Ummm...

Well I did very little writing, despite by best laid plans. I did however learn how to crochet. It's something I wanted to try for years, but life always got in the way. I've now made 3 doillies. OK, so they aren't brilliant, but you can see the improvement from the first to the third. I'm also using a medium wool, which means they are a lot more chunky than normal.

So now I just have to use the same technique to write more. It's a very simple technique, which can be applied to anything. And I do mean anything. From flossing to exercise to cooking and to just about anything you can think of.

You start by forming a habit. A very simple habit. The rest grows from there. So for writing, you form a habit, which consists of writing just one word. That word leads to the next and so on.

For the crocheting, I started with just one stitch, which lead to me crocheting for 5 minutes, which lead to me getting totally distracted and crocheting a doily in one sitting. On Monday I made 2, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. The first one took a couple of days...

So for writing, when I have some free time I need to sit down and write one word, which will hopefully lead to a second and so on.

A great place to go to learn about forming habits is http://tinyhabits.com/, which can teach how to form habits. It may seem a little weird, but it does actually work.

Very bad

I haven't written here since January, that is so bad. I have written. I started a new short story and there is another that's mutating in my head.

I start off with an idea, which when I start to write doesn't work, then it begins to mutate into something that might. At least that's the way I look at it.

For some reason I'm writing in very short paragraphs today, and I don't really know why. I normally write much more before changing the subject. Oh well.

I haven't touched any of my novel since NaNoWriMo last November and that is not a good thing. I really need to sit down with it again. The trouble is I sort of promised myself to write and finish a short story first. I think I need to break that promise and actually do something rather than make up excuses for not doing anything.

I'm very good at doing nothing. That's one of my biggest problems. I have Friday off work and I will do something writing related then...just not sure what, but I'll think of something.

I quite like writing blog posts, but they aren't essential to me or to anyone for that matter. Still that's no excuse, I guess.

Anyway time to get back to work.

Long time no post

Well first there was Christmas, then New Year, then I was sick and I never quite got round to writing a new post. I did do some writing, just not here. I wrote a bit more to a short story and I even have an ending for it now. I haven't finished writing the ending, because some of what I've written doesn't sound right at the moment, but at least I know where I'm headed.

This is a different story to the one that I was going to submit. That one I'm hoping to completely re-write. I'm going through all my old files trying to find one of the first drafts. The last version I worked on just isn't right. I have an older version, which is better, but has too many characters. I know I had another version with still more characters. I want to find that one to see if I kept the wrong characters and deleted the right ones - if that makes any sense.

Of course I could just simply rewrite it completely, which will probably happen.

As for a novel, I'm sort of stuck. I know what I want to achieve, I just can't seem to get it right and instead of going round this, I'm stuck. I need to give myself a good push, trouble is I'm so busy it's easier to leave this until later and concentrate on other things that can't wait.

NaNoWriMo

I've written about 7600 words for NaNoWriMo, which is not so good. There are still eleven days to go, so I will probably still finish in time, but I really am not feeling it this year. If that makes any sense. I just can't get into the story. I don't know if it's because I did a detailed outline or not.

But on balance I think that must be it. I think I miss the freedom or writing and discovering what the story is. I'm hitting the second draft doubts instead. Of course if I can get past them and get on with this story then that should help with other first drafts I've written.

Still I think that next year I won't outline at all. Hopefully I will have a story, but I just put down a few lines giving the general overview and do the rest in November. Currently it feels like I'm just filling in the blanks and there is nothing to discover.

I love discovering the story. I think that is what I love the most about writing. I also think that is the reason I will never be published. I'm not sure I'll ever finish anything to a high enough standard to be published, because by the time I reach that stage there is nothing new left in the story for me.

I never started this to write for other people. I started this to write for me.

2000 words and counting

I'm behind in NaNoWriMo and for some reason I'm not worried. This year it seems less important and I don't know if that is because I know I can finish it in ten days or if I've just lost the will to complete NaNoWriMo.

Last year was the first year that I wrote on almost everyday. I spread the load out more evenly. All the previous years, excluding the one where I didn't finish, I wrote 50000 words in just ten days. The last ten days to be exact.

