Friday Photo

As an accompaniment to today's photo I have to tell non Thai residents that Thai people sleep everywhere and anywhere. As a napper, I think this is eminently sensible. Once, I was so culturally immersed, I napped in Starbucks and I've been teased by my friends ever since. Still as you can see here it can be pretty funny too.

This week, as I raced around the malls of Bangkok trying to find Daughter's computer case, I went into a new set of loos in Siam Paragon. I couldn't resist taking this photo. I promise I haven't photoshopped the sign. I am convinced that the (foreign, surely?) translator has been poking a little fun at the Thais' love of forty winks. In Thai, this label says it's the equipment/broom cupboard.

Wednesday

I had a fabulous session in the gym this morning. I was fired by banana power; a tiny cup of tea (can’t do without) and a banana half an hour before I started. I seem to have come on leaps and bounds today; stronger, quicker, smilier.

I had plans to go to the newly reopened Siam Paragon today but when I’d showered and dressed, this happened:

Still seeing the sky like this (it’s rain not fog) is waaaaaay better than seeing it full of black smoke.

(I think it might have cleared up enough now for me to brave the outside world. I am off to sit in Starbucks  in Siam P with my book, notebook and index cards… just because after weeks and weeks of not being able to… now I can.)

A Someone? Or a No-one?

I’m sitting in Starbucks (again, I'm considering shares... or maybe they'll sponsor me.) This time I’m up the road in the Grammy building. I hardly ever come here even though it’s the closest one to my apartment. In my first year in Bangkok I came here all the time with K (*Waves to K.*)

So far as I’m aware Grammy is The Place for pop music. It’s an entertainment company; a record label for big, big Thai pop stars. It’s always full of funky Thai youngsters and older, producery looking types. Or maybe I’m just letting my imagination run away with me.

Today though, it's not in my imagination; there’s a film crew here. There right here, feet away from me in Starbucks, not just in the Grammy building. I hope they don’t swing the camera around to catch me eating my muffin…

This is turning out to be the ultimate in procrastination. Watching; no idea what’s going on or who she is. I still can’t stop watching.

Yes, I have no shame.

I can blog this, I think. I'll get my camera...

A new low...

A while back (although it might have been yesterday given the regularity I am reminded of this sad episode) I told you how I’d gone to sleep in Starbucks. I hadn’t accidentally fallen asleep; I’d realised I was tired, it was nice and warm in my armchair and I’d clasped my handbag to my front, and settled down for forty winks.

Honestly, you’d think I’d done something really dreadful like vomit down my front in public. I am reminded about this low episode, almost weekly. Thais sleep everywhere; on the pavement, in coffee shops, at traffic lights (I kid you not.) I was just showing how culturally immersed I’ve become, honest.

Anyway, today I sunk to a new low (no, not sleeping on the pavement; that is going too far.) Today, I had a little weep in Starbucks. It wasn’t quite a fully fledged sobbing episode but definitely a moist eyed, wobbly chin, in need of a tissue to mop up my runny nose, kind of weep.

I was writing you see. I’d got to a scene where I thought my MC was having some thinking alone time in the kitchen garden, when quite suddenly, Jean was out there, confessing stuff. Before you tell me how great this is – that if I’ve moved ME, I’ll move my readers – I don’t think the scene is ready yet, but it will hopefully get there.

When I got home I found this article. The website looks as though it will have other useful resources too.

*****
On a cheerier note: Yesterday I discovered that I have won a copy of Short Circuit from Salt Publishing: HURRAH. I cannot wait to read it.

Only five obsessions...Easy Peasy

I was very excited to be given this award by DJ.

The "Your Blog is Fabulous!" Award stands for: Integrity. Commitment to Excellence. Stubbornly Optimistic.

The Rules:

List five current obsessions:


1. Oh my blog; blogging. Completely and utterly can’t get over it. Even though I’m told blogging is so yesterday. Do you know what? I don’t care; I just do not care. Anyway, I always was behind the times. Twitter schmitter: not interested. Facebook, nah been there, done that. (Okay sometimes I do go and look and comment a teenie weenie bit…)
2. My mini race with Sheepish. The woolly one and I are both Novel Racers but we’ve got a private race on too. We compare word counts each Sunday and so far it’s two weeks to Sheepish; one week to me. (I MUST win this week.)
3. Family: from Son’s GCSE’s coursework and climbing mountains…to my poor elderly Dad who’s just broken his pelvis. I could worry for a living (Coo, if only someone would pay me for it)
4. Costumes for the Melbourne Cup. I’m only slightly obsessed.
5. Starbucks writing-my-novel sessions. I am thinking of asking them to sponsor me. At the moment it’s the only place I can write. It’s costing a fortune in tea and the muffins… ah, terrible temptation.

