Writing

So what does it mean to sit at home and write, anyway?

A newish sort of friend <insert long, complicated story here> wanted to know what I do with my time at home writing. I felt like snarkily showing her one of those writing memes like this:

Clock with the phrase "Writer's Clock on it" with "Write" at 12, "Coffee" at 1, "Review" at 2, "Edit" at 3, "Start over" at 4, "Drink Heavily" at 5, "Cry" at 6, "Consider a new career" at 7, "More coffee" at 8, "Write" at 9, "Submit" at 10, and "Wait" at 11.
Text that reads: Writing-is-a-bitch wrote: "writing is the worst. u wanna write a single, passing line of dialogue so u fact check it to make sure it's historically accurate, then suddenly you've lost track of time, space,, urself. for intstance: I wanted to know how frequently fighter planes were used in WWI and now I'm several pages deep into the history of witchcraft in Ireland." brieflywritingwolf replied: "this is it. this is what writing is like." source: writing-is-a-bitch

Instead I’ll just say it here. Some days “writing” is character sketching on an iPad version of a worksheet I like with an Apple pencil, some days “writing” is world building like literally making maps on a really cool website someone from writers group suggested, some days “writing” the world building looks more like answering a questionnaire about your imaginary country, some days “writing” is actually literally just writing on the novel, some days “writing” is doing a tarot spread for a character or Meyers-Briggs tests for recalcitrant characters that refuse to do anything useful, some days “writing” is writing poetry to use as hymns to be sung in the background of a scene that you wrote last year and put <insert words from hymn here>, sometimes “writing” is gathering up all my notes from my desk & purse notebook & van notebook & husband’s car & the table by my favorite green chair & the back of the kids band calendar & a bulletin from church and typing it all in or doing voice transcriptions because my hands hurt that day, some times “writing” is reading up on things I know I don’t do well enough or things that I see other people doing awesomely that I want to emulate or just re-reading my own stuff because I don’t remember where I was going with that bit of something in Chapter 3, sometimes “writing” is making the perfect playlist on Spotify for upcoming scenes that you know you won’t be able to write without intense music, sometimes “writing” is searching for stock photos of interesting people so you’ll know what a character looks like later on, some times writing is going to writer’s group or writing class and doing silly prompts and listening to other writers talk about their novels and writing and sharing tips and resources and lending each other books, and sometimes it’s just starting out the window for an hour daydreaming about leaves falling from trees because my mind refuses to tell me what the next thing I need to write looks like.

There ya go… that’s why I’m spending so much time “writing” and that’s why I need a planner for just “writing stuff.” 🙂

Onwards

After I wrote all that yesterday about not being able to write, I ended up adding a couple thousand words to my count. This morning I got up and did some more character building for a character that is going on a quest with my main character, as well as the main antagonist. I was hoping to get more done, but it is time to move on with the day. We’re having a birthday party for my 16-year-old this afternoon and there’s still cleaning and decorating to do.

My 16-year-old and his giant pile of 800+ paged birthday books standing in a sunbeam at Barnes and Noble.
My 16-year-old and his giant pile of birthday books.

Nano Struggles

I’m really struggling with Nanowrimo this year. I have zero energy, very little in the way of time for writing, and since I spent time working on writing classwork instead of planning this years nano novel, every time I sit down to write, I instead end up spending 3/4 of the time working on background info and character sketches. So for every 2 hour block of writing time, I get maybe 30 minutes of good writing in, which gets me about 500 words a day. But I haven’t had time every day because of days like Tuesday, where I spent all morning working on PTA stuff, went to the meeting, had to stay late to work on yet more stuff, and that used up all my free time and energy for the day. Or days like Wednesday, where I spent time writing for class, went to class, and only got real words on the book done during the Write-in that I could only stay an hour for (because they scheduled them during school pick-up time.).

By Friday this week I really just gave up. There was no way to get ahead with the way things were going. I sat down to write and spent an hour doing background planning again and while I got a lot of good information out of that session (and got to use my son’s new Apple Pencil, which is how I convinced myself to do it in the first place), I just couldn’t see how I was going to finish.

But then this morning, my sweet spouse asked how it was going and if I was 1/3 of the way through my novel like I should be. I told him about my struggles and he encouraged me to spend more time writing, to put it all into the calendar and enforce those times, and that he’d get me up every morning at 4am if that’s what needed to happen so I’d get my time in.

So here I am, blogging instead of writing. I can’t get into novel-mode with as short a time period as I have until breakfast, plus two of my sons have wandered through since I started typing (and in the time it took to start and end that part of the sentence, one of them wandered back in a second time, but it’s his birthday, so I’m indulging his wandering-ins because he’s showing me photos from his friends celebrating him at midnight last night.).

