages up in the air.

I had ideas about writing some more after I got to my hotel - if you can call it a hotel - in Pasadena, but I was stressed and tired and tearful (perhaps at the prospect of being so close to Bradley Whitford) and so I never quite made it.

The next day was sightseeing and catching up with Brianna (yay), and the day after that when I'd had plans to go to a write in, then All Saints Church, then the mid-month NaNoWriMo celebrations in LA, instead I made a last minute decision to spend the day with her. Which was lovely, and her church was fab, and we visited a posh hotel beloved of Presidents (with good reason), and ate the first cupcakes I've actually enjoyed in America, but still, it was one of those times I wished I could have cloned myself and been in two places at once.

We rounded the day off with a delicious meal at Russell's - so that's what a hamburger ought to taste like - and then I spent a happy couple of hours in a Barnes and Noble. ("Does Bradley Whitford ever come in here?" "Who?" "He's an actor... Josh Lyman from the West Wing? He lives in Pasadena." "Oh,  yes, he's a regular." You are so totally making that up, given that a minute ago you didn't know who he was, but I want to believe you, so I am going to.) Next door was a Starbucks - open till midnight, ah, civilisation, how I've missed you - and I planned to sit and make my quota if it killed me. But the seat by the window that I'd had my eye on got taken before I could get there, and the people who sat themselves next to me were very talkative, and wanted to know all about me. I have a hunch they were famous in some way - one of them was very whacky and wearing a weird hat, and the other told me her sister used to live downstairs from Allison Janney in New York, which is confusing since I thought Allison Janney lived in California, but anyway - but to cut a long story even longer, I got no writing done.

So the next day, I was determined. I wandered round Old Town Pasadena and looked round All Saints Church, then spent a happy rest of the morning in Vroman's, which is an amazing independent bookshop, where I succumbed to a Pasadena tshirt and the novel "Helen of Pasadena" (which actually was not bad, and unexpectedly made me cry. I wonder if Jane Kaczmarek has read it, and if she cried too?). It also has a café, so I sat and wrote there...

... and then, after paying a small visit to the Pasadena Playhouse and sighing over the Artists' Entrance, where, if any of you would like to donate a few hundred dollars or a couple of thousand airmiles I could potentially meet my hero in just a few months' time, I went to Sabor 2 which is where some of the write ins were held. The coffee was not that nice and the people were not that friendly, but it was a cool place.

And then I got on a plane, and then another plane, and I came home to frost on the ground, tenacious jet lag, a trip to the UK, and about 40,000 words still to write. By 19th November, I had a choice: full steam ahead or give up. I wasn't going to be half-hearted about it and get to 25,000 words. I tweeted and asked for advice, and my fellow WriMos were very encouraging, for which I am eternally grateful.

So I wrote in the spare bed at Tim and Jacqui's flat in Stockwell, and then on the train from London to Oxford for the wedding...

... and then I wrote in Giraffe in Victoria after Church...

... and then I wrote in bed, and then I wrote on the Eurostar back to Belgium...

... and then I finally stopped international travelling and wrote some of the rest of my novel on trains between Nivelles and Brussels ...

... but mostly at my desk in those final few days when I had to crank over 20,000 words in not a very long time. I could have sanitised and tidied it for you, but this, minus the tissues which I admit to throwing away, is what my writing table looks like. I am an artist. It's okay to be messy. It's part of the persona.

I know it's not pretty, but it got the job done. So maybe the moral of the story is there is no need to be somewhere interesting and different to do NaNoWriMo. Wait, no, that can't be what I was trying to say...

NaNoWriMo: how I'll do it next time

1. I'll spend October getting ready. 

I wanted to do that this time, too, but for the third year in a row the last couple of weeks in October were a little crazy, with translations suddenly arriving right when my pieces for the What's On section of Away Magazine were due - and there are always more of those in the run-up to Christmas anyway, what with the markets and castles and carol concerts to write about.

