Art and Inspiration

Right now I'm procrastinating re-writing 500 words I lost last week because I'm an idiot and rely waaaay too heavily on auto-save!

So I got my cover for July Camp yaay! Definitely incentive to look forward and take it seriously (although I still have no idea what point I'll be at by the end of June!) Still, I'm hoping Camp will make me knuckle down and really drive myself to the end. I'm in a cabin with the Gremus again (O! wonderful Gremus!) and I know they'll be a big help in this!

Right now, I'm at the point in my draft that I was on November 1st 2014, and where I really struggled to get going again post NaNo. I'm hoping it'll be easier this time around, although the middle still makes me nervous so we'll see. Alyk is making a lot of sense to me, which is good. I'm excited to see how he'll develop over this draft. I'm still freaking out about this draft every other day, but the days in the middle when everything feels right more than make it worth while!

Now for some more art!

I was incredibly lucky enough to win a prize in Hragon's  follower giveaway. As you know, I absolutely adore her art, and couldn't believe I won the prize I reeaally wanted -- a portrait of a character. I picked Laurie because she did such a perfect job with him last time, and this one's even better. I'll never get over how amazing it is to see your character perfectly depicted outside your head! It's such a crazy thrill, and now I have both the boys. It's very motivating! 

A NaNo'er was giving away art a couple of months ago, and they got back to me today with Ammeline, so it's been a couple of days of excitement (much needed after the couple of days before) Super cute! Definitely need to find a way to include Ammy in Book 2; I don't think I'll be able to wait 'til Book 3!

And, finally, the NaNo blog was asking for Not-So-Secret-Admirer letters for their inspirational blog, so I wrote one for my Writing Buddy, Sarah, and it got picked and published yesterday! It can be found HERE The whole blog is worth taking a look at for motivation and inspiration :) 

So, all in all, it's been a good, busy week. (EXCEPT GAME OF BLOODY THRONES SDFGHJK!!! but I'm not ready to talk about that yet.

Post-NaNo Blues and Happy New Year!

Browsing through the forums this morning feels like walking through a store ten minutes before closing -- everything's quiet and the air is still buzzing from the energy of the last minute rush. I"m pretty surprised so many people have disappeared so quickly, but I'm glad to see the regulars are still hanging around.

A lot of people are expressing their sadness that NaNo is over, and I totally get that. It's a mad month of friendzied scribbling, and coming out the other side is like waking up after a month-long sleep. It is sad, but it's also exciting -- now you've got the whole year ahead of you with an amazing block of raw material ready and waiting to be chizzled into something gorgeous!

NaNo, for me at least, is like the new-year's party for the writing year and I cannot wait to see what this year will bring! Last year, it brought me the confidence to go freelance whole new world and cast of characters of my own to work with. This year... who knows? But I think good things are going to happen. I feel more confident, more dedicated, and any excuse I had *not* to do my very best has been completely erradicated.

I have no more excuses, nor do I have the desire to make any more.

Whether you 'won' or not, simply by participating in the eventyou have shown more dedication, more passion and more drive than most self-proclaimed writers ever do. It doesn't matter *what* you've ended up with, only that you *have* ended up with something. And the coming year is the time to make that something into something brilliant!

So don't be sad NaNo's over, be excited for the next step in your novelling and look forward to next year :)

NaNoWriMo 2014 -- A Week In and a Reflection on Success.

So we've reached the One Week point and I think, by now, I can safely count my chickens. 

I have had two days out of seven in which I did not hit 5,000 words, and that has left me 4,000 words behind my goal (which I didn't decide on until after I had missed those two days)

But settling on my target of 5,000 words a day has really focused me and made me push myself to achieve it. 

Over the last couple of days, pretty much since I hit the half-way point, I have had a fair few NaNo'ers message in a range of different tones, but all asking the same question, 'How???' 

To be honest, I'm reeling from the fact I can include myself as an Over-Achiever, let alone that other people see me as such too, but I like to have the chance to encourage people where I can, especially when they come to me specifically. This has also brought more traffic to my blog (*waves* Hello!) so I figured I should address the question more widely here.