Pass the award on to five other bloggers: Queenie, Carol, Redders, Leigh and Sue.

Word count day, juicy scenes and big feet

After failing to find some trekking shoes gargantuan enough for Son, I went off to Starbucks yesterday. That’s where I’m writing best at the moment. It’s got something to do with the piles of non writing related work on my desk. If I’m sitting at my desk, I see it and worry. I don’t do it but I do worry. I end up not writing and not doing any of the other jobs either.

So it’s off to Starbucks. On Friday I went to my usual branch. (You know you’re going too frequently when your teabags (yes two bags for a grande) are in his hands before you’ve even arrived at the counter.) Yesterday for a bit of variety (get me, how exciting is my life?) I went to a different branch of Starbucks. I went to the one in Siam Centre. It overlooks Siam Square. They don’t know me there so I had to order my tea and then I went and found a seat.

I was very excited about the juicy scene that I knew was next. I’d been thinking I was about to write this scene for a couple of days, but other bits of business always got in the way. I first wrote up the germs of this scene in my notebook a year ago when I was on my own in Koh Chang. It just appeared in my head and all I had to do was write it down.

This was my view from my chair. And I did smile whenever I looked up and saw it.

So Sheepish, are you here looking for my words? Well I shall be along later in the day to update them… Update: After NO Sunday writing (I've been to the cinema) words this week are 4121. (And the rule about no Sunday writing is nonsense because I've whipped her woolly bum this week!)

♪♪ I can see clearly now ♪♪

I’m not a planner. I can’t. My intention to get a bit more cerebral about managing the plot has evaporated because I can’t map out what, where and how. I still have no idea how to manage what’s coming; I’m just doing it a scene at a time. Nothing makes any sense to me until I'm writing ... and then things become clearer and I realise what's going on.

But I have been writing. It just turns out that, at the moment, I write better when I’m out. I think this is because I’m back in Husband’s office at home, our wifi internet having gone wrong again, been fixed and now not working as well as it did.

I’ve been increasing the profits of Bangkok’s various branches of Starbucks. On Saturday I wrote a massive (for me) 1300 words and on Sunday I wrote another huge 1030 words. (500 words are normal ish and 700 is a lot for me.)

But although I know roughly what is coming in each scene I sit down to write, I don’t know the how and the exactly what until I start writing.

So today, I’m celebrating not being a strategist but being 'a flier by the seat of my pants-er.'

And now, I’m off to find a branch of Starbucks, and there’s a big choice.

Mentoring

Last Thursday evening I got my second report from my mentor.

There was always the potential (in my head) that the first 10k of words was a fluke and she’d come back and say “Oh dear, what happened to the second 10k?”

But I am a bit excited. I love how she’ll say something, such as “you have a tendency to do this…” and I go and look at it thinking ‘Do I?’ and yes, she’s right, so I do. I love how she’s not spoon feeding me but is highlighting things (tendencies) for me to identify and amend: all the while being there to feedback to if I don’t understand. Personally, I think it’s important for me to learn how to spot this stuff myself and what I intend from this experience, is how to stand on my own two feet with my work.

About one scene, she said: “… far and away the strongest passage is the conversation between M and her mother in C’s study. This is packed with dramatic tension, pathos and humour, beautifully balanced in that you invite us to sympathise with both women in their troubled relationship. The narrative pace is spot on…”

Coo.

Fancy that.

I worry a lot about everything narrative pace. My notion of pace is based on a woolly feeling such as ‘ooh, isn’t it about time we had a bit of a drama?’ I have absolutely no idea how to decide these things in any other way, so it’s a boost to hear that it’s working.

Today I was on ‘take Daughter and Friend to a party’ duty. I took my laptop to Starbucks while I waited for the pick up and wrote 720 words and felt myself getting back into the flow.

It’s so exciting. I am so excited.

(Please forgive the me me me-ness of this post)

Dressing up

I am on new words today but I slipped out to get some money and a Starbucks this morning so that I could pay the IT man that's coming to boost our wifi. I know that not having wifi in my office should be a really good thing that keeps me writing, but unfortunately I've become so cold turkey I can't write unless I get it boosted to reach my little room.

While I was out I saw two promo girls: one in front of the Grammy building and one inside. Both were giving out freebies (a sachet of sugar or a sachet of tissues). This is really Thai and it always makes me chuckle. They seem such an introverted people such a lot of the time and yet they appear to love to dress up in extraordinary outfits to sell things. I still can't quite forgive Husband for telling me about the girls dressed in American tan coloured body stockings who were bathing in a cup of coffee! He saw this downstairs in his office building and didn't have a camera. I don't go anywhere without a camera and haven't done for nearly three years.

