Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash
Hello awesome people. I haven’t written a post on here for a few weeks, but I have been active over at Her Heart. My latest article there is on motivation and discusses the five second rule and decision fatigue. To take a look click on this link.
Have a fantastic and creative day everyone xx
In last week’s post I committed to not posting every week. Yet here I am posting a week later, ah the irony. But why, after stressing myself out about the commitment, am I disregarding it? That would be because of one Holden Sheppard.
Read on to find out what happened.
Holden published a blog post on Friday the 29th June that really resonated with me. I was in a writing funk full of self-doubt and this post helped me climb out of it. In it, Holden had given himself permission to write horseshit because he figured he could fix it up later.
You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page. – Jodi Picoult.
He also spoke about self-sabotage. Hello, let me introduce you to the Queen of that particular kingdom (that would be me). Case in point, hitting the first target for Rosie and then coming to almost a complete stop on it. For no reason other than I was starting to feel completely inadequate. Perfectionism also reared its head and that paralysed me even further. So I followed Holden’s lead and gave myself permission to write horseshit. It felt rather freeing to do that. I’ll let you know how it works out when it comes time to edit!
One other thing happened that helped pull me out of my self-doubt. A lovely person contacted me via Instagram, saying that my latest article at Her Heart Poetry had inspired her and that it had helped her after a very stressful month. I can’t tell you how much that made my day.
You see, that article had been hard for me to write. I was mentally exhausted and my mind was all over the place. If it wasn’t for my sense of commitment and Her Heart’s Editor in Chief, Samuel, that article would have never happened. I was very close to throwing my hands up in the air, saying fuck it and calling it quits on the whole thing. It is very rewarding to know that I eventually got it done and that it has gone on to help someone.
It amazes me that both incidents happened within 24 hours of each other. They have, in turn, inspired me to not give up. That although writing is hard sometimes and I have self-doubt over it, I love it. It also reminded me that when I write from the heart I honestly feel free and like I have found my version of paradise. And who would want to give that up?
You can read Holden’s awesome post here.
My Her Heart post can be found here.
Have a fantastic and creative week everyone xx
Hi guys! Here we are, nearly half way through 2018. Where on earth did that time go? If you are anything like me, you most likely set yourself some goals at the beginning of the year. It’s now six months in and it’s well worth checking in with yourself on where you’re at. Seeing as writing here for you guys keeps me unflinchingly honest, I thought I would share my check in with you 🙂
Goal One: Attend Fiona McIntosh’s Masterclass
This one I met with flying colours. I attended the five day course and it changed my writing for the better and also had a pretty big impact on my life. For more on that you can read it here.
Goal Two: Finish Balance
Well… this one is on hold. I have a working draft of my manuscript but it’s time to focus on my other story, Rosie. The reason for this is that I want to be traditionally published and fantasy, which is what Balance is, is a hard genre for that to happen within Australia. So I’ve switched focus to Rosie which is historical fiction. This doesn’t mean I’ve given up on Balance, simply giving myself a better chance at my goal.
Goal Three: Get fitter and healthier
HAHAHA, this one is half done and I suspect will always need work. I’m certainly fitter, thanks to an awesome trainer, however the healthier side of things needs a bit more work. Part of this is from the amount of stress I put myself under, but that’s being addressed in goal four. The rest of it is what I put in my mouth and that’s improving so I’m counting it as progress.
Goal Four: Sort out work/life balance
I had no idea that this one would actually be the biggest hurdle for me to jump over. I’m prone to the all or nothing approach and with my perfectionism tendencies I put myself under a lot of stress. I wanted 2018 to be the year where I started to even out my family responsibilities and my work ones. I thought it would be a matter of writing everything out in a list and sorting out the priorities from the wants. I want to laugh at poor deluded Sam from January 2018.
You see, I didn’t take into account that a family is made up of more than one person, each with their own wants and priorities. It has taken me a bit to balance that with my own, but we are getting there. I write we because a family needs to work together to get harmony within it. And the most important tool to get this is communication. I don’t know why that always surprises me, but really, the most essential tool to getting anything done in life is talking to each other.
