NaNoWrMo

Rising From A Slump

Peter Germany Convention, Editing, Horror, Insperation, Life, Writing , , ,

Well, I’ve had a relatively productive week. I’ve managed to hit a thousand words a day this week, except for Thursday that is, and over the last couple of days I’ve felt like I’m getting back into the mindset I had at the start of the year. Writing is still quite difficult and isn’t feeling as natural as it has done, but the urge to write is stronger now than it has been for the last four or five months or so. I’m also feeling the creative juices beginning to flow again. While at work yesterday I was actually having ideas and having to scribble them down quickly in my notepad. That’s something that hasn’t happened like that in quite some time. I’ve had the odd idea but yesterday I was having ideas that sparked further thoughts which resulted in more notes being taken. What I think helped was that I sat in Costa for fifteen minutes before work and forced myself to work on some character details for a project I’m looking at working on next year.

Most of this week has been working on typing up my handwritten draft of The Space Watch, last night I finished that and have sent it off to Owen for his thoughts on it. I’ve stuck quite well to our outlines but I have deviated and added a POV which we hadn’t discussed but that I think adds a layer to the story and also fills in what I think would have been holes to the plot once the first draft was done. I’ve also changed the gender of an antagonist (it just kinda happened and has worked out well), and added a fair bit of minor world building details that we haven’t discussed but came out during the writing process. At the moment its at 14k words, and if I remember right we were looking at either a 30k or 50k target. I honestly can’t remember which, but I’m not sure how long it’s going to wrap up at. I’m thinking we’re about a third of the way through. My gut is saying 30k but we’ll have to wait and see how it goes as we work on it, which will probably be after NaNoWriMo.

With what I’ve gotten done of The Space Watch with Owen I’m going to focus on getting last years NaNoWriMo piece wrapped up. I’ve got a long way to go on it, but as it’s part editing and part adding a whole new character and his POV I’m hoping I can get a good pace going and be nearly done by the time NaNo starts.

Speaking of NaNo, I know what I’m doing this year. I’m going to type up a piece I wrote earlier in the year. I know that’s kind of cheating but I’d like to get it done and have a digital draft completed by the end of the year, and I think I’ll be able to get it done during NaNo. Next year I’m going to plan things out better, as I’m writing this I think I’ve just decided what to do for next years NaNo.

I can’t really remember the last time where I’ve had such a long period where writing has been as difficult as it has been this year. I think I know one of the reasons why it has been, and I’ve moved to sort that out, but I need to learn how to make sure I’m writing regardless of what’s going on around me. I know I can do it, and I’m much happier in myself when I am being productive. I just need to keep getting the work done. I’m not ignoring the buzz I got from Bristol Horror Con last weekend either. Meeting Cat and Lynx Raven for the first time after building up a great rapport with them online was a serious highlight of the year for me. But I also met some other fantastic people and just the feel of the event and the energy that was there was so infectious and has really rammed home a few things to me.

Just A Couple Of Quick Bits

Peter Germany Books, Editing, Sci-Fi, Writing , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hey guys I just wanted to give a couple of shout outs and mentions.

 

Firstly is J.R. Murdock. I listened to a story he wrote about intergalactic haulage called V&A Shipping. This is one of the random podcasts that I have downloaded from podiobooks.com via iTunes which was a random download. I had not heard of it or Mr. Murdock but the story got me from the first line and kept me listening keenly until the end of the story. It did also tug at my heartstrings which I think is always a good sign. It’s a good sci-fi setting and the story itself is engaging. Well worth a listen. Here is the authors website (best web address ever by the way).

http://ofgnomesanddwarves.com/

 

One quick other shout out is one that I have done before but it has been a while since they have had a mention and they are the good people over at Adventures In Sci-Fi Publishing.

http://www.adventuresinscifipublishing.com/

Their website still looks amazing and is full of great content. Even if you do not write science fiction this podcast is a great listen and the website is great, I really need to get there more often than I do.

 

With my WIP, it is progressing slowly as I am expanding on some of the pieces that I have written. Next time I do NaNoWriMo hopefully I’ll be able to put this detail in when I write the first draft. It is getting there though 🙂

Still Learning

Peter Germany Insperation, Random Thoughts, Short Fiction, Writing , , ,

I’ve been writing for a good, eight years now but it has only been in the last three years that I feel like I’ve grown as a writer. In particular the last two years and in the last year it has really hit me just how much I want the world to see what I write. Not because I want lots of people to tell me how great it is and then I may have lots of money (be nice though) but because these stories are fighting their way out of me any way that they can. Who am I to fight them? Who am I to say “nope you ain’t coming out.” What I need to do is get more self discipline, plan what I am writing a little better and have an overall game plan for my writing over the next couple of years. I briefly mentioned a rough plan in another post but I need to fine tune it. I also need to learn how to plot out a story. I consider myself a discovery writer but I find myself so often hitting roadblocks when I just start writing with little or no ending in mind. Sometimes I can pull this off, mainly in short stories but in longer fiction I crash and burn.

With Project Delphi I have a very good outline, although it has had a number of changes since Owen’s original concept for the story but hopefully the story is better for it now. I also have a very good outline of what will be my NaNoWriMo project this year. It’s a story that me and Owen have been playing with for a couple of years but we’ve never really been able to get it right but now I have a fairly decent idea of where to take the story, although I’m not sure how and where to end it at the moment. It is going to be a lot of fun starting this one with almost a clean slate. The story is generally planned out in my head (except how to end it) and I’m looking forward to getting my teeth stuck into it.

Every time that I sit down to write I seem to learn something new about my own skills. I used to think I was awful with dialogue but a lot of Project Delphi’s dialogue has been almost effortless (this is where our beta readers tear the dialogue apart lol) and I think that I have learnt a lot about developing characters in the last couple of years and with Delphi in particular there are little (and major) character traits that I have altered and spoken to with Owen about. This may sound daft but I always knew characters had to have certain driving forces etc. but now I seem to be so much more aware of these forces.

When we exercise we make our bodies stronger, the more writing we do we exercise our minds and that makes our creativity so much stronger for it.