I've moved! And I'd be honoured if you'd visit my new place:

illustratedguidetolife.com

What happened? 

The rabbit hutch of my creative process is fouled by dirty life habits. And I'm cleaning it up. 

If you're a follower of this blog, you'll probably know my theatre shows and  novel-writing. Epic challenges in short timeframes, usually with exciting outcomes. But every time I did a creative project, I ended up burnt out. I love deadlines, and worked with a kind of brutal, obsessive energy and determination. I got things done, and fast - but, as my wise friend and director Sara Kewly Hyde advised: "Controversially, Laura, getting things done is not always the most important thing". 

It sure isn't. Life is more important. You know, taking it in. Savouring it. Being grateful for its pleasures. Wiggling your toes in the sunshine. Playing with your family (I now have a daughter, and she's one big reason why my life has, and must, change). Breathing. Loving your loved ones until they are in no doubt. 

Coffee, diet coke, booze, overeating, overcommitting, disengaging... Psschht, you say. Everyone does that, don't they? Well, these might seem like minor vices, but they wreck the pleasure in creativity. They add up to misery. They enslave me. Suddenly, I'm racing ahead, never enjoying what I'm doing or what I've got, just desperate to get through it to the next thing. My life is ruled by an Urge to have More and More of everything. And the ensuing tiredness, paranoia, illness, depression, self-disgust, hopelessness and conflict is no small consequence. And for my loved ones, it's as though I abscond, and then reappear at the door one stormy night, drenched and shivering. (Does this sound familiar to anyone? Please, do get in touch or leave a comment below - I'd love to discover I'm not alone in this). 

The RSPCA must be called (just to return, randomly, to the rabbit hutch metaphor). By the end of an artistic process, I've masochistically turned the cage into a kind of leporine Tracey Emin installation. 

Each time I have to stop, and rebuild myself. My creativity lives on - there must be another way of working I can learn. I don't want to stop and get a day job. But I'm done with working this way. 

Fortunately, I can turn the same enthusiasm and determination that I used in theatre on myself (in the last year, I've already transformed my life into an unrecogniseable incarnation), and I'm determined to keep learning how to live better. Both in general, and in a creative life which has a steady pace, and is sustainable in the long term. 

So don't say goodbye, oh no. Not even auf wiedersehen. Come over to theillustratedguidetolife.com and see me take on this huge and worthy challenge. You'll find a candid account there of my strategies and attempts to change my ways. And you'll find support for anything you're trying to clean up about your act too. Do it for me. Do it for yourself. Do it for the rabbits. 

What's on illustratedguidetolife.com?

• Posts once a week initially - on Tuesdays – right from the coal face of where I'm at. The questions that come up and the solutions that I've found through my diligent research and self-experimentation that actually work
• I'll be there until I can work in a sustained way on a creative project for three solid months without crashing. Yes, I'm committed to seeing this process through
• I'll be there longer if you're changing things and need my support too! So if you'd like to make your creative life healthier too, (or just give up your latte habit) then pitch in and we'll egg each other on
• Oh, and did I mention the drawings? I illustrate everything, with sketches. Why? Because it makes me and you happy

Yours, 
Laura Eades

100 hours of novel-editing in one month in Berlin

If you haven't heard from me for a while, I've been doing a novel-editing marathon! 

The wins: 

• I've been spending time in some lovely places, and really enjoyed myself! Like this cafe in Hufelandstrasse, Prenzlauer Berg. Also, a treehouse in a children's playground, and my writing desk at home (pic below).
• I worked my way through 4 chapters (about a quarter of the novel) - so I now I know I have to allow 300 more hours!
• I kept running, and ran 10K
• I've lost a stone. Only minor bad behaviour with a bag of nuts and a box of chocolates in the final days

The hurdles:

• We haven't had any internet connection at home, or phone line, and so I've become hopelessly disconnected from everyone - apologies
• I've forgotten all the German I learnt before this month started
• Too many espresso macchiatos

Now I know a few more things about the creative process, and can plan the next one better! (Two weeks, then a healthy week, then two more - that's as long as I can last before entering caffeine hyperspace)

National Novel Editing Month (NaNoEdMo): How many edits do you need?

To everyone still editing for NaNoEdMo - good continuance!

My favourite days were with the terrace doors open, a blanket on my knees, gloves on my hands, watching the snow drift down. Snow and editing go well together. After two months of diligence, I ran out of steam - but I hit my targets. But now I can see I have more to do than I even realised.  

