Avoiding The Game

Getting Out Of This Rut

Peter Germany Life, Writing , , , ,

I’m almost raring to go this morning. I’ve got a few bits and pieces to do out in the garden this morning and I’d like to watch a little football this afternoon but I really want to get some words down. I feel like I’m coming out of this rut but it’s been more of a slow process than just flicking a switch.

I REALLY need to get myself out of this rut, it’s begining to drive me crazy and the longer I’m in it the harder it’s going to be to get myself out of it. I keep thinking I’m almost out of it but then I hit a little roadblock and that’s it, I loose my rythm and that knocks me off the horse for a few days.

So, this week I’m going to make a concetrated effort to get words written. I’ve got both the AVG and Project Apollo rewrites to work on, so if I get stuck on one of those I can switch over to the next one. I’ve also got planning work for The Residents to do, as well as a couple of blog posts that I want to write as well. And I’ve got Beta Reader’s notes to read through on my Vampire series.

I’ve got enough to do, and I know this rut isn’t the dreaded writers block (which I don’t think is something that I’m gonna suffer from) I think it’s a mental barrier that I’ve built up after Earth, After Liberation crashed and burned. I had a rough outline of three books and I was all set on getting them written this year and hopfully start getting them published. That was my plan for the start of the year, and now its all out of the window.

I don’t know if this is something that other writers experience, but I’ve got to get out of this rut and start building my confidence up again, and today’s the day I’m going to start.

A Little Hit and Miss

Peter Germany Writing , ,

This is just going to be a short post. I’ve had a quiet week, well month to be honest, with writing. I’ve eased off the AVG rewrite simply because I’m not sure about the pacing of A revelation for the characters that I’m at and I want to think it through A little before continuing.

I have attempted to write a really short little story in mine and Owen’s Project Apollo universe, but that really didn’t go well, so I stopped that and am currently making an attempt to get Project Apollo started again. It’s early stages yet, but its feeling both good and bad. I’ve got the first chapter done, which has come up shorter then I thought it would but I’ll be typing it up tomorrow and getting it of to Owen for his additions.

I’ve got a bit of a busy day tomorrow, but I’m hoping to be able to get a bit of writing done. I still feel like I’m in this slump that Earth, After Liberation has left me in, but I’m seeing a few signs that I’m coming out of it.

This Chapter Is Kicking My…….

Peter Germany Editing, Writing ,

Okay, my second attempt at getting this chapter done has not worked out. I’m okay with the quality of the writing but not the content. This chapter is going to be one of the most important parts of the novel, and will hopefully be very emotional. But it’s not working out how I want it to. I think I’m still a little too fond of the way I originally executed this part of the story but that won’t really work with how this re-write is working out.

I have got an idea of how I want to work this out now, but I’m still not sure how happy I’ll be with it. It’s kind of a combination of the two ways that I’ve attempted to write it so far. This will be the final attempt at writing it and whatever I write will stay wheher I like it or not until I start on the typing up of this story. I don’t want to get stuck just re-writing this one chapter because I’ll be here forever otherwise.

A Quick Update

Peter Germany Editing, Writing , , ,

Evening all, I just wanted to post a very quick update here. I managed just over 1200 words tonight. This is the first time I’ve written properly for a few days and I’m still not overly happy with how chapter four is taking shape, but I’m happier with this version than I was with the last attempt. I’m going to run with it for the moment and see how it feels when I start typing it up.

That’s all there is to say really. Work is still being done on Project Apollo and The Residents, but the Avoiding The Game re-write is what my main focus is on. I am planning on spending some time in the next week or two on both Project Apollo and The Residents, respectively. I’ve got a few notes I need to scribble down and a few ideas I want to think through for both projects.

I will wrap this up by giving a quick word count update: For the year I’m now on 31000 words. That’s not anywhere near where I was planing to be but I think it’s still pretty good.

