Walking to the Beat

I walk to work. Not all the way but I do park at least one and a half kilometres from the office and walk in. I was using this time to listen to the music I don’t usually get to listen to and improve my overall fitness. Since I have started a fairly regular routine at the gym my fitness has improved greatly and I cover the distance in less and less time every day.

The music helps as I find I start walking to the beat and so it keeps me moving along. As it has grown colder in the last few weeks I have found it too difficult to try and untangle my headphones and flick between songs with my gloves on. So in the last few weeks I have travelled without music and instead listened to the traffic and sounds of the street as I walk.

Using the senses to enrich our writing is very important and it’s something I have discussed before. But I have rediscovered the importance of hearing for myself again and so I wanted to share.

We hear so much without really thinking about it. On my usual trip there are several places I have to stop and wait for the traffic lights to cross the road as I am travelling in the same direction as the traffic. But with my hearing unobscured I can hear when there is a lull in the traffic and can then check before crossing the road. Probably not the best example to share, but it shows how hearing can make a difference.

All noises are important and can give a real sense of place. One morning last week I could hear the click, click, click of a cigarette lighter. Someone standing in doorway to get out of the wind while they tried to light up. With the sound I could picture the small wheels turning and the flint trying to catch. Then I started to think that one sound can take you away somewhere.

It took me to a party in my youth when we all seemed to smoke. The guys used to fiddle with my lighter so when I went to use it there would be this amazing (and scary) huge flame. Then I would have to track down the one guy I knew would fix it and that quiet, intimate time laughing over the silliness of it while he tried again to show me how I could fix it myself.

It reminds me how many stories are out there. Just that one sound started so much moving around my head that I will try now to focus more. Of course there are the cars and trucks zooming past, all making different noises, some with music so loud I don’t need my own music.

There are the people you pass on the street. The snippets of conversations, phone calls, clicking of heals, thuds of a runner. And then of an evening when I walk back to the car, in the dark, there is a whole new range of noises.

It also reminds me to make sure I use sound in my writing. What sounds did you hear today? Maybe tomorrow you could head out, sit somewhere noisy and listen to the world. Then imagine where it might take you.

Happy Scribbling.

Another Productive Week

I have had another productive week. My editing is moving along quickly but also reasonably well. I’m making sure that I’m not rushing the process but putting in the time to make sure I get it finished by my deadline. And so far I’m ahead of schedule. Although saying that I am coming up to some difficult chapters that need re- working.

When I finished the chapter I was working on this morning I was feeling somewhat apprehensive about the following chapters. All the little changes that I have made along the way now mean that the next two chapters need more than a little changing. And I couldn’t work out how I was going to do that.

I took some time out, did a little housework, took a shower, and it all started to come together. So I spent a little more time making some notes on where I wanted to go and now for tomorrow’s editing session I feel confident and a bit excited. Having to rewrite two chapters is going to slow me down a bit, but I want this to be right.

I have somehow in the last week shifted my work patterns. I am usually freshest and work best first thing of a morning. But of late it has been too cold of a morning and very dark and my body is just not so keen to leap out of bed. I am making up the time of an evening and more easily than I thought I would.  I am happily spending one to two hours a day editing.

Despite my clear focus I am starting to think about future projects and future options. My fantasy story is still rattling around in my head and I hope to start work again on the first draft as soon as my current project is finished.  I am also thinking about some competitions, different writing opportunities and learning about Twitter. That seems much scarier than I thought possible but I believe it is important to continually learn so I am trying to look at it as a learning experience.

In the meantime it is still all focus on editing. They key is not to rush to the light I now see burning at the end of the tunnel.

Happy Scribbling.                                                            

Productivity and the Inner Critic

I have had a super productive week. I have been focused on my main project, the final edit of my manuscript and I am flying along. Some pages need very little attention and some need a whole lot. Part of the feedback from my readers was that too much fell apart for the main character so I am changing one of the relationships she has.

This has actually been an interesting experience and as I know what I want that relationship to be it hasn’t been too difficult. The rest of the editing  is making sure it works, correcting little errors, ensuring flow and that information doesn’t change from chapter to chapter (nothing worse than the protagonist’s main love interest changing eye colour half way through) and building on some aspects where there were small gaps or not enough description.

My only problem is the inner critic. When I am working on first drafts I am able to shut her out completely and ignore all she tries to tell me. It is a first draft after all, I just want to get the story down, and I can work on all the little details later.

But now I am focused on every word, every detail and every punctuation mark she is starting again. My main aim at this point is to make this manuscript as good as it can possibly be, to bring it up to a publishable standard. I hope . So in some ways the inner critic can help.

When she mutters “that really doesn’t work,” I know I need to re-write that section, or sentence, so that it does work. When she says “that doesn’t sound right,” I can read aloud and work out what does sound right.

It is when she starts to nag, the whining voice at the back of my head, “You know it’s never going to be good enough.”  

Then it is time to shut her out. Ignore the taunts and the worry she causes and concentrate on the pages in front of me. If I focus on her then all would be lost. I would just give up. Dump the pages and start something new. But then I would end up doing the same again.

Maybe this novel won’t be published; maybe it won’t be available in the local bookshops, its glossy cover with my name on it displayed for all to see.

But maybe it will...and I would much rather focus on that voice and that image. Otherwise we would never achieve anything.

Happy Scribbling

Fighting the Procrastination Monster...and winning

I am finding that the procrastination monster is looming again. But this time I am able to fight him off. I am thinking about cupboards, cleaning out the plastic cupboard, the laundry cupboard, the bathroom cupboard and even contemplated my chest of drawers. Thankfully I managed to catch myself before I got too carried away.

