Feb 2 2014

Still in Need of Motivation

Back on the 6th of January, I wrote a post about keeping the fires burning, and how I was going to use Seinfeld’s method to write every day. Now that the month is over, I thought I would post a photo showing my progress, and in all honesty, I find it a little depressing. I mean, I’m a writer, yet I only managed to write on 6 days out of the month. (The red crosses mean writing, the green crosses mean exercise)

So does this mean this method doesn’t work for me? Well, not necessarily. I think perhaps if I managed to get a few more crosses in a row I would be less likely to want to break the chain. But it does feel like my usual methods to motivate myself to write aren’t working anymore.

Now you may be reading this and thinking – ‘Well perhaps you shouldn’t be a writer then’, and I wouldn’t blame you, to be honest. I have questioned my choice to write books many times, even though deep down, I have always known that it wasn’t really a choice. I am a writer. There is no way out of it. But that doesn’t mean that it’s always easy.

I will continue to cross off the days that I write (and exercise), because it is good to have a visual reminder of what I have achieved each month. And I hope that by the end of February, I will have created a longer chain. I will post a photo in 27 days!

And if I find any other methods for motivating myself that work, I will let you know what they are.

(Just to clarify, the only writing I am counting as part of my chain-making is writing my new novel. I don’t count any other writing towards this goal.)

Jan 21 2014

Lost in a Technical Blip

Am just dealing with the fact that in transferring photos from my phone to my computer, about four months worth (the last four months) have vanished. They are no longer on my phone and they are not on my computer. Somewhere along the way, there must have been an error and they are now irretrievable. Luckily, a few I had uploaded to facebook, but the rest, well, they’re just gone. Of course after talking to the helpful people at Samsung, I realise that I should have done a back up and transfer via Kies Air, rather than the old school transferring method. But it’s too late for that now.

As upsetting as it is, to lose the photos, (even though I cannot remember all of what I have taken in the last few months) it started me thinking about how reliant I am on my computer and my phone. Of which either could easily malfunction or be lost or stolen. You could say – save it all to the cloud, it’ll be safe there. But is it? Have you ever considered what you would do or how you would feel if Facebook of WordPress suddenly deleted your account? Or they had a massive blip and all the photos, conversations and posts were lost?

I would imagine that it would be similar to the loss of having all of your photographs destroyed in a fire or flood in your home. They’re damaged beyond repair, and there is nothing you can do except to accept they are gone, and to move on. In some ways, it is a kind of cleansing, a de-cluttering. How often do you look at your old photos? How often to you re-read old letters or diaries or old blog posts? Is it even healthy to hold onto all of these old memories? I used to create scrapbooks from my photos, and in more recent times, photobooks, and it’s fun to occasionally look back and remember good memories. But would my life be terrible if that was not possible? Would the world come to an end if I couldn’t look at my holiday photos from ten years ago? I doubt it. We are apparently exposed to more information in a single hour, than people in 1900 were exposed to in a single year. So it is probably actually impossible to keep up with the flow of information coming to you and also revisit previous information and remain a sane human being.

Though the photos may be irreplaceable, and I cannot re-create them, when lost, surely it is a better idea to just become focused on creating new memories? On having new experiences? That’s where my focus is right now. I have decided that mourning the loss of some digital files is not a good use of my time today. Instead I intend to learn my lesson about backing up, and plan for new and exciting events and experiences this year. And even, I may take less photos. Why? Because sometimes, in this new digital world, we spend more time capturing our lives on digital film than we do actually experiencing the moment. Have you noticed this? You go to a party, and instead of communicating properly with one another, the guests are taking photos of each other, then immediately uploading them to twitter and facebook, with captions about how great a time they’re having, then they spend the rest of the party on those social media platforms, responding to comments about the photo. They’re not actually present in the moment. They’re not fully at the party. I know I am guilty of this, I think anyone with a smartphone is probably guilty of having done this. So perhaps this is the year of spending more real-time with people, and less digital time. We’ll see if I manage to do that.