Tuesday, 3rd of March

Peter Germany Editing, Novella, TV, Writing , ,

In three sittings I’ve managed to knock out 1200 words today, all in longhand. I’m well chuffed by this. It feels like I’m slowly getting back into a groove a little bit, even if writing with a pen is killing my hand.

This rewrite of Avoiding The Game is coming along well and I think it is taking shape well. Last week I was a little worried about how the middle of the novella would work out but I think I’ve found where I want it to go now. I am a little torn about when I should start typing it up though. Part of me wants to wait until I’ve got a complete draft but another side of me says to start typing it up now, just in case something happens to the paper draft. If I start typing it up though I’ll start editing it and I’m not sure I want to start looking at it with a critical eye until I have a completed draft. I think I’m more inclined to hold off until the draft is done, that feels like the right thing to do and I’m trying to follow my gut instinct a little better at the moment.

That is me done for the night now though, I’m going to dive back into Game Of Thrones series four 🙂

Looking Back at February

Peter Germany Editing, Health, Planning, Writing , , ,

I think February 2015 will be a month that I look back on with disappointment. I wrote just over 5000 words this month, which isn’t good, when I look back at my targets for the start of the year it’s not even close to where I wanted to be. I’d had plans of having three books written, edited and put up for sale either this year or early next year. But with how Earth, After Liberation crashed and burned that’s not going to happen now. That hit also knocked me hard, it’s not been until this last week that I’ve realised how much of a blow its been to my confidence. I was talking to Owen about it last night and he commented that as I was talking I was shrinking in on myself.

The head cold that I’ve had for the last two, three weeks hasn’t helped either. Writing with a fuzzy head is not very easy.

Owen and I did make some good progress last night with Project Apollo. One of the major sticking points was resolved, which I’m really happy about because it was a key detail in the story. I’m still not sure when we’ll make a start on the re-write but it’s feeling closer now than it was.

The AVG re-write is one of the few elements of February that I’m happy with. It’s progressing well and I’m still enjoying the act of hand writing the story and not typing it up.

That was my February, I hope yours was much better and heres to a more productive March.

Fighting Back From Disillusionment

Peter Germany Books, Writing , , , ,

Today I’ve felt more like myself than I have done for the last couple of weeks. Ideas have been popping around in my head all day and its the first time in quite some time that those ideas have been coming to me while I’ve been at work. Aside from when I’ve actually been writing I’ve not really been feeling creative.

I think part of this lack of new ideas has been to do with the disillusionment that I’ve been feeling due to how the Earth, After Liberation re-write just fell apart. I’m also thinking that I got myself a little burnt out. I’ve done a lot of writing since November and I’m wondering if I should have had a few days for a break between wrapping up the sequel to Earth, After Liberation and then working on the re-write for Earth, After Liberation.
I found a lot more plot holes with it then I was expecting to and how I was planning to set the stories up will not work out how I thought they would. I think I need to work out how some of the details of the plot will work out before I look to it again.
One of the problems I’ve had with Earth, After Liberation was that it was feeling very robotic as I was writing it. This was just part of the disillusionment that I mentioned earlier in the post. I was really sick and frustrated with what I was writing and felt like I’d lost the ability to write a story that had a structure as well as depth of story, character and the universe it’s set in. It also felt like it had no soul to it.
This was a really low place I found myself in and I didn’t really know where I wanted to go with writing. At the end of last year it seemed like I had a lot of words to write this year but I found I couldn’t find anything that I wanted to write. Owen and I aren’t ready to start the re-write of Project Apollo. Nor are Chrystalyn and I ready to start on The Residents.
Knowing I had these two books to work on in the next year was worrying me as well because I feared that I wouldn’t have the ability to do either story justice.
Finally I decided I needed to go back to basics and picked up a pen and paper and started re-writing Avoiding The Game. This is the first story I wrote for NaNoWriMo back in 2010 and it’s one that I tried to re-write a couple of years ago but I never managed to get a good feel for it. That time I was writing straight into a computer and this time I’m doing it by hand, and it’s feeling so much more natural than it has been when I’ve been typing my recent drafts.