So yes, there was time to throw things in a suitcase for my America trip; there was time to go out and carefully select pretty notebooks for NaNoWriMo, and I fitted in reading Chris Baty's "No Plot No Problem" well in advance. But there wasn't time to do character sketches or draw up timelines or brainstorm subplots. Which, in a way, is fine. I wanted to see if NaNoWriMo worked when you do no planning whatsoever - as it is, in fact, supposed to. It's the opposite of how I wrote my first novel - carefully, deliberately, a scene when it would pop into my head, all of which after spending a long time getting to know my characters - and I was curious to see if it worked, and it kind of did, but I also kept thinking how much more productive it would be if I had a better idea of where it was going. And how much easier it would be to start each writing session if I had, as suggested my someone on I can't remember which website, written thirty index cards, each with a scene to develop.

That said, I don't know. Some of my best writing to date has been when I've started with a writing prompt and just written for thirty minutes, the aim being to keep writing, and see where it takes you. NaNoWriMo is, the way I did it, a long experiment in freewriting, and I think there is value in that.

Besides, I can do the character development and backstory and subplots and timeline now, and rewrite and add words as I need to. (And I need about an extra 50,000 words, so those things will come in handy.) Also, it's very possible that I'm remembering the process of writing Inevitable wrongly or selectively: a lot of the brainstorming and post-it note sticking was done between drafts.

Still, next time I'll do it the other way.

2. I'll start on 1st November.

I'm fortunate to live in a country which has two bank holidays during NaNoWriMo - on 1st and 11th November, and if those days fall on a Tuesday or a Thursday, you tend to get an extra day off work thrown in too. My teaching also slows down during the first week of the month because it's half term here. Which of course has been my excuse for taking that time off to go on holiday for three years in a row now. I'm glad I left on 1st November this year, because if I hadn't I may not have made it to Philadelphia to see Staging Hope and meet Melissa Fitzgerald. But another year I will make sure I spend as much of 1st November as possible writing - or doing the brainstorming that I yet again won't have had a chance to do in October. Then on 2nd, I'll take to the skies. (I assume, by the way, that my next NaNoWriMo won't be next year, because next year there is an election to win.)

I did start on 1st, and I got 1,000 words or so done, and only had to stop because the whole of Peregrine Espresso was spinning and I started to feel as if I was going to fall off my chair, what with jet lag, sleep deprivation and messed up eating patterns. And my novel starts with Aaron jiggling his leg because on the bus from Dulles to Rosslyn there was a guy jiggling his leg as he spoke very quietly into his mobile phone, and it intrigued me, because when people are stressed enough to be jiggling their legs they are normally shouting. Also, there was something nicely symbolic about beginning my NaNoWriMo novel in DC, where it is set, in a cafe of which I had thought on my last visit, "I would like to come and write here". But still, it would have been nice to have started, say, 1,000 words ahead, rather than a few hundred behind.

3. I'll travel.

Yes, it's great that Belgium gives us writing time in November. But what's less great is that, like so many things, NaNoWriMo has yet to take off here. The best thing about NaNoWriMo is the community aspect: you write together at "write-ins", you meet up for half-month parties, you send each other encouraging emails. Yes, nominally there is a NaNoWriMo "region" covering "Belgium and Holland", but it irritates me that they only send out their emails in Dutch - since just under half of this country speaks French - and there are very few Write Ins, and the ones there are tend to be in Flanders or Holland. Also, I have not found the Belgians to be super friendly when you first meet them, so the thought of walking into a coffee shop to join in with strangers and being met with a blank stare when I say "Hi, I'm Claire" is a little discouraging. In the US, everyone is super-friendly, especially WriMos. In the UK, I'm among my own kind, so I know what to expect. In other countries, there are also more Write-Ins - I love the idea of the California one that takes place on a a train. Write-Ins are a great way to meet people when you are travelling alone, too.

Plus, of course, there's the inspiration factor. I don't know if all my novels will be doomed love stories set in DC - though it's looking increasingly likely - but there is something fantastic about sitting in the Pain Quotidien on 6th and Pennsylvania writing about a date in the Pain Quotidien on 6th and Pennsylvania (although I didn't quite manage to be that in sync, sadly): about looking around and getting the real details from the real place, about eavesdropping on conversations and making a careful note of them. The dad who told his toddler "senate is in session" by way of explanation of something or other will almost certainly make an appearance in my novel, as will the dogs and small bilingual children in Lincoln Park. This kind of thing makes the place feel more real to the writer and therefore to the reader. Well, hopefully.