Operation Cheer Up

On Saturday morning I went out as planned to Thaicraft as I thought it might cheer me up. It didn’t really so having bought two little Christmas tree decorations I set off for Starbucks a few sois further along Sukhumvit. I’d brought my book out (Girl, Missing by Sophie McKenzie) which unofficial Godless Daughter had recommended to Son and me back in the summer.

I took my grande English Breakfast tea upstairs and - okay, yes, and a muffin … I was still feeling sad, okay - and went to perch at the window. This was my view, so I didn’t come for that, did I?

However, if I looked through the window under the table down on to the pavement I got a really fascinating view of some of the street life in Bangkok. I’ve often noticed that there was a wide variety of people hanging around here but it was two years before I realised they weren’t all waiting for buses.

Yesterday there were two girls. The first one had the body of a teenager and the face and posture of a bad tempered, disappointed woman of indeterminate age. She was dressed cheaply in rubber flip flops, a pussy pelmet denim skirt and an orange spaghetti top which had an embroidered butterfly on it.

The second was her opposite. She was tall, beautiful and immaculately groomed. She worked really hard on her manner, smiling at all the guys that came past while she ran her hands coyly through straightened hair. She leaned on a lamp post (really) and hooked her gold sandaled foot up behind her. When one guy did come up to her they chatted for a while and then she squeezed his arm muscles playfully, before presenting him with her backside which he (equally) playfully smacked. All of a sudden her face changed – the flirtatious smile was gone – I think he must have told her he wasn’t interested because he moved off.

I’m not sure at what point I realised she really was the first girl’s opposite – she was a katoey - a ladyboy.

Care in the community

Yesterday I was a disgrace. I spent all day alone in the apartment reading (until the children got home from school). I lay on my bed all day, reading (even when the children got home). I ate lunch on my bed, reading. The book? It was ‘Over You’ by Lucy Diamond. I finished it by bedtime and really enjoyed it. I can’t believe she made me laugh out loud at the bottom of page 111, just after that happened.

But I decided this morning that I really needed to get out or I might get institutionalised. I’ve been looking at chapter one it on screen for ages, and in order to break the habit of ‘opening document, looking, huffing and then closing document down again’, I decided to head off to Starbucks with a paper copy. Sometimes it fools my simple brain into thinking it’s seeing something different, rather than the same old drivel. I’ve been dealing with the first half for ages now and every time I read the transitional bit between first and second half, I lose the will to live. So I thought I’d ignore that bit and deal with the second half.

It was rather marvellous, not the writing, but the change in my mode of attack. I saw lots of stuff that was wrong and stuff that could be improved. Some conversations came into my head which I scribbled down. And I saw things in my head. I might’ve appeared like care in the community anyway.

I rushed home to write, but got caught up in the banners I’m designing at the moment – I do so ♥ playing with Photoshop. I’ve sent six banner examples off to the Chairman to see which one she likes (fingers crossed I don’t get the answer ‘keep going’). But it’s Friday night, the kids are happy, Husband leaves the UK for BK tonight so I shall write tonight instead.

Novel 1, 2 and 3

Yesterday there was no stopping me. I returned to the scene of my ‘sleep crime’ in Starbucks (not to the same chair just in case it was infused with soporific stuffing) but to the sofa where I wrote and wrote and wrote about the two new ideas. Novel no 2, the idea I’d had in the UK, had appeared with characters and bits of dialogue so I wrote mostly about that one.

I really like the idea for novel no 2. It requires more research, but nothing impossible - and I do love research. (If anyone knows anyone who could tell me about ‘advisors to the Government’ I’d be very grateful. Please email though the address in my profile.)

Husband thinks that Novel No 1 idea might best be put on the back burner until it feels right. I feel emotionally attached to that one and yet I'm not doing it. I think maybe the stakes are too high. There seems to me to be several possible reasons why I'm not doing it:

• I am not ready to write Novel 1
• I really am bone idle
• I beat EVERYONE on the procrastination front, whatever Sheepish says!
• I am not cut out to write fiction
• It’s a crappy idea

And I am rather excited by Novel No 2… which is about someone coming back home after a period working overseas. If I’m about to spend July in the UK, it might be the time to write that one.

Doncha just love it?