The Question of 'How' --

NaNo 2013

Let me start by saying that last year I was behind right up until the end, and 5,000 words was my last crazy sprint on the last day that left my wrist aching and my mind numb. My attempt at the April

Camp was horrendous and not to be spoken of again, and it was that which first made me fear the approve of November 2014. 

I was terrified that 2013 had been a fluke that I'd never be able to repeat again. I had won 2013 because I needed to prove to myself that I could do it, and I had, so what was left?

On top of that, I was planning on working on a project very dear to my heart, and (limited) experience had proven that that was a Bad Idea.

So there's my first ingredient - Fear. Fear of failure and fear of humiliation. This was increased and focused by the fact that I now had friends (supposedly) doing the event with me, who I knew would be more than capable of winning and would be keeping a critical eye on my own progress. I had to, at the very least, be able to keep up with them. 

Time, of course, is also a major factor when it comes to word count. It goes without saying, really. But more than that, it's the utilization of that time. I know as well as anyone that sometimes the more time you have at your disposal, the less you are liable to do with it. As I've said in previous posts, I really really wanted to make the most of this month, so I had to find a way to wipe out the temptation of procrastination. I do this by using Focal Filter, a really brilliant little app(?) that wipes out whatever websites you need to avoid for as long as you want. Personally, I turn it off for an hour and blast through a thousand words, then reward myself with ten minutes of forums. It works! It actually works!

Ambition. I am a very strong believer in being the very best you can be and, whilst NaNo is certainly for getting out that 0.5 Draft, you still need the ambition to keep up and stick with your story right until the very end, whether your goal is 50,000 words, 500,000 words or whatever. Ambition is crucial to anyone who wants to get to the end. 

Competitiveness also goes along with this; whether you're competing with yourself or a friend or both, you need a reason to really push yourself to and beyond your limits. Last night I really didn't think I was going to make my goal, and every time I reached the end of a scene, I considered calling it a day. But I didn't. I pushed on and through until, knackered, I could sit back and feel pleased with myself. 

Planning helps much more than I ever thought it would. Last year I pantsed completely, and I was great. This year I loosely plotted and it was even better. Whenever I get lost and can't see the wood for the trees, I just check my notes as I'm checking a map and everything starts to make sense again. Planning is a very personal thing, though, and you must do as much or as little as is best for you, and that can take some time to work out. 

Faith. I'm not religious in the slightest, but all through my life I've found that if I can truly picture myself succeeding, I usually can. The same goes the other way round -- if I can't, I don't. Try and have faith in yourself and your novel; read the pep-talks and let people encourage you. You can do this, really! 

Enjoyment. Allow yourself to ride the waves of your successes -- big and small -- they will compel you onwards in a way that nothing else can. A good day will lead to more good days; getting ahead will increase your faith in yourself. Let the positive energy (god, I sound so hippy-ish!) fill you up and elevate you higher than you ever thought it was possible to be. NaNo is a time to just bask in the pure pleasure of putting words down on paper and creating something amazing. Love your adverbs and your passive voice -- you aren't allowed to speak to them the rest of the year, so really enjoy spending time with these broken rules! 

I think that's more than enough for now, so I hope this has helped everyone a little bit, and I shall leave with you with the NaNo mantra by Nora Roberts:

You Can't Edit a Blank Page.

Today the NaNo site updates for the 2014 challenge and I am so pysched!!! Seriously, this year's going to be an amazing. My covers look ACE together; I had a massive breakthrough re: plot in the car coming back from Kansas, and I have more material than I know what to do with.

I need to sit down and sort through all the bits and pieces I've compiled and actually organise them into a plan.

As soon as I've finished typing part 1/book 1 (23,000 of good material in a month!)

Life is good.

