No writing today, long shift at the day job. I’ve got another one tomorrow as well, so not a lot go writing this weekend.
I have had some amazing feedback on my story that is in the K is for Kidnap anthology from another one of the contributors which has made my day! I had a lot of anxiety about this story. I didn’t think it was good enough, which is a testament to the old saying ‘never judge your own work’. That feels so apt at the moment. I’ve got to get over my anxieties about my own work.
Right, I’m wiped out. So I’m going to finish this episode of Sex Education and then get my head down. After a little reading maybe.
I will pimp out my Buy Me A Coffee page quickly. If you like what you read here, or have read and enjoyed my fiction and would like to chip in for editing, cover art, website hosting fees. Then I will be very grateful. I understand times are tough, folks. I do. But anything I’m grateful for.
Wednesday really did open my eyes up to a lot of myself. One of which was writing my thoughts down. This is something I’ve known I’ve wanted to do for a long time but I’ve never been able to do it. I’m not really sure why but I think it might be a combination of the new medication I’m on, I’m having a little therapy, and it feels like something broke or changed in me on Wednesday.
Realising just how much fear and anxiety have ruled my life has been devastating in one degree, but freeing in another.
Fear was something we touched on in therapy on Monday, and I’m glad we did. The therapist recommended a book about fear that I listened to a big chunk of on the journey to and from the coast on Wednesday. And I think where it was something that we’d spoken about on the Monday I had realised that I was scared of everything and the therapist talked to me about it. Then going down the coast on Wednesday pushed open the door that was unlocked on Monday.
I’m finding this book really helpful.
I think about the excuses I used to make. For not going to the beach it’ll be things like I don’t like getting my feet sandy, or wet, or both. Or getting sand in my car (I was a var cleaner for almost 20 years, sand is a nightmare to get out of a cars carpets), but that doesn’t matter. It’s just sand. It was fear defeating me.
Even simple things like sitting in my garden to write or read. I wouldn’t do it, it would rarely even enter my head. The last couple of mornings I’ve made a cuppa tea and then gone out and had my tea while writing my thoughts done as the dog is running around doing his business.
This morning I was sitting there in shorts, t shirt, a hoodie and my sandals. I had Max jump up on the seat next to me as I wrote. It was chilly this morning. We’re moving into autumn here in the UK (almost halloween season!!!!!), so the weather is cooling and after a while I did retreat into the house. I am going to keep going out there till the weather is too brisk for my taste.
One of the fears I’ve had the last few days is that I wouldn’t be able to sit and writer as freely inside as I have been outside, but I managed to do it okay today. I’m not sure I can write like that when I’ve got loved ones around me, simply because of the distraction but I’ll give it a go at some point.
Why not sit out in the garden when I can?
My fear seems to be focused on failure or disaster. If I drive somewhere I could be in a crash. But that could happen driving to work. It doesn’t stop me doing that. Yes, I could crash but the odds are massive of that happening.
As for failure. Well, it’s a case ‘well what happens if my book doesn’t do well?’ that’s something I can’t control. The best thing I can do it write the next story. If I play online and join a group doing a team mission and I screw up, what’s it matter? It’s not the end of the world. Learn the lessons from it and try again.
I only fail when I don’t try. When fear stops me. I’ve lived in a state of fear my whole life.
I’m not doing it anymore.
My eyes are open, I’m realising what I can do to move forward and over come this fear.
I’m going to do what scares me. I’m not fearing the anxiety I used to.
Well, I think I did have the productive day I was aiming for.
I got up at a decent time, made tea and sat in the chilly morning air in the garden wand wrote some more thoughts down. I’ll put those in another post. After the tea and morning thoughts I ran into town for a few bits for my folks. I finally got Max a couple more balls for him to chase around the garden.
It’s nice working with Max with me. Normally as I write upstairs it’s the cats hanging out.
I got some writing administration work done, then I got stuck into some words. A nice 710 was written on a short story. Then I gamed, took Max for a walk, read, then gamed, dinner, washing up, and now I’m watching a movie and writing this post.
