NaNoPhoMo - a different challenge

My NaNoPhoMo challenge.

Everyone knows that a photo is worth a thousand words so as NaNoWriMo is a challenge in writing 50 000 words, I changed it to be about 50 photos. Every motif should only occur once (but I cheated once due to awesomeness).


In my collage, photos are numbered from left to right, up to down.

1. Autumn leaf on the hedge outside my apartment. I love the pattern of colours. Did you know leaves change colours because the chlorophyll (green colour) is pulled backed into the tree because it contains the vital nutrients nitrogen and magnesium? Carotene (yellow colour) is just carbon and hydrogen so the tree doesn’t bother reclaiming it.
2. A Chinese fortune cookie which says “passionate new romance appears in your life when you least expect it”. It was a dinner with relatives and even my nephew’s first visit in a restaurant.
3. Blossoming flowers despite the late season! Seen in a flower bed on one of my many walks around the water tower.
4. Apple slices and the knife I used. Nom.
5. Two squirrels on each side of an evergreen tree. Photo taken in Vrinnevi-forest on one of my walks.
6. Fallen autumn leaves. There were so many of them I wanted to throw myself into the heap and roll around, but that would have ruined the nice display.
7. Reflections and shadows. A candle holder with mirror pieces on the outside threw reflections on the shelf.
8. Horse’s feet. The front legs of Steffie, one of my favourite horses at the riding school.
9. Aunt and nephew playing in grandma’s kitchen. He’s almost 14 months old and is already running around.
10. Warning sign at the dams telling people to watch out because the dam can open suddenly. No idea why anyone would decide to climb two fences and slip down the hatch to walk about beneath the dam.
11. Tea and biscotti, the cup was made by my ceramic skilled friend.
12. A walkway under a road which I pass through to go to the grocery store. I often go buy food on evenings, alright?
13. A busy road late at night, taken with long exposure from a bridge.
14. Fil with raspberries and bananas.
15. Nephew playing “where is auntie?” with me at a playground.
16. Studying hard with a cup of tea at the only early-bird coffee house in town. Had been to Core-training right before (at 7am).
17. An apartment complex being torn down to make room for parking lots or something. Sad to see it go because it lay in a very interesting angle. But the deconstruction bit was fantastic to view.
18. A close up of the same apartment complex being torn down as in the photo before. Yes, I know I cheated from my rule of “motif only once” but it was so fantastic to look at!
19. Sea gull in one of the central parks, right by the stream.
20. Nuthatch walking down a tree trunk (head first).
21. Mist among trees. There are four “promenades” where I live, one each in north, south, west and east. This is one of them early in the morning.
22. Jumbled mess of spare parts and stuff in a mechanic shop where my dad works.
23. Words. Cut out pieces of a book from me making a bookshelf (from real books).
24. Three generations of love. My dad and my nephew. Nephew with his mother’s hat on for cute-overload. Yes. He’s in my photos often, but they are all different!
25. My stats after a jogging spree. Tempo is 1 km per 6:22 min, I was out for 33 minutes and ran 5,2 km.
26. Bookshelf, made from actual books (see 23) with my DVDs in it.
27. An eggtimer in my favourite style and colour. It matches everything in my kitchen perfectly.
28. Tea pot! Höganäs 1,5 litre with a metal strainer inside. Love the colour and the shape.
29. Keys in our new mail slots (outside! Where it’s COLD!). I won the red phone booth at a book launch for my incredible art skillz. (stop laughing)
30. Tofflor – or slippers in English. I would never be able to survive without a pair.
31. Oak against sky at one dreary morning walk. Naked boughs against pale skies are very dramatic.
32. Graffiti, which I really like watching when it’s well made like this one. It’s from one of my longer walks, right before a railway bridge.
33. School books (biology this time). I had three final exams to do in November and felt quite disgusted with it all.
34. Bunny! His name is Snakebite because he was supposed to be eaten, but the snake didn’t want him. He doesn’t like me petting him but he’s very curious.
35. In a horse’s eye, you can see a lot of truths. Filur right after my class on him and he was quite spent the poor thing.
36. Moon on the morning sky, going from full to new.
37. Soccer game in the early morning with a loud coach and frozen looking parents.
38. Lussekatter (saffron buns) – newly baked by me and mom. A few out of a hundred.
39. No plants are safe in my house. This one has lost most of its leaves and I threw it away a few days later when it kept suffering.
40. Blister. This is what happens when reins meet skin for an hour of dressage. It dried up and turned all brown after a few days.
41. Nose. My cat Selma having hoarded the string of the camera.
42. Paw. My cat Selma’s hind leg.
43. Candlelight. The background lights come from a set of garages that are right outside my window (yay for view).
44. Christmas decorations in town, view from escalators.
45. Moccacino. Which is very much like a café latte with pieces of chocolate melting in the bottom. And they made a leaf in the foam!
46. Eye. My cat Selma (hey, the motif is different, just happen to come from the same cat).
47. Basketsball court. Never seen anyone play here and the fence is always a little open. Feels very abandoned.
48. Decorative flowers outside an apartment complex with droplets from the morning mist hidden among the petals.
49. Torn out warning text from a pack of cigarettes lying among the dying leaves.
50. Seasonal rings telling the life of this tree in small sections, just like this collage showing my life throughout November.