Here’s my writing schedule for the next three weeks (barring disaster):

  • Sundays: 7-9am at home, 2-4pm at the library write-in
  • Mondays: 9-11am and 1-3pm at home
  • Tuesdays: 9-11am and 1-3pm at home
  • Wednesdays: 2-3:15pm at the library write-in (will also write for classwork 9-11am, but it doesn’t count towards nanowrimo)
  • Thursdays: 9-11am at home
  • Fridays: 9-11am and 1-3pm at home
  • Saturdays: 3-5pm at the Barnes & Noble write-in

Mathematically, if I get 30 good minutes writing for every two hours spent times 500 words per session times three weeks like that, I should be at 50,000 words by Christmas. *sigh* Maybe I’ll have to start writing in the early mornings and late nights, too.

Welcome new visitors, plus site updates for regulars

Howdy my peeps! It’s NANOWRIMO, so I know this time of year I usually get an upswing in visitors from new writing friends, so welcome to all of y’all! This blog is a combination of my online diary/way to kept in contact with far away family/ place to blather on about writing/ health journal. I’ve been doing this for 20 years now, so there’s quite a lot of backlog that’s kept under lock and key as my kids have gotten older and wanted to have less of their baby pictures and stories online. I’ve tried to make the writing and health posts more available because I have a lot of readers for those things. 🙂

Sometime late this summer I started posting and saving things as drafts, meaning to go back and add photos or links and then totally forgot about all of that as school got busy, PTA got busy, and I got sick once again. So this morning I went back and updated all 20 or 30 or those entries with photos or links and set them free from the WordPress jail (aka: published them). SO if you’re a regular here and have not been reading along feeling like you’ve been missing something: the posts in between are there now. Go, read, catch up on my weirdness.

As always, love to all of you. Hope everyone is doing well! 🙂

NANOWRIMO Write-In at the Tyler Public Library

We had a great first Write-In at the Tyler Public Library today! Well, a little chaotic because we were moved to an area that had no places to plug in our computers, but I found us some help. The rest was really good! We had 7 writers total, six that stayed and chatted and one that zipped in late and out early. Met some very lovely ladies that I’m looking forward to seeing again later this week! 🙂

TPL Writer’s Group Halloween

Here’s how me and my friend Elizabeth dressed up for our Tyler Public Library Writer’s Class Halloween meeting. We went to the coffee house like this first and people were amused. Only one other person at the group dressed up, but we got candy and read spooky stories that we wrote. 🙂 D6EF37DA-964D-4DB3-9DFF-36A754FB02E8

Things I Do When I Cannot Write

I wrote 7 scenes yesterday, but my brain could not be bothered to come up with more than 500 words today, which is the lowest limit I allow myself for productivity these days. So I made this list of things I could do that are mostly Writing Adjacent on those days:

  • Make list of things to be done
    • Scenes
    • Outlines
    • Character sheets
    • Research
  • Research things off my Research list
  • Write “daily pages”
  •  Update Writing folders on computer
  • Read “Downloaded-yet-Unread Writing Related Articles”
  • Sort “Prompts” file by type of prompt for later use
  •  Figure out what topics I want more info on for the next writing group meeting
  • Prepare my 2-page item for sharing at TPL’s Writing Club
  • Do coursework for online writing classes
  • Help someone else with their writing

 

So then I did, yay verily, sort all my prompts. Also, dyed my hair teal. It didn’t come out quite how I hoped, but that’s how my whole week has gone.

20191016_1452582

Planning for Writing

I have been stuck at home either in my bed or in my favorite chair today because moving is ridiculously painful and just sitting makes me cringe, but have been watching all those videos I have amassed over the last few weeks of being too busy to watch them, so there’s that. Learning about other people’s planner hacks, some new-to-me novel planning procedures, and doing a little background research for the next novel. Have loved being cozy while watching the rain and breezes outside my window.

Anniversary

It’s around the one year anniversary of me taking myself and my writing seriously. It took a big health scare to do it, but I finally started regularly doing the things that make me feel all sparkly inside when I do it. Since then I’ve been writing or reading-about-writing as closely to daily as possible, I’ve joined classes and groups that have helped me not just work on my craft, but also expanded my knowledge of areas of writing and publishing that I had been previously unaware of. I’ve scaled back on a myriad of things that I was doing just because they filled a need for others and have tried to concentrate my efforts on things that I am really good at or knowledgable about (being the secretary for organizations and helping PTA’s learn & grow). Despite some hard times this last year, I feel like it’s been a year of growth and I’m excited to expand on that and start putting my writing out into world this next year. 🙂

Writing, more writing, planning for writing, more writing.

I spent all day writing, except when I was organizing some writing, or learning a new writing program. I conceived and wrote the beginnings for 11 new flash fiction pieces. Tomorrow I’ll write the middles, then Wednesday the ends (it’s for an online class). I am currently the calmest I’ve been since, oh, May of 2012 when my mom first got sick. It is really good to spend the day doing something I both really love and am good at. I feel like a real person. It’s nice.