I am now on to the fun part of cover design for the hard copy of The Funky Mongoose. I’m trying to model it on “real” books and thought it would be fun having a few one or two line quotes of “reviews” – you know the sort… “Spectacular, exciting read – The Guardian”.

So, I’m going to issue a plea for help. Want to be quoted on the cover of a book that could have a circulation of a whole 3 copies?! Now is your chance. Quote can be silly, frivolous, completely unrelated to the book (hell, you don’t even have to read it) – this is just to make the cover more fun.

I’ll pick my favourites for the cover! Thank you!

No, I haven’t forgotten all about this and my promise to get it into printed format for souvenir copies. It’s just taking rather longer than I expected to get it all sorted out!

I had a faff around today getting it into a proper paperback 5″ by 8″ format rather than the standard Word document. It’s a very odd feeling. When it was just 25 separate chapters in individual word documents it didn’t feel that substantial. Now it’s one document that looks like a proper paperback and is 226 pages long, I feel like I actually wrote a proper book now!

Why is it that on the rare times you have a dream that you are aware is a dream and consciously think “this would make a great plot for a short story”, you either:

a) wake up next morning with only minimal recollection of what happened and nowhere near enough to make a coherent story out of it.
b) remember just about enough to realise that it was, in reality, absolutely useless as any sort of creative writing material except maybe dream analysis to see just how screwed up you are.
c) suddenly realise it was completely ripped off a film or book you’ve read recently.
d) all of the above.

Word Count (Today/Total): 1820/51,102
Hours Written (Today/Total): 2.5/59.75
Words Left: none, zilch, nada, nowt, NOTHING!
Morale: *BOUNCE*
Written today: Chapter 25 – In Which The Author Writes Her Last Chapter Ever And Hopes To Retain Her Sanity By The End Of It

Word Count (Today/Total): 2301/49,282
Hours Written (Today/Total): 3/57.25
Words Left: 718
Morale: bored and want it done – unfortunately it shows
Written today: Chapter 24 – In Which Sue Goes Rooting Around Her Past

I’m just not enjoying this anymore. I’m carrying on because I’ve got this far so I’m going to finish, but I’m not promising to avoid a major nuclear explosion wiping out all my characters in the last chapter, okay?!

I did have two dares for my chapter today. The first was from Sylvia who wanted me to put the word “rutabaga” in the story (for some reason, during our work avoidance ICQ messages, we were wondering exactly what type of vegetable a rutabaga was, and she insisted I put it in the story).

While she munched, in an effort to avoid thinking about the telephone conversation ahead, she found herself idly reading the ingredients on the jar of sandwich pickle. What was rutabaga anyway?! She’d always wondered but never bothered to find out. Didn’t you have to know these sorts of things once you became a parent?

The second was a dare of my own to myself. I wanted to tie the story in to the title I’d given the book. Here is my very convoluted solution:

“Don’t you remember me taking you to the zoo just before all the divorce stuff kicked off? You were fascinated with the meercats. I bought you a stuffed toy of one on impulse to give to you on your birthday, crazy as you were probably far too old for stuffed toys and you would have hated it.”

Sue turned it around, inspecting it closely. “Hey, you never know. It is kind of cool. A funky mongoose. I would have loved it.”

Sometimes though, your own book is just never as interesting as someone else’s. I spent hundreds of words parodying Syvlia’s book with titbits I’d learned from our ICQ messages as she was horribly stuck with the last chapter. I would copy and paste it here, but to be honest so much of it was in-jokes from the ordeals of the last month it probably wouldn’t make much sense to you. Just trust me though when I say it was absolutely hilarious and far better writing than my own sorry chapter.

Word Count (Today/Total): 2014/46,981
Hours Written (Today/Total): 2/54.25
Words Left: 3019
Morale: are we nearly there yet?!
Written today: Chapter 23 – In Which Philip Gets A Visitor

Ten things I’m going to do in forty eight hours when this is all over…

1. sleep.
2. play Star Wars Galaxies lots.
3. say “thank god that’s over!” lots.
4. tell everyone who will listen that I will never ever EVER do something like this EVER AGAIN!
5. sleep some more.
6. start thinking about Christmas presents et al.
7. buy myself an advent calendar with chocolate in it.
8. look into getting a souvenir paperback copy over at CafePress.
9. pay Akra Jr some quality attention to make up for the Distracted November Mummy.
10. start planning next year’s entry…

Word Count (Today/Total): 2000/44,967
Hours Written (Today/Total): 2.5/52.25
Words Left: 5033
Morale: every word dragged out kicking and screaming and viciously pinned to the page…
Written today: Chapter 22 – In Which The Author Waffles About Shirley Some More

You know you’re struggling when you go back through the chapter to expand out some contractions to make your word count for the day… I also cringed through most of the last quarter of the chapter. I think it’s proved to me that I could never ever write Mills & Boon.