Falling Behind and Going Backwards

Having taken a few days off for a friend's wedding, I am desperately struggling with my NaNo. The key to success is definitely making sure that you some Every Single Day, even if it's just a couple hundred of words, otherwise - if you're like me, at least - you will find your concentration and enthusiasm dwindling, and your mind wandering to other projects you would far rather be doing. 

As it is, I've decided not to worry and let myself take a break. I love it enough to know that I will certainly return to it soon enough, but right now I'm going to concentrate on my work and use my fanfiction as my Hobby Writing. 

I have been writing this particular fic on and off since 2006(!!) and I consider it to be my Masterpiece. Of course, the quality of writing has changed massively over the years, but looking back at the beginning of it, I don't cringe as much as I do with other things and, over all, I wouldn't change a thing about it. I definitely intend to finish it and have it on my bookshelf as the definitive work of my early writing-life, and at the moment the word count sits at 119,678 words. Which is quite a lot. 

I wish that I was working on it more frequently, but my Harry Potter passions are very sporadic. Although, when they do get me, they get me hard. It's definitely my favourite state of being, and I am reminded of how ardently I fell in love with Potter all over again. It's my safe spot and my area of expertise, and oh! how I wish I could make a living out of it!! Coming back to this fic is like sinking into a hot, bubbly bath and feeling all of your muscles relax after a day travelling on a coach. 

Finishing is a very long way off, but we'll get there in another ten years or so!

(Almost) A Week Down!

And 8,750(ish) words in! As I am handwriting the whole thing, I am roughly estimating that I write 250 words per page - sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less, usually depending on how much speech there is. But progress is happening, and I'm very pleased with how it's going. 

My characters and my setting feel much more solid this time around; I feel that I now know them as intimately as I do my fanfiction world, which is a big achievement for me seeing as I have struggled for so long to find something of my own to connect to in this way. I always find that I'm making fewer notes, and consulting my notebook less as everything is becoming much more solid in my head. The actual process of writing this time around feels much more organic than it did in November - then, I was writing to prove a point to myself, this time I am writing to get the story out of my head and onto paper. 

I've fallen hard for my characters, although there are only three or four of them so far as opposed to the vast cast I had first time around. I am looking forward to introducing the rest of them, but it's also really nice to give each one the attention they deserve rather than chopping and changing every thousand words or so. I think (hope) the finished product is going to be much more satisfying the second time around! 

Here's what I'm listening to today - Florence + The Machine: Never Let Me Go. If I were to give Dakin a theme-song, this would certainly be it. 

Day the Third, and the pressure begins!

I  always knew this day was coming - the day when NaNo starts to conflict with work. Now, before you get too excited, nothing dramatic happened; it wasn't a Sophie's Choice moment, and I didn't get fired or anything. Just a little note in my inbox from one of my lovelier clients asking how I was getting on.

To problem is, I haven't been getting on. Not even a bit. 

The problem with falling absolutely in love with a project - as I have with 'The Moon Path' - is that that becomes all you want to do with your time. An hour in the evening isn't enough, five hours in a coffee shop isn't enough. A whole day isn't enough! I want to be writing it twenty-four hours a day, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year for the rest of my life! Of course, I cannot wait until it's the finished polished piece in my hands, but, equally, I'm dreading the day when it's over. What will I do then? 

This is exactly the reason why I am loathe to finish anything. It isn't laziness (well, maybe a bit!) it's the very real phobia of leaving something behind. Every time I finish a piece - my diss, my november NaNo, a ghostwriting project - my body goes into shock. It's quite terrifying. I've spent so long with that piece, and wrapped myself so completely up in it that it has become my entire world that, for an hour or a day, I struggle to function in a world without it. 

I'm the kind of person that likes having several projects on the go, doing a bit here and bit there, and never committing to finishing anything (my fanfiction.net profile is a key example of this). I struggle with endings, writing them and dealing with them. I am never satisfied. That's why fanfiction has been so liberating - it means nothing is ever finished; there's always prequals and sequals and What If oneshots. 

But real life, and real writing, doesn't allow for that - the purpose is to finish and move on. Let it go.

