Guest post up!
The Apocalypse Blog’s first ever guest post has gone live! Go check it out.
Many thanks to the lovely Julie for her enthusiasm and her fantastic spin of a story in Faith’s brokendown world. The guest posting is off to a great start! Yay!
Headless chicken
The last couple of weeks have been insane. Between juggling writing groups, parents going away, housesitting, petsitting, houseguests and relatives, working full time, and keeping up with my writing, I’ve been a little bit busy.
On the plus side, I have kept up with the Apocalypse Blog. I’ve had a few bad days, and I have to restrain myself from reading over the published posts to see how much it shows. I don’t think Sax’s last appearance came out the way I wanted it to, though hopefully I captured at least some of the horror and wrongness of the image. I managed not to miss a day, though, and I’m glad of that.
I also managed to get the guest posting stuff sorted out. The first one goes up tonight! Big fat tick for me (and my guest poster!).
I feel like time is slipping by me at a fantastic rate. It doesn’t help that I’m exhausted and sluggish (the hectic pace of the past week or two is catching up with me at the moment – I feel as if I’ve been hit by a big, sleepy truck). I haven’t touched my novel in months now (it makes me so sad to realise that it has actually been months), my short story is no closer to being finished, and the Writing Tips post/s on dialogue still haven’t been written.
Gah. On the one hand, I feel like AB is sucking up all my writing time and making it difficult (not impossible! just difficult) to write anything else consistently. On the other hand, I suspect that AB is the only reason that I write anything regularly. I’m afraid that if I let myself miss a day, I’ll be giving myself permission to skip a day every now and then, and my writing and posting frequency will whittle itself down amid excuses and procrastination. That’s part of the reason why I started the damn thing in the first place. I suspect that a post a day was setting the bar too high, but I’m too stubborn to back down from it now. Nearly five months in and I haven’t missed a day – I can do eight more like that! Definitely.
I still love AB. I’m still looking forward to some of the stuff that I know is coming (I have only done a fraction of the plot-point notecards on my board). I can’t wait to see what guest posts I have come in – I have had two more expressions of interest in it, and I have my fingers crossed for more. Plus, now there are zombies.
Yesterday, my very good friend and ex-housemate pointed me at a handy podcast – Writing Excuses. Weekly podcasts about writing that are hilarious but also very useful and practical. Check it out! I’m listening to it while I work, and it’s awesome. And it’s making me want to write, which is fantastic – just what I need right now. If only I had the energy! Bah.
Skipping the tech writer’s meeting tonight because I’m too tired. Have my writing group on Friday night – I still need to plan that meeting. But tonight is for curling up on the couch and staring at the TV until I am tired enough to sleep. Mmm, that sounds like a good plan.
Apocalypse Blog guest posting open!
The Apocalypse Blog is now open for guest post submissions! Huzzah!
I have pulled together my notes and sorted out the guest posting guidelines, and they are now up in the Guest Posts section. I even have a post already on the way – it should go up in the next few days.
I’m hoping to put up a guest post every couple of weeks (depending on submissions). It’ll be good to spice things up and I can’t wait to see what other people make of the Apocalypse Blog world.
The final pieces of the fallout from the bomb are starting to show themselves on the blog now. The dead are walking! What’s an apocalypse without zombies? Fun fun!
So get writing, everyone!
Nightowl strikes again
Been a weird day. I haven’t been getting great sleep this week, so I went to bed early last night. My brain wouldn’t shut down, though.
See, this short story I’ve been trying to write for the past couple of weeks has been bothering me. It just wasn’t working. I had written about a page of it – 600 words, maybe – and it ground to a stop on me. After leaving it alone for a few days, apart from random ponderings when I wasn’t writing on the train, I realised what the problem was. The main character just didn’t feel right. She’s an amalgamation of a couple of characters I have played around with for years, but her pieces just didn’t fit together right (which is ironic, considering the central issue of the story – it’s all about her and her pieces, but unfortunately not in this way). I think I was trying to do a bit too much with her.
So I jiggled her around a bit. Took out one of those two old characters, melded her into something a bit different (so that she isn’t batshit crazy like the other chickie she’s based on), and came out with something that should work better now. Fingers crossed.
