Looking Back and Looking Forward

Tonight has a lot of significance for many different people. For most of us it’s Halloween, a night to dress up, eat candy and scare ourselves silly. For others it’s the Pagan New Year, when the veils between the worlds are thin (and yes, that is now a plot bunny in my head). Others still have it as the Day of the Dead, a night to remember and commemorate those we have lost. For me though it’s NaNoWriMo’s Eve. Tonight, right now, people all over the world are setting out to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

I’m not going to talk about NaNo tonight though. I’m looking back at the last month, at how much I’ve accomplished and how much I failed to do. I was looking at my monthly plan for October today. I got the most important bits of what I wanted to do, done. I managed to get my NaNo outline all done, a lot more of The Darkling Watch edited and a few more entries of The Feral Diaries written.

What I didn’t get done was as much on o.S.a.M as I had hoped. In fact I barely got anything done. That was the major disappointment of October.

So I decided something. Obviously, with NaNo and work, I’m having to cut down on what I’ve set myself as goals for RoW80 and my own November goals. I’m focusing entirely on NaNo with a little bit of a focus on the Darkling Watch read-through as well as more blog posts about NaNo, RoW80 and another post each week about something else. Maybe when I’ve got time I’ll do a bit of work on Feral Diaries and o.S.a.M.

My post is short tonight, I’m focusing on finishing the plans for NaNo and getting enough sleep for work and doing some writing. I’m a little disappointed that I won’t be able to take part in the midnight kick-off but I’m still looking forward to it. Hopefully once my money problems are sorted out I’ll be able to put together a bunch of incentives for myself as well.

Keep Writing!

A Very Late RoW80 Check-In

I’m a little late posting this, I know, I know. I’m very bad. Real life caught up with me in the form of vodka. A lot of vodka. But it’s alright. I needed it. I needed to unwind and relax and spend a day doing nothing involving my novels or my blog or my comic. Every day, no matter how minor it is, I end up doing something involving them. Except for Sunday. Instead I spent it lying in a nest of quilts on my living room floor watching Grey’s Anatomy. Yeah, that was my hangover day and it freaking rocked!

Now though it’s over. I had my first day at work (an unpaid work placement) and I’m tired. I’m so very tired. But I want to make this post. I’m driven to make this post. I suppose it’s truly become a habit for me. All day at work I was thinking about what to say, what to talk about. I’m going to start with my progress on RoW80.

Work on o.S.a.M once a week  -  I actually did some of this last week. I wrote a few detailed scene outlines of the first chapter. I may not have gotten loads done but I got enough done to be happy with it.

Edit The Darkling Watch – I did quite well with this one as well. I managed to separate out 3 more chapters and made notes on what I need to expand with them. I’m happy with it. While I may be taking a break from editing during NaNo I’m not going to stop thinking about it, working out how I’m going to attack it again once my placement is up and figuring out where my plot needs to go to get two books out of it.

Write The Feral Diaries – I was a bit disappointed with this last week. I got nothing done. And when I say nothing I mean diddly squat. I wrote one entry and that was it. Not good. I won’t lie, it bothers me a little but that’s just because I feel like I let myself down and disappointed myself. I am putting this to one side as well while I take part in NaNo.

Post twice a week – I did good with this one. I know I did. I managed to blog about NaNo and about my crazy organisation thing. I’m planning to do the same this week, even with NaNo starting properly and the fact I’m going to be working full time. I can’t guarantee that my posts will always be readable or that they’ll make normal person sense but I will try. I have to. I already know what I’m going to be posting about. I hate to admit it but it will be mostly about NaNo.

Plan/Write NaNo – My planning went really well last week. I got my entire plot twisted out, the first few chapters detailed in scenes and I’m tracking which dares I use where. I have lists again. I really like lists. I’ve even decided how I’m going to manage to write and work at the same time, a new experience for me. That will come on Wednesday, Halloween. I won’t be taking part in the midnight kick off like so many of my fellow NaNoers will be, simply because I’m useless without 8 hours sleep.

For now though I’m going to work on my outline a little more, get changed into my PJs and snuggle into my comfy bed for a good nights sleep. Look out for my post all about NaNoWriMo on Wednesday.