I think it's the deadline that pushes me on. Without it I don't feel any urgency, I mean I can always catch up tomorrow, right?

I'm hoping to write today. In fact, after I've finished this post I'll be writing. But I have a busy day at work and at home, so I'm pretty sure it's not going to be the big catch-up I need. Then again, at least I'll be writing something...

NaNoWriMo

I have a total of 750 words written. I should be at 8335 words, writing at the 1667 words per day. I have an excuse...

Work has been a nightmare. I didn't get a weekend. I was in working both Saturday and Sunday. I'm taking Tuesday off in compensation and possibly Friday. I have a meeting on Wednesday which will decide if Friday is possible or not.

I should get some written today too. I'll update here if I do, but as things aren't working I do have a bit of extra time.

The other weird bit about all this is that I am not the least bit worried. I normally start about November 20th and finish in time, so I'm totally calm. At the moment that is. Give it a few more days and I'll be wondering if I'll make it this year.

Good luck to all NaNoWriMo writers.

Long weekend

I wrote something over the weekend! OK, so I didn't write every day. On two days, I was so busy there was no chance to do anything. However I got all of one ending complete and most of the second ending outlined. The second ending is a lot more complicated. Much more than I originally anticipated, so there are still a couple of scenes left to go. I hoping to finish that tonight.

But as I was so busy, I didn't get all the housework done, and that needs to be done at some point. I still have to load all the scenes onto the computer to. I wrote them long hand, which for outlining seems to work for me. I will have to spend a couple of hours typing them up, but in the worst case I'll simply refer to the paper copy instead.

So I'm almost ready for NaNoWriMo and I'm looking forward to it too :)

More scenes

I added five more scenes to my NaNoWriMo outline and with those scenes I have reached the point where I can go one of two ways. So tonight I'm going to start writing the first of the two endings. Hopefully I'll get a chance to put down the other ending too.

I have fifty scenes without any ending, which is the highest I've ever go to with this sort of outlining. So if I average 1000 words per scene, that's the 50000 words without finishing. Of course some will be much shorter, a few hundred at most, but others will be much longer, especially where I have grouped together several scenes in the outline.

The upshot is I shouldn't have any problems with writing the 50000 words for NaNoWriMo. There should be about 15 to 20 scenes left for the ending, perhaps up to 25. So I should be able to write getting close to 75000 words if I keep going and use all the scenes I've got written down.

I wonder what the reality will actually be...

Sick

I was ill for most of last week. I went out on the Sunday and picked up some sort of bug. I wish I could say I spent the week curled up in bed, but unfortunately I had an important meeting on the Thursday at which I had to do a presentation. I only found out about it on Monday. So while sick, I had to put together said presentation, attend the full day meeting and give my presentation.

I did all that, but nothing else except sleep. Outlining was out of the question and even thinking about NaNoWriMo was too difficult. Now there's only nine days left. Still I have enough already outlined to keep me going, but I would like to outline at least one of the endings. So tonight I have to write. No option. It just needs to be done.

Next weekend I'll be out and about again, attending an event. I hope I don't pick up another bug. That would be just my luck though. Still November doesn't start until Thursday so that gives me some time to recover. I'm also glad that it starts on a weekday. I know most people hate this, but for me, work days tend to be more structured, which means I'm far more likely to write.

I'm going to try for my 5000 words per day. Then all I need to do is write on ten out of the thirty days. Not to mention that if I don't make it to 5000 it's not all over. I know if I aim for the minimum, that's all I will do and if I fail to reach that, there is a very good chance that I will fail to complete the challenge.

Weekend washout

I didn't write a single thing from Friday through Sunday, which is dreadful. I did so promise myself to. Tonight I will write at least another 5 scene descriptions.

But on the upside, I got a good rest on Saturday, which is code for I did nothing, well almost nothing. And Sunday I did some housework in the morning, then took the afternoon to go for a drive with my husband.

All in all I was incredibly lazy this weekend. Have to try harder.

more writing

I wrote another four scenes last night, so that means I've written every night so far this week. It feels good. I'm going to try to write more on other things too, I just don't want to try too much too fast. If I do, it may get to be too much and then I will stop. I don't want to stop.