4. I'll hand write.

I almost always hand write my first drafts. Working on my writing is almost the only time that I use pen and paper now, so it signals to me and my body that I am in creative mode. I am a creature of habit, and I found my writer's voice sitting in St James' Park writing with a pen and paper, so that's the way it'll stay. It's also how I do my dailyish freewriting exercises. Fewer distractions that way. Long enough for my brain to catch up with my hand.

Maybe by next time I will have mastered the art of sitting at a computer and not flicking back and forth from my writing to Facebook to twitter to Authonomy to Blogger and back to writing. After all, I have been sitting here typing this blog post for quite q while now and resisted the temptation, so you never know. Plus, I have this funky wireless keyboard thing for my iPad now, and it's a pleasure to type on.

But still, an iPad and a keyboard, light as they are, are more hassle to carry around than a notebook and a pen. You have to remember to charge them, and hope that nothing goes wrong with them, which they rarely do, but it does happen, and if it happens, you can guarantee it will right at that breakthrough moment when you're typing a pivotal scene.

I also live in constant fear of my iPad being stolen, which is one of the reasons I don't carry it around with me everywhere when I'm going to be hanging around touristy places. And yes, okay, my whole handbag could get nicked, and if my notebook were in it that would be a real shame - particularly because I back up by taking photos of my notebook, and my camera would likely also be in my bag - but I don't furtively look around me when I get out my notebook and pen to check no one looks like the notebook and pen stealing type.

Speaking of notebooks, it's also an excuse to buy pretty notebooks and post it notes. And who doesn't need one of those from time to time?

5. I'll count my words every day.

Arguably the best reason for typing NaNoWriMo novels is that the whole point is to get to 50,000 words, and therefore you need to know when you've got to 50,000 words. I've found my estimations to be wildly inaccurate - well, not wildly, but wildly once you multiply 20 words by 90 pages, which led to a frenzied final day of NaNoWriMo and a collapse in exhaustion rather than a triumphant hooray. This was, of course, after I'd hand counted most of 50,000 words over two or three days. Try it. It's not a lot of fun. But I really did need to know if I had made it. I think I have. But then again, I might have counted completely wrong. Next time I'd like to know for sure, and I'd like to watch the little NaNoWriMo graph go up steadiliy. I'm sure I can count 1,667 words much more patiently and accurately than I can count 20,000.

I've won NaNoWriMo!

Well, I did it! I wrote 50,000 words in a month. The exact official number is 50,143 words, but you can ignore that completely, because I hand wrote, and also hand counted, and given my propensity for mathematical errors the real number could be anywhere between 45,000 and 55,000 words.

Oddly, I'm not as excited as I thought be. Not even as relieved - though doubtless that will happen tomorrow when I realise I can spend train time reading and free time inanely clicking on refresh on twitter, just like before. Maybe I should have planned some kind of momentous event or at least champagne drinking to celebrate with friends. Well, there's still time, so let me know.

I'm sure I'll be musing about NaNoWriMo a fair bit in the next few weeks: why I did it (to prove to myself that I still had it in me to be self-disciplined!), whether I'd do it again (the jury is still out at this point),why I hand write, and what I learned. But for now I wanted to proudly display my winner's badge:

I even got a winner's cerificate that I could customise and print, but since I haven't decided what to call myself or what to name the novel, I won't add it here just here. It's pretty fab though - those nice people at NaNoWriMo really have thought of everything. Almost everything. If someone could please design an app to count hand written words (so that you basically just point an iPad at a page), that would be wonderful.

Techniques for upping your NaNoWriMo word count

The end is in sight. 30th November draws near. How's your word count doing? Scrabbling around for those extra few words? Here's some tips I've picked up. 

1. Give your character a dilemma. 

That way things can keep going round in a circle, to illustrate said dilemma. Particularly if she's also indecisive. Like, she wants him but she knows she can't have him but she really does want him but she really can't have him but... 

Indecisiveness in general is also good, since you can add things like "oh, I don't know, I think I'll have the cheesecake... no, the pumpkin pie. Oh, I don't know. I'm so terrible at decisions. Help me, oh my hero, to make the right choice." (You'll be glad to know nothing like that appears in my novel, but you get the point.)