On another backing up note – if you are a writer, like myself. then you know how important it is to back up your works-in -progress. Last year, while writing The Other Side, my netbook crashed and shut down, and when I re-opened my file, 2000 words of my novel were missing. Not just the scenes I had just written, but some earlier scenes too. Because of the way I write (no plan or plot) I had absolutely no idea what I had lost exactly. There’s no way I could have re-written the scenes. After a minute of absolute panic (and screaming swear words, good thing I live in the middle of the woods), I vaguely remembered that when I downloaded Scrivener, there was some kind of automatic backup system. Using their help feature, I managed to find out where the auto-backups were stored, and there they were – all my lost words. So if you are a writer, and you sometimes get lazy about backing up your work – we all do at times – use Scrivener. It saved me then, and I have no doubt it will probably save me again in the future.

I hope you are having a better day than I have had so far, and now that I have made peace with losing my files, it’s time to get on with some work. Which of course, I will back up 😉

Jan 6 2014

Keep the Fire Burning

(The above photo is not of my house, but of the Gryffindor Common Room, taken at the Making of Harry Potter Studios in London. I did have a photo of our fire, but this one looked so much cooler!)

I live in a house where in the winter, our heating and hot water comes from a wood-burning stove. To keep the house warm and the showers hot, it takes a consistent daily effort to light the fire and keep it going throughout the day. And if you can light the fire in the morning with embers from the previous nights’ fire, it takes much less effort to keep it going. If decided one day that I couldn’t be bothered to light the fire, the house would soon grow really cold. After a few days, there would only be cold showers available and a whole lot of shivering. During really cold winters, it would take three days to properly warm up the house after getting the fire going again.

So what does this have to do with anything? Well, I realised yesterday that writing a book is very similar to keeping the house warm. When in the middle of a novel, if I write something every day, I stay in the flow of the story, I can remember what the characters are up to, and each day I might only need to re-read a few lines to re-orientate myself and keep going. The story then remains consistent, and I can get a novel done in a month. But when there are long periods of time between writing, days, weeks, sometimes even months, the story grows cold. I then have to re-read everything, try to remember what was going on and it may take a few days to pick up the thread and continue the story in a way I’m happy with.

So if I know this, why don’t I write every day? After all, all the great writers did. They had a routine that they stuck to, and they would make writing the most important task on their daily agenda. Truth is, I don’t really know why I don’t write every day. When I wrote my first novel, The Earth Angel Training Academy, it was easy to write every day. Of course, I wasn’t working or in a relationship then, so I had no other major distractions. But also, there were no expectations. No one knew who I was, no one had read my work (other than a few English teachers, of course) so I was free to create without worry. Now, with readers waiting for my next published work, there’s a little more pressure. Some people are motivated by this kind of pressure, but as a writer who never knows if her writing is any good until the first person reads the manuscript, it’s more nerve-wracking than motivating!

But perhaps these are just excuses, or self-sabotage. I mean, I could just as easily say that I just haven’t found the right routine, or the right writing chair or the perfect music. Setting crazy deadlines used to be a fantastic motivator, but once you’ve allowed a few to slip by, they lose their potency. I recently came across the method that Seinfeld uses, where you put a cross on the calendar for every day you do the thing you want to do. And the crosses then form a chain. If you don’t write for a day, you ‘break the chain’. I was planning on giving the method a go, after all I figured it couldn’t hurt, but ultimately, I just need to figure out a way to get some words down every day, to keep the story from going cold, and having to start all over again each time I sit down to write.

How do you motivate yourself? What makes you plug away on a daily basis, keeping the fire going? I don’t think there is a magic, one-size-fits-all answer, but I do find it interesting to hear different people’s ways of working. Comment below if you’d like to share yours.

Dec 30 2013

A New Vision for 2014

In less than 30 hours, the new year will have begun. I feel that 2012 was a year of destruction (of old ways, old patterns and old relationships) 2013 was a year of transformation (finding new paths and new ways of being) and 2014, in my mind, is the year of making things happen. Of creating the reality that we actually want to live in.

In order to prepare for a year of making it happen, I feel that it’s important to have a clear vision. The clearer you are about where you want to go, what you want to do and accomplish, the better the reality you will create.

