Christmas break

And it really was a break from everything except my family. I didn't write or read anything. Hopefully this weekend I will print out the entire NaNoWriMo manuscript, then I'll chop it into scenes and rearrange it all over the next few weeks.

As I move stuff around, I'll also rewrite the scenes - add or take away as necessary. I know that not all of them will be used. I put in extra background more for myself than anything else. The ending definitely needs work. I rushed it in November in order to finish on time.

The current version is almost two stories which don't quite come together. I need to make these two sides mesh a little better.

As usual I know what I need to do, I just haven't done it. Anyone noticing a theme here...

I also have a short story I wrote some time ago and as long as I can find it again, I'm going to edit it once more or at least read through it and then I'm going to submit it to magazines for publications. I still need to research this part, so at the moment I have no idea to which ones I will send it, but I will send it. That's my one resolution: to submit this one story for publication.

It would be nice if it is published, but I also want to get some experience in this area.

Next few days...

I will be leaving for a business trip in 5 hours time. I will try to at least write the minimum between then and now, but no guarantees as I have to prepare for the trip first. Also I will have much less time to write. I'll be working about 12 hours a day and then there's the 7 hour drive each way (today and Friday).

And yes it's by car, so no chance to write on the way. I am not happy about this, but sometimes you just have to do things you don't like doing and I haven't had to go on a business trip since the summer. I know it's not that bad, but right now I keep thinking 'why me?'

An update

I haven't been here for a while. A death followed by a health scare meant I just didn't have the energy to update the blog. Sorry.

Now all of that is over and I'm sort of catching up at work, so it is time to get back to writing or at least writing about not writing. I have my story. I know what's wrong with what I have written. Now all I need to do is make it right....

This should be interesting. I am attempting to get into the habit of writing every day, even if it is only for 5 minutes or so. I would love to write for an hour a day, but I'm not going to run before I can walk.

So time to finish the urgent stuff for work and then I will write. At least one sentence...

Not much

Well I wrote for a couple of weeks, then became ill and lost it. I haven't written since then. I've got ideas and scenes floating around in my head. I just haven't written a word of it.

I have no excuse. Time to try again...

So slow

Not doing so well. No surprise there. I just don't seem to have the energy, but that's just an excuse. I also forgot to recharge my mini laptop. That's an excuse too. Not to mention that not plugging it in is probably an unconscious way of avoiding writing.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this. Trouble is I know myself very well and I know I'm doing my best to avoid writing. I do similar things to avoid housework too. I am lazy.

Tonight, as soon as I get home, I will plug in the mini laptop. I will. And I will write using pen and paper while it's recharging.

long time, no write

And not just here on the blog. I have re-written my outline, but it stopped there. I haven't written in weeks.

Well technically that's not true. I should say that I haven't written anything in the way of fiction. I have written several reports for work, including re-writing an existing report, totally changing another one so that it was ten times as long, and wrote a couple of totally new reports.

But as far as fiction goes, not a word. Nothing. And now I'm repeating myself.

OK so things have been busy in the rest of my life, but I shouldn't use that as an excuse. I have spent an hour or so watching TV some nights and I could have easily been writing instead.

The break is now over and I'm going to start writing again. Honest. Actually I've already tried, but deleted both efforts. They were bad, and I mean really bad.

However I am writing again, so hopefully I will start blogging again to. I hate writing a blog post about nothing. Mind you, this post isn't really about much....

Not dead...

just not around much at the moment. Deliberately so. I have been writing and crossing stuff out and writing some more and so on. All using pen and paper. I will start actually writing the story again, I just don't know exactly when.

I'm going at a much slower pace now and it seems to suit me. The new outline is getting there and is much more detailed than the previous attempts. In fact it is almost a first draft in its own right. However there is far too much telling and no showing.

But the story is emerging and though the general description still fits, the subplots are entirely new and add another dimension to the story. In fact, I realised that it was the lack of complications that meant that the book didn't work as I wanted it too.

My mind has been wandering too. I have a couple of new book ideas, which are still in the baby stages and may not make it any further. I also have a short story idea, which I'm pretty sure will work. I might write this as well as continuing with the book outline.

Might be good for me as long as I don't get too caught up in it and abandon my novel. Anyway back to work. I'll write more later.

back to the beginning

At the moment I am writing using pen and paper. I'm re-doing my outline and one thing I've learned is, I need an outline.