Writing longhand has felt so freeing on a level that I have not felt in a long time. I don’t feel constricted like I was, the words are flowing a lot more naturally and my characters are talking to me again.
It is a slower process but if it means that my first draft is so much better than recent efforts then it is very much worth it, and hopefully when I came to type it up I’ll be able to make the changes as I type it up.

And,

Writing is actually fun again.

Good Morning, Tuesday

Peter Germany Writing , ,

Here is just a very quick post to give an update of what I’ve up to at the moment, so expect typos. I’m handwriting a re-write of Avoiding The Game at the moment, and I’ve not done as much of that as I would like (less then 2000 words this month so far).
I have been far too slack this month with writing. We’ve been very busy at work but this week looks like it might be a little more like a normal week. I’ve also been disillusioned with my own writing lately. It’s not felt good enough, overall and I’m trying to focus on the craft of writing and ignore everything about the publishing side of writing. I think that’s been far too much of a distraction for me recently, which is why I’m trying to ignore it at the moment.
Another thing that I think has added a lot of pressure to what I’m writing recently has been that it’s all been in 1st person narrative. Now that I’m writing in 3rd person again it feels like I was sabotaging myself a little by doing this.

So far I am happy (kind of) with how this rewrite is going. Some of it is really good and I’ve got a good idea of where the story is going to end but I’m not so sure how the middle of the story is going, but I’m looking to finding out where it does go.

Looking Back at January

Peter Germany Editing, Short Fiction, Writing , , , ,

I think this January just gone is going to be one that I have mixed emotions about. Before adding in the hand written words I’ve done this last week I’ve written about 17,000 words this month. All of those on Earth, After Liberation. A story that as I wrote more and more of it I felt that it was getting worse with each word. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve stuck it in a draw for a few months before going back to it. I’ve tired to start red-penning it but I was just getting more and more disillusioned with it as I went and that tells me that it’s not anywhere near good enough. I think it’s lost its identity and I think some of that may have been the way I was writing it. At times it felt very robotic and I don’t know if that was because I’m trying to stick to an outline top closely or that it’s where I’m typing it as opposed to writing it with a pen and paper; I simply don’t know. It doesn’t feel like the same story that I began writing how ever long ago it was. Where I’m writing on the Avoiding The Game re-write with a pen and paper, and without an outline aside from the original draft I wrote, it’s coming out quite well even if it is a bit more of a slower process.

Something that has been a bit too much of a distraction this month has been me thinking about how many things I want to get published this year. I think that has taken too much of my attention away from the actual craft of writing and at this stage in my writing I need to be focusing on the writing and not all the other bits and pieces about self-publishing or submitting to magazines. If I can get the writing quality as good as I’m able to and the stories right, then I can look more at the publishing side of things.

I mentioned submitting to magazines in the last paragraph and I have still only made one submission, which I need to change this year. I’ve got a short story that is almost there. I’ve got some grammar edits to make before sending it off to a couple more Beta’s before I do submit it. I have high hopes for this one as I think it’s quite a good little story 🙂

So despite it feeling like January has been a bit of a let down for me I’m looking at the positives and learning the lessons. The main one is that just having an outline doesn’t mean it’ll be a piece of cake to get a good draft done.

Putting A WIP in the Draw

Peter Germany Editing, Writing ,

Okay, enough is enough. I’m really not happy with what I’ve done with Earth, After Liberation. The tone of the story is not what I want it to be, the story itself feels like it’s all over the place but most of all it feels like I haven’t found the soul of the story. The writing is not good enough either. I’m also not happy with writing this in first person, either. It’s beginning to feel very restrictive.
I’m going to put it away for six months before looking at it again.

I’m going to continue working on the Avoiding the Game re-write, which I’m finding a lot of fun. More on that in another post though.