So, to begin with, I have my Vision Board, which I created with my publishing partner and long-time friend – Liz Lockwood.

Creating a vision board (or diary – I did a diary for 2013, and many of the things in there came to fruition, but that’s another blog post!) is very simple. You put pictures, photos, sketches, words etc on a board. Preferably in a place where you will see it often, so as to remind yourself to keep your activities in line with you dreams and goals. My board is currently propped up on my desk. I will probably stick it on the wall next to me. Having photos of yourself on the board is important – so that you are placing yourself in that reality.

The other thing you could do is simply sketch it. You don’t need to be an artist to do this, stick figures are fine. I watched this great TED talk the other day, where a lady called Patti Drobrowolski demonstrates how to do this.

http://youtu.be/A7KRSCyLqc4

This was my attempt at sketching my desired future!

So as you can see, no artistic skills required! But it was good to clarify things, to decide what I wanted.

Tomorrow is Marketing Plan day. and I plan to figure out how to market my books, and how to structure my time more efficiently. Which means that by the time January 1st rolls around, I will have in place everything I need to make things happen in 2014.

What are you going to make happen?

Oct 30 2013

NaNoWriMo 2013

Yes, it’s that time again. In just a few days, thousands of writers all around the world will begin their novelling quest. I am a huge NaNo fan, as I know that without it, I would never have written a single book. Though my last attempt during Camp NaNo in April didn’t go so well, I have decided to talk part in this years November NaNo, in the hopes that I can get my next book written, and then publish it by January/February next year. My goal for the last three years has been to publish two novels a year. I managed it in 2011 and 2012, but this year, I am afraid that it will just be one. I will do my best to publish three next year to make up for it!

Oct 6 2013

Gallery

Tax, UFOs, grit and pink fluffy socks

This gallery contains 3 photos.

I have been lacking a little in the motivation department lately, and with my novel still unfinished, my tax return still undone (with all of the receipts scattered in various places) and a mountain of other things that I have … Continue reading →

Aug 30 2013

I’m a pantser, and very proud of it too!

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, here is the Urban Dictionary definition:

Pantser : A NaNoWriMo term that means that you ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ when you are writing your novel. You have nothing but the absolute basics planned out for your novel.

The alternative to this is the plotter. The definition:

A person who plots.
A person who plots on a regular basis.
A person who has indeed plotted before.
A person who is currently plotting.

I do not plot. When I write, I do not need to know what’s going to happen next, I do not need to develop characters or arcs or twists. In fact, it is completely detrimental to my writing to know any of these things in advance.

Which is why I am still working on my new book. I started it with a very rigid plot and structure, and it has been a case of just filling in the blanks. I understand that many writers work in this way, but I personally find it irritating, boring and incredibly difficult.

Once this book is finished, I vow to never work with a plot ever again. I will forevermore fly by the seat of my pants.

Rant over.

If you are planning on writing a novel this year, sign up to Nanowrimo.org, and get yourself a copy of the awesome ‘No Plot? No Problem!’. Just don’t read it in public, you will get funny looks.

Aug 13 2013

Why I write

I have been wondering recently why it is I write. Why I can’t choose an alternative profession, why I couldn’t have been called to do something that I could train for, then get a job in and get paid well for, all the while still helping people and making a difference.

I believe that writing, for the natural writer, is not a career choice. It’s not even a choice at all. It is a necessity, something they must do, or else what is the point to life?

As well as that, for me, writing is a way to chase away the demons of mortality. I write because my fear of death is so strong, that I need to create something that will live on past my lifetime. I write about life after death because I need to believe that it is real. I need to believe that my soul will continue even when my body is still. And when I have departed for that other realm, that alternate dimension, there will be something tangible left behind that will declare that I was here. That I lived. And that I had something to say to the world.