I’ve been meaning to get back to writing this story for days, but Sunday was a bust (thank you, CFS) and AB takes up my writing time during the week. Last night, in the vain attempts to lull my brain into drifting so I could go to sleep, I kept getting snatches of scenery for this story. I both love and hate it when that happens.
I gave up on sleeping and grabbed my little netbook, and wrote for an hour. One of the other things that was wrong with my first pass at the story was that I had glossed over one of the most important parts of the character’s tale. So I went back and reworked that, and it’s now sitting at about 1200 words. Unfinished (it looks like it’s going to turn out to be about 4,000 words), but it’s getting there.
The best part is that I went to sleep fairly quickly after that.
I’ve always been good at night-writing. Words seem to come easily then, but my health and schedule won’t really allow for it. It’s a frustrating conundrum.
Perhaps I should try to work in an hour of writing before I sleep every night. The problem with that is that sometimes I’m too tired to be creative – it’s a delicate balance between enervated wordsmithing and exhaustion-driven drivel. Hmm. Maybe I’ll just make a point of making myself write something if I am too brain-busy to sleep. If it’s crap, I can always delete it in the morning.
I’ve been doing more reviews of creative work lately, too. Been getting back into the critique board on the Accentuate Writers Forum, and that’s been fun, actually. I like to keep my hand in, but I’m not sure how much I can keep that up. I generally use it as a break when I should be doing something else, so my presence there is pretty erratic.
I do keep kicking myself about the Writing Tips things, too. I am even getting a list of ideas for it! Must get started on the dialogue stuff soon. I’d like to aim for one post a fortnight, but I’ll see how I go.
I have put out feelers about the guest posting on AB, too. I need to work out the details of that and how it’s going to work. I just realised that I’ll have to work out a statement about publishing rights for it. Oh, joy. Shouldn’t be too hard, though.
How did my list get so long? Ahhh. I need to start writing this stuff down somewhere (other than buried in these blogposts), if only so I can cross stuff off. Possibly with a little dance.
Best laid plans
My Creative Writing Group met on Friday night. Due to Easter and a general desire not to spam emails at the least provocation, I didn’t send out a reminder email the weekend before it. This is, apparently, a bad idea, as I only had a handful of people come to the meeting. I suspect the rest were either caught up in family stuff (it was the school holidays), or had simply forgotten. Oh well! I know better for next time.
On the plus side, I had a new member join the group, and we all had a lively and informative discussion. I had prepared all kinds of notes about dialogue, an issue that has cropped up a lot of late in various writing circles, and one that I find writers often ask about or struggle with. I’m planning to write all those notes up for my next Writing Tips post (probably the next several!), hopefully some time over the next week.
I had a lot I wanted to do this weekend, but I didn’t get to most of it. This was mostly due to the awful, short sleep I got on Saturday night, which led to a very lethargic and resting Sunday. Rather than force myself to write, I gave myself the day off to recuperate. By Monday morning, I was feeling much better, but I still wish I had got done some of what I had planned.
So my short story hasn’t been written yet, and I am not ahead on the Apocalypse Blog posts the way I want to be. I have been posting very hand-to-mouth over the weekend, and I think the posts are a bit rougher than usual because of that.
Exhaustion is making it difficult to write as well as I would like. I tried to do today’s post on the train this morning, and wound up closing the notebook after one sentence so that I could nap instead. I will have to be strict with myself to get as much done as possible over the next few days, as next week is looking like it will be something of a nightmare.
My parents are heading off to the UK for three weeks to visit my brother and the grandson they haven’t seen yet. So I now have the house to look after, three demanding cats, and a houseguest to cook for. The three hours I have when I get home from work will shrink alarmingly, I think. Thank goodness I already do the bulk of my writing on the train; here’s hoping that I am not too tired to accomplish that.
On the plus side, the blog is going well and still hitting 80+ visits per day. I’m constantly battling the plot pace, trying to keep myself from rushing things, but without dawdling either. I’m not sure I always hit it right. At least now they have the scooters, Faith and her friends will be zipping around a lot faster than before, though that presents its own problems. Luckily, I have some other obstacles to throw in their way to slow them down from time to time.
