So, I finally made the very hard call to move my blog from here over to wordpress.com. I've imported all the posts from here and have made my first new one over there today.
It's with sadness that I leave this space, it was a good first blog home but wordpress is easier to customize and personalize, and has some features that I am looking forward to playing around with.
In future posts will be made over here, though I have no doubt I'll still make posts over here on the odd occasion.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
Friday
It's a miserable day here - perfect for writing and getting other stuff done around the house.
Rewrites are going well, I am over 4k now, and well on track with my initial wordsperday goal - I am sure this will either get harder to do or just become a habit, and I'm not sure which way it'll go just yet. I could easily have NOT written last night but I told myself that no, I needed to get into it. And I'm not allowing myself to only write 1000 words even if that would get me to where my collective count divided by days writing would be at. That's cheating lol and not sticking to my plan and I don't want to start doing that so early on in the process, so I wrote exactly 1500 words (well, just a few over). I am sure there will be writing free days later on in the process - life happens.
Everything else is going really well I think, baby seems to be growing nicely and I can feel him/her at different points throughout the day moving around in there. Such and odd sensation but really pretty cool at the same time. Ivy is still adamant she only wants a girl baby, so fingers crossed! lol I would hate for her to be all upset and disappointed if it turns out to be a boy, but I guess we'll just have to deal with that when it happens.
Business course is going well, feeling really fired up about it at the moment and am charging through the material we have, hoping to get my next submission sent in this afternoon sometime - failing that it'll be tomorrow. At least if I do it today I might get the next bit opened up for me before the weekend. It's moving into the financial side of it all though and that's where it will get trickier for me.
Anyway, better get Ivy down to preschool, and then get back here and get busy!
Rewrites are going well, I am over 4k now, and well on track with my initial wordsperday goal - I am sure this will either get harder to do or just become a habit, and I'm not sure which way it'll go just yet. I could easily have NOT written last night but I told myself that no, I needed to get into it. And I'm not allowing myself to only write 1000 words even if that would get me to where my collective count divided by days writing would be at. That's cheating lol and not sticking to my plan and I don't want to start doing that so early on in the process, so I wrote exactly 1500 words (well, just a few over). I am sure there will be writing free days later on in the process - life happens.
Everything else is going really well I think, baby seems to be growing nicely and I can feel him/her at different points throughout the day moving around in there. Such and odd sensation but really pretty cool at the same time. Ivy is still adamant she only wants a girl baby, so fingers crossed! lol I would hate for her to be all upset and disappointed if it turns out to be a boy, but I guess we'll just have to deal with that when it happens.
Business course is going well, feeling really fired up about it at the moment and am charging through the material we have, hoping to get my next submission sent in this afternoon sometime - failing that it'll be tomorrow. At least if I do it today I might get the next bit opened up for me before the weekend. It's moving into the financial side of it all though and that's where it will get trickier for me.
Anyway, better get Ivy down to preschool, and then get back here and get busy!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Second Draft
It's been started! And it feels really good.
I wrote 2K yesterday with ease, and could have pushed myself on but I want to pace myself this time around, get into writing between 1.5K-2K per day without fail, and set up more of a habit and less of the 'full steam ahead!' attitude that accompanies novel-in-a-month challenges.
It's strange that this particular word count goal seems like something so incredibly attainable now, a few months back it would have daunted me beyond belief, but now, I know I can do it.
And, against all my thoughts and beliefs, writing this second draft doesn't feel 'hard'. Before now I had only really approached short stories for editing and rewrites, and they are so different than a whole novel. I have rewritten short stories before, and not usually been that happy with the outcome - so the idea of rewriting an entire novel just scared the hell out of me. When I first looked at editing this particular novel I was trying to find ways to expand it, I was working out the best way to break it up and then add everything into it that I wanted added in, and cut all the bits out that I no longer wanted in the story. It was hard, such hard work - but I was telling myself that it would be much easier than rewriting the whole thing.
I think I was wrong. I feel now like I have the skills (magically appearing from nowhere apparently) to rewrite this novel, while still keeping in tact the bits of the original that I wanted to. Perhaps it's just that I have enough distance from it now - really enough distance, not just thinking that I do - to say that no, I don't need to keep the exact words or lines or order of the original, to know that the story I wanted to tell will be told, that it will just be in a slightly different (better, longer) form.
It's not like my characters are going to change much, if anything they are becoming more of who they are and should be. The story line for the most part will remain the same with some really great changes. So it's not nearly as drastic as I am sure a lot of rewrites are when whole chunks of the story are changed dramatically. And by working with it in this way, through a total rewrite, I can enjoy it all again.
That was really the thing I was worrying about I think, that I was going to be bored, that I wouldn't finish a rewrite because I already knew what was going to happen. And while yes, I do have a very good idea, I am allowing for some movement in the story, and I am sure that there are elements in there that will be new to me, and the depth of detail and character development this time around are also going to be something new as well. I'm not writing this in a month, not trying to cram as much story into as short a space as I possibly can.