You see, the size of the task multiplies. Unseen loose ends. Writing more from scratch than expected. Though I revisited that raw NaNoWriMo spirit and had a couple of highs as things fell into place. But how many edits will I need? Julia Crouch cites about five. 

Going back to it over and over, like stripping away layers of paint. 

Maybe it's good to decide what the rewrite or edit is for. 

• I think this was the Plot Edit, since you can't finesse the style when the characters' motivations are weak and the narrative doesn't make sense
• Then we might have a Character Edit where we look at motivations and emotions
• Then we might look at Style and cutting the padding and tweaking the poetry.. 

Or is it possible, for some supereditors, to do it all in one writethrough? 

I discovered some of my writing habits. 

1) I'm a denier about plot inconsistency, basically because I'm impatient to get on

2) I combine a lot of different themes. I don't know if there are too many, or if maybe a novel can support that. Somehow I'm drawn to the intricacy of it - but sometimes I read something really focused and elegant and think this intricacy masks indecision

3) I can get addicted to anything - Anything! Even decaffeinated coffee

NaNoEdMo: News from halfway through an editing process

I want to say how it is right now. Just over halfway through the editing process. Just under halfway through my material. A week into NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month). Sweating, under pressure. It was sunny, now it's cloudy again.  

Character doubts

My main character suddenly looks really thin and I don't know her. I read this super inspiring thing - Occupy Steve - on the Office of Letters and Light Blog. Haven't got a hope in hell of occupying my character unless I do some development - don't really have the time to get too waylaid. 

Concept doubts

My book idea suddenly looks totally unsellable. Was I even thinking of whether it would sell? As usual, no. I don't approach ideas like that. I wish I did. I just wrote the only idea I had. I wrote a pitch for Pitchapalooza. That took about 23 hours as well! I'm not sure if it was worth it. In theory, it should help sharpen your plot ideas. I think it did ... It was sooo difficult. I couldn't work out if my idea didn't sound jazzy enough when I wrote it down, or was it just too damn complex for a 250 word pitch? Anyway, it's done now. Maybe I'll be able to pitch it better in a year's time when it's done! 

Other things in the how'm I doing section:

Keeping in touch with friends

Improving - I went into my own island there for about a month. Now I've had some health problems that have jolted me out of it, thankfully. 

Destructive writing habits

I'm alcohol-free!

Caffeine-free!

I'm working on my Toast Problem. If anyone's a specialist in this area, please refer me to them. 

Total hours spent editing since start of Feb: 80 hours

Words edited: 27,000 + pitch written + rereading twice + character work

Head Space animation with gorgeous soundtrack

March 1:  Start of NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month) officially. 

To celebrate relaxed beginnings, and to feel like I've actually FINISHED something even when the editing work is very much ongoing, here's an animation I made last year, my talented radio producing friend Sarah Cuddon and talented musicians Cabinet of Living Cinema did the soundtrack for. 

HeadSpaceAnimation from Laura Eades on Vimeo.

Five and a half lessons when getting started editing

1. Unexpected bonus
If your writing is quite crap to begin with, editing is even more fun, because it's really easy to make tangible improvements in the editing process.

2. Plateau
The first chapter is way easier than the second, because you have all your cards in your hand. It's easier to create suspense and arouse curiosity. Continuing is harder, so it's just good to know that in advance so it doesn't feel like a drag when it comes to it.

3. Ship's log
Keeping a little graph notching up your hours (just like notching up your word count in Novel-writing November) really helps.

4. Jigsaw-pieces of time 
Two half-hours make an hour. So grab really small bits of time in the knowledge that, like budgeting, it all adds up. Put your headphones on, take a deep breath, and go underwater

5. Continuity
Don't leave more than two days without doing any, or you'll waste a whole session just rereading back up to where you've got to. Do it every day, and you'll not forget where you are and what you were part-way through.

5 & 1/2. Zoom in, zoom out
Having said that, if you do have a couple of days off, your technical eye sharpens considerably. You can suddenly see clearly that a character is too negative, or that you need to string along a mystery better, or plant the seeds of an upcoming storyline. 

The first wave of editing: the challenge

Now I've messed around a bit with a magenta pen and some index cards, I have the novel split into 3 parts, each around 35,000 words. It feels good this way, a bit simpler

The challenge 
Edit Part 1 into a state that I can at least share with friends/allow someone to read. Part 1 is currently in 11 chapters, and I've done the first one. 



