Project Apollo

Good Morning, Wednesday

Peter Germany Writing ,

I’m just going to put up a quick post here, a quick little update about my progress this week so far.

I’ve written about 2000 words over Monday and Tuesday, last night I really wasn’t feeling the urge to write but I forced myself to start and I found that I once I was going the words flowed pretty. I think part of the reluctance to write last night was that I’m almost writing word-for-word what the original part of this story was. I keep thinking that this re-write will be very different to the original draft of Project Apollo, but as I’ve been writing this I’ve found that it’s still quite similier to that first draft. That said I was always quite happy with this particular section of the novel, so that’s probably why it’s kept as close to the original as it has done.

I’ve got a lot of thoughts I’d love to share right now, but I’ve got to get ready for work.

Have a good day everyone.

(i havent had time to proof read this, so feel free to pick out the typos 😀 )

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.

Good Afternoon Sunday

Peter Germany Football, Writing , , ,

This last week hasn’t been too bad when it comes to words written, a couple of thousand words or so at a guess (I have got the numbers somewhere, but not close to hand). I’ve dropped my rough daily word count target to 500 words a day. I think aiming for the 1000 words a day was a little too much for me. It’s all good and well doing NaNo once a year but I don’t think I’m quite ready to be doing that. 500 a day is very doable.

I’ve also felt a little more disciplined this last week while writing. I’ve been writing during my lunch breaks at work and then doing a bit more in the evenings. Writing longhand is slower for me but I’m enjoying the process a lot more this way (I am looking forward to getting this draft typed up once it’s done though).

Discipline is something I need to work on, I’m far too easily distracted (yes, mainly by the internet) but I’ve been trying to turn off a little more lately. One thing I have noticed; I get easily distracted when I’ve come to a part of the story which I get stuck with. Like today, I’ve come to a point in the story where I’m not really sure what to do next. So instead of scrolling through Facebook and Twitter I’ve decided to bore you all with this blog post 😀 But I’m also going to work on a little short story I’ve been thinking of writing. It’s one that takes place in the same universe as Project Apollo and will probably not be read by anyone other than Owen. Should be a fun story to write though 😉 

Now I’m off to watch a bit of football, and maybe get a start on this short story 🙂

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.

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.

Good Morning Friday

Peter Germany Life, Writing , ,

This last week has been fairly unproductive when it comes to writing, its just been one of those weeks where little obstacles have cropped up here and there.
I’ve had a Advance Reader Copy (ARC) of a book a friend of mine has written, it’s a really good book on writing and I’ll be writing a review of it tonight. So I’ve spent some time reading that – which I’ve enjoyed doing – and I went to the cinema on Tuesday night as well (I saw Jupiter Ascending and loved it, a really fantastic movie).
I think it was Wednesday night that I was planning on getting a good evenings work, but I didn’t leave work till about 6:30pm and I had to run an errand after work. So I didn’t manage to get home until gone 7pm. Then once I’d had a bath and dinner, and done the dishes it was pushing 9pm and I was exhausted.
Last night I finished reading the ARC and did a little writing before winding down with a movie, and tonight I’m not going to get much written as I’ll be preparing to go down to Owen’s tomorrow so we can do some work on Project Apollo. So that’ll be two days where I don’t think I’ll get many words done on my WIP.

But…

It is supposed to rain all day on Sunday here in the UK so I’m planning to spend a fair chunk of the day getting words onto paper. This story I’m working on is taking turns that I wasn’t expecting it too, especially some character development that I hadn’t seen coming. It was really exciting as I was writing that bit as the story took over and I haven’t had that happen in a long time 🙂

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.

Update 15-2-15

Peter Germany Books, Health, Writing , ,

I’ve had a week where I’ve been fighting a cold and it’s only been the last 24 hours or so that I’ve began to feel a little more like myself again.
I managed some writing this morning and was just getting into a rhythm when I got interrupted.
The rest of the day has seen me fighting a pretty aggressive headache that is only now abating.
So today feels like a bit of a dead loss to be honest. I was feeling good and motivated this morning but after about midday things jut seemed to descend and they never really picked back up again.
I was planning to do some ARC reading today, along with some work on Project Apollo and maybe a couple of blog posts too. If I was really on a role I would have done a little comic book reading too.

The only good things that I’m taking from today are what I wrote this morning, I think it’s pretty good, and I started reading Scott Sigler’s Pandemic. This is the first chunky book I’m diving into this year and I’m itching to get into it and see how Sigler wraps this trilogy up.

I know I’ve been really slack this month. I’m going to change that this week and work on upping my word counts for each day. I’ve not got a set target in mind but I’m going to try and do more words then the previous day

Good Morning Wednesday

Peter Germany Books, Editing, Outlining, Planning, Writing , ,

Good morning all. I’m just sending out a little update and looking at what I want to do during this week. It’s only a quickie post so expect typos 😛

I am still feeling a little disillusioned with what I’ve gotten for Earth, After Liberation but not as much as I had been. I’m beginning to question my process a little as well. On Monday I started re-writing the story that used be to be called Avoiding The Game on pen and paper.
This is kind of me rebelling against myself a little, that disillusionment I spoke of is behind it I think because I really am not happy with what I’ve done with Earth, After Liberation. And now with the few pages that I’ve written by hand it’s made me really wonder if I’m using the best process to write for me. I used to write most of my first drafts by hand but in the last couple of years I’ve been doing it all on a computer and I’m wandering if I’m missing something because what I’ve written by hand this week has a different feel to it, and is – in my opinion – some of the best writing I’ve done in some time. I’m going to see how it goes over the next few weeks before making any grand declarations to change my process. I’ve had moments when it feels like I’ve found the golden goose and it rarely ends up helping as much as I think it will.

I’m going to continue writing by hand but in the evenings, when I have most of my writing time, I’m going to continue reading through Earth, After Liberation. That is still my priority, to get it red-penned, but I’m going to be working on the Avoiding The Game re-write as and when I can.

That’s my plan for this week, and the foreseeable future.

Oh, before I forget. Owen and I did have a chat on the phone on Monday and we made a little process but not much. We did have a rough date set to start the re-write but we’ve taken that away. Once we’ve got more of the outline and world building done then we’ll look at when we can start writing.