Art

I see art in the world. It has no colour, but artists capture it; it has no purpose, but writers give it meaning, and where it has no soul, musicians give it rhythm.

It's a goal

I work with goals. Maybe it's my business training that makes me want to organise myself in a rigid manner, and partake in goal setting, but I think there's more to it than that. When you have many different projects on the go, planning becomes essential.

I've come to a halt with the nano project I've been working on, and I'm a little behind actual wordcount, but it can't be ALL about the wordcount, although getting to 50000 is fun, exciting and utterly exhausting. I also have another goal with this nano. I want to be able to produce work that is worthy of taking further, i.e., crafting, shaping and editing after all the faff of national novel writing month.

There are two short stories to write before the end of November, and these absolutely need to be in tip-top condition, so my writing schedule is pretty hectic to say the least, and I'm not even counting the business writing that's been on the back-burner for a very long time.

These are my goals for today:

1. To write roughly between 5000 and 8000 words
2. To work on my scy-fi story, currently about halfway through. 
3. To plan some more on a short story.

Better get scribbling then.

On being productive: concentration, passion and scribbling

"The sun's energy warms the world. 

But when you focus it through a magnifying glass it can start a fire. 

Focus is so powerful!" 

Alan Pariser

Writing in Genre

The writing was going well for a while, and when you're writing for output rather than to provide a masterpiece, it can seem word count is the only thing that matters. However, even when output is the main goal, some thought has to be put into the general direction of the writing.

I've just discovered why through writing this novel.

I had come to a plot climax, and wasn't sure in what direction to send my characters. But I knew that if I did this wrong, the whole story could quickly come to a standstill. With this in mind, I took time out today to re-focus on the story I'm writing. It seemed to me that I was trying to glue together two separate stories. The dorky sci-fi writer me wanted to give my characters a dual universe to hop, skip and jump between, whereas my head was pulling me up, telling me, 'Not in steampunk, you don't'. So, I had to rethink how to do what I wanted without my more natural tendency to provide a parallel universe.

My characters will thank me for it in the end - I think.

The Words that are not There

I admit, I got off to a bad start with nano this year, and am in danger of falling spectacularly behind. I have written/edited a short flash story to get me going today.

Desperate measures are now called for, and I have cleared distractions, iPod in ears, writing in offline mode, ordering takeaway later, and maybe end up with a bottle of wine just before midnight.

The word counter is on.

Words from nowhere

Writing an essay while trying to do nano is a 'never again' on my todo list. Thankfully, the next one isn't due until after November, which gives me time to go do some reading and planning - the way I do with my fiction writing.

When I sat down to write my fiction this afternoon, I was glad I'd taken half an hour after finishing last night to consider where the story was going, and provide myself with some plot markers, otherwise, I may have faltered. I needed to do some quick writing to keep my writing on target.  

What I've learnt so far - planning is important. I'm worried that I'll get halfway through and then start slogging through that dreaded swampy middle. I've done it before, and I'm determined to avoid it this time, so it looks like some careful planning will be going on the next couple of days, to make the next few weeks of writing a little easier. 

NaNoWriMo - Day One

This is my fourth nano, but it's the first one for which I've done any type of planning. Alongside nano, I have been sidetracked by an essay which is due for completion on the 2nd, and a new teaching module which also  began today. Add to that, I still want to continue working on the science fiction story I started to write a couple of weeks ago, and still have time to write all those short stories!!

Over the past couple of weeks, I've had a couple of ideas and had started planning both, but only managed to pull them apart this morning when I realised that I hadn't put enough planning into either of them. So now, it's going to be more of a winging it novel writing, instead of the carefully planned story I wanted to write.

To my own amazement, after not writing very much all year, in fact, for the past two years, I've written half a novel, and the current wip of around 12,000 words, I managed to write the first 1794 words with ease, in between essay writing, shopping, cooking, meetings, and teaching prep. However, day two will be a challenge, as the essay needs to be finished, and although I have a structure, it still has to be given some form.

For now, I'm going to plan my next two or three scenes for tomorrow's writing.