NaNo - what?

In Swedish we say "a beloved child has many names" and that's definitely true about NaNo - also called NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. It's a writing challenge for everyone and anyone with one simple rule - write 50 000 words in one month. That month is November so if people are dropping off the grid all around you, NaNo might be the cause.

I've "won" twice (aka I did write 50k) but this year a lot of things are conspiring against me managing to write in that speed. I'm still attempting, but I will not put my physical health on the line. If my body says stop, I'll stop.

So, I've "come up with" (I wouldn't be surprised if other people have already arranged something similar) NaNoPhoMo: National November Photographing Month. As a picture says more than thousand words (my nickname is "thousand words" in Swedish after all), 50 photos in one month sounds like a reasonable alternative.

My pledge for November is to take 50 photographs of different motives (1-2 per day) and make a huge, insane collage of all of them. I'll post it here the 26th of November (because I'll be halfway around the world that last weekend).

Please let me know if you attempt something similar and I'll make sure to put up a post with links to everyone's collages.


To everyone already waist deep in plot holes and bunnies - good luck and don't panic.

Expectation vs outcome - the short version

One of the many problems with writing is that you have this fantastic idea of how the story will turn out and how your characters will be. You can't wait to pull the images from your head onto the pages of your manuscript.

A lot of the time, this is how it all works out:







At least they tasted delicious.

IRL / rant

I vouced to myself to become more regular on this blog, to post something every Thursday. I had also vouched to never let this blog be a place where I complained or ranted about my personal problems.

I'm going to break both those promises to myself.

I've lived in pain for four years. It's not an excruciating kind of pain - maybe 1-5 on a scale of 10 - and it's not close to the very tangible problems of living with say lupus, migraines or fibromyalgi. It started as a headache and for the last years it's spread to my shoulders, back, and now recently my lower back. Doctors say it's psychosomatic, i.e. all in my head. They could be right because no one has found any fault with me, not that they've made much of an effort.

The pain is there nevertheless.

I found ways to deal. I can't take painkillers because 1) they make me addicted and 2) because they only help at the 'topmost' pain - it takes a 5 to a 2. I tried keeping super busy so I wouldn't have time to think about feeling crappy. That didn't work out very well. Now I try to afford a massage session once a week, I exercise a lot to improve my strength, I avoid heat (even sometimes tea) as it makes me collapse (literary), I take extra iron because it helps against the nausea and the dizziness.

I've never had a fabulous self-confidence but I've effectively kept that voice down in the past. Unfortunately, when you spend all your energy on battling pain, there's not much left to lift yourself up.

And people don't understand. When my sister spent her whole pregnancy feeling nauseous, family and friends asked her if she needed to lay down, if she thought she felt good enough to come along to family dinners etc. That's something people can relate to. They can't relate to being unable to actually focus your eyes on a face. They can't relate to how unbearable a small pressure in your head can become. How noise and talk sometimes help me, how other times it cuts hard. They can't relate to having a half cup of energy left, or how I can run 10km but only visit them for two hours. How horrid it is to stand in the warm drying room, reaching my arms over my head to hang laundry.

I'm not saying this for pity. I'm not saying this because I want help. I'm saying it so you'll understand that if I suddenly go quiet, or don't write a blog post, or snap at you, then it's not your fault.

And I'm hoping that you won't judge me too harshly. I'm not at my best at that moment. I know it's a poor excuse for being rude. I try to be better. I hope one day I will be better.

Until then, I will take each hour as it comes. Step after step. And I hope I won't stand on too many toes.

What? It's not obvious?

An often repeated mistake writers do (even published ones) is info-dumping. You’ve heard all about that, I’m sure, so I’ll give some attention to the opposite problem. Fellow writer, reader and horse-rider MuseInks (check out her blog) did me a favour and beta read one of my manuscripts.

Halfway through she asked me why my main character refused to turn to his family for help. I was taken aback; I thought it was obvious. I took a good look at my manuscript and realised that no, I had never truly explained it. I discussed the issue with another friend and come to an interesting understanding.

The reason I hadn’t felt like I needed to go into depth about his reluctance was that he acted like I would have. My friend on the other hand would have immediately turned to her family in the same situation. I had been defeated by my own idea of substated facts!

Our experiences change the way we view things. As writers we can’t know how the reader will interpret our characters and their actions. A reader who has had a family member suffering from cancer will be able to relate to My Sister’s Keeper on a different level than most.

As writers we will need to compensate our readers’ “inexperience”. A word here, a memory there.

It’s not easy to see through our own “blind spots”, the things that are so ingrained that we take them for granted. This is when a writer is blessed to have a beta reader or critter to point it out for them.

