– Page 12 – Claire Rousseau

A writer by any other name

Posted on November 7, 2013February 21, 2014 by Claire

A good deal of the questions I get from new Wrimos are about how, when and where people write during Nano. They know what word count they’re aiming for (11,666 today, scary heh?), but there’s plenty more to figure out:

Are you a plotter or a pantser? A typist or long-hand writer? A tea fiend or a coffee guzzler? A morning person or a night owl? A social or a solo writer? A marathon-runner or a sprinter? A home buddy or a coffee-shop regular?

You could do worse than answering those questions for yourself, if only because it can help you prepare the best environment in which to pen the masterpiece you can see so clearly in your mind.

If, like me, you’re a plotting, sprinting, coffee-guzzling social night owl who’s a regular at her local coffee shop, you’ll love the idea of an after work write-in in a coffee shop, with yummy lattes galore. I find forty-five minutes is a bit long for me to write without a break, so I often use Write or Die for shorter sprints instead, and I can always rely on my colour-coded notecards for guidance.

Someone else might prefer a long, quiet coffee shop session on their own, or an hour’s worth of Twitter sprints in the morning before work. If you haven’t yet, take a moment to figure out what works best for you and try to create as many opportunities to get that perfect environment as you can.

Does that mean you can’t or shouldn’t write under any other circumstances? Heck NO! Because in the end, there is only really one type of writer – one who writes.

Nanowrimo is all about filling a blank page with words, as clunky and imperfect as they may be. You have to accept your words won’t always be as good as you hoped, and you also have to accept your writing environment won’t always be as good as you hoped either.

On Tuesday, I went to an evening write-in in a coffee shop, one of my favourite places to write and managed to forget my laptop at work! I’m just smart like that. I would probably have skipped the write-in altogether if I hadn’t been in charge of organising it. Typing really slowly on my phone, I only got 531 words in about an hour and a half. That’s a pretty tiny amount to get done in that time, but I bet I’ll be glad of those 500 words when I reach the final stretch.

So in the next few days, your mission if you accept it is:
Write anywhere, anyhow, anything.

Anywhere – Your time is precious, and doing Nano will show you just how much you can accomplish in just a tiny nugget of it. Let’s not kid ourselves, Nanowrimo WILL take over your life this month, so why not embrace the fact and whip out your writing tool of choice for a quick sprint whenever you have a few minutes? Lots of Wrimos write at lunchtime or on their commute, but I also find the stress of waiting rooms highly reduced by some impromptu novelling.

Anyhow – Most of us adore our computers, but there are many other ways to write. Check out one of the many free note-taking apps for your phone or tablet. Record a message for yourself on your voicemail or scrawl all over the napkins when you go out for dinner. Try something new, you might end up really enjoying it. I recently rediscovered the joys of writing longhand and now that’s always a favourite option.

Anything – Don’t be afraid to go over the top (you can always cut it in December if you don’t like it). Pick a prompt or dare from the Nano forums. If you can’t figure out what comes next, why not skip ahead to the nifty scene that got you excited about the story in the first place? Or if a scene is too difficult to write, you could leave it to your future self to deal with, as I did in my first Nano – which genuinely included the line: ‘Insert Space Battle here’.

Claire
(4897 words, not even that far behind by my standards!)

Originally posted at nanolondon.org.

Happy Anniversary, London!

Posted on September 19, 2013February 21, 2014 by Claire

Last Sunday marked the five-year anniversary of my arrival in London.

I’ve now lived in this country longer than it took me to go through high-school, or complete my degree. I’ve now lived here almost a fifth of my life. More than a fifth of my memories are from here.

It is officially A BIG THING.

Five years ago, I stepped off the overnight coach from Paris with a big suitcase filled with stuff too heavy for the plane, and went to meet Amy, who I went on to live with for several years. The house-hunting started that day, and that night there were tears of frustration and homesickness.

Less than a week later, I met Jenn and Rach, who let us stay at their place, geeked out about Harry Potter with us and took us out for sushi and karaoke. We eventually found a place, I met my other lovely flatmates, more awesome friends, an over-enthusiastic ginger kitten made of adorableness, and life went on.

One day, everyone was getting super excited about this thing that I didn’t get, because it was early days and I couldn’t catch everything everyone was saying. When I asked what the fuss was, I got more than I’d bargained for. Had I ever wanted to write a book? Did I have a lot of essays due in November? Did I fancy writing a book with them? In a month?