I even told myself that if I was that determined to reorganise and clean out the bathroom I could use it as a reward when I finish my editing. So despite little distractions pulling at me I have managed to sit at my desk (with my new lamp) and get some very productive work done.

The weather has been both a help in this and a hindrance. I find it difficult to keep motivated when it’s cold and raining day after day. My body also seems to need more sleep at this time so it has been a little difficult to get up of a morning. On the plus side I’m not able to get out into the garden so there is more time to be inside and writing.

At this point I am still confident that I can complete the edit by the set date. I’m also looking at this as good practice for deadlines set by publishers on re-edits. Fingers crossed that I get that far...

Happy Scribbling.

A Revised Life

It seems a little ironic that my last post was all about how well I was writing and how it was all coming together and then I haven’t done much of anything since. I don’t want to start with poor excuses. I was knocked over by a bug (the viral type) and really I didn’t feel too sick, just the sniffles and a cough. But it also drained all energy.

So very little was done other than what absolutely had to be to keep life ticking over, such as clothe, feed and bathe child, dropping and picking up said child from school and the day job. At the end of two weeks everything was a mess and I hadn’t even thought about writing, let alone done any. I didn’t even manage to pick up a book to read.

It then took another week for me to really feel human again. And then of course I started to feel guilty about not writing and stressed about the amount I wanted to get done. I find the more stressed I get about my writing, the less I do. So I have made some decisions to reduce this stress and thus increase the writing.

The first is to focus mainly on one writing task. The most important one at the moment is the editing of my first manuscript. This is because it is the longest project I have been working on and I can no longer justify to myself spending a further 12 months working on it. It needs to be finished and I have set myself an absolute deadline, in chalk, and now on the web...16 July 2011.

I know that this is achievable so my main focus is to achieve it.

I will continue to blog because I have found that useful and interesting and some small part of my ego hopes that I am reaching other writers and helping them...But I am going to reduce it to one blog post a week. Reduce you laugh, as I haven’t posted anything in weeks. My initial aim was three a week, so I think one for a while will keep me on track and means more time for my editing. I can always increase it as things change.

This year is slipping away quickly. How are your plans and goals going? Are they on track or needing reviewing?  I am hoping that by the end of July I will be ready for a big swing in my goal setting.

Happy Scribbling

Writers write

A great quote that I came across recently was “Writers write, aren’t they lucky?” I came across it on one of the many websites and blogs I check out. I haven’t been doing that so much lately, mostly because I am actually writing myself, but it is helpful to see what others are up to.

When I am writing, it helps me write. This may sounded a bit confused but I find the more I am writing the more writing I want to do and the more I get done. I also tend to forget that until I am back in a good writing rhythm and then I start to regret the time wasted not writing.

So at the moment with my daily plans and consistent writing actually happening, I am writing more when I sit down and I want to sit down and write more often. I am even sitting up, switching on the bedside lamp and picking up paper and pen as ideas flood my thinking in the moment I am drifting off to sleep. I find myself making one sentence notes on hair or clothing styles, ideas to be edited into or out of my manuscript, random words and even short and children’s story ideas.

I find writing very relaxing and my day job at the moment is so hectic I didn’t even take my sneakers off when I reached the office today. At the moment I am fairly emotionally exhausted by the time I get home, but after a little family time, sitting down and letting the words flow onto the paper, or screen, is actually very relaxing and very freeing.

It is quite often at that exhausted point I’m not sure I really want to start anything, and the computer and I start that glaring competition to see who will win but I usually find that it does help. Particularly with a first draft, I am not consciously thinking about how the story is working, or whether what I am writing today fits with yesterday’s scene. It is the words just flowing onto the page. And I find that very relaxing and surprising, I never really know what might appear until the words type themselves across the screen…In many ways it is like watching the story unfold from a distance and that is the main reason I love writing fiction.

Happy Scribbling.

Half a Step Back

Someone once shared the insight that writers see the world from half a step back. Actually it was very good writer and teacher, at the best course I have attended to date (but I might go into that another time).

That I could see the world that way, and that others did as well was such an enlightening moment. It not only gave me purpose, but it helped me feel better about not fitting. I quite often get the feeling that I’m not quite in the mix with everyone else; that I am experiencing life but not quite the same as those around me. It also meant that maybe I was a writer and thought like other writers, or saw the world like a writer.

When I start to get a bit overwhelmed, or feeling “out of it” I can use that idea again. It has become my mantra “half a step back” and it usually puts me back in perspective and a smile on my face. I may even use it for my memoir, if I ever write it. Or something about green. I have this thing about writing green...

Anyway.

Writing can be personal, insular and solitary. I think it is important for us to spend time with like minded people. Whether that is other writers, or even readers; people who enjoy the written word. It helps put you in perspective it can be a great way to improve your writing or just assist with motivation.

There are different ways to do this, writing groups, reading groups, classes and courses. Even the internet now offers so much, online courses, online forums and of course some writers out there have a blog of their own where they share information, ideas, their writing life and their writing.

Once you get over the initial fear of sharing your writing with others it can be very useful. I have also found in many of the course I have attended that no two people in the class with me had the same style or genre. Or if they did have the same genre, they came at it from a very different angle. The exercises in classes like this really show how differently people think and write. It is also a chance to bounce and critique your own work.

I find feedback very useful, not everyone appreciates it but I need to know that what I am writing works for readers. I may enjoy the story but I am more involved than anyone else and there are times that you know the characters or the place so well that you don’t see what is missing. It might be in your head but not clearly on the page and readers can help with that.

Think about how you view the world. What do you do with what you see?

Happy Scribbling