There's nothing wrong in what I've written, but at the moment none of it hangs together. It doesn't help that I wrote some of the scenes for one storyline, only to alter the plot and not edit those scenes straight away.

Maybe that was the problem...(and before you ask, it was the problem.)

I think that I should have just started from scratch with the new plot and not tried to bring in what I had already written. I got lost. Very lost.

Now I'm going to write a detailed outline, and then write a list of scenes. Then, and only then, I'm going to start to write on the computer again.

Writing the outline down on paper, helps me to see the story more clearly. So for the next week or so, the word count won't increase, but hopefully I will make progress.

If I change my mind about the story line again, I'm going to go back to this stage immediately rather than trying to continue and adapt what I have already written.

Thursday evening

Last night I did what I had predicted I would, I slept and I needed that sleep. The consequence is that there is no change in the progress of my book and there probably won't be until the weekend.

It's unlikely that I will do much today, so tomorrow will be the first day that I will actually be able to sit down somewhere quiet and work on the scenes.

Happy New Year!

The snow got worse and the schools closed and I stayed home until today. Actually I did go out between then and now, but I didn't go back to work. I also didn't go on the Internet much nor did I write much. In fact I didn't write at all. I did have a great time with my family and got a netbook at Christmas.

This should mean that I can write more when at home, but one thing I learned over my two and a bit weeks at home, is that my family are exactly helping me to write. Every time I tried to sit down and write there was something someone wanted, or it was time to cook again. Still the house was cleaned top to bottom and everything that needed polishing was polished. Now all I have to do is find time to write when at home.

Today I hope to fit a little in this afternoon. I'll blog later on with the result...

Update (lack of)

Unsurprisingly, I did not write over the weekend. I managed 0 words.

However I did work out that I needed to change the location of the scene that I'm stuck on. If I move the location and add in a new character, one that isn't actually new, but was deleted from the NaNoWriMo draft because I thought that she was superfluous. Now I realise my first instinct was the right one. Moving the scene and adding the character will add a new dimension and solve some other minor problems. My MC will show herself off in a different environment and that is needed.

It will increase the word count too and that's no bad thing. The first draft, written for NaNoWriMo, was only 52000 words long and the final draft needs 75000-90000 words to lie within the "normal" book lengths.

I might change the timeline a bit too, not sure about that yet though. I think I need to write more before making a decision. Perhaps that's something for the next draft. Keep with the current timeline as is in this draft and see how the whole thing pans out. Sounds good to me.

On a separate note, I seem to have lost the spell checker from my post editor. I have no idea how I managed that, but I really need to find it again. My spelling is so weak, it's scary.

Outlining

At least that is what I should be doing, writing a new outline. Instead I'm surfing the web, doing my job, cleaning the house etc. In fact anything but writing a new outline. I am a little stuck at the moment, however that shouldn't stop me, but it has.

My excuse is that I'm looking for new inspiration to add to my story as well as boosting what I already have. That's just an excuse. I'm not really doing anything. Part of this is post NaNoWriMo exhaustion. I've been so intensely involved that I needed a break.

The other part is fear. Fear of failing, of being bad, of just not being able to finish what I've started, so why not fail now and do something else instead. None of this is real, it's just in my head. Part of me wants to work on several projects at once to increase my chances of at least one working out.

I know that if I start multiple stories, none will ever get finished. I have to concentrate on one and right now, that's difficult. It's time to knuckle down and get on with it. I know I can, trouble is will I?

One constructive thing I have been doing, is reading. Several books so far and I've another 4 I would like to read. At least 2 have been so bad, it's amazing they ever got published in the first place. Though both had interesting concepts, but, trust me, the writing was atrocious.

One book I couldn't get beyond the first page. It was that awful. I know I've read the book before, but how I managed it, I do not know. Another, one of the really bad books, had so many "She got home, had some dinner and a drink, then went to bed" scenes it was truly amazing. Well, they weren't really scenes, but you know what I mean.

The one I'm currently reading is very well written. It's not a subject I would write about, but that's just personal. The flow is good, but I think there are parts that could easily been cut to make the whole thing tighter, but on the whole these are few and far between. If I had written this book, I would be very happy. I know it's not going to win awards, but it is a good read and that is what is important to me.