I was talking to my mother a couple nights ago about what I'll be working on with the novel, and she is of the opinion I should just have submitted it ages ago and it should have been published already. I told her that yes, it's a solid story, and yes I know a lot of people enjoyed it - but the point is that it's not the best story it can be, and if I want to have any chance of getting it published that is exactly what it needs to be. It's about peeling back the layers that I already have and seeing which ones need adding to and which ones need removing, about crafting the thing instead of just drafting it.
I feel more like a 'writer' this week than I have in a long time. I'm moving from being a first draft novelist onto being somewhere else in the process of novelling, and that's exciting, so very much so. I'm really looking forward to this new kind of journey, and I feel renewed and nourished by it, and strangely, not fearful anymore - I know I can do right by my novel.
I wrote 2K yesterday with ease, and could have pushed myself on but I want to pace myself this time around, get into writing between 1.5K-2K per day without fail, and set up more of a habit and less of the 'full steam ahead!' attitude that accompanies novel-in-a-month challenges.
It's strange that this particular word count goal seems like something so incredibly attainable now, a few months back it would have daunted me beyond belief, but now, I know I can do it.
And, against all my thoughts and beliefs, writing this second draft doesn't feel 'hard'. Before now I had only really approached short stories for editing and rewrites, and they are so different than a whole novel. I have rewritten short stories before, and not usually been that happy with the outcome - so the idea of rewriting an entire novel just scared the hell out of me. When I first looked at editing this particular novel I was trying to find ways to expand it, I was working out the best way to break it up and then add everything into it that I wanted added in, and cut all the bits out that I no longer wanted in the story. It was hard, such hard work - but I was telling myself that it would be much easier than rewriting the whole thing.
I think I was wrong. I feel now like I have the skills (magically appearing from nowhere apparently) to rewrite this novel, while still keeping in tact the bits of the original that I wanted to. Perhaps it's just that I have enough distance from it now - really enough distance, not just thinking that I do - to say that no, I don't need to keep the exact words or lines or order of the original, to know that the story I wanted to tell will be told, that it will just be in a slightly different (better, longer) form.
It's not like my characters are going to change much, if anything they are becoming more of who they are and should be. The story line for the most part will remain the same with some really great changes. So it's not nearly as drastic as I am sure a lot of rewrites are when whole chunks of the story are changed dramatically. And by working with it in this way, through a total rewrite, I can enjoy it all again.
That was really the thing I was worrying about I think, that I was going to be bored, that I wouldn't finish a rewrite because I already knew what was going to happen. And while yes, I do have a very good idea, I am allowing for some movement in the story, and I am sure that there are elements in there that will be new to me, and the depth of detail and character development this time around are also going to be something new as well. I'm not writing this in a month, not trying to cram as much story into as short a space as I possibly can.
I was talking to my mother a couple nights ago about what I'll be working on with the novel, and she is of the opinion I should just have submitted it ages ago and it should have been published already. I told her that yes, it's a solid story, and yes I know a lot of people enjoyed it - but the point is that it's not the best story it can be, and if I want to have any chance of getting it published that is exactly what it needs to be. It's about peeling back the layers that I already have and seeing which ones need adding to and which ones need removing, about crafting the thing instead of just drafting it.
I feel more like a 'writer' this week than I have in a long time. I'm moving from being a first draft novelist onto being somewhere else in the process of novelling, and that's exciting, so very much so. I'm really looking forward to this new kind of journey, and I feel renewed and nourished by it, and strangely, not fearful anymore - I know I can do right by my novel.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
And today, there shall be word wars
There will be, regardless of whether I 'feel' like it or not, thank you Chibi :-)
And I do mean that, it's nice to know that you can get in there and write, no matter how you are feeling, and I am definitely ready to begin this second draft.
The outline is not complete, the ideas are mostly all formed though and I am well enough prepared to actually start. I think I need to, before I chicken out and don't get into it. Before some other idea pops up and I cave in and do that instead. This is the time for focus, and determination, and getting stuff done. I can do it :-)
It's SO cold here today, but thats ok, it's also a really beautiful day. Ivy and I got into the weeding yesterday and that was good, one of the three gardens is clear now and I am hoping to get another done this afternoon as well. Am looking forward to planning out where the things are going to go and doing some more research so that I can have the most successful and productive garden that we have can have - the less we have to spend on food the better I say! Also going to talk to my brother about planting some fruit trees and whether that would be ok with him, though they won't provide anything this year it'll be good for in the future.
Anyways, better go and do some more outlining, might as well!
And I do mean that, it's nice to know that you can get in there and write, no matter how you are feeling, and I am definitely ready to begin this second draft.
