Planning for writing

I have been a little bit busy with my uni work of late. It is taking up most of my thinking time and currently all of my writing time.

But that is OK.

And it is OK because it is important, enjoyable and all leads toward my long term writing goals.

Despite the enjoyment I am getting from this writing at the moment, it is disappointing that my current work in progress has had to take a back seat. The longer I'm not working on it, the further my finish time gets pushed out.

Yet I still have that writing time booked. I still get up at the same time, sit in my study and write. I may not be writing my novel but it is writing.

And uni won't last forever, and my workload will ease and when I get to the study at 5am, I'll be able to write my novel and not my uni specific work. And I won't have to retrain myself.

The current heavy workload for uni has also taught me that I can get more done of an evening than I thought I could, as I usually work best of a morning. I also discovered that I don't need to watch so much of the telly; I can record the good bits and watch later. As long as I have a plan of what I would like to achieve I usually do what I set out to in a session, or at least get reasonably close.

Planning for my writing, what I want to achieve and what I am going to write has been a great help and improved the quality of my writing.

Each month I have a list of goals, I then transfer these goals to a work plan. The work plan details all I need to do to reach my goals and how and when I am going to do them. I then use each week of this plan to detail what I need to do each day. It seems to be working well.

I am also planning more for each piece of writing. There are so many steps before the actual writing or aspects of what we are going to write that need to be posted for uni each week. Each of these steps I have found add to the work as a whole; and help me for future writing projects.

So I'm flat out, and not writing my novel, but I am happy that this all leads to a better writing overall and therefore worth every moment.

Happy Scribbling.

Where I have been for the last month...

I would like to start with an apology. It has been a very trying time over the last month and I’ve been a bit lax with my blogging.

I lost a friend – my old computer. Well he wasn’t that old but he was familiar and safe and not backed up well enough.

He died mid Dr Who. I’m not sure what was most upsetting at the time; having to wait until the Saturday night for the conclusion to the episode or the fact that I could have just lost my entire writing career.

In the end it was the panic over my writing that won out, and it intensified over the following days as I remembered more and more stories and snippets stored away on the hard drive only.

Thankfully, it was discovered, by a very fabulous man, that the hard drive had in fact survived but the computer itself was lost forever. It was surprisingly easy to find a handsome slimline replacement. And then the initial fabulous man moved my hard drive contents to my new one.

In setting my new world to look and work like my old world I also managed to max out my download limit. Although I had everything back it was painful to even try to access the internet let alone do things on it.

By this point it was the end of September and I was highly traumatised.

I then had a week of complete relaxation with some friends interstate. Where I literally did nothing but shop, watch trashy t.v. and make a decent dent in Dance with Dragons (book 5 of the Fire and Ice series by George RR Martin). And that was a trauma of a different kind because I know he is going to kill off more of my favourite characters and I fear getting attached to anyone. (There is a whole blog post in that alone, I’m sure.)

I am now back to where I should be. Although a bit stressed about how behind I am with my writing, struggling to keep on top of my uni work and too scared to pick up the novel I’m reading.

I have also learnt a lot from this. The most important thing being: to back up, back up and then back up some more. It was only pure luck that the hard drive didn't die and I had visions of having to rewrite my current work in progress from the last print out I had – a very scary thought indeed.

I have purchased an external hard drive, I have some copies of the important stuff on thumb drives as well, and I am investigating cloud technology (although I’m not sure I get the process I can see the advantages).

After few deep breaths and saving everything to everywhere I can, I hope to continue with some more regular blogging from now on.

I hope you have all your writing backed up… Happy Scribbling