ROW 80 Check in 5 - How Not To Do A 30 Hour Novel

 

I have not failed in doing the 30 hour novel, I have very successfully found useful information on how not to write a 30 hour novel!

Based on my day of experience, here is my top advice for anyone that wants to write a 30 hour novel:

1. Don't. 

This is not to totally discourage you, but to make you think about why you would want to do this?

I admit, I wanted to do it to show off. This is not a good reason at all. 

If, say, I was totally excited about an idea, so much so that it kept me awake at night, and I decided I would take all the passion for that idea, and just lock myself away from the world and pour it all out over 30 hours, this would be a perfectly good thing. But if you are writing solely to write 'a 30 hour novel', it is a waste of your effort and time. If it is a good idea it deserves being developed properly, if it is a bad idea don't waste the 30 hours on it. 

2. Have a character to start with. 

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you will know that I'm a big fan of letting your creative youth take over and doing discovery writing. I am now revising this theory just a little bit. 

You need to have something to start with. 

Yesterday I sat down with absolutely nothing. No name, no image, not even a time period. I started writing, and then just kept going with all the weird stuff that came up. This is not the way to start a time-pressured writing piece. 

I came up with some good concepts, but 3,000 words in realised what I had were a few points that needed to be sorted, brainstormed and extended, in amongst a whole lot of confusing not so good stuff. It was not the beginning of a story. It might, just might, have been the beginning of an idea. Trying to turn it into a story without sorting it out was a mistake.  

I am now coming to believe that for me I need to have a grasp of my main characters and the overall feel of the book before I can be expected to sit down and do long writing sessions. If I had taken the time to plot out my characters and understand the environment I was going to put them into, then I could have done the discovery writing much more successfully, and without feeling like I was trying to sculpt using my own brain matter.

3. Run Away Where People Can't Find You.

So, one of the guys I was meant to be having a date with, but called off because I was going to be writing all day, offered to drop off some supplies. This seemed very sweet, and I reminded him that I would be writing. However, if felt super rude to have this guy turn up, give me food and then kick him out, so I offered him a drink. His reply should have alerted me potential problems:

'Just water for now, I'll have a tea later.' 

Um, excuse me? Later? How long did you think you were going to stay? Writing, remember? 

But I wanted to be polite, and the food was great (market cheese and dips with crackers), and did enjoy talking to him, but after over an hour (!!) I suggested I needed to get back to writing, and it took another 20 minutes to get him out the door. 

Then my little sister rang to say my brother Tim had just flown in from Brisbane as a surprise for Australia day, was I coming up for the family dinner? 

Seriously people? What part of 'writing, all day' did you not get? 

But as I was getting nowhere, I gave up and went up to my parents. 

So, conclusion: no 30 hour novel, but some good advice.

If I were to do it all again, which maybe one day I will, though not on the first day of my holiday when I'm still stressed and tired and people are wanting things from me, this is how I would approach it:

1. Read more motivational material before starting. 

2. Spend the week before brainstorming and developing enthusiasm for an idea. Do some in depth character description and build up an emotional context for the story.

3. Run away with no communication and lots of supplies to a place where I can be totally self-indulgent and just write with no disruptions. 

And I would have to seriously consider if this was the best thing for my book and my mental health. 

So, sorry for letting everyone down, and I do feel I broke very easily, but I think if I had continued on I would have made things even worse. 

From now on, I'm going to be setting ROW 80 check-in by check-in goals because, frankly, I'm really tired and need to take better care of my mental capabilities. 

So, I'm now officially on holidays (yah!), so for the next few days, until the Wednesday Check in, I want to edit the introduction and first day of my e-book, I want to write at least 3 articles, and finally get my fitness blog transferred and up and running. 

We'll see how that goes. 

Thanks everyone for the support, I really appreciated it.

Four Words To Write By

There are a lot of inspirational quotes out there. Every writer has something stuck up somewhere which they look at when they need a kick in the rear end. And as much as I love motivational quotes, the type that make you feel all fuzzy and warm inside, today I'm going to share with you the only four words I have near where I write.

These came from Ray Bradbury's Zen and the Art of Writing, and they are three simple concepts in four words:

Work.

Relaxation.

Don't Think.

Let that sink in for a moment. 

Work. If you want to be a writer, especially a prolific writer, you need to realise that you are going to have to consider it work. You can't just wait for inspiration to strike, you have to sit down and keep going until it does.