On that note, I’ll say goodbye for this week. Let me know how you are going with your goals, I’d love to hear about it 🙂
Have a creative week everyone!
One of the things that I do when constructing a story is create what my father nicknamed the ‘spider web’. It lives on the wall beside my desk and is a quick reference for me in regards to characters and important information for my current story (For Rosie that the black death and for Balance the magic system I created). I’ve posted pictures of this on my Instagram and Facebook page and have had questions about exactly how I go about creating it so I thought I’d write about it more in-depth here. If you have any further questions about it, feel free to ask and I’ll answer as best as I can. So here we go 🙂
Progress shot of the spider web last year
Firstly I create a board on Pinterest and pin anything that strikes me as relevant to my story. Rosie has its own board, as does Balance. After browsing Pinterest for an hour or so, I then cull the pictures down to exactly what I want. Sometimes I’m lucky, come across a picture and know immediately that it’s a reference for a character. This happened with the female character in Rosie. I had no idea what she looked like prior to seeing a certain picture, but the moment I saw it I knew that it was her.
Other times I have an idea of what the character looks like, find a picture that looks completely different, but fits them so much better. Annoying when this happens but also the reason why I do this before writing too much. Much easier to change physical characteristics early on.
Then I print out the pictures as well as any relevant information (such as fashion and landscape images) and stick it to my wall. The Pinterest board and the wall grow as my story progresses as I don’t really plan too far in advance. It simply doesn’t work for me. But now that there are some pictures up the web weaving starts.
I place string connecting the characters together. I pick certain colours and connect the people who have met, leaving non connections blank. The colours are important. For Balance it was because I was writing more than one book so I needed to know who met in which book. For Rosie it’s because there is a time slip in the narrative and I need to know who is in which timeframe. Also, Rosie is a duology so there will be a third colour added to keep track of that. By the time the story is finished the pictures are covered in string.
It’s really easy for me to glance at it and see who knows who, as well as other information.
I love walking into the room where I write and seeing this web. It spurs me on to create more as I like seeing the progress. I tried keeping a binder full of my characters’ information at first but it quickly fell to the wayside. I’m a visual person and this is what works for me. I know of other writers who keep files full of reference material for their manuscripts and others who simply refer to photographs. What about you? We are all different so I’d love to hear what works for you guys.
Have a fantastic and creative week xx
The start of Rosie’s web.
Photo by Daniel Jensen on Unsplash
To others it appears as if an idea for a story or poem has come to me from no where. Completely not the case. Usually something I have heard will trigger an idea in my brain and my mind will take off and expand on it at a rapid rate. My mind simply takes a massive jump from one thing to another, often missing the obvious links in between. I like to refer to it as mental exploring, for that is what it feels like. I get this awesome idea and I examine every inch of it through writing. Sometimes I end up in new territory, other times I reach a familiar destination with a new view of it. The journey is truly the exciting bit for me.
So it was different for me to have a friend suggest a story idea and have my mind embrace it for exactly what it was. Now, I do sometimes talk to others if my current writing project is not making progress like I want. There is something about talking it out that frees up my mind. But I have never had someone suggest I write something, a particular story idea so complete that she could have written it herself, and have my mind accept it as is and want to write. I made little changes, but the story itself is undeniably her concept.
It was rather fascinating to witness in myself. With the process I mentioned previously, I’m usually too involved to really pay attention, but this time there was a small part of me that was standing back and watching it all. It was interesting to watch how it seemed to flow onto the page and by doing so, I better understand how I weave words together. Which is awesome because now I’m thinking I can better harness it. I’ve yet to actually put this into practice though!
But now to the practical side. What I’m having to work on with all this, is not getting distracted by the shiny new idea. I’ve written the first draft so it’s not rattling around in my brain, but it’s time to let it rest before tackling it again. And finish my other project.