The outline is not complete, the ideas are mostly all formed though and I am well enough prepared to actually start. I think I need to, before I chicken out and don't get into it. Before some other idea pops up and I cave in and do that instead. This is the time for focus, and determination, and getting stuff done. I can do it :-)
It's SO cold here today, but thats ok, it's also a really beautiful day. Ivy and I got into the weeding yesterday and that was good, one of the three gardens is clear now and I am hoping to get another done this afternoon as well. Am looking forward to planning out where the things are going to go and doing some more research so that I can have the most successful and productive garden that we have can have - the less we have to spend on food the better I say! Also going to talk to my brother about planting some fruit trees and whether that would be ok with him, though they won't provide anything this year it'll be good for in the future.
Anyways, better go and do some more outlining, might as well!
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Monday
The outline is progressing! I am... taking it slowly, and making it really basic, not writing down a lot of the details which will be added in the writing, just making some notes about how the story is going to progress. I am wondering whether I actually need to do it or not, but I guess because I have started I should finish - why not give it a go?
I went to my first WoW raid last night in ages. Which is a big thing for me. I used to not want to go because of the late nights it meant, but the reality is that I am not falling asleep until after midnight these days anyways, so that's no longer a valid reason. I put off going for weeks now... I was paralyzed by this fear that I wouldn't be as good at what I do in game as I used to be. They always labeled me one of 'the best resto druids around' in my guild, so expectations were high - but it's been months since I played my druid, I'm out of practice and was so afraid of being bad at it that I just couldn't move forward enough to even give it a chance and see how I might do.
I did not wipe the raid, I did not fall apart, and the world did not implode like I had feared it might. Funny how these irrational fears can be eradicated when you just find the courage to overcome them.
I've been like this about writing in the past - and about several other things. That whole 'I did this great once, what if I can't again?'. And it CAN be hard to move beyond that, to put yourself out there, risk being terrible, but if you don't risk it, you're never giving yourself the opportunity to be great either. Failure is a part of life, and the sooner that can be accepted the sooner we can open the door for the possibility of success.
So what if your next story lacks something that your last one didn't? Chances are that it's also better than your last one in some way. With each word written, each story/novel/poem completed, you get better, even if you can't see that right this minute. Every time you put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, thought process to reality, you are learning and growing - as a writer, as a person, as a creative being.
And besides, we can always go back and edit those stories so that each of them are as good as they other ;-) The joys of being a writer.
I went to my first WoW raid last night in ages. Which is a big thing for me. I used to not want to go because of the late nights it meant, but the reality is that I am not falling asleep until after midnight these days anyways, so that's no longer a valid reason. I put off going for weeks now... I was paralyzed by this fear that I wouldn't be as good at what I do in game as I used to be. They always labeled me one of 'the best resto druids around' in my guild, so expectations were high - but it's been months since I played my druid, I'm out of practice and was so afraid of being bad at it that I just couldn't move forward enough to even give it a chance and see how I might do.
I did not wipe the raid, I did not fall apart, and the world did not implode like I had feared it might. Funny how these irrational fears can be eradicated when you just find the courage to overcome them.
I've been like this about writing in the past - and about several other things. That whole 'I did this great once, what if I can't again?'. And it CAN be hard to move beyond that, to put yourself out there, risk being terrible, but if you don't risk it, you're never giving yourself the opportunity to be great either. Failure is a part of life, and the sooner that can be accepted the sooner we can open the door for the possibility of success.
So what if your next story lacks something that your last one didn't? Chances are that it's also better than your last one in some way. With each word written, each story/novel/poem completed, you get better, even if you can't see that right this minute. Every time you put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, thought process to reality, you are learning and growing - as a writer, as a person, as a creative being.
And besides, we can always go back and edit those stories so that each of them are as good as they other ;-) The joys of being a writer.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Sickness
It struck on friday... it lingers still. Except that now it's spread and Simon is home sick from work - I'm still trying to decide whether Ivy is well enough for preschool this afternoon. She seems fine, but she still has a cough, and she's not really been eating a whole lot yet. Her energy levels have certainly returned to full force though!
I've had some of it as well, and spent saturday morning and sunday afternoon in bed sleeping/reading/resting. It certainly helped because I feel much better today.
I have also been suffering from some mild pregnancy craziness, ok, it didn't feel mild at the time and as much as I can stand back from myself and tell myself logically that none of my crazy trains of thought are real or make sense, emotionally I can't. Sometimes I guess you just have to let things out, and after doing so yesterday I do feel better. More sane, getting back on track, less depressed. I was worn out, and sick, and looking after sick people, and sometimes when that happens I can feel a lot like no one actually cares about me because I am the one who has to do everything. It would be nice for once if I was the only person to get sick and everyone else could run around after me for awhile lol.