The deadline
31 March 2013

Target hours
3 hours' editing/writing per day (there are some big gaps), 15 hours per week in Feb, and then during March 50 hours in total - I can log this as NaNoEdMo. By the end of March, starting on 11 Feb, this makes 95 hours. 

The price of failure
If I do 6 chapters or less 
A £75 donation to Manchester United (this is in nobody's interest. Not mine, my husband's, nobody)
Plus no lie-ins at weekends for 2 months
If I do 8 chapters or less
Penalty fare as above, plus no lie-ins for 1 month
If I do 10 chapters or less
Penalty fare

Things I can do to help me succeed: 

• Cooking dinners in advance. If dinner is ready, I can sneak 45 minutes just after the little one's bedtime. 
• Get up early (and therefore, I'll be in bed early too). Then I can usually sneak in an hour before the little one awakens. A breakfast tray ready the night before helps with that one. 
• Print out as I go along. Editing means a lot of rereading, where you are up to. So printing helps, as it makes this rereading quicker. 
• Plan a couple of daytime/weekend sessions to boost the hours and gather momentum

How a child can help you write a novel

Would I do NaNoWriMo again?

Yes. I'd recommend National Novel Writing Month - even those looking after a child. It's a free-flowing writing experience. And you end up with a novel - almost.

What's the advantage of working fast?

• Your Inner Editor can't keep up. That proved to be true. When I knew I was writing tosh, I told myself I wasn't in any state to judge it.
• Best of all, your characters start misbehaving and creating plot for you. Working fast, the writing has a mind of its own.

How did my child help me out? (She's 14 months)

• By being asleep! Ha! I only wrote when she slept, and she kept her routine. (I got up at 6am sometimes too, to get an hour under my belt before she woke up).
• She prevented late-night working. That would have been killer come the next day. In the past, I've always burnt the candle at both ends. Not any more.
• By taking me out for fresh air. She forced me out the house in the afternoons!
• By stopping me straying outside allocated writing times. I wrote in one-and-a-half-hour bursts, which was probably a good thing. With kids, if you have 45 minutes to spare, you don't dick around!
• By making me want to take the weekend off writing and play instead. (I did also do two day-long stints though when C took our daughter out - one the first weekend, which was good to get ahead wordcountwise, and one towards the end when I had too much plot and too little time).
• By forcing me not to work in pig stye. Weirdly, perhaps, to the non-childrearing among you, my main worry before I started was about keeping mess and housework under control. If you're a NaNoWriMo signup, you can read this great post by Tupelo Hassman about mess. I don't really enjoy trying to be creative in a tip so this was a real concern. I cooked meals for the freezer, and ran around tidying and hanging up washing while my husband did our daughter's bath at the end of the day. Had a separate space for writing so I wasn't distracted by it. 

How did I make sure it was a successful attempt?

• This was a real learning curve about setting something up to work out. Chris Baty's book No Plot No Problem was right about absolutely everything. (You can buy it as an ebook too). It followed it to the letter! Hilarious. I'm a nerd, I know. But I wrote a draft of a novel!
• I did quite a few of his suggested preparations, like setting myself penalties for failure, and getting my family primed and ready to support.
• Got myself in a few tidy-up habits to try to make house jobs automatic.
• Reduced my caffeine intake to one large coffee in the morning and a cup of tea after lunch. Sounds trivial but avoiding burn-out and anxiety was crucial to sidestep my usual sabotage.

Is there a downside to working so intensely?

• Apart from needing to seriously edit all that low-rent prose, you mean? Ha ha. Quantity over quality...
• 
  
• I'm always worried that creativity, especially the single-minded obsessional kind (my favourite) can be bad for the health... I'm talking about becoming isolated from the ones you love (hold on minute, aren't people what life is for? Abandoning your social life doesn't make sense); sleep-deprived; cheese-snorting; early-hours wine-drinking; heart-thumpingly caffeinated; self-doubting; nail-bitten; indoors; sedentary. I nearly went down that route. About three times - and that was even after preparing a month beforehand not to drink too much coffee (which, for me, is usually the start of the whole perilous spiral). My husband really helped, suggesting that we put a stop on mid-week drinking too.

It turns out that I still have some work to do on the caffeine front - it'll take as long as it takes. Here are two more things that are helping with that: Self-hypnosis for Dummies and the tips listed here: http://www.wikihow.com/Quit-Caffeine. You can work fast and be alert naturally, I want to believe that.

What do I do now that I've written tons of unreadable prose?

Julia Crouch, lead the way.I'm not going to look at it until after Christmas, but no doubt I'll be a nerd about editing it too!