I don't think I'll ever learn how to do that without my body going into shock.

In other news, this is what I'm listening to today - Christina Perri's Human

  It feels pretty appropriate for my main character. I really like coming across songs randomly that just seem to fit. 

Day Two of Camp

So far, it's going well - very well. I have 4,000 words on 14 pages of A5, and I have altered my projected goal from 30,000 to the full 50,000. I've decided that I want to fairly finished piece at the end of this, whether it's polished or not, especially since I will be forced to do a thorough edit when typing it up. 

A really great thing about this camp is that everyone else in my cabin is doing really well too, so that's sparking my competitiveness and spurring me on. I really like working around like-minded people; I'm not trying to be better than them, but I am definitely keen to keep up. It was the same at uni - it's all very friendly, but the pressure is definitely On to be 'Up There'. It's brilliant, and I certainly work best under these conditions. 

Today, my writing music is The Lion King: Broadway Soundtrack. It is flawlessly beautiful and never fails to raise goosebumps. 

  

And so it begins...

Pinch, punch, first of the month and happy Camp NaNo all! Over the last few days, I've found myself becoming unreasonably excited for this - partly because I'm psyched about polishing up The Moon Path, and partly because all the feelings from November's NaNo (my first) is all coming back to me. 

But this time, I'm more prepared, more focused - I am a veteran, and it's going to be awesome! 

For some reason, I've made the executive decision to write my novel by hand (yes, even the stuff I've already got typed) Whether that's a wise choice or not, it is yet to be determined. If all goes to plan though, it'll force me to edit thoroughly when typing it up after the fact. If it doesn't, it'll end up being left on a train and I'll never want to think about it again. 

Let us all keep our fingers crossed that it is the former! 

I used to write everything by hand first - I really loved having that raw, unique copy in my own handwriting. I loved the way I could just whip out my notebook anywhere and start scribbling - in the launderette, on a bus, in the pub etc. But then I lost my almost-full notebook on a train (I think) and it broke my heart. I'm hoping this NaNo will fix my PTSD regarding this because there's nothing more satisfying than having a notebook full of work.    

Anyway, it's going to be the best and busiest month so I'm going to set up with a large cup of Assam, put Cirque Du Soleil on Netflix and get down to business!

Good luck all you NaNo'ers out there!

The Approach of NaNo

As April looms over us, I am keenly aware of how much prep I need to do for the upcoming Camp NaNoWriMo. At the moment - touch wood! - I'm feeling pretty good about it. I have a solid beginning, and I am pleased with the style I have chosen to work in. My goal is to write something that I would consider to be my favourite book, and that is certainly a daunting task! 

I'm still uncertain as to what to put for my word count goal; I have so many different projects on the go freelance-wise, I don't want to overwhelm myself too much, but then again I really do want to make the most of the opportunity that NaNo affords. I've gone down from 50k to 25, but I'm considering going back up to 30. 

At least I've found the music that will get me through it! The Firefly Doundtrack by Joss Wheldon is The Best television soundtrack - including Game of Thrones - that I have ever had the pleasure to come across. It's an absolute delight to listen to, and nothing quite like any soundtrack I normally have in my ears. 

I have also been assigned my 'Camp'. Of course, luck being luck, I was not put with any of the people I wanted to be, but they seem like a decent lot so hopefully it'll work out. I'm still not sure how the whole camp thing works, but it'll be nice to NaNo with people.

The Feeling

Yesterday, I had a break through and it was amazing. 

I got The Feeling. 

So, for my April NaNoWriMo, I had made up my mind to start something completely new. I began with the title, I had developed my basic cast and a fairly decent plot, and was well up for a new challenge. As far as I was concerned, NaNo is the perfect opportunity to do something new, something that you wouldn't necessarily do usually. 