I thought ‘what’s the worst thing that can happen?’ and it didn’t even occur to me to think of the best thing that could happen. I’ve met so many amazing people in the NanoLondon community, and in London in general – I just can’t wait for the next five years, the next ten, etc.

Bring it on, London.

When The World Was Flat (and we were in love) – Review

Posted on August 25, 2013December 15, 2016 by Claire

17568923 Author: Ingrid Jonach
Genre: YA sci-fi
Publisher: Strange Chemistry
Date: January 2013
Source: Net Galley
Buy the Book – Goodreads

Lillie is your average small-town-Alaskan high-school student. Crackpot hippie mother not-withstanding, Lillie’s life is pretty normal until she starts dreaming of her own death, every single night.

Then new guy Tom strolls into school; he’s handsome, rich & British, a swoon-worthy combination if there ever was one.

But he is also strangely familiar, Lillie instinctively knows things about him she couldn’t possibly know. Do they really have some kind of weird connection, or is a simple teenage crush making her read way too much into Tom’s every word or gesture?

The beautiful cover and intriguing title should give you an idea of the lyrical, atmospheric flavour of the book. It doesn’t lack in sass either, with Lillie’s opinions and descriptions rendering the small town and its inhabitants in vivid detail. I was particularly impressed with the expert portrayal of teenagers, which hit just the right notes of frailty, bravado and cruelty in turn. The parade of couchsurfers moving in and out of Lillie’s living room never failed to provide comic relief.

The revelation of a supernatural aspect to the plot came fairly late, allowing the high-school drama to take front and centre stage for the first half of the book. That’s a relatively large portion of the story which is solely dedicated to Lillie’s everyday life, as well as that of her family, friends, frenemies, and even the town.

This early focus allowed the reader to immerse in Green Grove sufficiently to understand exactly how devastating an impact the later reveals could have.

One initially very sympathetic character turns suddenly sinister shortly after the central crux of the story is finally revealed, and the reader feels this twist all the more cruelly for this attention paid the character in question early on.

The lack of a supernatural plot-twist before the mid-point also provided its own little pinch of suspense. There is a certain amount of meta at play; when you pick up a book from a genre publisher, you expect some kind of science-fiction or fantasy element.

Yes, the weird dreams could just be dreams, except the reader knows they’re not. I spent the first half of the book wondering, at the turn of every page, is this next one the page I’ll find out?

By the time Lille finally gets told what is going on, the seasoned genre reader will have probably guessed the most likely answer (I did), but Jonach builds on the beloved sci-fi concept and creates a beautiful, multi-layered hidden fantasy world. There is almost a bit of cognitive dissonance between the high-school drama and high-concept sci-fi portions of the story, but if you enjoy both genres, like I do, you will love both halves equally.

I read this book on holiday and I must say it was close to the perfect summer read for my taste – a fun, witty story, with enough emotional resonance to make me root for a happy ending, none of the unnecessary sap I always dread from romances, and a decent grounding in sci-fi without any arduous info-dump. It feels great sometimes to step back and read a story not about the end of the world, but the tearing apart of someone’s little world, which is just as dramatic when it’s done well.

Multiple POVs

Posted on August 19, 2013February 21, 2014 by Claire

I absolutely love multiple point of view narratives. They aren’t essential to my love of a book, but it makes me so happy when I find beautifully handled multiple viewpoint stories.

Consequently, I noticed that I always planned for several viewpoint characters in my own writing, despite finding it really tricky to write. So, when I started work on The Paradise Swarm, I decided it would be a single viewpoint story.

I wanted to finish the story and I thought the simplicity and straightforwardness of one single point of view character would help. I thought too, that it would be easier to find his voice – and that has worked, somewhat.

I’ve now changed my mind. See, the single viewpoint character for The Paradise Swarm was, among other things, an upper-class white man. The other main character, who is just as important to me, and the story, is a woman of colour. While I never intended it in that way, I realised that her not being a viewpoint character made her appear less important to the story, and she really isn’t.

There are, of course, many things about both of them besides their gender and ethnicity, for instance:

Laurence is a botanist and the fourth son of an aristocratic family, thrown out by his father after he stopped believing in god. His sexual orientation doesn’t feature in the story, as he is more interested in science than anything else.

Mara was adopted by a countryside gentleman after her family died when she was a child. She is well-educated and is now working for herself, but she does encounter pretty horrid racism and sexism on a daily basis, because it’s London in the 1850s. She’s also heterosexual and Catholic.

But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made to make her a viewpoint character – and I don’t mean just ethical sense, I really think it will make for a stronger narrative too. As Laurence is her lodger, they spend most of the book together. If they get separated or he gets hit on the head, it’ll be useful to have her point of view, and it will allow me to show how prejudiced and wrong each of them is towards the other early in the book.

