Only a week of March left and I still haven't Written 1 and Subbed 1. Well, I've written a flash which count as half, and had a rewrite request which I could work on for my sub. That feels a bit like cheating though. It's going to be a busy week!
In the spirit of starting the year as you mean to go on, I saw the New Year in reading a writing magazine. Then the first thing I did on New Year's Day, after breakfast, was sit down and do some of my proofreading course. I've done my Sub 1 for Write 1 Sub 1 already, and I spent an hour and a half this morning in a coffee shop alternately noodling notes for poetry and writing the first draft of a story.
Of course, all this subject to change once the day job starts crushing my soul again, but so far it's a good start. I've decided that the Write 1 part of W1S1 needs some parameters. For my purposes, only completed first drafts that are typed up on the computer in full count towards it. Drafts in notebooks are no good to anybody because they so often stay that way. No one wants a submission in turquoise ink and my scrawly handwriting. My writer gifts to myself are proving to be worth the investment. The Mslexia diary is a great space-saver, since it has so many blank pages in it (a page for each week and a bunch of extra pages at the back) I don't need to carry a notebook around with me as well "just in case". And my first foray into the Writer's Toolbox garnered me a rough draft, and the idea for another story. After (not much) deliberation, I've also bought a jar of overpriced flavoured coffee (hazelnut, if you're interested). It's expensive, but only in that a 50g jar was slightly more expensive than a large latte - which is still cheaper than drinking the same amount of coffee in a cafe somewhere. The intent is to try and replicate some of the coffee shop vibe at home, with a "treat" drink that I'm only allowed when writing, and the radio on for background noise. Whether this works against distractions remains to be seen, since that's the main point of going out in the first place. The aim this year is to be more productive, so: whatever works! It's been a little while since I've posted, mostly due to Real Life getting busy all of a sudden. For the last couple of weeks I've been on a writing hiatus, trying to clear everything else so I can have a nice and relaxing, writing-filled holiday.
One of the things I've been doing is gearing up to go Duotrope free next year. While I won't go into details - enough writers have already done so - I don't feel that what they're offering is value for money. So I exported all my data into Sonar, backed up my spreadsheet, and made a note of some free tracker websites to look into. I'll miss having a searchable database of markets, but to be honest I should be aiming for the pro markets first and I have a list of those anyway. I intend to be more productive next year. To this end I've bought myself the Mslexia diary, which is full of writery goodies and will hopefully keep me motivated. This afternoon I went through and wrote "Write 1:" and "Sub 1:" on the first page of every month, since I plan on doing the monthly Write 1 Sub 1 challenge. Part of this will involve going over to Liberty Hall to do the Flash Challenge more often - no doubt there will be months that I need to in order to reach my goal! Other goals include to finish my proofreading course, and to spend some time every week looking into and for different types of freelance work. I want to dye my hair purple, and I can't do that with an office job! Probably the last one of the year, although there'll be a proper blog post after Christmas.
The Duotrope Conundrum - why writer Alex Shvatsman thinks Duotrope's new payment plan is unsustainable. (Hint: most writers I know, including past donators, won't be staying.) 12 Letters That Didn't Make the Alphabet. Blog post by Della Galton on Writing a Serial. Religion in Fantasy World-Building at Genreality. 9 Signs That You Might Be an Introvert. Daily Words with Debie Ridpath Ohi. The Weekend Book Marketing Makeover by Shannon O'Neil and Toni Tesori (I haven't read it yet, but it's downloaded and waiting for me to get to it). Once again I've been a bit lazy on the internetting this last week. Although that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's an interview with me over at Anaea Lay's website today - Telling Lies for Fun and Profit. Some of the answers may seem a little odd: the clue's in the title. My story "The Message" went up at Kazka Press last week. And my copies of Cucurbital 3 arrived as well. And my one and only "Link I Like" collected last week was: Three Signs You're Renovating a Condemned Novel. Only two this week, I've been a little distracted.
Promoting Your Books By Getting Articles in Magazines - Autumn Barlow at Top Hat Books. I'm going to print this out an keep it on my noticeboard. Copyright - Words and Images, Not Ideas, Titles, or Cats - Nicola Morgan What Motivates Your Characters? by Natascha Biebow. Written sbout (and using great examples from) picture books, but relevant to any writer of fiction.
What to do when life gets in the way of you writing - a great post by Alison Wells. 3 Reasons You Should Write When You're Tired by Krissy Brady. I really need to get the hang of this. For poets who are feeling left out of NaNoWriMo, why not try A Poem a Day in November? And finally if you've never read Shadow Unit, why not? It's awesome! Like most writers, I have a complicated relationship with stationery.
For some reason, I struggle to write poetry in anything bigger than a reporters notebook. The large amount of white space intimidates me. However, I struggle to write fiction in anything smaller than A5 because it feels stifling. It makes keeping a generic notebook really difficult. Also, while I can scribble poetry in cheap throwaway books, I prefer writing fiction in something a bit nicer. This means I have a huge collection of shiny notebooks that I then become too scared to write in, in case I ruin them. Because what if I put the wrong project in the wrong book? I can't be the only writer with this problem, surely? I seem to be slightly short of links this week, so I thought I'd post some for those planning on taking part in NaNoWriMo next month. I'm giving it a miss this year, too much other stuff going on, but no doubt I'll be wanting to take part by the end of the first week.
For those who don't know what NaNoWriMo is, here's the website. They have a very helpful Reference Desk where you can research pretty much anything. The danger is spending more time there than actually writing. If getting words on the page is a problem, Write or Die has a nifty online app that punishes you if you stop writing for too long before you reach your wordcount or the timer runs out. The consequences vary from a gentle reminder to your word unwriting itself. If you're more for the carrot than the stick, Written? Kitten! offers pictures of fluffy cats for wordcount. Just don't set your count too low as the number of available kittens isn't that big. Of course, you'll be wanting to keep track of your wordcount, and post status updates all over your social networking. Writertopia have a couple of nifty wordcounters you can add to blog posts. Finally, if you're struggling for ideas, Seventh Sanctum has a random story generator, along with generators for settings, characters, and other random things. Just don't spend all your time playing with it. It occurs to me I haven't posted a lot lately, other than my weekly list of links I like. That's not because I haven't been writing, more because I've got out of the habit.
Lately I've been working on my proofreading course (another post on that another time) and - of course - my Tax Return. I'm working on a set of ten poems for the Attys (I think I mentioned it before - they all have to be in a different form) but it's difficult to blog about that without gving a lot away about what I'm doing, which isn't so great for a contest. I've done the Flash Challenge over at Liberty Hall the last two weeks. Both times I wasn't sure I was going to get anything, but the gears started turning slowly and I got a story both times. I've got a couple of story ideas to work on as well, in different genres, it's just finding the time to fit them in around everything else! I joined the local creative writing group, as I mentioned, and can't wait for the next session. The poetry and short story satellite groups both run this week, and I'm thinking about trying one of those. I don't think I can commit to both. And that's where I'm at so far. How about the other writers out there? |
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