Writing for me is not about the money, or fame (which is a good thing, as many writers never see either) but about quelling my fears and the fears of my readers too. I write to express the worst-case scenario in my head. I write to experience things through my characters that I am curious about, but have no desire to experience in real life. I write to get my darkest fears out of my system. I write to experience the different parts of myself, in a way that’s safe. I have always seen writing as my personal form of therapy. Years ago I would not have felt comfortable spilling my thoughts and secrets to a complete stranger whilst laying on a hard couch, but I would eagerly spill my thoughts onto the diary page in an inky scrawl, that no one but myself could decipher later on. My diary understood me better than any human being on this planet. And best of all, my diary never tried to give me any advice.

So why is it that I have been so stuck recently? I have been finding it so difficult to commit words to the digital page, that I find myself procrastinating on my writing to the point of craziness (is watching that youtube video really more important than finishing my novel? No, I think not). Have I stopped writing because I no longer fear my mortality, and therefore can find an easier way to make a living? No, that’s not it. Is it because I have simply run out of things to say?

Well, anyone who knows me even a little bit will know that it’s definitely not that either.

I’m beginning to think that perhaps it is because I have been a little too happy recently. To be a writer means to be tortured, to feel things deeply, to hurt, to experience more ups and downs than a roller-coaster enthusiast, all in the name of gathering experiences and feelings so we can write about them. In the past few years, while writing my previous books, I have experienced the highest highs and lows so low, that it seemed impossible to recover from them. And all of those things are what makes my writing interesting. (I hope).

But recently, I have been on very even ground. Life has been tootling along quite nicely, quite easily, and very evenly. Which, considering my slightly weak stomach, is preferable to the steep slopes I have hurtled down in the last couple of years. But unfortunately, this wonderful, drama-free existence does not inspire me to write.

Which brings me to the conclusion that I must choose. Between being happy, or being a writer. Are those two things really mutually exclusive? Is it possible to write about the pain of heartbreak while having a whole and healthy heart?

I’d like to think so. Because quite honestly, this is not a choice I am willing to make.

In fact, I am going to choose, right now, to be happy, and to continue my writing. To have faith that this feeling of being stuck will not last, and that the words will flow again. And that I will publish my next book in September.

If you write, and you experience these moments of being stuck, please comment on how you get through them.

Jun 24 2013

Book Reviews

Book reviews. Most people see them as necessary for book sales, the more (good) reviews a book has, the more it is likely to sell. They’re also very useful to readers, they can check out the opinions of other readers before they try the book themselves. Sometimes, they are simply used as a way for people to vent, rant or abuse the author or even other readers.

But for me? They provide me with the motivation I need to write. When I get stuck with my writing, when I wonder if I should continue, all I need to do is read some of my book reviews, and it reminds me that there are people out there waiting to read my next book. Waiting to see what the characters do next. Who are cheering me on and who have supported me in my career so far.

To make the most of this, the other day I printed out some of my reviews, and stuck them on my wall.

I want to thank every one of them for inspiring me every day, and to let readers know that your review is more than just a way to give your opinion. It may mean more to the author than you think.

Which led me to realise that I have read hundreds of books in my life, but I have been very lax in writing reviews for them. So I have decided to write a review every time I read a new book, and also to begin leaving reviews for books I have read in the last few years.

After all, what if my words are the very thing the author needs to read to continue with their work?

May 3 2013

Local Author Events at the Malvern Book Co-operative

I am happy to say that I was contacted by the Malvern Book Co-operative to be a part of their local author week from the 13th to the 18th May. There will be several local novelists taking part, and I am looking forward to it!

On Tuesday the 14th, at 7.30pm, there will be a ‘Speed Pitching’ evening, where the authors will be pitching their novels in a few minutes. (Apparently like speed dating only without the embarrassing chat up lines!) Then afterwards there will be time to chat to the authors about the good bits and bad bits of writing and publishing.

Then on Thursday the 16th, between 1pm and 4pm, I will be in the shop in Malvern, doing some writing and having a cuppa, and would love it if any other writers or budding writers wanted to join me for some informal writing/chatting about writing and publishing. I would be happy to answer any questions or make any suggestions 🙂

Then on Saturday the 18th, there will be two sessions of the local novelists coming in to sign their books and chat with readers. We would love to see you there!

Please pass this on to anyone you know in the area. You can find the Malvern Book Co-operative on Facebook too.