I don’t normally break my days down like this, and looking back it doesn’t feel like I’ve done a lot today but that’s because I only wrote 710 words. I keep reminding myself its not just about words. It’s about progression of the story, and I progressed the story today.
I’ve got plans tomorrow afternoon, but in the morning I’m going to try and get some words wrangled again. I was planning on getting a lot of writing done this week, but I’ve spent the week working on myself. It’s been freeing this week, and I need to keep that forward progression of myself as well as my fiction going as well.
I’ve written 1501 words today. All recent wordage has been on the mermaid story. I’m not sure how much I’ve said about this story, but essentially it was a short story I wrote years ago but always felt like there was more to tell. This is what I’m doing now. I’ve already built on it and done lots of brainstorming and I am now almost past the point where the original short story ended. I’m excited by this as now I’m very close to writing a whole new part of this story that only exists in my head and in a few notes.
So it’s quite exciting at the moment.
Right, I’m off to settle for the night. Got what could be a busy day tomorrow so I’m gonna try and get an early night.
I finished this fine novel last night and wasn’t disappointed with the ending ☺️
My plans changed for the day which meant I had the day. So I wrote this morning, hitting 1065 words. At one point I was going to be happy with 300 words. That’s the target I set myself because I really didn’t sleep well, but when I checked to see if I was at least close to the 300 words I was over 700 and figured I might as well just keep going for four digits.
After that I did some non-writing bits and pieces. I had a couple of phone calls that I was able to see to today. I was going to do them and the other bits tomorrow but as I had today I managed to get them ticked off.
Then it was a red-pen out loud read edit. I’m liking this story, called Sweet Danny, and I’ve got a good feeling for it. I hope it works. One person has read it and they liked it, I really hope the icky factor works for it!
Because of the fatigue from a couple of long shift at work and an ongoing issue with sleep, today could have been a washout but I’m glad I worked to make sure it wasn’t. When it comes to sleep, I’ve always had a lot of problems with getting enough sleep. It is something I’m working on (just realised my TV stand is at an angle (yes, welcome to how easily distracted I am)), but haven’t got it close to being figured out yet. I honestly think it’s going to be something that will be part of my life and will go up and down depending on what’s happening around me.
Not too zombified this morning!
A positive is I’m slowly picking up reading again. I am determined to finish Six Wakes by Our Lafferty this month. I’ve been reading this book since last year, and I’m enjoying it but with all the ups and downs of the last eighteen months I’ve really struggled to just sit down and read. It feels really good to be getting into the habit of reading again.
I have work in a couple of hours so want to get on with some writing. I slept badly so I’m feeling wiped out already, but I’ll be okay once I get up and running and I’ve got tomorrow off, so it’s not too bad.
Time is something I don’t have a lot of here so this is gonna be a short post. If I can hit 500 words today, I’m a happy word wrangler!
The Gaunt’s Ghosts books are being made into audiobooks and this is the first. Arguably my favourite book series that I’ve been wanting to reread for some time 🙂
I was going to write an end of day post on Friday(15th) but I was working on a post for my Buy Me A Coffee page and accidentally wiped out two hours work on it! Yes, I almost cried. So I gave up for the night.
Aside from that, I had a productive day. I wrote 1176 on a new short story in my Penal Earth universe, and edited 3204 words on Black Blood.
I’m still some way off finishing this edit on Black Blood. It’s not like an epic mess, but there’s a lot of work to do on it to get it where I need it to be. The ending is still eluding me. I kinda know what I want it to be, but I think I’ve got to map it out better. Figure out the beats of it and make the pay off worth it.
I had Dizzy’s company for all of two minutes this morning!
The A4 pad I’m using has pages of notes I’ve got to put in and I’ve got a lot of details to put into the character profiles as well. I made notes for Penal Earth in the middle of last year, but I’m not sure where they are. So I’m going to need to have a search for them.