For the times when you don’t have that handy beta reader around, make sure you have some kind of answer for every “why does she do that?” you can find in your story.

What kind of blind spots have you experienced? Have you read a novel where you just couldn’t understand why the characters acted the way they did? Feel free to share your examples.

That's it, I'm over you!

I love writing - right now I just don't happen to like it very much.

If you haven't had that feeling about writing yet, you haven't been writing for very long. But as a very wise person once said: "Don't Panic!" Even though a towel might be needed in these moments, the most important thing is a quote:

Doubts are okay.

We all have them, in everything from how to spell "mischievious" (did I spell that right?) to how the cute barista in the local coffee shop might react when being asked out - by another woman.

Writing is by essence something that doesn't easily relent to logic and reason: there are no ultimate right or wrong. We don't have a teacher that will stamp our manuscripts with APPROVED if we have managed to reach 50% correct answers. For me, this have a huge impact. I can't step back and think "but according to these standard, I'm good enough" which I can when it comes to schoolwork. I can't think "but they haven't fired me yet, so it must be fine" which I can at work. When it comes to writing, there is no APPROVED level. You are good and bad all at the same time, depending on who you compare yourself with and who is looking and how you interpret someone else's crit. This makes writers second-guess themselves a lot.

To keep writing, we need our coping mechanisms. Mine might be a little louder than most people like. I whinge and act out, scribbling ferociously on Twitter or Facebook and let the world hear my pain. And I swear that this time it's over. That I'm not cut out for writing, that I will stop. Now. Forever. I will NEVER EVER write again. (I blame my father for my tendencies to act the martyr) And everytime I feel like this, I AM convinced I won't write again. Considering how often doubts overcome me, I should have learned that I won't quit. That there is never a last time. But in those hours, or days, I'm convinced it's the end. And you know what? That's okay.

Feeling doubts don't make you less of a writer.

If you need to take a break, binge on pickles, kiss a random stranger, or tell yourself (and everyone else) that you will never EVER write again, then do that. I give you all permission to cope in whichever way that suits you. Because feeling bad for coping in the "wrong" way is not helping. Most helpful friends and strangers don't realise this. They try to convince you of better ways to feel and act. I understand their view, but more often than not, my doubts get worse. Which is why I write this:

Someone's way of coping with doubts doesn't separate a writer from a non-writer.

In fact, the only thing that could stop you from being a writer is to no longer write.

So how do you cope with your doubts? And should I ask that barista out?

A runner’s view - how do YOU write a novel?

I’m a runner – technically, I’m a jogger but running sounds more vigorous – and somehow my body and I always have the same conversation, no matter the distance I run or the speed. It goes like this:

I walk the first five minutes, to get the blood flowing.
My body: “It’s a bit chilly. We could pick up the pace.”
I say: “Wait a bit, it’s not long.”

We start jogging, my body is all happy and easy and it goes fine. Until we hit the first uphill.
Body: “This is harsh, man! You know how far it is? You really think we can do this?”
I say: “Yeah, it’s tough, but if it gets worse, we’ll just give up and go home. No harm done.” “Alright,” my body says, “let’s give it a try.”

We plough on, and it’s alright. We have reached about a third of the way and my body gives up a great sigh. “We’ve got nowhere! I’m exhausted! It can’t have reached only this short. We’re screwed. We can’t do it.” I give it a stern glare and say nothing. We continue.

Somehow it eases up, probably because we’ve gone downhill and the music was great. Then we hit two thirds of the way. My body gets real upset. “My tummy hurts! I’m nauseous. It’s frigging hot!” I grit my teeth: “It’s not going to get better if we stop. The faster we get home, the faster we can feel better.” My body grumbles.

And then - there it is! - an opening among the trees, the end of the track! My body has a bounce in its step, a longer stride. It feels great! Why don’t we do this more often? We are almost at the end, and I clear my throat. “You know we’re going to jog home as well? It’s still some way to go.” My body takes the reminder in a stride. “Oh darn. It can’t be that bad though, we’ve gone so far already.” We can do it.

“My knee hurts!” it says suddenly. “And my ankle. This isn’t working. If we keep going, we’ll be MAIMED FOR LIFE.” I waver – it might be right. “It’s only happened like once,” I argue. “And usually it’s nothing – the odds are on our side. Besides, it’s hurt much worse before.” It’s true – it has. So we keep at it.

Then there it is. Home – in all its brick-clad wonderfulness. We run, faster, stronger, like we were real runners and could go for miles. We round corners like motorcycle riders. Then, the last stretch, 50 yards. We run, rush, dash. Release all that we had, which we never thought we would muster (even though we know we have before).

And it’s over. We’re home, we’re through, we’ve made it.

I might have ended up with a dead bug in my bra, but it feels good. My body is excited, exhausted, exorcised (exercised with a vengeance!). I smile. “You did good,” I tell it. “You did fantastic. You’re the best.”

When it comes down to it, writing a novel is very similar. Don’t you think?