Anyway, it’s suggestion day. There’s probably only 3 chapters left in this poor excuse for a novel, I’ve got some ideas but are there any requests for specific happy endings/horrible massacres? I may or may not take them into consideration ;)

Word Count (Saturday/Today/Total): 2058/2055/42,967
Hours Written (Saturday/Today/Total): 3.5/2.25/49.75
Words Left: 7033
Morale: are we nearly there yet?!
Written Saturday & today: Chapter 20 – In Which Sue Returns To London and Chapter 21 – In Which Sarah Gets A Visit…

Well, I did manage to write on our weekend away – on the Saturday at least although it seemed to take ages (too busy getting distracted by fun people to talk to!) – Sunday was too busy and we didn’t get home until after 8pm so I didn’t get anything done.

I’m on the homeward run now, but I don’t feel particularly excited or anything, just desperately want it to be all over so I can get some sort of life back!! It doesn’t help that I “invested” in Star Wars Galaxies and the box is staring at me saying “come play me come play me” every time I sit down to write…

At the moment I have two nightmare scenarios – the first is that I’ll get to my 50,000 words and still be nowhere near ending the story – dilemma do I then carry on writing even after the deadline just to feel I have “got somewhere” and “finished”? My other nightmare scenario is the opposite, that I’ll run out of story somewhere around 48,000 words and have absolutely nothing left to fill with! I suppose either scenario requires an actual plot to magically appear so I think I’ll just worry about tomorrow for the time being…

Word Count (Today/Total): 2106/38,854
Hours Written (Today/Total): 2/44
Words Left: 11,146
Morale: ugh. not great literature today, but I got the words out.
Written today: Chapter 19 – In Which Philip Attempts To Keep A Low Profile

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Dares Day is now formally closed. I seem to have got off quite lightly.

I cheated horribly fitting in both suggestions, as you will see.

Daisy’s air ambulance – it was so so tempting to do something really evil with this, but I restrained myself:

He squinted at the screen, trying to work out exactly what was going on. A car weaved in and out of traffic then smashed into a wall. An air ambulance helicopter swooped down and landed on the tarmac, little figures running out to scrape up splat marks before the words GAME OVER spiralled into view. To think it didn’t seem that long ago when Shirley was worrying if Tom and Jerry was too violent for the kids to watch.

So there were no serious manglings as Tiz feared… or were there….

Tiz’s parachuting bunny did make a cameo, but not as blatant a one as before, I’m afraid. To be honest, it came after I’d already written a large portion of the chapter, and I needed to get my characters to where I wanted them to be, so I just stuck in a passing reference:

He walked them home after the film feeling older than he ever had before, and they weren’t even ribbing him about it. He, quite frankly, hadn’t understood most of the film, although he strongly suspected it might have helped had he seen the other two parts to the story first. Next time he was going to insist they went and saw a cheery kids cartoon instead. Maybe Disney. No, Disney was gruesome and depressing too. Something with parachuting bunnies, that would be pleasant distraction.

I’m not altogether happy with this chapter. The end felt very rushed and not as important as it should have been. The last five or six chapters are a mystery to me as well as you, so I’m hoping I have a flash of inspiration this weekend.

I will be away in Blackpool tomorrow and Sunday, so I may or may not post, depending on how organised I am. I also may or may not write my 2000 words, so I’ll just have to catch up in the week if I don’t *gulp*. Keep your fingers crossed for lots of good plot ideas to wing their way to me over the next couple of days.

Word Count (Today/Total): 2030/36,748
Hours Written (Today/Total): 2.25/42
Words Left: 13,252
Morale: went okay today, but to be honest I’m getting writing fatigue – looking forward to December.
Written today: Chapter 18 – In Which Peter’s Lies Are Finally Exposed

Well, okay, that word count includes the 47 I wrote yesterday, but it didn’t seem worth separating it out!

Even though there’s “only” 13k words left to write, I’m starting to flag a little. There’s other things I want to do with my time and I want not to have to sit down at my computer each day and think of what’s going to happen next. I just want to slob out a bit, play computer games and not use my brain for a while. It doesn’t help that we’re away this weekend so trying to fit in writing time around that is going to be difficult, but if I *don’t* write then catching up will be difficult.

I know I’m going to regret this, and I’m very conscious of the last time I did this activity with you all that I got some really nasty objects to add in to the chapter! But, hey ho, glutten for punishment and all that, it’s “dare me” time again. Same rules, one object per person, as bizarre as you like and I will do my best to work them into the chapter…. *gulp*