I must be stopped!

I’ve just ordered 10 books. 10! I do not need 10 more books. I already have enough books waiting to be read to last me a year or two. I’m probably heading for 100 books on my TBR pile – no exaggeration. I really need to stop this compulsive book buying.

So, for the next 3 months (I was going to say 6 but I know I’d cave on that) I am not allowed to buy any more books, and I’m going to make a concerted effort to get the TBR pile down. I want to read at least 12 books in that time. I would make it a higher target but I do actually want to get some writing done too, and maybe possibly have a social life. Please…

Oddly proud of myself

I actually got some writing done today! For the first time in a fortnight, possibly more. Okay, so I didn’t write very much – around 100 words, but I did knock them out in around 10 minutes at the end of my lunch break. As I’m generally quite a slow writer, I was pleased with that.

It felt good to get back at it. I have been struggling to get started on writing my new opening scene to my fairy story but now that I’ve made a start I’m hoping it’ll flow easier. I’m going to set myself the goal of writing 100 words during lunch every day this week and 100 words at home too.

My goal by the end of this week is to write the new opening scene and edit the one after it so that it works as a second scene.

Things I’m Working On

1. The story I mentioned a while back about Fairies doesn’t seem to want to be just a short story. It wants to be longer and I think I need to do some more character development and plotting – and by more I mean some at all. I got a basic concept, then came up with some characters I thought rocked, got overexcited and waded straight in, only to get caught up in fuzzy where-is-this-going, story hell. Must plot!

   This is where I went wrong with my many, many attempts to write before. I go completely against my character in the rest of my life – where I plan things to oblivion and make lists for absolutely everything – and start writing without a plan and then I just sort of flounder. I know I do it and I’ve spent a lot of time pre-writing DW to prevent the same thing happening there so I don’t know why I did it with my short story.

   So my main goal for this week is to plot that out and do a little more character development. Ooh and world-building, I’ve really enjoyed the world-building I’ve done for this story so far so I might do a bit more. Reading through what I’ve already written I think some of it is salvageable but the beginning is absolute dross and I’ve deleted my entire first scene. I want to rewrite that this week, starting the story a little sooner.

2. I need to write down all the ideas I keep having for the novel I’m planning to write for NaNoWriMo and work on twisting them into some sort of plot. Concentrate on developing my characters too, especially my main character and her mum.
3. Then have a look at DW and see how I can work in the idea I had for it last night. I’ve had quite a break from it so should be able to look at my ideas and characters with fresh eyes, see if I still think they’re as good.
4. I also want to try and plot some of my other short story ideas.

Blogistential Crisis

I have two blogs. This one and an anonyblog where I witter on about what I get up to, whinge about my dismal love life, reveal my deepest darkest secrets, occasionally talk about quite racy topics, all that self indulgent crap you see so often on the blogosphere. (Okay, place your bets, how many more words can I shoehorn the word blog into?)

The thing is, this puts me in a bit of a quandary about what to post where. I think if I talk about writing exclusively on here, it will get boring rather quickly but I don’t want to abandon my old blog and post things that would normally go on there here either. Oh I don’t know, I guess I’ll just have to see how things develop.

There’s always reading as well as writing, I don’t talk about books on the other blog. I’ve not been reading much this week but I did finish The Darkest Night, the first in Gena Showalter’s Lords of the Underworld series. It was quite dark and very sexy, there was a certain shower scene that had me contemplating getting in touch with an ex-boyfriend and seeing if he fancied a drink… ;o)

On the writing front, I had a novel idea yesterday that gave me goosebumps. Which I think has to be a good sign.

Things I have learned about my writing so far

• When writing in Third Person I am not great at keeping to the right POV. Well I wasn’t when I started, I’ve got much better already.
• I have a tendency to try to write as if I am looking back on events, telling someone about them. Not intentionally. I do not like this.
• I write fairly dialogue heavy.
• I’m quite good with the old dialogue tags, I get across who’s speaking without resorting to a lot of he said, she said.
• I am most definitely a Plotter.
• I may like physically writing better but I can get more written working directly on the computer – I type much faster than I write. Plus it looks like more handwritten so I’ll think I’ve been far more productive than I actually have. The guilt of seeing how little it adds up to typed is a great motivator.

100 words

For the past few days I have been setting myself the – uber reachable – goal of writing 100 words a day. The idea is only to get into the habit of writing at least something every day. It seems to have worked quite well for me, having such an easily achievable target means that I don’t feel at all daunted by what I have to do and I’ve been surpassing it every day.

