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12 Books in 12 Months

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What Is Literary Fiction, Anyway?

Pic © the fantastic Tom Gauld (http://www.tomgauld.com/)

As you may already know, for this November’s National Novel Writing Month I will mostly be writing a work of literary fiction. 

I was originally going to do a graphic novel, but if I stick with that there’s no point signing up because I won’t reach NaNoWriMo’s 50,000 word target even if I take the whole month off work and do nothing but write and draw.  And given that NaNo is one of the main reasons 12 books in 12 months happened, it seems churlish to ignore it this time round.

So I’ve switched, and now the graphic novel is going to happen in December and will probably be a three panel strip about Santa or something.  Well, actually it’s more likely to involve a series of cartoons about me trying to write 12 books in 12 months… But I digress. 

A couple of folk have asked me, “hey Ali, what do you mean by literary fiction?  Surely the word ‘literary’ derives from the Latin ‘litterārius’ simply meaning ‘of or used in writing’?  Are not all your books then literary fiction, as they are written down?”

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Parapluie

© Erin McNulty http://www.etsy.com/shop/erinjaneshop

I’m still working on short stories based on your comments, so don’t think I’ve forgotten you if you’ve suggested something and it hasn’t turned up!  I might schedule them as posts crossing into November, because having made the decision to NaNoWriMo this year I won’t have as much time to dedicate to the blog.

In the meantime, today I’m posting a story about the lovely weather we’re having, in Edinburgh at least. The title, ‘parapluie’ (pa-ra-ploo-ee) is the French for umbrella.

 

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A Story

What do Jedward’s Birthday, Liam Fox, Justin Bieber, Siri, We Are the 99 Percent, the Rugby World Cup, protests in London and the Korean Grand Prix have in common?

They’re all featured as keywords in this blog post, because they are the things people seem to be talking about on Twitter today and I want to see whether mentioning them drives more traffic to this page.

I don’t have a lot to say about any of them though, sadly.  So what I might do is incorporate them all into a short horror story, as this month I’ve been claiming I can write a short story every single day (turns out I can’t – it’s really quite hard).

 

It was John and Edward’s birthday, and they were celebrating by dancing around their kitchen to the new Justin Bieber album.

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Questions are never indiscreet (answers sometimes are…)

Check the bleary-eyed morning face...

This morning I got up early (for a Saturday), inhaled my wheat biscuit shaped breakfast cereal, made a cup of tea, and headed for my computer to answer questions about 12 books in 12 months from the people of the internet.  (And various friends and family who had agreed to submit questions based on several days of plaintive nagging).

I ended up doing this for about two and a half hours, and as well as answering questions I stuck up some never before seen (not even here on the blog) snippets from June, July, August and September’s books.  After all, it’s only good manners to offer news sources an exclusive when they offer to interview you.

And do you want to know what the best part is?

If you were busy (there were plenty of excuses – people I know were variously working, watching the rugby, asleep in bed, away on a psychology field trip for uni, attending the West Port Book festival, and paint-balling at a stag do in Wales) YOU CAN RELIVE THE WHOLE MAGICAL EXPERIENCE.  It’s right here on The Edinburgh Reporter website, and later on today the text will even rearrange itself in chronological order.

Isn’t technology marvellous.

One thing that came out of the session was further confirmation of something a lot of people have said in the comments here and via Twitter; that I should definitely switch November and December’s genres.  This will mean I can do NaNoWriMo this year without having to become Alan Moore (something that’d take years of work, and anyway he doesn’t do his own drawings).  The only question now is, what can I write about in a literary fashion?  I’ve a feeling I’ll be blogging about that in the next few days…

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Live 12 Books Q&A

© Rajiv Patel (http://www.flickr.com/ photos/23679420@N00/)

Ever wanted to ask me a question about what it’s like to write 12 books in 12 months?

Maybe you want to know how much planning it takes, what music I listen to when writing, or my WPM?  Perhaps you want to read an excerpt, or find out what I plan to do after the 31st of December when the whole thing is over?

Well now you can, in a live Q&A session with The Edinburgh Reporter.  Assuming you have access to the internet, which you must do or you wouldn’t be reading this.

I’ll be online responding to your questions and comments tomorrow (Saturday October 15) from 10am – 11am.  To join in, all you need to do is go to the Edinburgh Reporter website and click on the link to the liveblog event.

If you want to be involved but can’t make that time, you can submit a question by email to theedinburghreporter@googlemail.com, or on twitter using the hashtag #askaligeorge.

So that’s tomorrow, Saturday October 15, 10am – or at least that’s the time it will be here in Edinburgh.

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Introducing iWriteReadRate.com

A guest post by Adam Charles, Writer and Director of the excellent iWriteReadRate.

iWrite (© jeffrey james pacres http://www.flickr.com/photos/jjpacres)

By way of introduction, iWriteReadRate.com is primarily an ebook website for writer’s work. 

We are developing a dynamic, democratic, open and supportive community for writers and authors to receive valuable ratings and reviews to enable them to prove and improve their writing.  Whether you’re a writer or a reader looking for new stories, we believe there will be something on our site for you. Writers upload their work and our site automatically converts them into ebooks.

I liken my need to build the website to that of being a natural writer.  I don’t mean that it all came completely organically; rather that you simply cannot stop yourself from doing it.  It is a compulsion, a need, a desire as strong as any can be.  Yes, the challenge is big and yes it will be bumpy along the way, but as every writer knows the drive takes over and the act of creativity becomes all that matters. This is what it was like in the early stages of iWriteReadRate. For more on my person motivations read my post: The Story of iWriteReadRate.

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