Easter Break

I have been taking some time for myself of late. Not always productive time, but time I need.  Again, I seem to be spending a lot of time setting goals, reorganising and refocusing and relying on my lists but they haven’t necessarily been moving me forward.

Over the Easter break I stretched that out to take some alone time to clear the clutter (from the house and my mind) and try to reclaim my creativity.

It isn’t that I’m not being creative but at the moment I am trying to do so much I am in a constant state of stress about what I want to do. Which is simply crazy. These are goals and projects I have set myself. So at what point did my writing change from being a daily necessity to become so difficult?

I don’t know.

But when I think about it, it is not that it is difficult, I’ve just let other things overwhelm me and get in the way. A few days off my day job gave me the chance to sort some of those other things out and allow me the opportunity to write all I want to.

I’m also taking more opportunities to feed my creativity, such as making sure I read every day, I’ve been to the theatre and booked another visit. And the most exciting is that I’m going to see one of my favourite authors next week launch her new book. In the middle of all of this my writing group is a constant support and source of inspiration.

Have a Happy Easter – I hope your holiday break is as productive as mine.

Happy Scribbling

Life's Pressures

As I have started back at my day job after 4 (nearly 5) weeks off I have started to feel the pressure. Of everything. With my day job I found that it is just as busy and overwhelming as it was before my break, which was quite disappointing. And then I began to worry that perhaps I had planned or hoped to achieve too much with my writing this year.

I also hoped to blog more regularly but what time I do have seems to be going to other things, not always productive.  And then of course there is family, friends, uni work and the occasional spot of reading to fit in.

My main writing focus is my novels and I am currently looking at or working on three. You probably agree with me by this point that I am indeed mad.

Novel Number 1 – trying to get it published, so I’m researching agents, refining chapters to send, writing covering letters. (Although it may be absolute rubbish and never get anywhere)

Novel Number 2 – reworking, revising a first draft into something more (I was at nearly 90,000 words by end of first draft and I hope for it to reach around 150,000 – a long way to go).

Novel Number 3 – early planning stages.

I thought that trying to concentrate on three different stories might be bit much but perhaps the pressure will actually help me get somewhere. I have most of what I need for the first one. I have even picked a favoured agency. Part of me is worried that it won’t get anywhere so I’m holding off a little but really it would only take me a couple of days to get the submission finalised and sent.

When I break it down into clear steps and see that it is not only possible but could be done by the end of the weekend I start to feel better about the process. So if it is rejected that’s ok. I’m all that much closer with my next submission. And if it never takes off, I have another book in the works and a trilogy slowly mapping its way around my study walls.

Novel Number 2 needs a lot more love and attention, every day, and I haven’t been giving it the attention it needs. I know what I need to do and I worked well last year, so time to knuckle down, book out that hour a day and go for it.

Novel Number 3 is happily moving all by itself. I am only spending a couple of hours (at most) a week thinking about plot points and characters and mapping out what should happen when. It is a skeleton and although with some ideas a whole scene comes to mind, I can just put down some notes and move on.

The door is covered in an almost complete Book One, some small gaps towards the end of the book, but I know where the main characters need to be at that point. Some of the detail will come once I start writing it, but as long as I get some ideas down it should work well. I have started using a pencil to get my ideas down (that includes in notebooks) so the cards look blank in the photo. Some contain only a short sentence, others are full.

I have bits of Book two and three but not as ordered as book one. By the time I start writing I would like it all mapped out. This is a very new process for me so I’m interested in how it will go. But as eager as I am to start writing it I think I should wait until I am finished Novel Number 2. Or I will be working on bits of books for ever...

Then of course there are the little ideas that keep creeping in and tapping on my brain asking to be written. Whole new worlds and friends calling to shared. They could be next but when looking at the list above Number 3 is really three books...so I have five to complete before I can move to the next project.

I’ll just continue to scribble down small ideas, either on the door, or the board in the study, or an index card, or one of the many notebooks I have stashed around the place, or typed up here to share with you.

Happy Scribbling

P.S. The Kitchen Door has become a learning tool for my daughter who is learning to read...hopefully sometime soon I can win it back for notes of my own.

The Gardener

Over the last couple of weeks I have been very busy, again, or is it still? I am trying to do so much and it seems that the more writing I do the more ideas I get. So in an attempt to try and increase my sanity I have hired a gardener.

‘Wow!’ you think. ‘A gardener, oh for such luxuries.’

Or did you think, ‘Yeah, right. Her dad pops round with the mower once a week.’

We have to be so careful with our words to ensure that the right message is being passed on. So that readers fully understand the story that is happening in our heads. That transfer to paper can be a real killer for any story.

The truth of the above statement about the gardener is that I have hired a company to pop around on a regular (and depends on the season as to how regularly he does pop around) to mow the lawn and trim the edges.

It may not seem like much, but it was one of those little things that were starting to tip the scale on my sanity. I was getting more and more worked up that I couldn’t get it all done on my own. So I decided to focus on what I can do, what I want to do and outsource some of the things I can’t do. And it isn’t that I can’t mow the lawn. I’m one of those fiercely independent types constantly trying to prove that I can do anything I need to. It just means less stress. And I’m all for that.

The other little bugbear over the last couple of weeks has been the state of the house. Not that it was that bad, not a call in the ‘current affairs type programs’ to look at what she is inflicting on her children type of bad; just a little overwhelming. Piles of notes, books, ‘artwork’, ‘treasures’ found in a variety of places and carried home, study notes (not always in the study), novel notes (again not always in the study). So I spent some time moving things to where they should live and ruthlessly disposing of the rubbish hiding amongst the piles disguised as useful. Unfortunately my daughter has inherited my gene for “let’s hold onto that because you just don’t know when it will be useful, wanted, needed etc”.

I am now feeling calmer, cleaner and more on top of things. Less time stressing and more time writing. It is how the world should be.

Happy scribbling.