Writing has been okay this week, this is the first day of the month that I haven’t written. I’m very close to 4500 words for the month so far, which I’m super happy with. I’m aiming to keep this momentum going.
I’m going to try and achieve this by seeing to it I write a little bit each day. I remember Paul E. Cooley saying that’s daily target was (not sure if it still is) 250 words a day. This is because writing 250 words is relatively easy. Even if I’m not in the mood, I can get the words out. Even if I hate them and rework them the next day, it’s still words written. But what if those 250 words are passed and you’re at 1000 before you realise it? I don’t know about other writers, but there have been days where I was only going to write the 250 words, but I’ve got into a flow and I’ve knock out 1000 plus words before I know what’s going on.
So the hope is I’ll do more of the later than the former.
This last ten days or so I’ve had a non-writing, non-family or work issue that’s been on my plate. It’s resolved now but I hate how it knocks me off my pace. I feel like I’ve got to re-orientate myself with War Child and get back on track with it.
Maybe I need to try something like setting a timer for half an hour for example and just look at the project I’m working on. Even if I don’t get anywhere it’s still installing that world into my head a little which can open up ideas.
Okay, I feel like I’m gonna go off into a ramble in a minute so I’m gonna wrap up. Tomorrow is gonna be a ‘get shit done’ day.
I’ve had a good weekend with family. But I did manage to get a little writing down first thing yesterday and a little tonight. About 4500 words edited in about an hour or so altogether.
It’s been a good start to the writing month, I’m nearing 8000 words edited with around 500 new words down. Most of those are on a non-fiction piece.
I did also, finally, find a way to get my iMac up and running. It’s been out of acton for a while. What happened was the screen just up and stopped working. Well, it was like someone turned off the screen’s light. You hold a torch to it, you could still see the display. Now, I did do a little googling at the time, and here and there I’d look into it. Although I didn’t go into Apple and speak to someone I did speak to a couple of computer repair shops and they were quite clear in that it just wasn’t cost effective to repair it. The annoying thing was, it would work for a bit and then nothing for months. Eventually I just stored it, having given up on it.
Then, a few weeks ago I got thinking about it again, like could I just not connect it to another screen? Well, back to the googling, and yes. I was searching for the problem previously. This time I was searching for the solution, can I connect my iMac to another screen? After a little digging, all I needed was a thunderbolt connector plugged into a HDMI adaptor. I plugged it into my tv and boom! it worked! I planned to connect it to my old tv which had lost its sound, but the tv had completely died. So I hopped online and ordered a monitor and I’m up and running. The annoying thing is, the damn iMac screen is working perfectly well, at the moment………
Until it does, I’ll run it as a multiscreen set up. It’s strange, a lot of the changes I’ve been making the last couple of years all seem to be coming together. I’ve got better concentration, I’m more at peace in myself. I don’t have so much of the self-hatred running around my head like I used to. It feels good.
Right, I’m off to watch a bit of Orange Is The New Black. Have a good one, folks.
January wasn’t a bad month, I wrote 5448 words, and edited 51758 words.
I realised I needed a lot more background work on War Child before I can move forward with it. So I decided to go back to Black Blood while I start building what I need to progress on War Child. Because I’ve had a somewhat busy and interesting month I’ve not done as much on War Child, or writing work in general, as I’d have liked. But it’s not been disappointing though, it’s given me time to let War Child simmer nicely, let ideas grow naturally. I think that element has been very helpful in that I haven’t just rushed through it and made a pigs ear out of it all.
The edit on Black Blood is not overly taxing. For the most part it is just going through and taking out any little spelling and grammar errors. This will be my final pass on Black Blood before it’s shelved until I have the money to get it edited. It’s behind Penal Earth in that queue.
Not quite what I was hoping for, but still enjoyed it.
On a personal note, I had some good news which came near the end of the month. I broke out of my fear-built cocoon and got away for a couple of days, I’ll have a post about that soon. I feel like I’ve had some good mental and emotional growth, and have made some interesting self-realised revelations about myself. Which, honestly, I’m still working on figuring out.