I managed to get around to updating the Chronology page the other day, so it’s up-to-date with the current goings-on. I want to expand the information on the Cast page a bit too – that’s a job for later in the week, I think. Sometimes, it’s nice to focus on the background stuff as a break from the posts, especially when my brain is feeling less creative.
I’m also thinking about throwing AB open for guest posts soon. Faith isn’t telling only her own story – she’s telling all of the stories she comes across. I need to give some thought to how that will work and then throw up an info page on the blog.
How do I always have such a long list of things to do? Oh well, best get to it!
Impending chocolate
How does time slip away from me so quickly? I’ve been meaning to update here for ages, and now it has been over a week since I put anything up. Wow.
So! What’s been happening? Let’s see…. I had a great day at Supanova – spent way too much money and went to a couple of talks. One was by a local author, who had some interesting things to say about getting started as a novelist. She has agreed to come and talk to my Creative Writing Group. Should be good!
Managed to get ahead on the Apocalypse Blog this week. It was so nice to be able to schedule posts and have them publish at more accurate times. I’m a detail-monkey, so I like these things to make sense and be appropriate (it is supposed to be a realtime blog). I’ve got the rest of this long weekend all written up, and once I’m done with this post, I’m going to edit and schedule those posts. Then I can put my feet up for the rest of Easter. Lovely.
I’ve been thinking about the next Writing Tips post – it’s about time I did another one. I’ve seen a lot of queries about dialogue recently, and it’s one of those subjects that often crops up in the writing groups. I just need to pull together some material and sort it out. It’s on my list.
I’m also thinking about doing book reviews. I know I’m opinionated enough! I don’t know if I have anything like time for that. I haven’t had time to read a book in a while, with all the writing I’ve been trying to cram in. Perhaps I’ll start with reading a whole book and then see what comes of it. Book on list, check.
I sent in a submission for Unsent Letters this week. Won’t hear back for a few weeks, probably, but it’s in there. Tick that off my list.
Working on another submission at the moment – this one is for the Accentuate Writer’s Anthology Competition. I’ve made a start – hopefully get it finished this weekend.
Whee. So! Lots happening. More good stuff coming. Have a great Easter, everyone.
Novelling… maybe
Here it is again – another novelling group meeting. Hard to believe it has come around again, though it seems like ages since I was here. Of course, I had to Skype into the last meeting because of the sicky.
I’m not sure what I’m going to write tonight. I should really take the time to work on my novel – tonight’s meeting is going to be more like a write-in – but my chronic hand-to-mouth posting on AB makes me want to use the time to get ahead on that. Even now, I can feel myself leaning towards where I can see tomorrow’s post waiting for me to polish it up.
It’s been two months since I wrote anything on the novel. As soon as I submitted it for the competition, I relaxed and took a break – which is fatal, really. I work better with a deadline and under (some) pressure. Bah!
The next couple of weekends are going to be pretty busy for me. There’s the big geek con in town this weekend (Supanova), and after that is Easter in which I shall most likely be Doing Things.
Wow, it’s almost like I have a life. I can’t remember the last time I had such a busy social life, and it had to come along when I was determined to really get my writing going. Not that I’m compaining! I like being busy. I just haven’t got the balance right yet.
Right. Maybe I’ll see if I can get the next few days’ AB posts sorted out, and then look at the novel. Yes. It’s a plan!
Perhaps I should post today’s post first. Hm.
Buffer unbuffed
Been a bit of a week. I have been meaning to post here for days, but just don’t seem to manage to find the time! We have relatives staying with us at the moment, so my time is not all my own.
I haven’t been getting ahead on the Apocalypse Blog posting as much as I had hoped. I’ve been doing well with writing during my commute (and I love my little notebook), but I’m not always feeling good enough to do it. I’m still working my way up to full health after the pneumonia (or as ‘full health’ as I ever get), and it’s a long road.