I did start my outline, it's not complete yet, but it is coming together and I am aiming at getting back into the writing of it this week. I am not going to set a day, I do not want to set myself up for failure. I figure I'll get all the sickness out of the house first and then get onto it, hopefully I'll be able to finish up the outline today sometime.
I've had some of it as well, and spent saturday morning and sunday afternoon in bed sleeping/reading/resting. It certainly helped because I feel much better today.
I have also been suffering from some mild pregnancy craziness, ok, it didn't feel mild at the time and as much as I can stand back from myself and tell myself logically that none of my crazy trains of thought are real or make sense, emotionally I can't. Sometimes I guess you just have to let things out, and after doing so yesterday I do feel better. More sane, getting back on track, less depressed. I was worn out, and sick, and looking after sick people, and sometimes when that happens I can feel a lot like no one actually cares about me because I am the one who has to do everything. It would be nice for once if I was the only person to get sick and everyone else could run around after me for awhile lol.
I did start my outline, it's not complete yet, but it is coming together and I am aiming at getting back into the writing of it this week. I am not going to set a day, I do not want to set myself up for failure. I figure I'll get all the sickness out of the house first and then get onto it, hopefully I'll be able to finish up the outline today sometime.
Friday, July 04, 2008
Friday
And I am still no closer to having my outline done...
Today tho, I mean it!! lol all efforts will be slightly hindered by my sick child, who is being kept home and hopefully will feel somewhat better over the weekend. I feel for her, it's not often that any bug prevents her from eating and means she is pale and lethargic. I discovered today that most prescribed medicines are free for kids under 6 though! How cool is that? She'll be better in no time I am sure.
I'm feeling somewhat lethargic myself today. I woke up at around 1230am and couldn't get back to sleep, so I lay on the couch for a couple of hours listening to the classical music radio station via Sky. And then went back to bed and lay awake for awhile there, eventually getting back to sleep at who knows when... only to wake up around 6 and not be able to get back to sleep once again. No wonder I feel like I need afternoon naps...
Today tho, I mean it!! lol all efforts will be slightly hindered by my sick child, who is being kept home and hopefully will feel somewhat better over the weekend. I feel for her, it's not often that any bug prevents her from eating and means she is pale and lethargic. I discovered today that most prescribed medicines are free for kids under 6 though! How cool is that? She'll be better in no time I am sure.
I'm feeling somewhat lethargic myself today. I woke up at around 1230am and couldn't get back to sleep, so I lay on the couch for a couple of hours listening to the classical music radio station via Sky. And then went back to bed and lay awake for awhile there, eventually getting back to sleep at who knows when... only to wake up around 6 and not be able to get back to sleep once again. No wonder I feel like I need afternoon naps...
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
on being slack
It's kind of settled in a little since I finished the latest novel. On the writing front anyways - I've instigated a TV ban for Ivy and have been working my ass off at making sure she's fully entertained and occupied away from that devil box. I mean, I like TV, I enjoy it, I wish she could enjoy it without getting obsessed about it, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Her behaviour in the last two days has been SO much better than it would be if she was watching even an hour of TV. So while it's more work for me, for now, it's better in general because I don't have to loathe the way my little girl is behaving.... I hate feeling like that, but the whining, the tantrums, the over the top tears and the agression that surround the TV are just things I can't live with.
We'll see what it's like in a couple weeks, I am fearful that her early exposure to endless hours of TV (prior to her living with us, for the first year of her life) means that it's like a security blanket for her, one which she finds it hard to detach from. So we'll see. But I can't let it slide now, I won't be a parent who is ruled by TV or their child's behaviour.
I want the best for her, and TV does not bring that out.
So, on the writing front I do have some goals for today: I want to finish the section I'm doing on my business course (I have to write the plan), I want to go through and make a list of short stories and poems that I can submit places and find some places to submit for the rejection collection challenge, and get that darn outline down on paper ;-) I think that's probably more than enough to keep me going for today, being that none of this will get looked at or done until after 12 when Ivy goes to preschool.
In the meantime I have a headache I should really attempt to deal with or I'll end up getting nothing done at all today!
We'll see what it's like in a couple weeks, I am fearful that her early exposure to endless hours of TV (prior to her living with us, for the first year of her life) means that it's like a security blanket for her, one which she finds it hard to detach from. So we'll see. But I can't let it slide now, I won't be a parent who is ruled by TV or their child's behaviour.
I want the best for her, and TV does not bring that out.
So, on the writing front I do have some goals for today: I want to finish the section I'm doing on my business course (I have to write the plan), I want to go through and make a list of short stories and poems that I can submit places and find some places to submit for the rejection collection challenge, and get that darn outline down on paper ;-) I think that's probably more than enough to keep me going for today, being that none of this will get looked at or done until after 12 when Ivy goes to preschool.
In the meantime I have a headache I should really attempt to deal with or I'll end up getting nothing done at all today!
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