I had an off day from writing yesterday. Aside from a couple of notes I made for War Child I didn’t get any writing work done.
Tonight I’ve done a little work on Black Blood and earlier in the day I managed to get some work done on War Child. I’ve really bitten off a lot with War Child, but it’s a weird feeling I’ve got at the moment because I feel like I can pull it off. I’ve never really had much confidence in any aspect, so it’s strange for me to be sitting here feeling like this. Like I can do this. It’s kinda scary.
But, it needs that work done. I was thinking I’d smash that draft out and boom, get cracking with book two. But no, it’s going to take a lot of planning. This isn’t like what I’ve worked on before, there’s a lot of moving parts.
Crap, that’s the time. I need to wrap this up and get settled in for the night.
So, here we are, 2023. I feel like the last few times I’ve tried getting goals scribbled down I end up loosing track of where I am on them. This time I’m hoping to be able to stick to them much better. I feel more focused, more capable at the moment and like I can actually follow through with these plans.
1 – Publish my zombie novella
2 – Publish one vampire era story to my ko-fi a month (this covers me till august)
3 – Continue writing War Child (2022’s NaNoWriMo project)
4 – Find publishers to submit Penal Earth to
5 – Complete Black Blood (just need to do the final edit)
6 – Continue planning for Penal Earth 2
7 – Spend no less than half an hour a day, for at least twenty-five days of the month working on writing projects
8 – Blog on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays
9 – Continue serial killer story
10 – Find anthologies to submit to
This feels like a big list, like there’s a lot I’ve lined up for myself. I do feel like I can do it though, I don’t feel like I’m fooling myself with what I want to achieve in this calendar year. A lot does rest on me continuing working on my life in general. I’m going to try and map out some personal growth goals as well, but I’m not sure where I want to start with that one.
Howdy, folks! How are we all doing? Are people having a good festive period? Mine has been pretty darn good, but it’s back to work tomorrow. Which I am looking forward to, I enjoy my day job a lot and I like the routine (if shift-work has such a thing), and as most of my shifts are early’s I tend to have the rest of the day to get stuck into what I need to.
In the week before Christmas I had very little time to focus on writing, but I did manage to squeeze writing time in. This years NaNo project is still in process and I didn’t want to go too many days without working on it. I’ve had seven days this month where I haven’t done any writing at all, and likely a few days where I haven’t worked on NaNo ’22, but I’ve not let too many days in a row where I’ve not worked on it. Something I’ve talked about a lot on here is momentum, and I think it’s something that’s very important. I’ve lost momentum before and it’s very hard to get it back. I’m worried it’s going to happen again, so I’m hoping I’ve done enough so far with this story to stop me from hitting a roadblock that stops me dead like has happened in the past.
I don’t want this year to end with a bang, and I definitely don’t want it to end with a whimper. I want it to end with a nice steady pace, similar to where I am at the moment which rolls right into 2023 and continues.
I haven’t spoken much about my mental health publicly of late, that’s simply because I’m feeling better than I have done in a long time. Okay, then I’ve ever felt. Yes, there’s a long way to go. There are still things which really eat away at me, and as I kinda tick one thing off another three crop up. But I’m working on it all. I have less bad days now then I used to and the good ones are more frequent. I don’t believe it’s one or the other. I think some days are a mix of both, while others are neither. Those are the days I have most of, but even those days tend to be more towards the positive side of life.
The biggest lesson I feel I’ve learnt of late is to get a decent amount of sleep. Life is a lot more settled when I’m more rested.
We all have that one co-worker that don’t do much 😉🤣
I wrote 50082 words for this years NaNoWriMo, hitting the target at about 9:40 last night.
This years NaNoWriMo got off to a slow start for me, I didn’t get caught up until the 23rd of the month, then I had a couple of days ahead of the goal, then a couple of days behind and then I brought it home on the last day.
It was a month where I was feeling like I was chasing the goal each day. My lowest word daily count was 247, while my highest was 4026.