But then there's my Second Draft constantly at the back of my mind. November NaNo was a complete success, and I love my finished product with all my heart. It is my baby. But it needs a lot of work, like, a complete re-write. And that's fine, I love it and I can't wait to get it Perfect ('perfect', in this sense, means 'so that I am satisfied myself') 

I've been dabbling on and off over the last couple of months; I've done a plan (which I never do) and started it a couple of times, but never quite made the connection I wanted.

Yesterday, I had a breakthrough.

It was never going to be a serious attempt, I just wanted to feel like I used to when I was writing, like I haven't done in far too long. 

So I went back to my roots. I re-read the fic that began it all (more on that later) and I sat down and wrote just for me.

It was brilliant. It flowed; it was *my* style and *my* writing, and it worked. 

But you know what the best thing was? I re-read it later on and I got The Feeling.

Now, this is The Feeling that first inspired me to write. It was the sharp twist of the stomach that you only get when you are the character you are reading, when you feel exactly what they are feeling. When I first felt like that, I knew that that was what I wanted to do - I wanted to induce That Feeling in my readers. That was my goal. And I was successful in that. I was shameless - I knew how to press the buttons, and I knew how to make people squirm and cringe along with my character. 

The hard part is making yourself, the writer, feel the same.

And I did, and it was wonderful. 

I only hope that I can continue along that line with the rest of my re-write, because I think only then will I truly be happy with this project.

Living the Dream

I graduated nine months ago with a degree in English and Creative Writing, and in the time that's past it's been fascinating to see what my course-mates have been up to. That's the beauty of Facebook, right? I now have a friend that's working for the BBC, another that's a full-time carer, one who's living the high-life up in London, and more than I can count who are looking for something - anything - to fill the gap between graduation and The Career. 

And you know what every single one of these people have in common? They are writers and all they want to do is write, but there is no time and they can't afford it and they're too tired in the evenings. We've all been there, and we know how that goes. 

And then there's me. 

For my whole life, I have known that I am a writer; it is literally the only thing that I have ever been brilliant at. If I don't write, then what the hell am I going to do? 

Throughout my degree, people told me more times than I can count that the only thing I would be able to use it for would be teaching. Maybe academia if I sold my soul to Student Finance, but what it boiled down to was I would never be able to make my living doing what I love, because that's just not how life goes. 

I was lucky enough to spend six months in Austin, Texas after I graduated, nannying for my brother-in-law, and this provided me with the time I needed to Look at my Life and Look at my Choices. Because, obviously, I couldn't Get A Real Job in America, I applied to several work-from-home jobs. I wrote for a movie reviews website, I dabbled in writing for a removals company, and I discovered - much to my distress - that I was utterly useless when it came to non-fiction. 

Ugh. What kind of chance did I have in the world of professional writing, if I couldn't do non-fiction? None.

So I took a break, and I played a lot of Harvest Moon.

Then November brought me the blessed gift of NaNoWriMo. I won't go into detail right now - let's save something for later - but during that month I learnt more about myself as a writer than I ever had at university. I learnt self-discipline; I learnt that all you have to do to write is to sit down and bloody well write! No Excuses! And, above all, I learnt to have faith in my own ability.

After all, if I can write a novel in a month, I can do anything. 

Since then, I have not been afraid of different genres or huge word counts. 20,000 in three weeks? Pfft! Bring it on! All sorts of crazy job specifications have been thrown at me, and sure - sometimes I have to sit back and take a moment, but it's all a challenge and it's all experience and, you know what? I am using my degree to what I love.

I am a writer. 

There's no trick; I didn't get an easy break. My course-mates stare at me in disbelief and ask how I do it. I send them the links to oDesk and NaNo, and say there you go. Because, really, that's all there is.

The problem is, we were conditioned to believe that there was no hope and no chance for us, and when you can't believe, you don't try. 

NaNoWriMo was a test for myself - if I failed that, then I had forfeited my dream. If I couldn't be a writer, I wouldn't be anything. But I succeeded because I had faith in my own ability, and now nothing feels impossible. Sure, every step is hard work - there is no laid out path, but isn't that the fun of it? - But I am Living the Dream.

All it takes - literally - is a little bit of faith.