I currently have fifty scenes and no ending. I'm at the point where the story, in my head, can go two ways. I'm sure there are many more ways it could go, but these are the two that I see. I'm going to write two sets of scenes for the ending, then I have something to help me when NaNoWriMo starts no matter which one I choose at the time.

Of course I might go for a completely different ending by then, but I'll cross that bridge if I get there.

more writing

For the last two evenings I have written some more scene descriptions. I've added ten more to the list, giving me a total of forty one. Not bad.

Of course I shouldn't really call them scenes, because several are a collection of scenes, which go together. Still it should become more clear when I actually start writing them.

I'm still in two minds about the ending. I'm not sure which way I should go. I think I might write summaries for both and then use which ever is relevant. Of course if I think that's not working I can easily switch to the other.

Still if I keep this up, I will be ready for NaNoWriMo by the end of next week. Earliest ever for an outline. It's getting easier too. I guess it's all the practise.

If I do finish the outline, then I'm going to work on the short story again. I'll do another re-write. I found an older version the other day, which I prefer to the latest one. I'm going to try to write a version which combines the best of both stories.

The older version has five main characters, which is a bit much for a short story. The newer has three, but loses something in the cutting. I have to work out what and try to put that back in. That should keep me (1) writing and (2) occupied while I wait for NaNoWriMo to start.

I wrote something

OK, so it was just a few scene descriptions, but at least I did something and it felt good. I'm going to try to do the same thing again this evening.

I wrote four and a half scenes for my NaNoWriMo. The half scene was adding information and some detail to a one line scene description that I wrote earlier. So now I have thirty scene descriptions to help with NaNoWriMo.

I'm hoping to get to fifty before the start on November 1st, then if nothing else I only have to write a thousand words for each one. Not that all my 'scenes' are actually that, some are a collection of shorter scenes I use to illustrate something, such as rising tension in the community.

At the moment I don't have any details on these in mind. Some of it will depend on how the characters come across in the scenes before this point, but I do want this to be shown. Just not sure exactly how it will pan out yet.

I almost didn't do any writing last night. I had to set up wifi and update an old computer for the kids. That took most of the evening, then all I wanted to do was sleep. But I decided to write at least one scene description before sleeping. Then I ended up with four more. This makes me very happy.

Something I'm very good at.

I'm very good at doing nothing. And I mean nothing. I haven't written a word in a week. Ridiculous. So today I made a promise to myself to write something every evening this week, starting tonight. Well it is a bit difficult to start yesterday...

Sorry in a bit of weird mood. It's freezing at work and I am staying warm by making lots of mugs of tea, which I hold until they get cold, then drink. It's helping.

There seems to be a lot of setbacks and bad news at the moment. I'm waiting for something good to happen. But if I remember rightly, most of the time you need to make things happen. They don't just magically happen by themselves. Which means I need to do something rather than my nothing.

Trouble is doing nothing is so easy and it comes so naturally to me. Stop being lazy! (and work on the typing before NaNoWriMo or the whole thing will be unreadable or I'll spend my whole time correcting my typing errors.)

lack of writing

Due to some problems at work, I'm pre-occupied with work rather than anything else. It's getting a little stressful and will probably get worse before it gets better.

This means I've done practically no writing since my last post. I did add one sentence to my NaNoWriMo outline, but that was it. I'm a bit disappointed with myself. We had a power cut at home, so I could have done some writing then, but I read instead.

Which is not such a bad thing. I love to read and I haven't done so in a while. I read Snuff by Terry Prachett and I did enjoy it, but I didn't feel it was as good as some of his other books. At some points it felt a little forced, but that could just be me.

The other book I read a little of was a collection of short stories by Stephen King, some of which were written many years ago. I didn't enjoy them as much as I used to. I have only read two of the stories, but neither really grabbed me. The first was OK, but the second I just couldn't finish. It made me put the book down.