The CFS is not helping, these days. I think I’ve hit the point where my body wants to be more tired than it is, but I don’t want to do too much activity because it makes me wobbly and want to sit down. So I don’t sleep well at night because I’m not tired enough, and that makes me more exhausted during the day. I’ve been in this spiral before and it’s a really hard one to break out of. Today, I can feel my eyes burning heavily and my body just wants to slither into a pile under my desk. Yesterday, I was completely useless when trying to figure out the technicalities of encryption terminology, with my poor little brain lurching around in circles and spitting out lots of ‘…..’
The plan at the moment is to start up my morning exercise again and see if that helps. It’s possible it’ll make it all worse, but that’s a risk I have to take at some point. I’ll start on Monday and see how I go, I guess.
In the meantime, AB posting has become more hand-to-mouth than I like. I made it worse by delving into a whole section about a prison, and there was so much to say there that I wound up doing two posts a day a couple of times. Whoops! I didn’t want to waste an opportunity like that by missing anything out, and it was already eating up way too much time – I didn’t want to string it out, or one day’s events would have taken a week to tell!
That was good fun to write about, though. The unseen and potential dangers are so much more creepy than the ones that smack you in the face. I had one reader tell me that she was all creeped out by one entry, and that made me happy (target achieved!). I don’t usually write much horror/suspense, so it was good to experiment with that stuff, and it fitted in with the ‘Rumours’ section nicely (all about what’s heard, but not (yet) seen!). That was a bit of a happy accident, as the only reason I put the prison in was that there was one next to the little black line on the map I’m using to keep track of things!
I think I need to sit down and write a load of posts one day on the weekend. All I need is the chance (and the energy)! That’ll get me ahead enough that I can start double-posting again if I need to, without running out of post buffer (I only finished up today’s post on the train into work this morning, and will have to put it up when I get home). If nothing else, it messes with my ability to schedule the posts to appear at an appropriate time during the day.
Also need to get working on my novel again. Been ages since I picked it up. Hopefully the novelling group meeting next week will kick me back into action with that!
Right. ’nuff talking, time to get back to work. Write atcha later!
Nightowl fluffing
Why is it that the Apocalypse Blog posts I like recently have all been written at around midnight? Between being sick and being very immobile recently, I haven’t been sleeping well. Usually around midnight I get up to do something else for a while, which usually means poking at AB.
My inner nightowl is showing, because they seem to be coming out better (or maybe just easier) than the other posts I’ve been writing lately. Today’s post is one of these! It’s certainly spammier than others recently.
Very strange. I also found time to update the Cast and Chronology pages recently too. There is a hint about what’s to come in one of those updates (I am trying to slide in the references when I can!).
Writing on the train went well today. I want to work up a buffer of posts again (rather than post them as soon as they’re written like I am right now), and now I’ve got the mini notebook up and running (with a decent battery life), that looks possible again!
This are looking up again. I feel like I’m getting back on top of things. About time.
I should probably do another Writing Tips post soon. Wonder what this one should be about. Suggestions? Anyone? If only I had a plan.
Recovery achieved
The last week has been a bit strange. Last weekend was good – the folks and I went out and spent money, in a way we haven’t been able to in a long time. I got myself a mini notebook, to make writing on the train easier. I don’t have to lug my iBook to work any more!
I was feeling somewhat better by Monday, and I was all out of sick time, so I worked from home all week. It wasn’t easy – I was still recovering, still very drained. The hardest part was trying to do anything else, like writing the Apocalypse Blog posts. I struggled with them, though I ended up pleased with a couple. I got some good feedback on them, which made me happy. This is what keeps me writing when it gets difficult.
I have set up yWriter on the notebook to manage the AB posts. Its structure works really well for it, and it’s reassuringly anal about its backup policy. I’m liking it so far.
I got the all-clear from the doctor on Friday – my lungs don’t crackle when I breathe any more and the pneumonia seems to be all gone. Still getting strength back, but I’m well enough to go to work tomorrow. So I shall be testing the notebook train-writing, providing I am awake enough.
Wheee. Time to get back to normal. This month’s writing group meeting had to be postponed to this Friday. I wonder what else I have to catch up with.