Cheating?

I’m probably going to insert a caveat into my no-new-books-this-year rule.  Reference books might have to be allowed.  That’s not cheating is it?  How about no new fictionbooks this year?  That’s really what I meant so I don’t think I’d be bending the rules tooo much if I bought some reference books would I?

Unsolicited Advice

Is it wrong to really, really hate it?  It is the one thing that has made me regret telling people about writing.  It annoys me so much.

When I first started writing, a friend at work gave me her (unwanted) opinions on things and even went as far as to criticise my methods.  When she’s never even written so much as a short story – heck even a blog post - let alone completed and published a novel.

There’s another friend who I thought understood me a little bit better and I ranted to him about the above friend.  Including some version of the phrase, “is she a published author?  No!  When she is maybe then she can give me advice!”  He went on and on then offering to put me in touch with a published author he knows – who writes completely out of the genre I want to write in.

He kept recommending books I should buy – just because his degree is in Creative Writing – and all sorts of other stuff, generally bugging the crap out of me.

He did go quiet for a while, but the other day I made the mistake of mentioning that I’d spent the weekend writing.  He asked me how it was going and then proceeded to lecture me about characterisation and the importance of back story.  Which I know.  It really pissed me off.  He was so high and mighty and preachy, as if I know nothing.  I just replied with, “I know.  I do a lot of pre-writing.”  And nothing more.  He knew he’d annoyed me, I got a “Lol… sorry” in response.

I don’t mind talking about writing, I love it in fact.  And I’m interested in hearing other people’s methods, I like to know what works for other people.  That’s why I read other writers blogs.  What I don’t like, is being told what to do!  If he’d even just prefaced his lecture with a “what I like to do is…”  Then it might have annoyed me less.

So, how do other people deal with people telling you how you should do things?  What do you say to people who give you advice you don’t want?  I’m guessing, “Piss off you insufferable know-it-all!” isn’t generally considered very polite…

Weekly targets #3

Hmm, well what can I say about this weeks targets.  I sucked this week.  I set myself 12 targets, mostly little ones – I tried to give quantifiable goals for my worldbuilding (e.g. detail powers of 2 magical beings and invent politics of 1 organisation) and plotting (work out next 4 scenes).  I only really looked at 3 of them.

Mainly because I spent the beginning of the week making my flower costume, then I was out Friday night (great fun!) and Saturday was completely lost to the hangover from hell.  Rubbish excuses I know.

I’m going to carry the same targets over this week and hopefully I will do better I WILL do better!

Procrastination or feeding the muse?

I have set myself a ridiculous amount of targets this week, I think there are 12 in total – some of them are only little though – and I haven’t done a thing towards any of them yet.

Instead, I have spent both evenings this week working on creating some sort of flower headpiece for a friend’s birthday party, where we are dressing up as flowers.  The fruits of my labour:

I’m really quite pleased with myself because I tend to think I have no artistic ability.    Of course, it was held together with sellotape and wishes so all the petals started to come loose not long after this photo was taken.  So that’s tomorrow night earmarked for repair work.

When am I going to write?

This week’s targets

I was hoping to get quite a bit done this week as I took a couple a of days of work but I came down with a cold and that meant I didn’t really feel like doing much, other than burying myself in a book.  I did have my most productive writing day yet, but I don’t seem to have written since then.  I’ve just been pottering.

My goals were:

• 10 scene ideas for SB (Beth’s Book) – well I’ve sort of done this.  I did some bubble chart brainstorming, which went really well and I have lots of ideas.  Can’t wait to write the book.  I never used to like brainstorming like this for some reason but it seemed to work really well for this book. 

• Hit 4,000 or complete first chapter of fairy story, whichever is greater – done, 5,128 words worth of done.  I will probably cut quite a few of them in the edit.
• Plot second half of short story – haven’t even looked at this I’m afraid.
• Finish character building Beth – Not done, I did do some bubble charting for her too but I’ve definitely not finished getting to know her.  I really want to get into her head as this is going to be a first person book.

• Get a wiki set up for DW- this is underway, I have picked my wiki and I am in the process of copying over and tidying all my hastily typed word documents to do with characters and world-building.

I might start posting my targets at the beginning of the week in an attempt to make myself feel more accountable but that doesn’t seem to have worked in the past so I’ll have a think about that.

3,500 – 4,000 my foot!