To do this I’m using my trick of self imposed deadlines to focus. Firstly, I’m going to a masterclass with Fiona McIntosh at the end of April, so that’s deadline number one. The current edit of Balance has to be finished by then as that’s the story I’ve sent to her for feedback. While there I’ll go over the shiny new idea and work out what needs fixing/expanding with it. There will be no writing on the shiny new idea, simply notes made on it. I figure this is doable because I’ll be by myself in a hotel room for five days. After that it’ll be reassessment time. Armed with the knowledge I’ll gain from the masterclass I’ll figure out my next step. I’m actually pretty excited about it all.
What’s your creative process like? Let me know in the comments and have a happy and creative week 🙂
I love books and have done from the moment I was given my first Little Golden Book. I have fond memories of reading Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, The Babysitters Club and sneaking off to read Wilbur Smith’s The Seventh Scroll at age 11 (my mum soon put a stop to that). At 12 I discovered libraries that weren’t at my school and the love affair continued and even grew. So why then, do I rarely leave book reviews?
I understand that book reviews are integral in selling a book. An excellent book review can propel a book forward, especially compared to a bad book review or, heaven forbid, no review at all. I look at them myself and they can make or break my decision to buy a book. So why don’t I help my beloved authors out by leaving a review more regularly? Or even do reviews on my blog? I know many others that do that, helping out their fellow writers and recommending books that they love. Let me be clear here that I do leave one if asked, just rarely off my own bat.
Part of the reason, for me, is that I read a lot of books. I checked my kindle library the other day, it has 1189 books in it. I’ve had it for less than 5 years. Don’t get me wrong, some of those I’ve only read part of before giving up, but those are in the minority and some of the other books I’ve reread several times. Then there is my physical library and the books I borrow from other people and my local library and the ones I gave away when I did a clean out.
But that’s an excuse. I could leave a review as soon as I finish a book, when it’s fresh in my mind but I don’t as I’m too eager to get to the next story.
This all about to change. Why? Well I went to the Mandurah Library Readers and Writers Festival. Between kids and my own ill health, I managed to go to only a handful of the sessions on offer, but the first one paid surprising dividends for me. Firstly, Beth from Dymocks Busselton spoke of The Hope Fault by Tracy Farr. She spoke of it so highly that I bought a copy of it that afternoon and finished it a day later. I love that book, as a reader and a writer. I will undoubtedly read it again soon and it has taught me a lot, much of which I am still processing.
Secondly, Beth also spoke of how she has to read so many books for her job. She enjoys the book and then often forgets what it was about and why she enjoyed it for the simple reason that she has to get through so many in a short space of time. This is my problem, only I don’t do it for a job, I do it because there are so many awesome books out there and I want to read them all! But I’m forgetting about them, not truly appreciating them in all their wonderfulness and in the process doing myself a disservice.
So I’m going to start doing book reviews and posting them on my blog site. It will slow me down with my reading but it will make me realise what exactly it is I like about a particular book. I read all sorts so the review could be about absolutely anything. First up will by The Hope Fault. It’s only appropriate, after all. I’ll post it this Friday.
Have a wonderful and creative week everyone 🙂
Often when someone starts to write a story or even contemplates writing one, they worry that it has all been done before. And to an extent they are right, it has, but the thing is it hasn’t been done by you. I’m not advocating plagiarism, because that’s just plain wrong, but simply because someone else has written about a particular story does not mean you can’t as well.
This really hit home for me on Thursday when I was writing down points for my latest blog post. I should make it clear that it was going to be my latest blog post. I thought it was a nice one about the romanticism of writing compared to the harsh reality of it and I was happy working away until my dad needed my help. Before I went back to writing I decided to take a look at Facebook. Lo and behold I came across an article posted by the Australian Writers’ Centre and it was eerily similar to what I was currently writing (FYI you can find that article here). I immediately threw my hands up in the air and declared that I couldn’t write it now, someone else had beaten me to it.
After thinking about it for a few hours (and yes, cursing the person who had published it first), I realised how incredibly stupid I was being. One, I hadn’t completely read the article and was assuming it was the same as mine and two, I hadn’t written it so who was to say I didn’t have something more to add? But then it felt like I got hit like a lightening bolt and the inspiration for this post was born.