Relaxation. But that doesn't mean writing should be a stress. It is your relaxation time, your time to let your mind run free as your fingers tap dance to keep up.  Take a deep breath and smile to yourself, because whether you feel it or not, you are doing what you love most in the world.

And finally, Don't Think. Don't try to analyse what you are doing, what is about to happen, how you are writing, what your audience will think of it, etc. That can all come later. Right now, in this moment, just let your creative youth take over and let go of your critic. 

At first I wasn't convinced of the power of these four words, but stuck them up on individual cue cards anyway. And every time I see them, I take a deep breath, smile to myself, and let my brain drift off.... oh, sorry. 

So, what words work for you? 

Twisting Metal: Fighting Your Subconscious.

 

I have finally identified one of the causes of why I've suddenly slowed down in my writing so much.

All of November I've been working on the same story, just trying to get to 50,000 words, and admittedly I was sick in there for a few days so didn't write anything. However, there were hours and hours where I was at my computer, working away, strive and struggling, and after an hour I would look at it would be 500 words, or 800 words. Where, oh where were the days of 2,000+ words an hour? Why had my muse abandoned me? 

And the writing was painful, not just slow, but every sentence I wrote I would delete and try again, it was like trying to straighten out a flat piece of metal that just kept trying to curl. I would tell myself 'No, that's not what that character sounds like, she should be feeling this right now'. And so re-write. 

Now when I say it like that, does the problem seem obvious? Well, it wasn't obvious to me until last night when walking home from church I was throwing a little tantrum saying I didn't want to do it if it was going to be so hard. 

I then just got the image: what if my subconscious was trying to write a flat piece of narrative, but I was constantly getting in the way trying to twist the metal to match my views on what the character should be?

So fine, I said, you win little subconscious, I'm going to go home, get my laptop, and just sit down and write whatever you want to come out with. I won't stop you at all. You just have fun in your own little way, and I'll be the good little typist. 

Well, it took a bit to stop my elder getting in the way and just let my youth mixed with my muse and genius jump right in. I found myself deleting a sentence thinking 'that will never work' and then I made myself stop and retype it and give my inner child a chance to explain why they had done that.

And in 15 minutes I had more than I had written in an hour that morning. By the end of an hour and a bit I had written over 3,000 words. 

So tonight I tried the same thing. I got home from work having worked overtime, with my head a bit dead, so I downloaded a mediation/relaxation app on my phone and did 20mins relaxation. Don't know if it helped, but it didn't seem to hurt it.

I then opened up a blank document, closed my eyes and went for it. Annoyingly, to me at least, I ended up re-writing a whole lot of scenes that I had painstakingly knocked out previously. But after 2 hours I had 5,500 words, and they were better words than the ones I had drawn forth from my body like I was pulling out my own intestines. 

I then went through and replaced all the scenes, and as I took out about 3,000 words, I sort of don't feel I'm much ahead in the word count. But the scenes themselves are much better. Though the characters and their interactions are not what I thought! 

This type of writing is so much more relaxing, enjoyable, encouraging than what I had been doing for the rest of the month. At the end I feel refreshed, and curious to see what will happen next. So, just keep reminding yourself:

I'm just the typist, and my subconscious is the one digging for gold.

Thanks Anne Lamott. 

 

Awakening Your Genius

So far I have talked about finding your muse as well as working with  your creative youth and judgemental elder. Now it is time to look at you genius and how to put it all together. 

For some writers, I suspect Stephen King based on his discussion in 'On Writing', your muse and your genius are the same thing. It is the part inside of you that is totally beyond your control but brings the goods.

This is not how I'm going to classify these terms. As defined in Buffyworld (Buffyworld is a phenomenon my brother Dave noted many years ago, and it is a very great place to live, though I am not sure what it would be like if other people lived there too, that might just be scary):

Your Muse: is perceived as something external to you that inspires you to write. It might turn up the ideas, or perhaps just the passion for the task.

Your Creative Youth: this concept was developed for me by Dorothea Brande, and describes that creative spirit that is overflowing with ideas and cares not for order and structure, just for creation and freedom. She termed it as part of your unconscious. However, while it is harder to control and does need you to let go of the reigns to fully function, I think it is not quite at the level of the unconscious. Using more pop-psychology, I am starting to think of it as my Right Brain working.