2. Have your character know something else well, and quote from it frequently.

Maybe she's a Christian, and keeps using the Bible to make her arguments. Or maybe he's a West Wing fan, and borrows Aaron Sorkin's words frequently. (I resisted that particular temptation this time - in fact, it took me till page 133 to mention the West Wing at all, and that's because I wanted my character to wear a suit and backpack, and didn't feel like I could do that without a nod at Josh Lyman.)

3. Get your character to speak a foreign language from time to time.

That way, they have to saw everything twice: once in the language, and once in translation. 

4. Use circumlocution.

If he says, "no", that's one word. If "he shakes his head no", that's five. If he "explains", that's one word. Have him "say by way of explanation" instead, and get yourself some extra.

5. Show, don't tell. 

Yes - at last some sensible writing advice that holds even if you're not doing NaNoWriMo. What I mean here is this, though: instead of saying, "she was kissing him", make it last: "she was kissing him, kissing him, kissing him". If their arguments are going in a circle, show it by making your narration go in a circle too: "And so they were back. Not to Square One exactly, more like the "go" square on the Monopoly board, they went round and round and they kept ending up in the same places, and round and round, but each time was different as well as familiar". There's a sneak preview into mine. 

Am I crazy?

Until very recently, it looked as if my now yearly pilgrimage to West Wing Land DC was not going to happen in 2011. I consoled myself with thoughts of going for the cherry blossom festival instead, and happy if unfounded hopes of being accepted by American University this year and soon getting to live there full time. 

I consoled myself too with the prospect of NaNoWriMo: every year, tens of thousands of writers worldwide indulge in (inter)National Novel Writing Month, the aim being to crank out a 50,000 word first draft in the space of a month. For the last two years, I've been on holiday and in the midst of another novel in November. Not this year. Maybe this was the year to give it a go.

When it turned out I could go to DC after all, I was not, initially, as excited as I would have expected to be. This concerned me - was it some kind of sign? It took me a little while to realise that I was, in fact, disappointed to be missing out on another NaNoWriMo. 

And then it dawned on me: why are travelling and NaNo mutually exclusive? Particularly when my next novel, like my first, is going to be a doomed love story set in DC, and DC is where I am going? 

This may be the best, or the worst, idea that I've ever had. But I've got a week in Washington this time, and I've taken the obligatory photos, done the obligatory tours, stood in the street where Josh threw snowballs at Donna's window (though I still don't know which house number it was - anyone?). I have time, in other words, to set aside a couple of hours a day to sit in a coffee shop and scribble in my notebooks. I also have plane journeys and train journeys. 

And one of the best things about NaNo is its communalness (this is where I wish, not for the first time today, that there was a decent English translation of the word convivialité). People meet in cafés and bookshops and write together. Not much in Belgium - and the ones that do seem to be Dutch-speaking. This is one aspect where being in the US will work for me. Maybe. 

NaNoWriMo requires stringent self-discipline, and I hesitate to be unrealistically harsh on myself and force myself to write 1,667 words a day on holiday - particularly in the 36 hours I have in Philadelphia and the four days I have in LA. But I have signed up to those NaNo regions just in case. The write-ins may actually be just the nudge that I need to keep me going at least every other day. And if I get ahead while I am in DC, I may not need to be too stringent. 

By the time I get back from the US, I should have 25,000 words of a novel written - perhaps more, because I know from experience that jetlag makes me useless for a good few days after I get back (and to make it more complicated still, I then have a trip to the UK for a wedding.) I have no idea if it's going to work. But I'm certainly going to give it a try. I don't want to wait another year. 

A cure for writer's block?

I know I (foolishly) claimed a while back that I don't suffer from writer's block. Turns out that I do. Only mine is not a case of sitting down and having nothing to write. I use writing prompts to get going and take it from there.

Mine is an odd internal resistance to writing. It's finding excuse after excuse, day after day, for not putting in the few minutes I promised myself I would. I don't know why I have been battling this. (Okay, not so much battling as capitulating.)

Only it turns out that I do know why - that there are lot of reasons, from being discouraged by my lack of success to being distracted by my wonderful but ubiquitous iPad and its many wonderful apps.

Actually, I think I knew about those, but I unearthed plenty more yesterday: it just so happens that I was on the chapter of The Five Minute Writer which deals with the "I am not writing because..." syndrome. You write down your reasons, then you write down positive statements to counter them. Things like, "I may not have been published yet, but plenty of people have enjoyed my work, including one or two agents." (Cheesier things were, in fact, suggested, but I didn't quite have the stomach for them.)

