Ploughing on through...kind of...

At the moment I'm supposed to powering through my rewrites, so that my novel will more or less be ready to publish by the end of October. Today, I opened up my diary, saw the big red underline under 31st October, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

There's no way in hell I'm going to be able to do the amount of work I have to do in just a few short weeks - not unless I have the luxury of my summer holidays back, but alas, that comes but once a year...

And I think that's a huge part of my problem. I'm doing bits and pieces on my WIP, but ultimately, I think I'm stalling. I seem to be waiting for a magical long stretch of time to just open up in front of me so I can write without the bother of, y'know, actually going to work and having an actual life.

I read this post on the NY Times website, and although I'm not too sure whether I feel encouraged by it's message or scared, it has made me realised that the time to get on with my novel is now. Not in an hour, not at the weekend, not next week, now.

Which is why I'm currently staring at my screen, torturously writing one word at a time, as I attempt to finally get going on the final phase of this book. It's not even that I hate my novel (for once), or that I'm being overpowered by insecurities (which makes a change) - it's just that I'm simply being lazy.

I think my task for this weekend will be to find a way that I can work, without procrastinating so much. But until that day comes, I'm just going to have to keep repeating to myself that slow and steady wins the race...I hope...

Blank page, blank mind

So you may have noticed (or not, depending on how much my blog interests you) that I've been away for a little while.

I finished the very first draft of my novel in August and, as much as I wanted to dive straight back in again, I've been forcing myself to take a step back. It's been pretty much a month to the day that I finished that draft and during that time, I've barely done anything writerly at all - including blogging.

I just wanted to take a complete break from everything - my novel, my blog, authonomy - and at first it felt fantastic. Reading all day, baking, bingeing on TV shows online, playing the sims (not to mention going back to my day job) - ahh, that was the life for me. But over the past few weeks...I just haven't been feeling it. I've been picking up books, reading a page then dropping them again. I've been firing up the sims, only to stare blankly at the screen, wondering what the hell I'm doing. I've been feeling...restless.

As soon as I finished Synthetica, I wanted to begin work on the sequel while it was all fresh in my mind. However, in the end I forced myself not to, and I tried to work on a completely new idea instead. But as soon as I wrote down my initial thoughts, I panicked, managed to convince myself that I'm not a writer and that I shouldn't even attempt to try and write anything new (that would've made a great depressing IWSG post).

It was only this weekend that I finally snapped.

I am not good at doing nothing (reading doesn't count as nothing btw). I'm happiest when I'm busy. And so, on Sunday I began to write down an outline for my new novel, telling myself that I could do all this (i.e. planning/writing a novel from scratch) again. And to my surprise, it didn't go quite as badly as I thought it would. Scenes began to pop in my brain as I idly wrote about possible settings, new characters forced their way out of the woodwork, and by Sunday night...I couldn't wait to get started properly.

Ideally, I'd like to get the detailed synopsis done for this new WIP before I start the edits on Synthetica but as I was going to start working on Synthetica this week, somehow I don't think that's going to happen. So we'll see how it goes. But most of all, I'm simply going to remember to not stress out and just have fun with whatever it is I'm writing :).

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Friday Reads: Pawn by Aimee Carter

I've been hearing good things about this book for a while, so eventually I decided to bite the bullet and see what all the hype was about. To be completely honest, Pawn is an okay book...but it's nothing spectacular.

Kitty Doe has been raised in a world where, on your seventeenth birthday, you take a test which will determine what rank you receive. Your rank (from I – VI) determines what kind of life you will lead – from what job you will do, to where you will live and what privileges you are entitled to. Aiming for an average VI but marked as a III, Kitty knows that there is no hope for her...until she is offered an opportunity she cannot refuse. In return for raising her rank to a prestigious VII (which only the Prime Minister and his family are entitled to), Kitty must agree to fool the world and live the life of Lila Hart – the Prime Minister's dead niece. But as Kitty is drawn deeper into the Hart's twisted game, she slowly begins to ask herself - is a rank worth the lives of those you love?

Pawn was a bit of a let down for me in terms of writing style and character development. Although it sounds great, I didn't feel as though the rest of the novel lived up to it's premise. Quite often we're told instead of shown that Kitty has 'spunk' – okay, that's great and I'm all up for a feisty character – but not when they're generally just standing around observing events and occasionally coming up with stupid 'smart' comebacks. And if I need another characters specifically telling me that the main character has 'spunk', then warning bells immediately go off in my head and I spend the rest of the book rolling my eyes at her 'spunkiness' (okay, I'll stop using the word spunky and all it's variations now).

Then there's Kitty's boyfriend, Benjy. To me, Benjy merely seems to exist in this book to create some extra teenage angst/drama – the overall plot would've worked perfectly well without him, given that he doesn't actually do anything. Ever. Oh, but when he does pop up, you can be assured that he'll bring with him the whole 'overprotective boyfriend' cliché. Seriously, he wants to stop Kitty from doing anything...but when she says she's going to do it anyway, he just seems to shrug his shoulders and let's her get on with it, which is a tad contradictory to me (not because I agree with him stopping her, just because he seems to whine a lot and gives up far too easily).

The whole book feels very clunky – there are virtually no descriptions, or if there are, they're very generic and flat. The only time I felt as though I could really visualise the setting, was when the author wrote about Elsewhere – then I could really imagine all the vivid colours of the woods. Although, there is one part when Kitty is on a private jet and her luxurious surroundings are described to us, including the real log fire...yes that's right, there's a real log fire on the plane. Now, I'm all for futuristic, but I'm pretty sure a real fire on a plane would interact very badly with the plane's combustible fuel system...but hey, what do I know? There's also a scene with a poker towards the end of the novel – I won't go into details in case I spoil it, but I'd love to know if anyone else spotted the consistency errors in that scene...

Final comments: Overall, Pawn was an okay read – nothing spectacular, but good if you're looking to while away a couple of hours. Just don't expect too much from this novel, and you won't be disappointed.

3/5 cupcakes

Book review: Half Bad by Sally Green

Warning: this review contains mild spoilers!

I was always going to be slightly biased towards this book as 1) I am a huge sucker for giant marketing campaigns and 2) it was written by a fellow North Westerner (still not entirely sure whereabouts in the North West of England Sally Green is from, but I'll take what I can get).

So, Half Bad is a YA book about witches. There are two types of witches – Black and White, and on a witch's seventeenth birthday they have a giving ceremony, which determines which kind of witch they are going to be (I think this is determined by what kind of witch gives them their blood at the ceremony, but I'm not entirely sure...).

Nathan is half and half – his mother was a White witch, but his dad is the most powerful Black witch alive. As he grows up, the Council (who are all White witches and believe Black witches should be wiped out) takes increasing interest in him, as they try to determine what kind of witch he'll be. They imprison Nathan in the hope that they can manipulate him into killing his own father, but he escapes and goes looking for his father instead. It's a race against time for him to 1) receive his three gifts at his giving ceremony on his seventeenth birthday (because if he doesn't, he'll die) and 2) find his father before the Council does.

The book starts with a bang – when we first meet Nathan he's locked up in a cage. Sally Green does a fantastic job of drawing you into Nathan's world, simply by starting the book is what is essentially the midpoint of the plot. The background to Nathan's world is intriguing, and I really enjoyed finding out about the rules of this world, the psychology of both White and Black witches, and about Nathan's own upbringing. However, around halfway through the book, I have to admit I started to get a teeny bit restless. As we follow Nathan on his journey to find his father/another Black witch called Mercury who can help him with his giving ceremony, he makes friends with another Black witch, escapes from Hunters (White witches trained to kill Black witches) numerous times and falls in love with a White witch (naturally). After the halfway point, I started to get a bit bored and found my attention wandering, as Nathan just seemed to be running around and not doing an awful lot apart from moping/thinking about Annalise/agonising over his future (think of the first half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and you'll get my drift).

Overall, Half Bad is a great debut book and I like the fresh take Sally Green has on witches. The world building was good and I was satisfied with the explanations behind the character's motives and world. The writing is gritty, and the author doesn't skimp on the bloody or violent details like most YA authors tend to do. It's this style of writing that really makes you feel for Nathan and his situation, and makes the whole thing seem more real, as though there really could be witches running around trying to murder each other while us 'fains' (non-magic folk) wander around blissfully unaware. The main theme running throughout the book is the age old question of nature vs nurture, and as a reader, you're constantly wondering which direction Nathan will go – will he stay true to the beliefs he's been brought up with, or will the White witches and their endless persecution turn him into a witch's version of 'Frankenstein's monster'?

For me though, the last third of the book wasn't up to the same standard as the rest of it, and the action felt more rushed than punchy - the last few pages in particular were a whirlwind, and the last line, which was clearly supposed to end the book on a dramatic note, simply made me roll my eyes. There's also the case of the typical 'forbidden love'/insta-love that unfortunately seems to happen so often in YA literature these days; Nathan's love interest, Annalise, comes from the purest White witch family around - although naturally she rebels and decides to follow Nathan instead. To me, I think this aspect of the story could've been written slightly differently to make in more intriguing, as it's completely obvious from the moment Nathan first meets Annalise what's going to happen. Saying that, Half Bad a good start to the series and I'll definitely be checking out the second book when it arrives next year – I just won't be rushing out to buy it like I did with this one.

Final comments: A good solid debut, but a couple of slices short of a full cake I'm afraid.

3/5 cupcakes