Horror Drabble Anthologies from Kevin J. Kennedy that I won in an online event ☺️
Today, is going to be productive. I’ve got today and tomorrow off and I want to make a good use of that time. I’ve a personal matter to spend time on tomorrow so I expect I’ve get more done today. I’ve had a good nights sleep, I’m in an exceptionally good place in life, aside from that one part that I don’t talk about.
Good evening, all. One very tired human being here. Work was good, had a good laugh, and a work out. Since coming off leave at the start of the week I’ve not really had a shop floor shift (I’m a retail worker), and today made me realise that maybe I relaxed a little too much during my time off!
Words wise, as I overlaid I didn’t get as much written as I should have done, only 480 words, but I went in a direction that I wasn’t expecting. It’s also made me realise I’ve been playing it safe a little too much. Time to get brutal and bloody! Mwahahahahahaha!
I write this blog for myself. When I started out blogging I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Over the years it’s evolved into what this is now. I share word counts not to brag, not to get one over over writers. I do it because it reminds me that some days I can’t get words out, while other days I can knock out 2k easy.
If you read this and think or see other people talking about their word counts, don’t get put off if you aren’t getting the numbers that other people do. Especially during NaNoWriMo it can be off putting seeing so many hitting big counts, but as long as you’re getting words down it doesn’t matter. A hundred words a day, you’ll have a story completed before you know it!
Just write and edit at the pace you’re comfortable with.
My next published piece was in Corona-Nation Street. My story ‘The Wank Diaries’ has an interesting journey. I wrote it with the intention of submitted it to this anthology but I wrote it and wasn’t happy with how it came out. So I dropped it. This was when I wasn’t in the best of places. Then I had a big change in my life and I was lower than I’d ever been in my life. I wasn’t writing, but I saw Burdizzo Books MC Matthew Cash putting a post online reminding people of the deadline, so I looked at it again. Scrapping the ending immediately. What I then wrote I could never have predicted and wasn’t quite sure I was capable of writing. So much of the despair I was feeling came out in the ending of this story. Brian Keene calls it ‘Bleeding on the page’ and I definitely bled on the page here. I’m very proud of this story. It gave me something to focus on and get writing again.
Wow, halfway through the month already. I’ve had a chill out day today, which I need to stop doing. I need to get up on a day off, have breakfast, get dressed, get writing. Simple as that. No thinking I’ll watch an episode of this or that (today it was The Queen’s Gambit, which was lethal as I’ve all but watched it now). I still got 2317 today, but I could have got 3000 words done, if not 3500. I know I have the ability to do that when I’ve got a day off and I should be doing it. For the speed I can write at and the time I have, it is easily doable.
I was on a Facebook live event tonight with the Mando Method Podcast folks. It was a lot of fun and in the hour before it I managed to crack out about a 1300 words to add to the 1000 or so I’d already written throughout the course of the day. We talked about NaNoWriMo at the halfway point and how we were all progressing. We touched a few other topics as well. It was a lot of fun, its been a while since I laughed that hard. It was really good to talk to these folks in real time as well. Armand Rosamilia and Chuck Buda have been very supportive to myself and many other writers. Please give it a watch 😊
Grumpy cat stare!
I’ve got one more days leave before getting back to my normal working week, so writing time will be cut down. But I can still get all the words done I need to, and more. I’m going to set myself a target of an hour at my desk a day. That’s head down and writing/editing. I’m not going to set word count goals at the moment, I want to get in the habit of spending that hour a day at the desk. My biggest enemy is myself and in particular my lack of discipline. That is something I need to overcome.
Under The Weather is the third book I’ve been published in. With my story, The Snow, I knew roughly what I wanted to do with it but it took a few little twists and turns along the way, but it was never a difficult write. One major element did change in the story which changed the entire theme of the tale. I still think it works, and it’s one that I’m really happy with.
Well folks, that’s me wrapping it for the night. I’m gonna watch a bit of tv and then read a little before bed. I’m aiming for an early start tomorrow.
Peter Germany's World 