Sunday 27 March 2016

Random Thoughts

It's the Easter long weekend this weekend and I have four days in which to either work furiously and get a whole bunch of stuff done, or flit it away procrastinating on the internet. Guess which one is winning out at the moment?
       My thoughts are too scattered at the moment for any kind of structured blogging so I thought I might just jot down a few things that have been going through my head:

  • Multi-tasking seems to be the thing which threatens to kill all my productivity. Ironic isn't it? I get so caught up wanting to do so many things at the same time that I end up nothing finishing any of them. 
  • Reading has taken a huge back step in the last few months now that I've gone back to work. Even though I've been enjoying books more than I did in the last few years I'm still having a hard time pinning down quiet time to read.
  • I have started writing fan fiction for the MCU instead of working on my actual novels. Part of it is because I am annoyed that the pair I ship isn't very popular (even though they are the best!) and the other part is that I've had all these stories pop up in my head since I first saw The Avengers in 2012 and if I don't get it down it'll just distract me during Camp NaNoWriMo.
  • Oh yeah I'm participating in Camp NaNoWriMo yet again. Despite my best efforts to make writing a daily habit the only way I seem to be able to write anymore is during some kind of NaNo. So next month I will be trying to sprint to that 50k again. 
  • My garden is looking totally worse for wear now that summer has ended. I'll admit I was pretty slack this summer and with the possibility of mice in the garden I really didn't want to be in there more than I had to. This meant a lot of my stuff is overgrown and/or dying because I couldn't be bothered watering it. I've made a concentrated effort to try harder in Autumn. Feel kind of bad that the two things I love most (gardening and writing) are always the things I let slip when I'm stressed. 
  • Blogging has taken a huge hit. Mostly because this is meant to be a book/writing blog and I have done neither with much consistency in the last 6 months.  Apologies to all my friends whose posts I missed. I am working on a better schedule so that I'm not MIA so much from now on.
Anyway, that's all from my end for now.  See you on the other side of April!

Thursday 3 March 2016

Insecure Writer's Support Group: Novel Fatigue

Insecure Writer's Support Group is a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh where totally insecure writers can get together and share the things that are making us go argh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
        During the last few months I haven't been doing much writing. As a result I've had more time on my hands and have been able to offer critiquing to my author friends. I've been critiquing for a while now and one of the things I've found to be a pattern is that as writers we often get sick to death of reading our own novels over and over. It was only when a friend of mine mentioned this about her novel that it clicked to me why I haven't been able to keep writing: I am sick of reading my own work. I am sick of editing the same thing time after time. I rewrote Poison eleven times before I was happy with the plot and structure. I edited it another four times after critiques. By the time it was published, I really just wanted to set fire to the MS and be done with it.
       I'm so happy that I've finally figured this out because it means that it's not writing that I cannot stand. It's the editing process. Which is a problem but since I've done it once I suppose I can do it again.