Humans have been writing for a very long time. The only way you are going to be able to write about something new is if you invent it. Good luck with that, it is much harder to do successfully than it sounds. So don’t worry about what others are doing and focus on your own work. Only you have your voice and only you can tell your story.
Have a happy and creative week everyone.
What if? It’s a simple question that often signals the start of something, usually some form of problem solving or an urge to try something different just because. As a writer it is my favourite question to ask myself when I lack inspiration for my current project. There is something about the question, the possibilities held in those two words, that fires up my imagination and gets my creative side flowing again.
What if so and so got sick? Or if another character developed a fascination with flowers? The list is endless and can really take your story to places it may never have gone to otherwise.
Then there is the aspect of applying it in everyday life. For example: I’m not sure what I was thinking about at the time, but I do remember thinking, what if…? Then my brain went on a whole different tangent and I ended up at this blog post. I often find myself starting at one point in a conversation/thought and ending up at a completely unexpected destination, simply because I’ve asked myself what if? It’s weirdly comforting in a way.
Life is full of what ifs and asking them really can change your life.
What if you took a chance on a relationship/job/different lifestyle? What if you took the train instead of driving to work? Sometimes, a small change, a simple question, can really have big results. So ask yourself, what if?
Have a fantastic and creative week everyone!
This school term I was determined to get the first draft of Rosie completed. I worked out how much I needed to write every week to achieve my target and set forth to conquer my goal. Then I hit a stumbling block. You see I also committed to entering The Richell Prize at the same time (to find out more about The Richell Prize click here). Now I figured out rather quickly that concentrating 100% on two projects is a difficult thing, but I stumbled pass that block and continued on my merry way until a friend reminded me I have a month until entries for The Richell close. Cue a minor freak out.
I was blissfully ignoring the deadline, wrapped up in Rosie because, hey, the new is fascinating and my entry for The Richell is something I have been working on for years. However not long after getting the timely reminder about the deadline, Rosie came to a ‘blinding’ stop. And I write blinding because I literally can not go any further with that story until I have done some research on the British royal court of 1342. That’s the problem with historical fantasy, some things you can’t make up, you actually have to get the facts. Don’t get me wrong, some facts I have twisted to suit the story, but I can’t make up a King and his court when they already exist. Time to take the blinkers off and deal with the real world with that story.
It works out though, because now I can focus on The Richell entry without thinking about Rosie. It’s like all the characters in that story have sat down for a rest in my mind, patiently waiting for me to finish my Richell entry and do some research on the side. And after a minor wrestle in my mind about not finishing Rosie this term, I’m already excitedly going over Balance and getting it organised for The Richell. The same freaking story that only half interested me before.
I should add that I wasn’t totally ignoring it so far, I’ve managed to get about 40% of it ready while focusing on Rosie, but now it’s got all my attention. This is life and the best laid plans often have to be adapted to get the end goal. And I will get my entry in. No excuses. What plans have you guys had to change to get to your goals? Let me know in the comments.
Have a great and creative week everyone 🙂
This week has not been the easiest of weeks for me because it has been very up and down. As some times happens, a lot of things demanded my time, but added to that stress was the fact that I couldn’t seem to write.
Now a lot of that is because time is limited, but some of it was because the few times I sat down to write I couldn’t focus. I’m not talking about the usual procrastination, but the lack of focus caused by the mind racing and unable to concentrate. This was heartbreaking for me as writing has always been my outlet at times like this and it wasn’t working. What did work however, was reading.
Over three days I finished a self help book I started months ago, finished one romance novel and started another and I’ve started a fantasy one for the purpose of reviewing it down the track. Yes, I could have used this time for writing and editing, but I feel my time was better spent doing this. Why? Because it allowed my mind to rest. Ironic because reading gives me something to focus on while part of it works on whatever is bothering me. It’s not exactly rest as you know it, but I found that after several days I was ready to dive back into my writing world.
And I have with gusto. In the space of a day I have worked on my current first draft, my Richell Prize entry and written two blog posts. So my point is, take a break if you need it, it’s okay to rest. Just don’t give up.
Have a happy and creative week everyone!
Samantha House 