Your Judgmental Elder: this was summarised by Dorothea as your conscious analytical mind. Very useful in the editing stages, and in the general process of getting you to sit down and write even if you don't feel like it. I think this can be viewed as you Left Brain nature, the logical and ordered aspect of your personality. Not so strong in a lot of 'artistic' souls, but can be cultivated and is very necessary for actually producing an end result.

And then there is Your Genius.

This I believe operates at the real subconscious level. It is involved in that moment where the brilliant solution just suddenly appears fully formed in your mind. It sits there and gobbles away at your problems, and given time and opportunity, it will spit back to you an answer.

Now, Dorothea argues that she believes absolutely everyone has some genius in them, some more than others and some are better at accessing and utilising theirs, but still everyone has one. It is a very nice thought, and idealistically I would like to say I agreed. Unfortunately, I know too many people. In reality there are a few people you just meet and think: wow, you have no spark in you whatsoever, do you? Which is nasty, possibly, though often they do not care and think spark is something to be avoided. Is it mean if it's only an insult in your perception? Well, I suppose so, because my intent is still to think less of them. But it does not change the fact that I do believe that most people have a spark of genius, and a very select few might have originally had it, but something horrible in their childhoods, maybe a great aunt with a love of cats and a hatred of little boys, killed that spark.

Given that premise, if you are reading this blog, and have got this far down the page, you are probably interested in writing, and therefore most likely has some spark within you. So, let us work under the happy belief that if you are reading this, you have some genius.

Therefore, the goal must be to utilise this as much as possible. Clearly, the more 'Aha!' moments you have, a) the more exciting your writing will be for you, b) the more exciting it will be fore your reader and c) the less conscious effort you will have to put into trying to be clever. All these are very desirable things.

So how do you get your genius to come to the party? Dorothea presents facilitation of genius in the following formula:

X is to Mind as Mind is to Body, where X is Genius.

Her argument is that to fully engage your mind (youth or elder) you need to still down the demands your body make on your thinking. Either by being completely still or occupied in some routine task such as walking, knitting, chewing etc., gives your mind a chance to focus on the story. I have mentioned her suggestion of wordlessness. In the chapter on genius she brings up two other requirements for the mind to function at its best: rythmical, monotonous.

That is your secret formula for getting the most out of your mind: spend some time in rhythmical, monotonous, wordless motion and your mind can breathe and think. This is useful information and is helping me to rework my 'wordless' time. I recommend some time looking at your pre-writing activities to make sure they fit these concepts.

So, as putting your body onto autopilot helps your mind to think, Dorothea argues that putting your mind onto autopilot allows your genius to take over for a bit. This is supported by the number of times I get great ideas after sleep, or in the shower. The hot water lulls my mind into a semi coma and bam! great solution to my plot problems appears. (No, I do not then jump out and run down the street yelling Eureka. Stop picturing me naked.)

This then leads to the question of how to consciously quieten your mind without having to go to sleep or run up huge hot water bills (especially since my hot water runs out super quickly. Cold shower, not as effective, let me tell you). The key appears to be practicing meditation. Not weird, wacko, leave your body or follow your spirit guide meditation, but the practice of slowing your thoughts down and trying to stay focused on a single thing.

Like a lot of my discoveries, this is something I've felt God has been telling me to do for ages. I started off with scripture memorisation because it forced my mind to be still and focus on only one thing. At the beginning of this year I then tried to move onto meditation, trying to still my mind and focus only on God. Of course, being human, I then didn't really see the point, so did it sporadically until I had basically lost the ability and the sense that I was supposed to keep my mind from wandering. See what God has to work with?

Dorothea describes steps to developing meditation which are reasonably similar to this in practice, though content of course is different.

First she suggests just a simple test; to try to hold your mind as still as your body.

So, right now, close your eyes and try to hold your mind as still as you can, even if for only a few seconds.

How did you go? If this was easy for you, great. If you were not so successful, then that is a useful skill to develop in aid of your writing.

'The best practice is to repeat this procedure once a day for several days. Simply close your eyes with the idea of holding your mind quite steady, but feeling no urgency or tension about it. Once a day; don't push it or attempt to force it. As you begin to get results, make the period a little longer, but never strain at it.' p. 165.

She then goes back a step for those of us that are slow and have difficulty with that.

