26.

Why is it that when you finally sit down to write something, you end up writing something else entirely? A short story that I started awhile back has started to blossom into a full length novel idea and I've been toying around with it in my spare time.

Also, it's April and I have failed to meet my goals for the first quarter. Will I make up for it over the next three months? I hope so!

25.

Having decided to put off redecorating until a less upheaval based time (friends and family coming to stay for extended periods within the next few weeks, plus busy work hours and terrible weather equals too much stress over something that is just slightly changing wall colours!), my desk and chair are once more uncovered and in place. And I am itching to sit down and get some writing done.

Needless to say, my 30 odd thousand word goal for March is a complete impossibility. But I'm all about fresh starts!

24.

Whoops.

Work = life; life = work.

Needless to say, no writing has occurred in awhile. So I bought myself a new notepad and hashed out a character that was feeling a bit flat, and at least now when I get the time to write, I have a better of idea of what to do.

23.

Not much writing this past week- I've been barely keeping up with work as it is (and I'm behind on so many things) so writing has been out of the question. I also feel guilty because I fairly wasted a decent weekend that could have been filled with wall painting in the office.

On the positive side, I'm back in touch with my writing group- one of the others sent out an email, which was lovely as it meant I didn't have to break through my 'what if they've been talking all this time but haven't included me???' worry and make the first move.

I'm also trying to tell myself that I won't hear anything from the competition I entered, so it's silly to wonder about it.

I did see another competition- that you have to pay a small fee to enter- that looked fun. You can only use one side of A4 to tell whatever story you want in whatever way you want. An idea popped into my head, so I might have a go at that. And I really want to sit and write a short for an anthology that's taking submissions at the moment. I just need to buckle down!

22.

How is it March already? Where has 1/6th of the year gone? We're rushing towards the end of March and I'm not going to lie- I won't make my word deadline this month.

The terrible thing about timing is that just as I get busier and busier at work, the weather gets worse and worse and colder and colder. And that makes it hard to do the things that have to be done in a timely manner- which of course eats into writing time.

Deep down, I know this is all just a terrible excuse. But the part of my brain that feels tired and exhausted doesn't seem to care.

The good side of things is that I am scribbling here and there again. I see something that makes me think of a random scene, and I write it. So in that way, things are going well. I just need to have some coherent thought.

I also think that my approach to my contemporary novel I've been working on needs to  be rethought. I think I'm trying to shoehorn too much into too small a space of time, and I can't create the overwhelming feeling of being a fish out of water that the main character needs to feel. So I'm going to have to rethink things, move the timing around (summer holidays will be better than spring break, I think), have the MC develop a relationship with a character who was in the background but clearly needs to be brought to the front and fleshed out more to make the story make any sense, and run from there. There needs to be more self discovery for the MC, and less just letting things happen to him. So we'll see where that goes.

21.

Eep! Not only am I several days behind in my posting, I also have nothing to report. Work has been hectic (first week of semester, which is always crazy), and to top it all off I wasn't feeling very well and have had no energy.

Clearly I need to make a decent schedule and stick to it. I'm so far behind in my goals for the year (only one made so far- submit a story, which is done, although I'm write another for submission in March, so there's that, I suppose!).

I'm holding out a lot of home that the weekend of the 7th/8th will be nice weather. Because if it is, no more procrastinating or being busy- that damn room is getting painted, and my office will finally be done!

20.

Last week was a flurry of being busy for various reasons. And yet, amidst it all, I managed to rewrite a short twice until I was pleased with it, slapped a title I'm not over the moon with on it, and sent it off.

Hitting send too a lot more courage than I expected it to. I don't expect anything to come of it (low expectations = low risk of disappointment) but I'm proud of myself. It's the first time I've ever submitted something I've written for publication. We'll be notified in March, so I'm going to push it out of my mind and keep working on something else.

I'm also trying to figure out a way to rearrange my schedule outside of working hours to accommodate more writing time. At the moment it's a 6am-10pm day, and in the evening I'm exhausted. So I'm thinking of pushing it to a 7am-11pm day, moving gym going to the evenings when I can and settling down to write afterwards. I normally feel so energised after the gym that it could be a good way of trying to get those mental juices flowing. But we'll see!

Mostly I just want a half hour back where I can read in bed! I miss books!

19.

I still can't remember what reading is like. It's been so long since I've been able to curl up and enjoy a book. Writing comes in fits and starts (definitely nowhere near the amount that I'd planned and hoped for), which is something. I worked up the courage to show a short to my BFF who is also a content writer in her daytime job life, and asked her to rip it to pieces. I need to rewrite and rework and take on board the amazing feedback, and the clock is definitely ticking on getting that done.

I also need to get in touch with my writing group. We've all been very quiet of late (at least, I hope we all have and I haven't been secretly cast from the group- ah, insecurities, rearing their ugly heads once more!), but I find their presence so helpful and I learn so much that I really need to get back in touch when I finally manage to unjumble my life.