I’ve just finished writing 2,185 words of my opening scene, bringing the current total number of words to 5,055.  So much for my prediction of it ending up being 3,500 – 4,000 words long! 

I did want to finish the scene tonight and I sort of have but I’m going to need to do some fiddling and decide what I want to take from my old opening scene and add to this one.  I don’t really want to start that at 25 past 12 on a school night thank you very much! 

Not that I anticipate going to work tomorrow, I have a stinking cold and feel lousy, so I can see myself calling up and asking for an extra day off.  Being ill obviously agrees with me for writing productivity though.  I didn’t even start writing until gone 5 today and I achieved my highest word count yet.

I’m feeling really pleased with myself.  I don’t think all of the words suck either!  I got that tense, anxious feeling while writing again, which I’m choosing to see as a good thing.  I’m hoping it means I’m channelling my character onto the page.

Book Review (sort of): Countdown – Michelle Maddox

I started this at around 10 last night and an hour after I’d got up this morning (I’m off work today) I finished it.  While I am generally quite a fast reader I do think that is a testament to just how good this book is.  I haven’t read a book that quickly in quite a while.

I’ve been a fan of Michelle Maddox’s alter ego Michelle Rowen since I read Bitten and Smitten, which I devoured in an evening, but it’s with this book that she has made the leap onto my MUST buy list – where she’s in the very good company of Kresley Cole, Karen Chance and Kelley Armstrong to name but a few*.

The book is non-stop action from start to finish, I simply couldn’t tear myself away.  I really wanted to get some writing done last night but when I put the book down to try, I only managed 12 words before I had to turn the laptop off and go back to reading.  The pacing and storytelling just drags you in, and any time when you’re not with Rogan and Kira is time wasted.

Michelle’s voice excellently gets across the urgency and tension of the situation her characters are in but she still manages to inject some of her trademark humour.  And speaking of her characters; I’m totally in love with Rogan.  He’s a deliciously tortured, sexy mixed up hero.

Oh I suppose I should have said a little bit about what the book is actually about really shouldn’t I?  Give me a break, this is the first time I’ve tried to do one of these (hence the “sort of” in the post title).  The Countdown is about a terrifying game that orphaned street thief Kira is thrust into against her will, where to lose level is to die.  She’s been teamed with the mysterious, convicted murder Rogan and they must work together – there’s the small matter of separating more that 90 feet killing them – to get through the game.

There’s evil robots, computer geekery, a couple of rather steamy bits and fights to the death.  What more could you want in a book?  How about messed up characters with depth who are just perfect for each other?  Check!  Tight writing that sweeps you into the story?  Check.  This is a superb book that I’d recommend to anyone, no matter what genre they normally prefer.

*I didn’t intentionally pick only authors who’s names begin with K, they were just the first ones that sprang to mind – spooky…

Targets

I had 3 main goals this weekend:

1. Hit 2,500 words on my new opening scene to my fairy novella – Done, I’m currently at 2,838 and I might write some more before going to bed.  I think the whole scene should end up being somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 words.
2. Do a character profile for Beth, the heroine of my book for NaNoWriMo – I did a bit, I have a better idea of who she is but I’m not done by a long stretch.  I think I might work through Holly Lisle’s Create a Character Clinic for her too.
3. Plot out one of my short story ideas – Half way through.

I don’t think I’ve done too bad considering how rubbish I normally am with meeting my targets.  And I didn’t do any writing Saturday so I’m fairly pleased with myself.

Finding the zone?

I’ve had a really good writing day today, my best yet I think. I got a few hundred words written lunchtime and even more tonight. I’ve been on a roll every time I’ve written this week actually, I got almost 500 words written on my lunchbreak on Wednesday as well.

In a fairly tense bit I was writing tonight I got really anxious, that felt strange. It was like I had to get the words out really quickly – as if it was me that was under pressure to act quickly and not my character.

I didn’t even come anywhere near last week’s goal of finishing my new opening scene. I didn’t write at all after that post in fact, I was a bit crud. I’m not very good at the upkeep of this blog either. I’ve actually been posting quite frequently on my other one lately – after a long period of slackness – and I’ve been thinking about stopping.  I dunno. 

I think I’m going to give it another try as I’m writing more now and I do like having somewhere to say, woohoo I wrote such-and-such amount of words.  That’s the sort of thing I like reading about most on writers blogs; that and posts about writing methods – mainly writing methods.  And as I figure out what mine are, I’m sure I’ll write about that sort of thing too.