Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Busy Day

It has been a most productive day today :) I've uploaded the book to Amazon Kindle and it's already live :) :) The link is here, in case you want to go look:

http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Canvas-ebook/dp/B00CRTAUVG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368521358&sr=1-1&keywords=blank+canvas

I've also written the outline for the new book, the werewolf book and I'm really excited about it. You may have noticed I don't have a title for either of the books I'm writing - I truly hate having to come up with a title so it's the very last thing I do. The only thing worse than choosing a title is writing a summary of a book. Condensing down 80 000 or so words to a single page (and making it interesting) is purgatory.

Anyway, to get back to it, I've written the outline and I'm in the process of giving the characters suitable names and building a picture of them in my mind. While I'm doing this random things are popping into my head - I already know the final paragraph, I know how the main character is going to discover a pivotal secret (and what the secret is). I know why the main character had to have a name with a particular meaning. It's all there in my head, bursting to get out and it's really very frustrating to have to do the necessary groundwork first.

The other frustrating thing is how SLOW the writing process is. No matter how fast I type, writing is so much slower than thinking or dreaming. To dream, I see the pictures, to write I have to paint the pictures with words. It's fun to do but sometimes the story is in such a hurry to be told that my fingers feel like they have blocks at the end of them.

I've never had writer's block, not yet anyway. But I imagine it must feel like the word police have rushed in and erected miniature thought blocks. I imagine it must be quite painful, because all the thoughts and words would be stuck in the head and cause a traffic snarl of thoughts swirling around and around unable to get out. I imagine it would be quite horrible. I mean it's called writer's block, a nasty description.

It kind of feels like that when I have an entire story that wants to be told and is impatient to be told. My fingers feel clunky and slow, and my head is full of that peculiar writing cloud so that I can't focus on anything else. And still, I can't SEE what I am thinking, what my mind is producing. I don't know what I will write until I write it but I know it's there and I know it needs me to write. So my fingers have been busy doing the groundwork, the framework really. No matter how good the story, it will fall over without strong framework, but the story doesn't want to wait and it is pushing me to hurry up.

And the story won't give me everything, I'm getting random tendrils, or entire paragraphs or snapshots of an event that has to be described - and by snapshots I do mean just that. I get a picture of a character doing something and I know it is part of the story. And it's not chronological, it's all over the place. I really have no idea how it all comes together on the page. But it does, and what a relief it will be when I can get started on the actual story! That's why I think writer's block must be so horrible, to have stories stuck in the brain without being able to access them by any means - thought, dreams, writing - must be so frustrating and exhausting. And I can't imagine how a writer going through writer's block is able to function in day to day life. Maybe they don't.

For me, to function in day to day life, I have to write. It doesn't seem to matter if I write physically (although that is certainly the best way) or if I write a story (that I then forget) while walking/cleaning/trying to sleep or any of the humdrum daily chores. I just need to have an outlet for all these characters and stories. Reading helps too, it makes the constant script and the characters and stories go to the back for a while. But now, I think because I'm writing on a daily basis, the need to write is stronger. Now, I need to write every day, and the more I write the more I need to write.

Maybe that is why I had such a detailed dream. I like this explanation way better than the one I suggested to my bestie. I said to her maybe my dish clattering ghost is a werewolf implanting this story into my head. She said it was very possible which was so not the required or expected response! Thanks for that Ola!

What I have learnt is that when I do what I really want to do I feel energised and fulfilled. Writing is definitely what I am supposed to be doing and I am just sorry I let life get in the way of doing what I really wanted for so long. Women do this a lot, we put our own needs and dreams so far to the back that we forget we even have them. Life, and family, takes up so much of our time and our energy there is often not enough left for ourselves.

It's such a shame that we are not all taught how to balance our lives better as children. We all deserve the chance to find what we should be doing in life and to do it. In the end, we all want to be happy, but so many of us have no idea what it is that makes us happy. And so many of us fail to chase a dream because it is outside of the ordinary. I saw a meme that has been doing the rounds on social media and I loved it. I think we should all chase our dreams, embrace change (yes yes I know, pot kettle black, but I'm opening myself to change!) and live our life the way a child does - with every sense fully engaged and a belief in magic.


Am I a weird person? Damn straight!


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