Keep Writing!

My Thoughts on NaNoWriMo

There’s 6 days to go until NaNoWriMo kicks off. I think that by this time last year I’d made 2 or 3 posts about it already. Part of this was just the sheer excitement of having found such a new challenging thing. Another part was that I never really thought about what I’d post each week. This year not so much, I’ve been focused on outlining and editing and writing The Feral Diaries and RoW80. As a result I’ve barely thought about blogging about NaNo.

I thought I’d talk about it at last. I learnt this week that I’m being put on Work Placement with the JobCentre. This means that for the first time I’ll be really learning whether I can handle writing and working full time. The last time I worked I’d just finished writing The Darkling Watch and was taking a break after the intensity of NaNoWriMo. It will be a new experience for me, writing with NaNo at the same time as working 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. I’m considering it an experiment at living in the real world.

My NaNo this year is again drawing on Norse mythology but it’s focused more on the Young Adult market. I’m considering putting it up on Amazon once it’s finished and edited to the point I’m happy with it but if I don’t it won’t be the end of the world. I have ended up spending too much time on the NaNo forums, particularly in the dares thread. As a result my outline is now full of strange events and quirky characters. There is a chance I’ll have to take them out once I’m editing but there’s also a chance those dares will make it funnier and more interesting than I could ever hope.

My outlining has been very in-depth. It’s overly complicated but it works for me. First I outlined the novel as a whole. Then I went through the outline, breaking it up chapter by chapter. Then I outlined each chapter in more depth before separating out each scene. I’ve got a whole 31 chapters and an epilogue done like this so far. Now I’m going through with each scene and going into detail with each of them. I’ve also tried to get a better grip on my characters by interviewing them as well as doing character sheets. It seems to be working actually.

With so much detail going into my planning process and the fact I’ve only got 6 days left means I’m going to have to work my backside off to get this all done before November 1^st rolls around. Here’s hoping I manage it. Last year when I went into NaNo I only had half of my novel detailed properly. The rest was only vaguely outlined and detailed and The Darkling Watch came out crazy towards the end.

I'll let you know how it's going over the month, making sure to have at least one post a week detailing my progress throughout the month. This will be on top of my RoW80 posts and another independent post. Hopefully I can juggle all this stuff. If you don't hear from me assume I've gone a little bonkers and had to be locked away. Or at the least that my parents have taken my laptop away from me.

Keep writing.

Crazy List Lady

Today I want to talk about organisation and some of the methods I use. These personally work for me, but they may not work for everyone. If it does, great! Let me know. If it doesn’t then fair enough, I hope you find one that does soon. Essentially what I’m trying to say is that there’s no right or wrong way to organise for everyone, it’s about finding what organisation methods fit you. Anyway, on with the post;

With so many projects going on in my head and in my writing I’ve found that being organised is key. I tried many different things; list making, using files on my computer, daily to do lists and self timetabling. Nothing really work though. Then I saw an amazing video made by a woman who’s also a writer and artist, Amy Brucker. Now her organisation tips are more directed to small business owners and the self-employed but I’ve found that with a bit of tweaking they are also a good base for writers.

I watched it, I made notes and I decided to give it a go. At first I was trying to do too much in one day, not really thinking about how long it took me to do each activity. Then I began to look and notice the patterns that were emerging in what I was and wasn’t doing. I realised that I was happily getting more done for the stuff that I wanted to do but the things I didn’t want to do I wasn’t really doing or I’d half-arse it. So I cut down on how much I tasked myself with each day and forced myself to do the things I really didn’t want to do or that I was feeling less enthusiastic about first. I also kept things new and interesting by making sure that no two days had exactly the same activities. The idea of doing exactly the same things two days in a row really seemed to get me unmotivated. So far it seems to be working. Granted my lists aren’t as colourful or highly decorated as hers, I prefer to focus more on the activities I’m setting myself than drawing pictures but it’s bright enough and eye catching enough that I notice it.