It makes me wonder if my taste in books is changing. Of course those first two stories might be the worst two in the book. I need to read more to know. I've also started to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It's interesting and well written, but I'm only at page 275 so there's a long way to go.

I'm glad I read a lot, but I wish I'd written more. Being distracted isn't a good thing.

Yesterday

I wrote 1831 words yesterday on 'The Haunted House', which impresses me at least. It's the most I've written in one day for a long time. December last year was probably the last time I wrote that much in one day.

I did struggle towards the end. I was having trouble with what to write and some things ended up more as a summary than prose. I need to learn to rewrite this parts to make them better to read and if I get time today, that's what I will try to do.

I didn't do anything on the outline for NaNoWriMo. I really ought to do five to ten minutes a day. I'll be finished well in time for October even at that rate. I know that when I start I tend to write for much longer than I intended to. I get sucked into the story and forget about time and the real world for a while.

It's the starting that's hard.

A miracle

This weekend I wrote something. I actually added to the scenes for NaNoWriMo. I only added three more scenes, but I also dealt a little with the timeline. I had just been going from one day to the next without worrying about how many days there are in a week.

For most people the week in split into five work days and two weekend days, I felt that I should keep to this. The book is set in a school, so this does make perfect sense. Having a break for the weekend, will also help the story move on despite there being no real action during this time.

Then the second half of the story begins. I'm not entirely sure how this will turn out or in fact which ending will work best, but over the next few weeks I hope to find out. I get the feeling it's going to be a bit in between the extremes - the MC either going fully bad or staying fully good.

Still I wonder if he'll make the right choice...

Bad news

I received some bad news yesterday, which threw me off a bit. There's been rumors and gossip for a week or two and now the news has been confirmed. Nothing is actually decided yet, but the advice is now known. This means I might not have a job soon.

So I haven't thought about writing, never mind actually written anything for a couple of days. I am hoping to change that this weekend, by at least producing some more scene scenarios for NaNoWriMo. I might write a bit more on other things, but that's not so likely to happen.

My desktop is dead and has gone back to HP to see if they can fix it. I won't know the verdict for another week or two. Unfortunately all my writing was on the hard drive. At least I have a back up of most of it as I also use my netbook for writing too. But anything I did in the last two weeks is on the one I can't access.

HP should put a copy of the disk onto a secure webpage for me, so that I can download the contents again. I wonder if this will work or not...

So there won't be any real loss. Just some annoyance because I don't have my desktop. And the expense, if I have to get a new one. Theoretically they have to either fix it or replace it, but I have a nasty feeling I'm not going to like the replacement. They don't have the one I bought any more and I have rather specific requirements.

I'm just thinking that everything will go wrong at the moment. I'm sure not everything will, but still...

The weekend

I've written a little bit more, but not as much as I would've liked. I had a very busy weekend and I didn't get a chance to stop and think. It spilt over into this week, which means I didn't do anything last night either.

I am writing now, which is an improvement. I am starting to write more slowly. By that I mean writing on more days and not just writing 5000 words in one sitting and then nothing for a week or two.

OK, so I'm not writing a huge amount in each session, but it's starting to become more consistent. Today I'm hoping to write up a scene that came to me yesterday. It's either the start of a story or a turning point in one. This may sound a little weird, but it tends to be how I start of a story at least.

I start with a scene. That suggests a set up or a set of characters or a place that becomes a large part of a longer story. The scene won't necessarily make it past the first draft, but it is the inspiration for the story. Seems to work for me.

more scenes

Since my last post, I've written some more scene description for NaNoWriMo 2012. I have extended the idea and add a new dimension to the story. It should be interesting. Plus, of course, it gives me a whole load more scenes to write. The more the merrier.

Well the more scenes, the more likely I will be to reach 50 000 words. No 5000 word scenes describing the MC making a sandwich (that was from year 1).

I've also done a bit of unrelated writing too. The start of a new story with a working title of The Haunted House, which strangely enough is not actually a ghost story. I don't have an outline or even a defined plot for this one. It's just a write what comes into my mind story.

I haven't written one of those for a long time. They don't normally work out that well as I sort of write myself into knots that are impossible to undo. Still it's a fun way to write.