I was feeling a little pathetic yesterday. I couldn’t write at home so after lunch with Husband and Son, I went to write in Starbucks. I bought a fruity frappacino, read the freebie Eng Lang magazine and then hugged my bag to my chest and went to sleep. Yes, in Starbucks. This means one of two things: either I have properly immersed myself in Thai culture (Thais will sleep anytime, anywhere) or I was a bit poorly.

When I got home I was full of self loathing for not writing, but then I realised I was feeling ‘not quite right.’ I took Migraleve immediately which put a halt to the pain and meant I could function. I woke this morning still feeling not quite right but we’ve got stuff planned so I got myself up; read a couple of blogs (including this one) and went into the shower (I apologise for any horrible images this conjures up for those that know me.)

While I was in the shower (ditto apology, didn’t mean to remind you) with my mind a wandering, I came up with Novel No 3 idea. (There is a small problem in that I haven’t written either novel 1 or novel 2, but it used to be the lack of ideas that worried me … now of course it’s the writing of the ideas…) Anyway, it’s perfect; it fulfils all the things that obsess interest me while being different enough from the ideas for 1& 2.

I owe Wordtryst big time for a comment in her post, which my mind picked up and flew with.

Then I had an idea for an article I’m doing that I knew was due but the subject had eluded me.

Doncha just love it? Now, of course I’ve got the small matter of writing them…

Deadline

I’m forever finding ways to procrastinate. Sometimes they’re genuine and other times … well they’re not. Yesterday I had the whole day to write and there was no artwork due, nothing else I had to do. I looked at my screen most of the day, fiddling. I toyed with tidying my desk to accommodate my new scanner. I need to replace my contact lenses; need my hair cut, but I haven’t got time, I’ve got to write. I am not writing. I finished Julia Bell’s Dirty Work (loved it); watched a bit of crappy TV, and then out of sheer boredom I began to think about writing.

This story just will not go away. My not writing would be so easy if the story just slipped out of my head, but it’s demanding to be written, and it’s nagging away at me. I can’t get away from it. It’s clamouring at me like a child with verbal diarrhoea. Every now and again I realise – often out of desperation to stop the din in my head – if I just wrote it, it might leave me alone.

I was due out at the Bangkok Women’s Writers Group last night, but with nothing to share, what is the point? I’m not a writer if I’m not writing. I went out anyway, to sit in Starbucks with my planning folder. I bought some coloured index cards, in the stationery shop, and this is the bag they gave me. (What does it mean – apart from someone needs some grammar lessons? Was it a message for me?)

I gave each of the four sub/plots a different colour card and I began to scribble on them, ideas for all the conflicts, scenes, dialogue, with all the characters. Today I am taking my bag of index cards, my planning folder, my folder with the 25,000 words that need rewriting, all my notes etc. I am going to get my contact lenses organised and then I’m going to spend the day out in coffee shops to write all ideas on index cards. Then I will assemble them into some sort of order and start writing.

I am seeing my UK trip as a sort of deadline: a get writing deadline or quit this pretending to write thing.

Been a bit busy

I didn't think I needed to post that it was half term here too.

I thought I'd be blogging as normal, but apparently not. Daughter, without lots of exercise, is climbing the walls; much stroppier than normal and more easily wound up by Son. So I'm doing a fair amount of being wound up by both of them.

We have a 'backpacker' here too. That's a sort of general traveller term in our house to mean, a friend/son/daughter/cousin of someone we know who's coming to Thailand. We offer to put them up. L is totally lovely, Canadian and the cousin of the wife of a friend from University. Got that? So I've been out and about with her and not blogging...

Anyway, I need to blog - I do - I NEED it. So I've come to tell you that today I had a blogger meet... Carol and I met with Mel, who lives here. She's come to Bangkok for an interview and it was lovely to meet her. I love blog friends. I thought the internet was for saddos and pervs, but I'm loving it and I'm not either. Honest. Well, maybe a saddo...

I think that might be all I've got to say today. Ooh, apart from, here's a picture of Mel in Starbucks.

Woo hoo

Well, I just couldn't wait to get over here again.

Starbucks (a different one in a different Mall - Siam Paragon this time) has sprinkled the writing fairy dust on me again. HURRAH.

My grand total is 21,389 words. I can't tell you how chuffed I am with myself. That's 3,163 words since I last did a word count.

So I'm developing a new theory: that I have to leave the apartment, and sit in a different Starbucks in order to write? Maybe? I certainly can't seem to write at home: I go and lie on my bed to read and then I fall asleep. (I do so love to sleep).

I have just arranged to sublet a little room near Andrew Computer (who teaches me website) to see if I can go and write there. I know this seems an extragavance but it is very, very cheap and only on a month's trial. I'm hoping that this means I eat fewer Starbucks chocolate brownies and write lots...