Tag: Personal

On a personal note

~ Meg ~ 35 Comments

I’ve completed ten days of National Novel Writing Month, having written almost 17,000 words so far. A pretty decent showing. I’ve had days where I get completely immersed in the writing and it flows like a river. And there are times where my mind wanders, I come up with a great idea for a short story or a scene from Here Lies a Soldier and I have to stop and make notes. But beyond that…

Writers understand writers the way no one else does, so this is my rant to you who know how it feels…  I’m struggling. I’m struggling  and not because of the pressure of sticking to the writing pace. Because I write a lot anyway. This month has had it’s share of other distractions – a weekend away –which was mostly good, the election coverage… And it seems like every single person in my life needs something from me right this very moment. The truth is I’m not receiving very much support for this endeavor. Its importance has been minimized. – mocked, even. I’ve been made to feel guilty for writing in the evenings. Anyway, the joy and whatever excitement there was for it is slowly seeping away. One month apparently, is too much to ask.

I haven’t given up yet. I am going to see if an adjustment in schedule will help. But I’m not optimistic. Writers how do your family and friends feel about your writing?

When November Spawned a Monster

~ Meg ~ 53 Comments

National Novel Writing Month (I refuse to use the acronym, it pisses me off) is off to a decent start. I have 11,315 words written as of Sunday night. That puts me ahead of the average I need to complete on time. Which is a good thing. I struggle to write the same thing every day. Which is bad. I didn’t have this problem when I started the first novel — I concentrated on that exclusively to its completion. What happened to me? I found this on Pinterest the other day I thought it totally applied to the way I’m feeling this month:

I have never had the best self discipline. I do stuff because I want to and the minute I feel like I have to, it quits being fun. “Duty is an ugly mistress,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, is one of my favorite quotes. And another is “I love deadlines. They make a nice whooshing sound as they pass by,” from Douglas Adams. These are both on one of my ubiquitous post it notes stuck to my monitor. I really do love to write so I’m trying not to let November ruin it for me. I also don’t want to bail on NNWM (I prefer initials to acronyms) but I will if it looks like it’ll spawn a monster.

The world turns upside down…

~ Meg ~ 32 Comments

Tuesday is the first of November, the day the novel writing frenzy begins. I have the weekend to prepare, make sure I’m ready to forget everything else and just write. I know some people map it all out, have incremental goals, and so forth. But I don’t flourish as a task orientated writer. That’s not to say I’m not organized. I do have the story all plotted out, but I am not writing with an outline.

When I say plotted, I mean I’ve written down the list of events that need to take place from the beginning to the end. I have snippets of conversation jotted on my index cards. I have character biographies written and I have a blank timeline spreadsheet started to keep track of my events as I write them. This approach can make the pacing of a novel more difficult. That is, making sure all the action isn’t bunched together with lots of dead space in between. We’ll see how it goes. The point of the whole exercise is  to get the story written, after that the massive edit can begin.

I have an obstacle or two to write around as well. Work of course, can’t be set aside for an entire month obviously. But I also have something special planned for the first weekend in November: I have tickets to Hamilton on Broadway. And a visit to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I guarantee no writing will happen on the 5th and 6th of November. Totally worth it, though.