Every lunch time this week I’ve been whipping out my trusty notebook and knocking out a page. Writing, as opposed to typing, seems to be working for me. When I’m typing I have a tendency to stop and think a lot, to umm and ahh over sentence structure and word choice, I almost constantly tweak. Writing long hand the words seem to flow better (of course there are lots of scribbles in the margins adding bits and saying things like “look up synonyms for ::insert word I’m currently overusing::”) and editing myself a bit less.

Having said all that, today I didn’t get my words written lunch time. I’m having a rough time at work at the moment (the person covering my boss’s maternity leave is not easy to deal with) so I had a meeting with a manager just before lunch to discuss the possibility of my job moving departments, which meant I spent most of my lunch break filling in a friend on what had happened. I did manage to find the time to do a little brain storming though, which was good, I had some nice ideas – even if I do say so myself ;o)

Well, I’m off to have a bash at getting my actual 100 words down before I fall asleep (am shattered) but I’m not going to beat myself up about it if I don’t manage it.

Change of Plan

I was planning on writing the novel that I’ve talked about here over the next few months, with the aim being to finish it towards the beginning of October.  Or sooner if possible.  The time from then until November was to be spent planning the book I’m intending to write (well, start writing) for NaNoWriMo.  Then November, obviously, doing NaNoWriMo.

 

Having read quite a few things lately about first novels rarely being up to much I’m considering a different plan of action.  I really like this story and I don’t want it to just be practice writing, I want it to be good.  I want to do it justice and be proud to show it to people, not bury it deep on my hard drive and wince whenever I think about anybody reading it – can you spot the person who recently found some stories she wrote years ago? *shudder*

 

So, what I think I’m going to do now is, spend the time between now and October writing short stories and novellas to get myself into a routine of writing often and to let myself get some of the crap writing out of my system.  Then spend October fleshing out my NaNoWriMo idea as planned.  Try and finish that by the end of the year (I don’t think it will be a long book so if I win NaNoWriMo that should be doable) and then write Dreamweaver – yes, I know it sounds cheesy as hell, it’s a working title okay…

 

Tonight I started writing a story about a fairy who bullies a woman into helping her free her friends from a witch who has trapped dozens of them and is selling them as garden lighting.  I’m having fun but I can see already that I had the right idea to do some practice writing.

Theft I tell you

Isn’t it annoying when the authors of books you read build time machines, come and steal your ideas – damn these mind reading, quantum physicist genius author types – then scoot back to when they came from, spin your germ of an idea into gold and write a fabulous book that makes you feel like sulking for a week because it was your idea damn it?

Lightbulb Moment

I quite like the idea of having pictures for my characters, I have found some on the net that are pretty close to the idea I had in my head of some of them but I hadn’t found any for my male lead.  Last night, when watching Chuck I realised that Adam Baldwin is spot on for Flynn.  Well built, good looking without being a pretty boy and looks pretty damn tough holding a gun, well even without a gun really.

Thinking about it, the two characters I’ve seen him play (Jayne in Firefly and Serenity; and Casey in Chuck) have a lot of the same character traits as Flynn too.  Tough guys with a slightly worrying affection for weapons, sarcastic and a little rough around the edges but with hidden depths, that you know are there but are hidden pretty darn deep.  Independent spirits, who don’t really like to play with others but really they need people. 

And did I mention yummy?  I know yummy isn’t exactly a character trait but  looking through images to find a good one for the post made me realise it’s a point that just can’t be stressed enough.

Forever Odd

For some reason, this just doesn’t seem to be holding my attention.  I normally really enjoy Dean Koontz books and I liked Odd Thomas so I’m not sure why Forever Odd isn’t doing it for me. 

I’m finding Odd slightly annoying and the plot a little boring.  That may have more to do with me than Mr Koontz though because I can see that it’s probably not as dull as I’m finding it – there’s murder, a rescue mission, ulterior motives to be discovered – but I still can’t help wondering why he keeps writing more and more Odd Thomas books rather than getting on the third Chris Snow book that’s been rumoured for years.

I hate to give up on books but part of me just wants to ditch it and start another book.  I have so many books waiting to be read that it feels daft to be wasting my time reading a book I’m not enjoying.  I’ll have one more push and try to finish it today but I think I’ll start another book tomorrow regardless.