My online stories
I wrote in my newsletter at the weekend that I’ve been feeling sluggish with my writing and creativity over the last couple of weeks. I called it ‘marshmallow syndrome’. It’s where my head feels like it’s full of sticky, melted marshmallow that stops any creative thoughts from coming. This could be due to one particular world event dominating everything and impacting our lives or it could be due to something else. Whatever the reason I was determined to do something about it because I was getting fed up with myself.
Honestly I hate that feeling when the creativity doesn’t come. When I do time-wasting activities instead of my writing and creative tasks, when my concentration is about a minute long before I start reaching for my phone or get out of my seat. Writing my essays, blog posts, my book proposal and novel gives me joy; creating videos and Instagram posts and connecting with other people gives me purpose and focus and a real zest for life. So not having the impetus to get anything done is so frustrating!
So on Monday I headed to my office with a renewed sense of purpose. I created a little plan for myself, got myself organised and set to work. I think it helped that my daughter was in my office with me doing her school work. I just felt - if she can do it for 55 minutes per subject then so can I.
This vlog is the result of that day. I’ve also included spring blossom and my dog walk at the end of the day to give a more rounded look at my writing day during the quarantine.
I've been working on my novel for thirteen years and it has evolved significantly during that time. Confidence and lack of it has been the reason why I've never completed this novel and moved on. I’ve created a video sharing the six steps I took to help push me forward. This includes sharing my work so I had accountability, tracking my progress and using index cards.
When I brainstormed some ideas for my YouTube channel I thought about a writing vlog. Maybe just once a month to give an insight into my writing day. So a bit like Instagram Stories but more cohesive and not in fifteen second clips. As the month ticked over into this week, the week I’d planned to record my vlog, I got excited. Admittedly part of the excitement is because the video is unscripted which means less work - but also I like the idea of showing more of my day…[click through to read the full post]
My log and tracker pages are not beautiful works of art as many bullet journals are but they have encouraged me to be more productive and I’ve really enjoyed filling in the different trackers.
I’m delighted with the progress I’ve made - particularly with my novel. In the video below I share exactly how many words I’ve written this month as well as how I got on with my non-fiction, my essay and what I’ve read.
Well, it’s been a long time coming but I’ve finally finished the editing of my novel so it’s ready for the next, and hopefully final, draft before I start sending it out to literary agents.
I have been editing this novel for years now but it’s only in the last six months or so that I’ve finally knuckled down and put some proper thought and time into the process.
I have a playlist on my YouTube channel all about this editing process and it starts with a video called Writing my novel | what happens after the first draft? In that video I set out to edit the first draft of my novel and why it had taken me so long to get to this point. And I’m talking years!
A number of videos on this playlist share the process as I set about doing an outline of my novel, do some proper plotting, where I break it down and identify plot holes and write each chapter on index cards. It’s been a fascinating process and I learnt a lot about what was missing from my book. And now I’ve taken it apart I need to start the process of re-building - of piecing it back together again and to include everything I learnt about my characters and learnt about the holes in the plot.
Finally I did a little vlog at the weekend where I undertook the research I needed to do…and now I can begin the re-write. The final draft.
When I set up a writing tracker and log book at the end of last year to chart my progress during 2020 I hadn’t anticipated how one particular spread in the journal would make me write every day. It wasn’t deliberate at all, I just included that page because I wanted to record which projects I worked on on a daily basis. It’s not even a neat, Pinterest-friendly spread. I just scribble inside a rectangle when I’ve worked on a project that day.
I hadn’t anticipated how I’d feel if there was a gap in the grid. If I hadn’t worked on my novel for a day. Or even, horror, for two days. I had pride. And wanted to make that column a solid mass of scribble. But I also didn’t want it to become a stick to beat myself with. So I decided to keep it simple. I’d write for between ten and thirty minutes a day on my novel. Once I’d done that I could reward myself with a scribbled in rectangle!
It’s a similar system to when, a number of years ago, myself and a group of writers, would aim to write one hundred words a day. Only one hundred. If we wanted to write more we could - but that was the minimum we had to aim for. And it worked. A regular writing practice became established.
I’ve achieved quite a bit during my time online in the last decade. The one thing I’ve struggled with, however, is fiction. I started my online presence in order to create a brand for myself when I pitched agents with my novel. But lack of confidence and fear manifesting in procrastination and a focus on other projects on and offline meant the novel never got completed.
So this is how I’m going to do it. By writing every day for between ten and thirty minutes - and recording my progress on my YouTube channel. There’s nothing like a bit of accountability to make you pick up the pen or open your laptop!
I made this video to chat about why I decided to undertake this project and I also reveal how many words I managed to write, using this process of up to thirty minutes, during the course of a week.
I’ll update you again in a month!
I’ve had my novel notes sitting on my desk for many a month. I have a clip full of index cards and more index cards, disorganised and loose, just kicking about. This disorganisation reflects my mind and it can get stressful and put me off working on my novel.
So during this quiet period between Christmas and New Year I’ve decided to get myself organised with my novel in progress. For a lovely hour I worked on organising my notes and it was so therapeutic. It’s not complete but already I feel inspired, I’ve come across ideas I’d forgotten about and just getting everything in a logical system makes me motivated for the writing to come. My mind has become clearer.
I’m now going deeper into this planning and editing of my novel than I ever anticipated. In this week’s video I share how I’ve broken the novel up into chapters and, following on from the last video where I drew up a grid to identify gaps in the plot, I am now starting to make additions on the index cards marked ‘insert’. Click the link to watch the video.
I began writing a novel from a period of loneliness and confusion and went on to create a blog, to having paid jobs writing for book and writing websites, to gaining a literary agent, to starting an Instagram account and becoming an 'influencer', to YouTube…whilst all that time having an on/off relationship with my novel and plotting out another one.
This is my writing journey told through my writing notebooks.
Oh my goodness I am really enjoying deconstructing (if that’s the right word?) my novel in order to make more sense of it. After my last video when I finished outlining the draft into four acts I decided to break it down into chapters. This was helpful as I saw how many gaps there were and also saw there was no time structure.
But I wanted to understand the gaps a bit more. The best way of doing this was to create a grid with the main relationships and themes running along the top and the chapters down the side. I ticked off where each one appeared. And discovered that despite a lot of the novel being abut my main character’s relationship with her mother and grandmother - they rarely appeared in the story!
With this information I wondered what to do next. And that’s when a friend mentioned on Instagram that she uses index cards so you can have one for each chapter - then use others to add in all the bits that are missing and move them around. So this is what I did and which is what you can see in my latest video in my novel editing journey.
(If you want to catch up and see my novel editing journey from the beginning this is the YouTube playlist).