'Choose a simple object, like a child's gray rubber ball... hold the ball in your hand and look at it, confining your attention to that one simple object, and calling your mind back to it quietly whenever it begins to wander. When you are able to think of the object and nothing else for some moments, take the next step. Close your eyes and go on looking at the ball, thinking of nothing else. Then see if you can let even that simple idea slip away.'  p. 166

That is the basic skill; that you need to relax your mind and give your genius room to move. To apply it to your writing she suggests taking an idea, or a character, and just holding it in your mind and letting your stillness centre around that.

'Presently you will see the almost incredible results. Ideas which you held rather academically and unconvincingly will take on colour and form; a character that was a puppet will move and breathe.' p. 166.

So, this is the last part of the puzzle for putting it all together, the preparation of the artistic mind for creation.

Let us start from the beginning (and so as not to be accused of plagiarism, this is a mixture of Dorothea, Kate Forsyth's advice on Creating Flow, and my own experience/thoughts).

First, you should have an image, a chance phrase, a personal description, something which you consider to indicate you have a book. Take this little spark and spend time blowing on it, brainstorming it out further; fuller descriptions of the characters, charting out possible plots that could include that phrase or image. Dorothea suggests viewing the whole in a pleasant, indulgent mood, seeing what turns up. If you are in the middle of a work, take the scene that you think you will be working on that day. Plot out how far you want to get in the block of time you have set aside for writing. Start building the anticipation for what you will write.

It is then time to give your mind a chance to play with it further. Take the draft with you, and go for a walk around a loop. Not a fast walk, but something that becomes rhythmical and monotonous.  In this time, don't think on how to write the story, but just on being in the story. That is, don't choose words to describe scenes, or think of dialogue tags, but just watch your characters talking or the action as it takes place.

Return home and have something light (not sugary or caffeinated) to eat. Kate suggests something like a banana, which makes good sense. I have found toast too insubstantial, porridge good but can make me want to sleep, and straight protein and vegetables filling without inducing drowsiness (had left over steak on mashed cauliflower for breakfast today, which was pretty good, but some might find having steak that early a bit weird, which I can understand).

Then have a shower or a bath. This does wonders for the body, mind and genius.

Now, find yourself a dark space and lie down, unless prone to falling asleep, in that case trying sitting. Now is the genius' time. First, still the body, then still the mind. As Dorothea commands 'lie there, not quite asleep, not quite awake'.

'After a while - it may be twenty minutes, it may be an hour, it may be two - you will feel a definite impulse to rise, a kind of surge of energy. Obey it at once; you will be in a slightly somnambulistic state indifferent to everything on earth except what you are about to write; dull to all the outer world but vividly alive to the world of your imagination... the state you are in at the moment is the state an artist works in.' p.169

Now, I should put in a disclaimer. I have yet to try the entire sequence. In the morning I have been trying to still my mind a bit before sitting down to write, but don't have time to go for a walk before work. After work I go to the gym, eat then have a shower, but then sit straight down and write because I won't have enough time if I try to brainstorm and then meditate.

However, tomorrow is my day off, so I'm going to test out the entire sequence and see how I go. I can imagine that it would probably improve the more you do it, too. So, will see if I can implement it more frequently.

If anyone else wants to test it out and review it as a method, I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Until tomorrow night.

Buffy. 

 

2 Essential Exercises for Becoming a Writer

Everyone who has done any writing classes or read around on the topic will know that teachers/authors always have exercises for you to do. These are to train up particular technical aspects of writing. Some are quite helpful, some come at the wrong time and are annoying as they don't answer your specific problems.

These exercises are not like that.

Once again I turn to my new old friend, Dorothea Brande 'On Becoming a Writer'. As mentioned before, her intention is not to talk about the actual technical side of writing, but the more practical and developmental aspects of turning yourself into the sort of person who sits down for sustained periods of time and writes, and then continues to write even when they aren't sure it's working or when better offers come along.

Of course the technical aspects at some stage will be important. Though as a side note, Stephen King argues in his memoir 'On Writing', that there are four levels of writing: a bad writer, competent, good and brilliant. If you are a competent writer, you can learn and train to become a good writer. However, if you are a bad writer, that is pretty much that, and unfortunately there is no way to train yourself from good to brilliant. However, before you can even know if you are good, bad or brilliant, you need to be able to sit down and write.

