I Seem to Have a Reputation for Liking Tentacles...

Honestly, you write one sex scene involving multiple tentacles and suddenly you're branded as a weird fetishist for the rest of your life...

Still, in the 'continuing to not help my cause' vein, allow me to introduce you to Insatiable Glor:

With Bonus Cameo from Previously-Featured Cushions!

(The name is a long story, involving accidental typos and the willingness of a small group of writers to transform almost anything into a deity they can pretend to worship.)

Yes, Insatiable Glor-as-pictured is an eight-foot-long cuddly squid.  What of it?  I got both the idea and the instructions for making him from Build-a-DIY.  The link was sent to me by Husband, who assures me that he did realise I would be immediately seized by a need to make one, and much encouragement in the endeavour was supplied by Giant-Plushie-Loving-Friend, who mostly just wanted me to be the guinea pig before she makes one of her own.

Step one was of course to make up the pattern.  Discussion with Giant-Plushie-Loving-Friend (henceforth GPLF) of ways to transfer the image on the site to a large-enough piece of paper took in everything from projectors to pinhole cameras to pantographs (apparently, it needed to be something beginning with P), but in the end I settled for a good old-fashioned pen-and-ruler approach.  The living room floor was covered with greaseproof paper and I spent a happy evening measuring, marking, and freehanding curves until I was satisfied with the end result:

Next step, acquiring the materials!  GPLF was snared into agreeing to drive me to the craft and fabric shops (my car is currently out of action until the clutch gets seen to) and giving me a second opinion on things.  Polyester stuffing and beanbag beans for filling Glor were easily acquired, but the fabric was a slightly tougher proposition.  The fabric shop came up trumps with a lovely mottled green that was a perfect squid colour, but was entirely lacking in suitable spotted-prints for the sucker side of the tentacles.  I was on the verge of settling for something that would *just about* work when GPLF spotted, in the clearance bin, a perfectly-sized offcut of a far better sucker fabric than I would ever have imagined existed.  Clearly intended for upholstery or curtains, it has textured circles that make perfect squid suckers.

While all of this was going on, Husband and Small Girl were away for a few days visiting family over half term.  By the time they got home, the living room was full of tentacles:

See what I mean about the fabric?

The pattern is mostly easy to assemble, which is always nice.  Turning the tentacles was a little tricky, but turning a narrow tube of fabric always is.  Otherwise, the only difficult thing was manhandling something of that size, with that much padding, under the sewing machine.  There were tentacles everywhere!

The tentacles and fins were stuffed with polyester stuffing, but getting enough stuffing for the body would have cost an absolute fortune, so instead I went for beanbag beans.  I also went a little off-piste as far as the instructions were concerned, and sewed the final piece on before stuffing the body (leaving a hole both to turn the squid the right way out and to insert beans).  Then I got busy with a jug and a funnel:

This was remarkably soothing to watch...

It didn't take me long to dispense with the funnel, since it kept getting clogged and the hole in the squid was large enough to pour the beans in directly.  I also wound up drafting in Husband as an extra pair of hands, to hold the squid at a suitable height so the body could fill up properly.  A bit of leftover stuffing went on the top, to help prevent the beans falling out while I sewed it close.  All stitched up, it was on with the eyes and Insatiable Glor was complete.

No, I don't have any idea where I'm going to put him.  No, I don't care.

Untitled, like its subject

Every November, I write a terrible novel.

The National NovelWriting Month challenge is reasonably well-known these days, I think, and involves churning out a first draft of at least 50,000 words within the 30 days of November. I've been doing it since 2005, mostly because I find it an absurd amount of fun but also because it affords me the opportunity to transfer the stories in my head onto paper.

One upshot of having done it for so long is that 50,000 words really isn't that much of a challenge any more. It's not that much of a novel by modern standards, either. So I've taken to setting myself harder challenges instead. In 2012 I had ideas for two separate-but-related paranormal romances, one with zombies, one with demons. Rather than choose between them I elected to write them both and aim for 100,000 words in total. Parts of it were undeniably fun; there was zombie sex with parts falling off at inopportune moments; there was tentacle sex with at least fifteen tentacles; and there was a decidedly D/s threesome where the two gentlemen were technically the same person and the lady was under orders to obey one and not the other. Writing that many words in such a short amount of time nearly did for me, though. I struggled with RSI (never normally a problem) and had a massive meltdown in week three when the effort of sustaining the pace finally caught up to me. I made it to the target in the end, but it was only by the skin of my teeth.

So for 2013, 100,000 words was definitely out of the question. Instead I set myself the more manageable target of 75,000 words, but with a determination to get that much out of a single story. Much of what I've written over the years has petered out shortly after 50k, and I was keen to finally write something that would run a little longer. In the end, that story got to 78,000 within November and was finally finished in the following week at around 82,000. It's the longest first draft I've ever written, and I'm surprisingly pleased with it even now.  It's a tricky tale that starts as the story of a bored wife embarking on an illicit affair, takes a sudden left turn into urban fantasy with musings on the philosophy of creativity and ends, as all the best stories do, in betrayal and tragedy.

Why am I talking about this now, in January? It's a long time until next November and the next NaNoWriMo project (for which I'm thinking of tackling gothic horror). It comes back to the idea of challenges. I can write a first draft. I can knock out a story in a month, but it'll be baggy and uneven, and things will change mid-story as ideas suddenly come to me. It's not something I can share, except possibly with a couple of trusted beta readers. I need to get better at editing, at spending the other eleven months of the year putting in the graft that's needed to knock that story into shape, rather than leaving it languishing on my hard drive forever.

So this is my declaration: I will edit this novel, this year. I will put in some effort, and work on those words, until I have something I can be proud of for more than just the speed at which it was written. I say this here, so it's in writing. I can't go back on this pledge now, and anyone who reads this can chase me about it and ask me how it's going. And if it's not going, they can ask me why the hell not and refuse to accept any excuses from me.

I will edit this novel, this year. I will.

Make me.