Ahh, it's such a beautiful day here in England - the perfect weather to start off the London Olympics! We ended up watching the whole of the opening ceremony last night, so I'm a bit frazzled this morning! However,
the Other Half's parentals are down for the weekend, so we can all just chill in the sun today :).
Anyway, I'm sneakily writing this as everyone else gets ready for our day out, but I have a few updates I just wanted to share with you all....
Firstly - I downloaded an e-book the other day called 'Nail Your Novel' by Roz Morris. I've been thinking about downloading a self-help book to writing for a while, and as I really want to get back into the habit of writing again, I thought I'd just bite the bullet and do it. So far, I think it's fantastic! It gives you all these tips on how to write, but instead of just telling you what to do, the writer provides exercises and games for you to do, to unleash your creativity and help you to spot where you're going wrong. At first, I wasn't too sure about her methods to be honest - but I thought I'd give it a whirl anyway and I LOVE IT!
No joke - in one section, you're supposed to write down each scene/major development in your book on a notecard, and then fit them together - that way, you can progressively see which parts of your book need work. I had a lot of fun writing out the notecards, but I had even MORE fun writing the whole thing up onto a spreadsheet in Excel and then colour coding different sub-plots! (That's just my obsessive organisational skills kicking in there - you don't have to colour-code everything!). Now I'm onto the stage of writing a detailed synopsis for my novel. Apparently you're supposed to write this based on your notecards, and then fill in the blanks. After you've finished, you're supposed to leave it for a week, so when you look at it again with fresh eyes, you'll be able to spot the mistakes.
Well, I'm about halfway through my synopsis at the moment. I don't know if I'll be able to get any more done this weekend, due to the Other Half's parentals visiting - but I'm really going to try and finish it at least by Monday night. I've FINALLY got a week's worth of work at a publishers (hooray!), so I thought it would give me the perfect chance to just leave my synopsis alone for a week!
Anyway, this post is getting long enough now, so I'll end this a link to Roz Morris' ebook, in case you feel like taking a look....she also offers a free sample on her website if you want to check out her writing style, but at £3.30, I didn't think I could go wrong by just taking a chance and downloading it :).
'Nail Your Novel' by Roz Morris
Does this sound like your type of writing style? Do you do exercises like this anyway? Let me know what you think - I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Have a great day everyone!
xx
Saturday, 28 July 2012
Saturday, 21 July 2012
Break time's over...for now...
It's been quite a while since I last wrote (I don't even want to check the date on my last post to see when it was!), but after taking a rather unscheduled break, I think I'm finally ready to get back into writing.
I'm not going to bore you with the details of the last few apathetic weeks I've had - quite simply, I'd had enough. I'd had enough of feeling like I wasn't getting anywhere with my novel, of getting rejection after rejection for every job I applied for (or, most of the time, not hearing back at all), of, well, just everything. I know, I know, it sounds so melodramatic but hey, I'm a writer - that's my job :p.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've turned a bit of a corner (although I was knocked back a bit yesterday by getting rejected after another interview - guess what the reason was? Apparently I'm 'too nice'. Great.) - although I'm tired of getting rejected for jobs and for feeling like my writing isn't good enough, I'm also tired of being tired. I'm twenty one for God's sake - I need to realise that not getting a certain job isn't the end of the world. And that writing a novel takes time - if I want to do a good job, I can't write the whole thing in a day.
Essentially, I just needed a bit of breathing space to realise that I haven't failed in life just yet - I have all the time in the world ahead of me to accomplish my dreams. Just because it's not happening for me right now, doesn't mean that it never will.
And so, I'm starting to write my WIP again. Don't get me wrong - over the stress and tantrums and tears of the last few weeks, I've still been writing down certain scene ideas that have come to me, as well as figuring out a whole new marketing plan for the book - if I ever get it finished that is! So that's something positive - at least I still believe in my work and I still believe it has potential. All I need to do now is get down to writing it!
Sorry for the melodramatic post, folks! I promise, I''m going to try and be a bit more positive and grateful for everything I have from now on :).
Hope you all have a good night!
X
I'm not going to bore you with the details of the last few apathetic weeks I've had - quite simply, I'd had enough. I'd had enough of feeling like I wasn't getting anywhere with my novel, of getting rejection after rejection for every job I applied for (or, most of the time, not hearing back at all), of, well, just everything. I know, I know, it sounds so melodramatic but hey, I'm a writer - that's my job :p.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've turned a bit of a corner (although I was knocked back a bit yesterday by getting rejected after another interview - guess what the reason was? Apparently I'm 'too nice'. Great.) - although I'm tired of getting rejected for jobs and for feeling like my writing isn't good enough, I'm also tired of being tired. I'm twenty one for God's sake - I need to realise that not getting a certain job isn't the end of the world. And that writing a novel takes time - if I want to do a good job, I can't write the whole thing in a day.
Essentially, I just needed a bit of breathing space to realise that I haven't failed in life just yet - I have all the time in the world ahead of me to accomplish my dreams. Just because it's not happening for me right now, doesn't mean that it never will.
And so, I'm starting to write my WIP again. Don't get me wrong - over the stress and tantrums and tears of the last few weeks, I've still been writing down certain scene ideas that have come to me, as well as figuring out a whole new marketing plan for the book - if I ever get it finished that is! So that's something positive - at least I still believe in my work and I still believe it has potential. All I need to do now is get down to writing it!
Sorry for the melodramatic post, folks! I promise, I''m going to try and be a bit more positive and grateful for everything I have from now on :).
Hope you all have a good night!
X