It sounds like a load of nonsense, doesn't it? The idea that this should somehow get me writing again? I only really did the exercise to assuage my guilt at having let yet another day go by without my daily quota.

And yet, today, I have found within myself the self- discipline to switch off the internet on my main computer while I wrote, and then agai later while I watched the West Wing and then wrote. (I have, in fact not checked Facebook for, oh, three hours now.) And lo, the West Wing inspired me again. This morning, I did a writing prompt and continued until after the timer had gone off. This evening I typed up almost 3,000 words and now I only have 12,000 to go till I can resubmit to the agent who liked me but wanted a longer book. Most of that is not new writing. But the inner resistance has gone. I want to write again. And now I feel like me again. And mightily relieved.

Now, it could be completely unrelated to the exercise I did yesterday. After all, as all West Wing fans are aware, "post hoc ergo propter hoc" (after it, therefore because of it) is hardly ever true. But hardly ever is not the same as never.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

3BT: carrot soup, another review, and a new website

1. A lovely friend brings me home-made carrot soup and freshly squeezed oranges, and sympathy for my being ill at home.

2. I spend a few hours contacting expat magazines to see if they want to review Conquering Babel. The best-selling UK-based mag for Francophiles says yes. Potentially, this could mean a boost in sales, and it gives me confidence that I have a marketable product.

3. Having struggled with Wordpress, I've found a website designing and hosting service that does exactly what I wanted and is easy to use: weebly.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

3BT: work, a review, and my favourite actor

1. I have not one but two emails from people enquiring about lessons. I can't remember the last time this happened.

2. A twitter friend of mine whose blog has a large following agrees to review my book, Conquering Babel.

3. I watch Bradley Whitford give an interview about his forthcoming event, fundraising for a cancer charity that sounds like it's doing fantastic work. It makes me smile when celebs I love use their fame for good.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

3BT: time, stories, and a refreshing breeze

1. I'm told that over the summer there will be no Tuesday or Friday lessons. I have been given the gift of time, and I don't intend to squander it.

2. At my writers' group, inspiration strikes for stories and novels: I want my friends to hurry up and write them so I can read them. Marie mentions a photocopier, and this, for some reason, is the trigger. I begin to write. It seems my worries about life post-Inevitable were unfounded. There are stories in me yet.

3. The oppressive heat breaks at last, and I watch the rain flow down the train windows. If I'd caught the one before, as I wanted to, I would have had to walk home from the station in the downpour. Instead of which, I let a welcome breeze refresh me and read The Grapes of Wrath as the occasional lightning bolt lights up the sky.

3BT: the BBC, Inevitable, and Starbucks

1. I log into the BBC website during my lunchbreak. A banner informs me that it wasn't a vicious rumour: soon we foreigners will be able to access iplayer. Hooray: no more kicking myself because I forgot to record Question Time.

2. Many unexpected backings and kind comments on my book. I even get an email back from an agent saying she 'likes the tone'. It's still a no, but it makes my day.

3. Another tweet, another happy shriek: the Gare Centrale Starbucks is apparently not just a rumour either. It's going to open on 22nd June. I'd been looking for something to use my countdown app on.

How you can help me get published...

You know the novel I've been yabbering on about for months? Well, a sneak preview of is now available!

If you wanted to drop by and read anything from a paragraph to 15,000 words - please feel free!

If you want to comment, back, or rate me, it could help me get published too, so needless to say I'd really appreciate that... and if you're feeling like you want to be super helpful you could post the link to your Facebook wall too.

The site is run by publishers HarperCollins, so it's totally legit - no worries there! They ask you to register but it only takes a minute, and you don't get spam.

Advert over!

Limping to the finishing line...

I have written a novel.

It's finished!

So my question is this: why am I not punching the air?

I am thinking about marathons. I have never run anything close to one, nor do I ever intend to. (I know I once said this about going to America, but Aaron Sorkin is unlikely to write a gritty drama about running. If he does, then I expect I'll be buying a pair of trainers.) So to those of you who have, a question: after you finish, how do you feel?

Do you feel euphoric, or do you drag yourself to the finishing line and then collapse in a heap and beat yourself up for not doing it better, faster?

How about the next morning? Do you ever want to run again?