Not that it's hugely jumbled. It's just that the things that need to be done IRL (as opposed to IWL- In Writing Life) are so time consuming. And a lot of it is caused by more of those pesky resolutions. Work- focusing more on things that will further that career instead of getting by with the day to day is definitely more time consuming than it has any right to be. Health- I've turned into a crazy person who awakes before 6am to go to the gym, and then sometimes goes to a class in the evenings too, which means that by 9.30 I am exhausted and ready for bed. I used to be a night owl, scribbling well into the night, and then finishing off with an hour or more reading time. Now I'm out like a light by 10.30! And the general living- doing the things I need to do to stay sane, like going to a movie or for a drive or a burst of shopping or enrolling in a MOOC.

Hopefully I learn how to juggle a bit better, and stop making excuses. And then maybe I'll be able to write more than the synopsis for a ridiculous shark movie script (which is entirely the BFFs fault as she is obsessed with them, and they always seem to be on the telly in our house, and it must have subconsciously inspired me).
 

18.

I wish I had an update. But I've spent a week with absolutely no writing and no reading either. The no reading part is worse, I think. I spent a three or so year period when I was doing my PhD not reading for fun. I was working ridiculous hours each week, and although I still wrote, as a way to save my sanity, I rarely read anything. In fact, I think the only books I read were the last Harry Potter the day it came out (I took a day off from the lab, which was Highly Unusual Behaviour) and a couple of Discworld and Gaiman novels as they came out. Nothing else. Once I graduated and got into a happier situation, I promised myself I would continue to read. There are things I should be reading (for other people) and there are things I want to read (for myself) and I'm doing neither. Ugh.

In my slight defense, I've stopped reading because my usual reading time (10pm onwards) has now become my sleeping time. I've shifted my day a bit earlier to fit in things like the gym, work, actually cooking meals each night, and some MOOCs I've been interested in taking. Which means other things have slid. I still need to set up a writing space- that's a priority once the weather turns good enough to carry on painting, but it only just occurred to me that it's just as important to set up a reading space too. There's a little nook in the office that would be just right for a comfy chair and small bookcase to keep the 'To Read' pile on.

I'm also trying to get myself to rewrite this thing that, if I want to submit it, is due next week. I think I need my first rejection to really see if I can handle this business. And weirdly, what scares me more is what will happen if I don't get rejected. Somehow that's much more terrifying.

17.

I've been sitting on a short story I wrote on the spur of the moment before Christmas. I wrote it after seeing a call for submissions with a theme that sparked something in me. It's quite a dark story, and it needs a good rewrite before being 'finished' (in quotes, because is a story every really finished? Aren't there always things to tweak?).

I would love to re-read, edit, rewrite, send it to someone for their opinion and then re-write again. Except- if I do, it'll be the first thing I submit. And that's quite scary. Admittedly, this is for what is essentially a competition (no entry fee though) which at the back of my mind I think I thought made it easier- after all, there can only be one winner, right? If they don't choose mine, then I can rest assured that it wasn't just mine that got a big R for rejection on it. And yet...it's almost too terrifying. I know I need to suck it up, to pull my socks up and get out the red pen, to lift up my chin and really give it a go. I have three weeks until the deadline, and I shouldn't be wasting time.

Maybe writing this post today was the motivation I needed to print off a copy and sit down somewhere quiet with a pen in hand and enjoy tearing it to pieces. Who knows?

The time has really gotten away from me. I only realised it today when I saw another call for submissions- this time for a magazine, non-competition style, paying a decent price. And again, it sparked something in me that I started to write. Something that I've wanted to write for awhile, but didn't know how, or in what way to form the words. And that's great, and exciting, but I really should finish one thing before I start another, right?

That's always been a huge issue for me. I'm absolutely atrocious at doing a task, finishing it, then starting another and so on. I like to have lots of things on the go, to take my attention as it strikes me. Sometimes it works. And sometimes it leaves me floundering aimlessly. But I don't know if I can (or want to) change. I like having three books to read at once, or a handful of stories to write, or several work tasks to be getting on with. I guess I see myself more as a juggler than a writer!

I signed up for an online writing course. It's with FutureLearn, which is one of the MOOC platforms out there. It's run by the Open University in the UK and I suspect it will either be vastly useful and I'll love it, or it'll be dull and hopeless and I'll wish I'd never signed up for it. Right now I'm looking forward to it, and although it's not until April, I'm sure I'll ramble about it ad nauseum here in the future.

16.

