It's a lesson in progress

I think I'm at a place with my WIP where I can just write it and be conscious of what I'm doing instead of simply writing whatever comes to mind. Erm, what I mean is I'll write a scene and erase all the unnecessary filler words I usually fall back on before I've even written them. Pretty neat, huh?

Another thing I've noticed about my writing is that when things are missing or not phrased quite right, I'll go back to them and fix it. If the problem was recognised three chapters later, I'll remember what I've learned during that time and apply it on the work as a whole. This is all probably stuff experienced writers do anyway but I'm not quite there yet, although I'd like to think I'm on my way. These are just the baby steps to my international best-sellers. Ahem.

I've also avoided falling into the trap I usually dive head-first into: writing more than one story at a time. And yeah, okay, I am writing more than one story right now but one of them is a collaboration so when it's not my chapter I get time off. The workload is halved - it's not my responsibility 24/7.

What often is an issue is when I'm really into a story and then, maybe four chapters in, I'll get a super-brand-spanking-new-awesome idea for another story. And everything hits the fan. I end up convincing myself that I can totally juggle two multi-chapter stories around my education and having a life. It's fine. I won't get confused, or frustrated, or overwhelmed. It will be just great. (That's all sarcasm, in case you didn't pick up on it.)

However! Where I'm at now in terms of my writing, when this super-brand-spanking-new-awesome idea came along, I didn't jump on it like a starving vulture, oh no. I thought about it. Let it simmer. Then, when it had been stewing just long enough, I wrote it all down in a quick plan and shoved the notebook out of sight. I'll get back to it when I finish the WIP I'm on now, thank you very much. There'll be no Shiny New Idea Syndrome this time around, Life!

Weeping for 99 chapters in a row

It wasn't my best move, choosing a module based on my liking for a Disney film that related rather obscurely to it, but now I'm stuck doing literature of the later middle ages until summer. It's not all bad I guess: I can understand most of the language and the stories aren't really taxing to read. Some of it is actually quite interesting and I was generally interested in Medieval times at some point in my life.

That being said, I want to shoot my eyeballs for choosing this module.

This week I had to read a Middle English text that had 99 chapters and was all about a (real!) woman called Margery Kempe who wanted to be a saint so badly she spent all her time praying and crying and regretting the fact she had fourteen children with her unfortunate husband. It was torture. Every time I read the words "wepyn" (weeping), "sobbyn" (sobbing) and "sorwe" (sorrow), I died a little inside. It was all so repetitive - and it didn't help that Margery liked to bang on about her hallucinations talks with God/Jesus/Mary/some reputable saint or other.

Not only did all this happen in the text, but it was also meant to be Margery's autobiography. Written in the third person. There were all these phrases declaring her as sweet and precious and bleugh. I mean really, conceited much, Mrs Kempe?

I feel sorry for her husband. He married a bag of crazy. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to erase all instances of characters crying in my WIP. I simply can't stand it in literature any more.

Fuck you, Margery.

Depleting my creative juices

(The title is weirder than this post is.)

When I turned sixteen, something magical happened to me: I stopped being able to sleep late into the afternoon. Going along with this, I also started taking myself to bed at around 9ish. I had just finished my GCSE exams and thought I would spend my long summer sleeping off the "stress" (I revised for two subjects - Religious Studies and Geography. The rest I winged). Little did I know that the summer of 2010 would be full of rising with the sun and going to sleep long before my friends were. It made text conversations quite difficult, actually.

Since then I've been going to bed early and getting up early. Most people who know this about me are surprised and call me either an old woman or a little child. I like old woman better, since I plan to be one some day.

Earlier this month, I got a job (this is totally relevant, I promise). I had to go to a couple of training days and the first one was the most exhausting thing I've experienced since I went to the gym three years ago. It started at 9.30am and ended at 4.30pm-ish. Also, it was at my university so I had to travel there pretty early, causing me to have to be up from half six in the morning. Remember when I said I usually go to bed early and wake up early? Yeah, half six is even early for me. I'm more of an 8/9am type of girl.

Okay so I came home, full of optimism and wanting to write an essay. It's the essay portion of the first term so I've been focused on them. I managed to finish the first one in two days and thought I'd be able to knock the second one out like that. Boy, was I wrong. I turned on my laptop and couldn't find the physical will to do anything academic. Instead, I thought maybe doing some recreational writing might help loosen me up a little. I opened up my WIP.

After bleeding from my fingertips writing 300 words, I realised I was simply too tired to function. Particularly as I had just written the word 'matchinging' and couldn't for the life of me understand why it had a red squiggly line underneath.

I hauled my tired ass to bed. But really, why is writing when tired so difficult?

For sale

Item name: Safi Kinson

Category: Character

Product description: Safi Kinson is a woman in her twenties who won't get out of my head. Seriously. She's there, dancing away like an arrogant, selfish protagonist who is trying to convince me to write her into a story. I ALREADY HAVE TWO WORKS IN PROGRESS, SAFI. I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR NONSENSE. If interested in purchasing the product, please contact your nearest mental health facility and book me an appointment. I will be crying in the corner meanwhile.

Safi's prototype appearance. Ignore her
lack of eyebrows, I'm tired.

The first person

When I was young, all my stories were told in third person. I didn't really understand the concept of being in someone else's head yet and my stories were in that stilted narrator voice of five year olds. You know the sort: "John went to school. He liked school. He saw his friends and they had fun because they were happy at playtime." As I got a little older, I discovered first person narrative. And boy, did I love it.

Everything I wrote from that point on was in first person. I wrote full-length, multi-chapter stories in first person. I thought it marked me as a writer. Turns out, it probably just marked me as a tween with a working internet connection, a big imagination and a cringe-worthy obliviousness to the lameness of clichés. Ouch.

A couple of years back, I decided that first person narrators were beneath me. Yeah, it was fun when I was a kid but really, who was I kidding pretending to be someone else while writing a story? Nobody believed in phrases like "Jenna's face was bright red with anger. I took a few wary steps back". It was just so stupid and childish and Terri? You could do so much better than that.

I started writing in third person again and didn't look back. I LOVED third person. It made me feel powerful, like a god of my own imagination, deciding the fates of these unfortunate characters. I probably went a little crazy with the power lust but that's for another post. The point is, my third person stories were simply mind blowing.

And then I hit a wall.