The month started off with a busy schedule at the day job which didn’t leave me much time for wrangling the words. I’d write before work, then during my breaks and then get stuck in after I got home. Most of the time when I was writing at work I’d not really be able to get really in-depth with the work, but I did manage to get some words down. These feel more like I was thrashing out a synopsis of the scene/chapter I was working on. I’ve now got a lot of little synopsis to build from.
Other scenes I’ve managed to build a pretty solid part of the story which won’t need much tidying up when the time comes.
Where I’m at now is I’ve got a lot scenes scattered throughout the document and I’ve got to start figuring out how to connect them all. I don’t think it’s as bad as I might be fearing, but there is a bigger problem I’ve come up against. Originally I saw this as a three book arc, but was worried I wouldn’t have enough to fill three books. Now that I’ve started it, I think I’ve potentially got a lot more than three books worth of story to tell. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me with this one.
This story, working title ‘War Child’ has been one I’ve been wanting to tell for quite some time, but have been intimidated by it. I feared I wasn’t capable yet to do it justice. But after some encouragement from friends and peers I decided to dive in head first. I’m so glad I did. This is going to be one where I think I am going to be pushed as a writer. I’ve spent so much of the last year trying to get stories finished and ready to either self-publish or submit I’ve forgotten what it’s like to begin crafting a new world.
Away from the writing part of NaNo I didn’t get much chance to host or even attend write-ins. Between the manic work schedule at the start of the month and a slow cash flow it just wasn’t on the cards. The one I did manage to host turned into a solo session. Which was okay, I got words down. It’d have been nice to get a few faces there though, hopefully next year I’ll be in a better position to be the ML I really want to be. I don’t feel like I’ve had the chance to step up how I want to. Between Covid and non-writing matters that have cropped up I’ve not really been able to dedicate the required time and effort to it that I’d have liked.
What’s next? I’m going to continue with War Child, but I also need to get The vampire book ready as I’ll be releasing that via the Welcome To My Nightmare tier on Ko-Fi. So I need to pull my finger out and get that final pass of edits done!
Good evening, folks! How are we all doing tonight?
I’m not likely to get the vampire book done by midnight tomorrow, but is it really the end of the world? I can multitask, especially in those early days of NaNo. The initial excitement of the month kicking off, that energy we all have as we jump off the start line like it’s a marathon and we’re sprinting over the start instead of taking a nice gentle pace from the gun.
I’m not going to try and get ahead early on like I normally do. Most years I prepare for the worst of loosing lots of days midway or at the end of the month, but this year I’m going to look at focusing on a steady pace and getting a good foundation of this story down. I’m going to try and push myself out of my comfort zone with this one. It’s one I’ve been wanting to write for a while, have even tried a couple of times, but haven’t felt competent as a writer to do this story justice. I’m not knocking my own abilities as a writer, I feel this story I’m going to need to dig deep, and go for a different energy to what I normally write.
Can I do it? can I make this work in the way that I want it to? Ask me in two weeks.
A random picture of the river Medway in Maidstone from Friday
I’ve had two productive days, well the whole week has been productive to be honest. Although today got off to a later start as I had shopping and some errands to run.
I am making progress with my goals for this month. I’ve typed up the short story I recently wrote and will be looking to do the next edit pass before the end of the month.
The read through of the vampire book is moving nicely. I’m finding more little errors and continuity issues than I was expecting, but nothing major.
I’ve also started digging into the planning for Penal Earth book 2. I’m hoping to have this as a major project for 2023. I’ve got a number of stories that are either ready to go (zombie and Penal Earth) or very ready to go (vampire and Black Blood), and I really want to push to get those published or submitted one way or another in the next two years.
I still need to be writing though. Yes, I’ve got those four pieces to get out into the world, but I also want to get ready for what’s going to be published after those.
This surge of productivity, I’ve had it before and it drifts away. I’m tired of letting it wonder off when it sees fit. I’m working on figuring out what causes me to loose this drive I’ve currently got. I know it’s anxiety, self-esteem. Confidence. I’m better prepared for working it all out than I’ve ever been. It’s still not always easy, and it’s something that’ll take time. But I’m getting there.
Peter Germany's World 