I also do a monthly to-do-list. This is basically an A4 sheet of plain paper with the month at the top. I’ll then write down each project I’m working on that month and leave plenty of space around it to set myself tasks. For instance in October I’m focusing on The Darkling Watch, The Feral Diaries, o.S.a.M and NaNo. Beneath each little title I’ll write three or four overarching tasks such as plan Book 2 of The Feral Diaries, get a complete NaNo idea written down. I’ll draw a little check box next to it and then I let myself loose with my Copic markers and decorate it. As the month’s gone on I’ve written little post-it notes to myself about other things that I didn’t even think about, mostly related to research and little ideas I’ve had.

Both of these pages are on separate doors of my wardrobe which is right beside me as I sit writing. That means I can look to the right and see what I’ve accomplished each day and what I’ve managed to do for each month. Once the month or week is over I switch it round, usually on Sunday night which is a slow day for me. I’ll put the old sheet in the back of my planning folder and put the new one up.

Then I found Amy Brucker had made another organisation video, focusing on something she’d mentioned earlier, the ideas journal.

I started making notes on the parts of her ideas journal that interested me. At first I was just writing on a single sheet of paper in a small folder where I kept my lined paper and notes on research I was doing. Then, as more and more ideas started coming to me, as I started writing a list of potential blog post ideas and The Feral Diaries pages started raking up I realised I needed to expand. So I bought a lever-arch folder and transferred it all to there. I used the larger cardboard dividers to separate out different sections; Darklings, The Feral Diaries, o.S.a.M, the blog, my research, NaNoWriMo, ToDo lists.

Then I divided each section down into what I needed from it. For Feral Diaries it’s outlines, Book 1 and Book 2. For the blog section its ideas, outlined ideas and published ideas. I could go on and on but I figure you’ve got the idea by now; I split each larger section into small bits focusing on different parts of the project. Even the weekly to-do list sheets get their own section at the very back (but that isn't split). At the start of each large section I’ve created individual to-do lists for those areas, just so that I can look at those when I’m working on the to-do lists each week and so that I can see how far I’ve come.

I like working on paper. It gives me freedom. I can go nestle in the living room with a trashy film on and slowly write out random bits and pieces for my writing. I can jot down a random idea about ninja parrots or something if I’m in the middle of town. I usually get struck by random ideas when I’ve not got my laptop on or I’m on the middle of the bus so can’t really dictate a note to myself without looking crazy. Basically the plot bunnies attack when I least expect it.

But I’m not unprepared. I make sure that I have a little notebook with me at all times. It’s a little bruised, a little battered but it’s mine. When I get an idea I write it on top of a fresh page and continue to develop it onto the other side of that page if it stays with me. If it’s got to that point I know it might be a keeper. Sometimes I don’t or can’t go any further with it but if it’s a random scene or character I’ll pop in a post-it just in case I can use it for some other story.

When an idea’s gotten to the point where it’s stuck in my head and begging to be planned I’ll copy it into the pages of another book I have, a notebook that was a birthday present this year from a fellow writer. It’s actually one of the notebooks that NaNoWriMo sells and has “There’s a book in you that only you can write” on the front. I think this is quite fitting really as this is where I put my bigger ideas as they develop. Yes I’ve split it into separate sections as well. I leave enough room for 3 double sides of writing per idea, 6 sides of paper in total. If an idea covers those 6 pages and especially if I’ve started to add in little post-its with notes on them I know it’s time to start planning it properly.

This all might seem really complicated to you but for me it works. If I need to take a break from something  that I’m currently working on or I’ve got a block on that project I can put it aside and do a little planning for something else. I love lists so they feature heavily in how I organise myself. I like to work on paper more than on the computer for the initial planning stages of a story. I like to keep all my ideas in one easy to reach place. 

If you want to give my methods a try and they work for you I’d love to hear it. If you try them and they don’t I’d still like to hear about it and why they didn’t work for you. If you have your own method that really works then please, share it. I like hearing about this sort of stuff, and who knows, it really might help other people too. There’s no right or wrong method for everyone, it’s an individual thing.

Keep Writing.

Also a big thank you to Christina who left a comment on Sunday's blog post and explained to me how to add those web-badges I was on about. As you can see her instructions worked and I'm one step closer to getting the blog looking the way I want it to. So thank you Christina, big hugs to you.