In the scene I’m currently writing, two police officers come to investigate reports of screams coming from the house. They interrogate Mara, insulting and threatening her quite a bit as they go, until Laurence, who has been listening in, intervenes and plays his rank to get them off her case. I started writing this from Laurence’s point of view, and it very quickly became apparent that it wouldn’t work. It was clunky and awkward. From Mara’s point of view, it’s pretty much writing itself.

I’m definitely happy that I made the change, and though it is going to mean significant changes to the first few chapters, I’m convinced it’ll be worth it. I always end up cutting a lot from my beginnings, so I’m not surprised that this one won’t be any different.

Forbidden Island

Posted on June 27, 2013November 13, 2015 by Claire

Forbidden Island is a 2 to 4 players cooperative tile & card game, designed by Matt Leacock, the man behind Pandemic, and published by Gamewright.

You play a party of fearless adventurers, come to the Island to unearth four ancient artefacts from its ruins. Only the island doesn’t approve of your looting ways; it’ll sink into the abyss under your feet & drown you dead if it gets the chance.

So prepare to lift some sandbags, you’ll have to keep shoring bits of the island to prevent it from being swallowed into the ocean before you can escape.

At the start of the game, each player receives a role, complete with special abilities, before part of the island gets flooded for the first time. Turns consists of an action phase (players can move, shore tiles, collect treasure…), a treasure phase (players draw cards more or less helpful cards), and a flood phase (the clue is in the name).

Seasoned gamers will be familiar with some of the mechanics used in this game; the Waters Rise concept, the good Treasure cards versus the bad Flood cards and the order of play are all very similar to the mechanics of Leacock’s most famous brainchild, Pandemic. This is not to say that Forbidden Island is derivative; it may appear so at first, but the gameplay is actually fairly unique.

The board is made
up of 24 tiles shuffled together & laid out at random at the start of the game, lending Forbidden Island extra replay value. Plus board gamers always love a chance to lay out tiles.

Particularly considering that there is a definite hierarchy between tiles. Some places are just more important than others – chief amongst those is Fool’s Landing, where you parked your chopper. It’s fine for it to get flooded, but if it sinks, your getaway ride drowns into the abyss and you’re dead.

The stakes are escalated throughout the game as waters rise, and the island sinks further and further. If you draw one too many Waters Rise card, you’ll have to start flooding more and more tiles each turn, and return all the discarded flood cards to the top of the deck, increasing the pace of the island’s sinking. When a tile sinks, it is taken out of the game, along with the corresponding flood card, meaning each tile ends up at a much higher risk of being flooded.

You need a set of four matching treasure cards to claim a treasure, so the hand limit of five is quite punitive! All treasure cards are shuffled back into play when the deck runs out, so it pays not to be shy about using helicopter lifts or sandbags. This also means that treasure cards for artefacts you’ve already claimed become a burden, and towards the end will cause you to lose many turns in the pursuit of one last, elusive card.

It is also worth noting that Forbidden Island works very well as a two-player game, unlike many games of the ‘tack a couple of shoddy extra rules that don’t really work on the end and call it two-player’ persuasion. The more players, the more difficult it is to get your hands on enough cards of the same colour to actually collect a treasure – enter the harsh hand limit, and you get a nicely balanced game.

It’ll take some imagination to top the ridiculously cool petri dishes storage boxes and associated ‘hazardous material’ stickers that came with the Pandemic: On the Brink Expansion Pack, but overall I enjoyed the artwork for this game. The treasure tokens are a good touch, especially for children (or fake-grown-ups like yours truly), who will enjoy colourful pieces to fidget with. The island tiles and territory cards are lovely, done in the kind of whimsical style favoured by games like Dixit or Once Upon A Time. The game comes in a nice tin box with embossed top, which to my mind makes it a perfect gift – to yourself or someone else.

Through a few clever tweaks of the wonderful mechanics which have made Pandemic one of my absolute favourite board games, Leacock creates a whole new gaming experience. A lovely gateway game to pass the bug onto children and non-gamers, a great way to warm-up to playing Pandemic, and an engaging two-player experience – in short Forbidden Island is a lovely game, and one that I highly recommend.

If I haven’t convinced you, maybe TableTop host & geek superstar Wil Wheaton can, as he plays Forbidden Island with Sci-Fi & Fantasy writer John Scalzi, NASA engineer Bobak Ferdowsi, and drummer & singer Jason Finn: