Rewriting, rewriting, rewriting...

So since it's a Sunday night and I'm sleepy and all I want to do is curl up with my book in bed, I've decided just to do a short post while I remember.

Following on from my IWSG post on Weds, I stumbled across this post by Nova Ren Suma, and it could not explain more accurately how I feel about my writing right now. All I've been dreaming of the last few weeks is having a glorious block of time where I can blissfully write - no job to worry about, no chores to do, the house would somehow miraculously cleans itself, and I'd magically have the inspiration necessary to power on through my rewrites.

Unfortunately, the lesson that this novel seems to be teaching me at the minute is that I can dream all I want - but this book is never going to get written without me actually, y'know, writing.

It's hard. It's so hard trying to juggle this little thing called life with writing a novel, but ultimately I believe it's worth it. If I didn't, I wouldn't be blogging right now. I wouldn't have spent my Sunday afternoon rewriting a single scene. I wouldn't spend my car journeys to work thinking up pieces of dialogues between my characters. I wouldn't be scribbling almost illegible notes while I'm half asleep in bed, because it appears inspiration likes to come along and knock REALLY LOUDLY when you're on the verge of sleep.

The piece of advice I'm going to take away from Nova's post for this month is the idea of momentum. I'm still going to try and finish my rewrites during November and this week, I'm going to be trying out a couple of new things that I hope will mean less distractions and more writing i.e. not coming home straight after work, listening to music (but not having a huge playlist that means I spend more time changing the song than I do writing), keeping my novel open on my laptop. But most of all, no matter how many, or how few, words I write, I will try to write every day. Because the only way I am going to get through this is to keep going, one word at a time.

How about you? What methods have you got to keep yourself writing?

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!

Just keep swimming...I mean, writing...

So it's week 3 of NaNoWriMo - where has the time gone?!

I was actually fully expecting that I'd give up again this year, and that I'd only make it to 1,000 words again - but to my surprise, I'm still so enthusiastic about writing my novel! I'm currently on just over 30,000 words, which I have to admit, I'm quite proud of! If this was a normal November, I wouldn't be so far ahead, by the way - my sister is coming to visit me next Friday for a week, which means essentially, I've only got this week to get to 50,000 words!

I'm aiming to get at least another 5,000 written today - although I'm feeling a tiny bit worse for wear today, as I went out with my colleagues last night! I guess that's spirit of NaNoWriMo - writing when you'd really rather just laze around watching films and sleeping!

I do still have some major insecurities about my novel - but NaNoWriMo has made me seriously think about how I write, and I've had some revelations over the past few weeks.

When I used to start writing a novel before (note: start and never finish), everything I wrote had to be perfect, first time. But now, I'm slowly beginning to accept that nothing I write will be 'perfect' the first time I write it - whereas before NaNoWriMo I would've spent hours choosing the perfect word for a sentence, or desperately trying to think up of a new scene, or feel like crying over the thought of finishing my novel, only to have to go back and revise and write yet ANOTHER draft - now, none of that seems to bother me so much. If anything, I'm actually looking forward to December when I can edit and rewrite my novel!

Although I have the main plot points in my novel planned out, there are still large portions of it where I have no idea how the characters are going to get to A to B, or how one plot point will lead to the next. But for once, I'm not that worried. I know I'll figure it all out in the end, and I'm so looking forward to discovering new things about my novel as I write. For once, I can actually imagine my novel as a complete, shiny, finished product - and I can't wait to get there! All I have to have is a little patience and determination (and tea...let's not forget the tea).

So here's to the next 20,000 words! Roll on next week - and December!

How about you? How's your writing coming on this month :)?

NaNoWriMo....Day 5!

This is just a quick update, to let you all know that I'm still alive and drinking lots of tea to get me through NaNoWriMo ;)...

It's day 5 of NaNoWriMo, and I'm pleased to say that I've passed last year's word count - hooray! Not that that was very difficult, mind you - last year I wrote about 1,000 words then gave up. This year, I've currently written over 8,600 words :), which makes me very happy! I was hoping to break through the 10,000 word barrier over the weekend, but I went to see a friend on Sunday and ended up hanging out with her later than I thought I would. Not that I mind - it was nice to get out of the house after writing all day Saturday!

What I've written so far is a complete mess. I'm not afraid to admit it - it's appalling. If I was writing this normally in any other month, I would have burst into tears, deleted everything, then thrown my laptop out of the window long ago. But this November, I am determined to turn off my inner editor and just write - it's so hard though - I'll think that I've managed to ignore what my inner editor is saying, but then I'll realise that I haven't written anything for five minutes, because I'm searching for the perfect way to word a particular sentence....but I just have to remember that NaNoWriMo isn't the time for editing and getting everything perfect - it's about writing.

So that's what I'm going to focus on this week - simply getting the words down onto paper. There'll be plenty of time in December for me to edit and rewrite to my heart's content, but for now I'm just going to box up all my doubts and shove them into a dark and dusty corner of my mind...

I also received some unexpected news this morning - when I turned up to my first class of the day, the classroom was empty and the teachers were stripping everything off the walls. Turns out some of the kids are suffering from the 'hands, foot and mouth disease' - don't you just love it when things get lost in translation? I'm pretty sure that means chicken pox...but anyway, the whole class is off school for the next two weeks, which means I now have even more free time in the morning. Don't get me wrong, I hope all ,y cute little Chinese pupils get well soon, and I can't wait to see them again, but I'm not gonna lie - two weeks worth of free mornings, right when NaNoWriMo is running (when I actually only have 3 weeks instead of 4 to write 50,000 words, as my sister is coming to see me at the end of November), - kinda seems like a very odd blessing in disguise ;)....

So, how's your NaNoWriMo coming along?? I'd love to hear what you're up to!

Three days to go...

...are you ready yet?!

I know, I know I keep going on about NaNoWriMo (you can check out it's awesomeness for yourself here), but I really am psyched to properly try and win this year! For the past few weeks I've been waiting impatiently for 1st November to roll around, so I can properly get stuck into writing my novel - but now I can't believe that it's only three days away!! Ahhh!! WHERE DID THE TIME GO?! For the next few days I'll be frantically putting together the last of my notes on my world-building/characters/plot etc (I know you're not really supposed to do this, but trust me, if I just jump straight in, I know I'll hit a wall in about two days time, and that'll be that). 

I've also taken the plunge and re-joined the Insecure Writer's Support Group (you can check out that awesomeness here!) - when I joined last year, I, er, may have got taken off the list because I didn't post for more than two months in a row - but this time I am determined to keep up with it! I already know what a couple of my upcoming posts will be about (and no doubt my first one for November will include NaNoWriMo...) and I've also made a note in my diary every first Wednesday of the month to make double-y sure I don't forget again! I may also put a reminder on my phone, just in case...

I hope everyone else's plans for NaNoWriMo are coming together - I'd love to hear about your plans for this year, so feel free to post a comment or two!