I know talking about 'muses' is fairly unfashionable in a lot of writing circles, but sometimes I think it's a useful term. To me it's pretty interchangeable with 'motivation'. As much as I'd like to write every single day, and I do strive for that, in reality there are always 101 other things that take up the time instead, and about 1/10th of those are actual unavoidable things (at the moment: work, sleep, gym, showering, eating, grocery shopping, transport, pets, cleaning, family time, education). The rest of the time is 'Me' time, which is mostly spent on hobbies. And even though I've heard people say that real writers don't count their writing as a hobby, I don't care. Hobbies to me are the things I like to do to fill my time. Maybe for some this means entirely things they do half heartedly, but I've never been that way. If I'm reading, I like to read good books for a long time and really engross myself in them. Sometimes I like to watch half a season of a TV show in a day. Sometimes I will paint until the picture is finished, or sew until the project is done. When I play video games, I always want to get as far as possible. For me writing is the same, and calling it a hobby doesn't make it any less important in my life- it's just that the unavoidable things are the ones which, if I stopped doing for more than a day, life would unravel.

This means that sometimes my writing takes a back burner. Sometimes I honestly would rather watch a TV show or play a game or draw something, than write. And sometimes that's because I don't have motivation (or my muses have deserted me) and every word I write is a struggle.

Maybe it makes me a quitter- if I'm playing a game and get stuck, I have three choices- I can keep trying ad nauseum until I figure it out, I can cheat and look it up online, or I can stop playing, put it in the back of my mind, and come back to it later. And usually all I need is a day or two away from it, and somewhere along the way without realising it, I've solved the puzzle and can keep going.

I feel the same way about my writing. I hate the frustrated feeling of not quite being able to do what I want. At trying and failing over and over. It twists me up inside, makes me panicky and grouchy and even less likely to do what I want/need to do.

So my general plan in these situations is to set it aside. To let my muses wander somewhere that isn't me sitting in front of the keyboard trying to force out words.

Sometimes I only need a quick break. Sometimes it's a couple of days. Lately, it's been a few weeks.

Now over the past few weeks I've written a couple of short stories. I've written a random chapter for a book I didn't even realise wanted to be written. But the project I've been trying to work on just wasn't willing to come out of my brain and onto the page.

So I left it. It's been almost three weeks now. And without realising it, I have a handful of post-its with jotted, half indecipherable notes about this novel. I have characterisations and plots waiting to come out.

So even though I was breaking the 'rules' and not writing every day, my muses were still working away like busy bees, buried beneath the "Did I pay the phone bill this month?" and "How's this research paper shaping up" and "How is dear old Aunty Mavis" and "Crap we're out of budgie food" and "How do I beat this level?" type thoughts that have been swirling around my head in the meantime.

(Of course, now I'm in the 'my cup doth overflow with motivation and muses' situation where I become tempted to cheekily write a bit while at work, and thus have to damp down my enthusiasm, but still, I can't complain!)

15.

Ah, how writing takes a back seat when The Job That Pays The Bills is commanding your attention. For me, it distracted me for my last week of annual leave, and is busy distracting me now.

I sent the first two chapters of a YA contemporary I've been working on to a friend, who is very good at balancing encouragement with telling me what doesn't work or what is missing. It's definitely sparking a bit more enthusiasm in me for continuing with it.

Another YA idea- this time, a futuristic one- is bouncing around my brain. It's the type of idea that gets wedged in there between your ears and pops up in those moments when your mind might otherwise be empty- showering, at the gym, falling asleep, sitting in a boring meeting.

I also wrote the first draft of a dystopian short story. I'm trying to write a short, leave it a month, then re-read and edit. Hopefully by doing that I'll avoid what I call the Folder of Forgotten Stories, where I save things, forget about them, and find them months and months down the line. I need to pull apart that folder in my old laptop, and see what's hiding in there.

In the meantime, I'll just keep daydreaming about writing from my desk at work.

14.

Ah, the best laid plans.

If I'd stuck to my resolutions I would have 5k words right now, shiny and gleaming for the first week of the new year. Alas, I only have 2.5k and a mild feeling of shame.

Truth be told, I've been in a writing-and-reading funk for the past few weeks, and try as I may to grin and bear it, it hasn't been too successful.

Not wanting to read, and not wanting to write hasn't stopped the ideas from forming though. Typically, most of the ideas that are running through my mind, demanding to become fully formed as soon as possible, are ones that require a lot of research on my part. Victorian era customs and dress, location of various Native American tribes in the Wild West, Los Angeles geography and requirements to serve in the US marines for the Iraq war are not things I have first hand experience with, and so copious research is needed. These are all different stories, I hasten to add. Although it would be interesting to see them all incorporated into one!

I'm also making a list of short story ideas, to be worked on throughout the first few months of the year. And I have one I wrote specifically for a Call for Submissions that I need to edit before February.

So things are slowly ticking along. I'm not letting myself get too disheartened for not making my self imposed goal for what was admittedly a very short week.

Let's look ahead to this week, and see if I can achieve what I set out to do.