Because, it's strange, but I feel a little deflated.

What if after the marathon, someone had said, oh, well done, but now you have to climb this big mountain? Would you have been up for the challenge? Because agent hunting feels like that mountain to me.

And, here's the thing: I am a little bit afraid.

Of feedback, because I can't bear the thought that there might be more weeks, more months of work ahead.

Of reading, because I am in love with beautiful prose, and I know that mine does not come close to the standards that I admire and aspire to: I fear that literary fiction will punch me in the gut.

Of writing, because, what if I suddenly get new ideas for this novel, this novel which is supposed to be finished? Or, worse still, what if I get ideas for my second book? Because I just don't think I can face that yet.

But maybe that's okay. Maybe that would be like asking a Marathon runner to do it again the next week.

Marathon runners, any thoughts? How about writers?

Could it be that the book is finished?

I've written before about how I don't believe in writers' block. I may have spoken too soon.

For almost two years now, scenes for my novel, Inevitable, have been popping into my head. Sometimes with frightening regularity. Sometimes sporadically. And even when they have not, usually if I have sat down with paper and pen for long enough, an idea has come. Not always a great one. Sometimes one I have later cut. But an idea, nonetheless.

But here is the thing now: I brainstorm. I write from prompts. I read about DC. I teach the guy who is the inspiration for my main character. I mostly still take the long train/tram journeys during which scenes used to come to me, randomly but often. I do all the things that used to work - though admittedly I haven't watched any West Wing in a few weeks - and yet inspiration does not strike.

I spent yesterday depressed about this: I've been so looking forward to six whole days hanging out with my novel. And then it occurred to me - the reason might well be a good one. The reason might be that there's nothing more to say. That the book is finished. So instead I am reading through, editing bits and pieces, cutting scenes, finding synonyms for beautiful and deleting instances of the word "suddenly".

And getting ready to post a triumphant Facebook status update.

Adventures in writing... the journey continues

Maybe it's my age, and the ticking of my biological clock, but the longer this writing adventure goes on, the more it feels like being a mother.

Let me explain.

You may remember that in the summer of 2009, when I was embarking on the adventure, I wrote a clumsy blogpost about how it felt a lot like being pregnant: walking around carrying the invisible promise of something new and alive and a part of you, something that consumes your every thought and hope and dream.  

Even the way it all started was a little like that sudden niggling realisation.  Uh oh.  I think I might be pregnant. I didn't purposely sit down to start writing a novel. I was coming back from one of my first lessons with a new student, thinking, probably, about the West Wing (this was at the beginning of my, erm, interest), and it occurred to me, wouldn't it be fun to teach Bradley Whitford French? And then I got out a notebook and started writing.  

And now? Well.  Maybe it's the later stages of a very long labour.  (I could get more specific, but I don't want to put you off your breakfast.)  At least, I hope it's the later stages.  I'm pleased with what I have so far, but I need another 12,000 words, and I'm not sure where they're going to come from; but then I also didn't know where the last 11,000 were going to come from, and somehow they appeared.  

Well, actually, not 'somehow'.  A lot of it was thanks to the midwife, my new friend Rebecca.  I've never met her in real life (yet) but we have talked a lot on Facebook over the last few months - we share a mutual, erm, interest - and she has been an incredible help and inspiration and support, cheering me on from the sidelines - push, push! 

I sent her my draft back in the summer, and she came back with such helpful comments and ideas and suggestions that where I thought I couldn't keep pushing, she gave me a fresh impetus. Above all, she is almost as excited about the novel, Inevitable, as I am, and that is so motivating.

And here's where it's also like being a parent.  Those of you who are mums probably remember what it's like to drop your first child off at school.  Are they going to be okay out there in the big wide world? Will they be liked? Will others realise how special they are? What a privilege it is to meet them?

At the same time as I sent my second(ish) draft off to Rebecca, I sent it to four other people, three of whom had asked me repeatedly to send them a copy.  Months later, I've heard nothing back from any of them apart from a couple of yes, I'm reading it comments.  

It's like your child coming home after you have spent all day wondering how they were getting on, and you ask, how was school, and they shrug and say, okay.  And you ask, what did you learn and they shrug and say, stuff.  And you ask, did you make friends and they shrug and say, I guess.  

Heartbreaking, isn't it?