For a long time I thought I couldn't be a writer because I didn't seem to get those brilliant flashes of inspiration that sent you flying to your study, doors locked, and scribbling for days on end. And so I found I didn't write very much at all. This image of the inspiration driven writer is actually a bit of a myth. It is now my belief that this might be true for a very select few, who probably have a lot of experience of just sitting down and writing particularly in the early stages. For the majority of great writers their life was making themselves write. The skill of being able to sit down on command and write is therefore one of the most precious a new writer can cultivate. As someone once said (sorry to the person I'm now stealing from because I can't remember who you are, but I at least acknowledge it's not my line):

Bad pages can be made better, blank pages cannot.

If you can train yourself to sit down and write, then you can work out the technical stuff later. If you have all the technical stuff sorted but can't sit down and write, you will never be a writer.

So, after that introduction, let me present for you Dorothea's 2 Essential Exercises for Becoming a Writer. After doing these for a month or so (I just made that time frame up, but it seems good) you will be able to work out two very important things: 1. Should you be a writer. 2. What you naturally like to write.

With those brilliant promises, the first exercise:

For a month, everyday, the moment you wake up, start writing. This is not 'start writing your great opus'. This really is 'start writing whatever is on your mind'. And keep writing. Let your mind write whatever it wants, don't refrain it. When you start to dry up a bit, stop. Then you work out how much you wrote, say it is 200 words or for 15 minutes. The next day, do exactly the same thing, letting your mind write whatever it wants, not trying to carrying on from last time. However this time, push yourself to write a little bit more, either words or time.

The important steps:

1. Don't restrain your mind in what it wants to write.
2. Do not read over what you have written for the period of the exercise (a month or so).
3. Always try to write a bit more than the day before.

Before I explain this exercise (beyond the obvious), let me outline the second exercise:

This is to be done within the same time frame of the first exercise. Every night, before going to sleep, look at your plans for the next day and schedule in a 15 minute block to write where ever is best. Then the next day at a minute past that time you must be writing. If you are in the middle of a conversation, well that was badly planned of you and you must excuse yourself and walk away. Dorothea describes it as a debt of honour. You must write exactly when you said you would write and for the full fifteen minutes. She paints the delightful image of the in training writer hiding out in a washroom with his writing notebook as it was the only space he could find at short notice. Once again, let your mind write whatever it wants to write, but keep it going for the full fifteen minutes. She even suggests if really stuck starting with 'I'm finding this exercise really difficult because...' and going on from there.

As she notes, there will be plenty of excuses to change the time, make it a bit later, do it the next day because you are too busy/stressed out/tired etc. But no. Don't listen. It is your career as a writer at stake. Do not miss even one session or put it off by as much as five minutes. It's just for a month. And yes, some of your friends/family may believe you are strange as you keep walking off in the middle of conversations. But I wouldn't worry. If you really succeed as a writer, you will only become even stranger, so it is good that they get used to the idea now.

The thing to note with this exercise is to try and pick a different time everyday. You are trying to train your creative youth to produce on command, any time, any where.

So, set a time frame (eg. a few weeks) and commit to doing these two exercises.

At the end you will have trained yourself to do two things:

The first exercise, if you kept increase the amount your wrote, should have trained you to sit down for extended periods of time and write and just keep writing. It is like Dory from Finding Nemo sings 'just keep swimming, just keep swimming...'. The biggest necessary talent for a writer is to just keep writing.
 

You should also have found that despite all expectations or feelings, you can make your mind write on command anywhere, anytime. It will have grumbled at first and possibly not churned out a great deal of anything very good. But you should have found that it churned out something. And as you went along, it grumbled less and churned out more.

Also, at the end, you should be able to find out the following things about yourself as a writer:

First, if you couldn't do it, if you found excuses came up too frequently, that you skipped your debt of honour, according to Dorothea (and while it is harsh, I agree), give up the idea of becoming a writer. You might be technically very good, but you do not love it enough. Most writers agree that sitting down is hard, but if even when you have settled on a time and only have to do it for fifteen minutes you still can't make yourself, you would be happier doing something else.

As another side point, as an emerging writer, I often hear/read people who say that you should try to be anything else before being a writer, or that you have to love it more than anything else. I don't entirely agree with these. First of all, I think the act of writing and the self discipline involved is good for you even if you don't ever get anything published. I wouldn't give up my day job without proof I'm going to earn money, but if you have ever thought about writing start it just because it can be fun.

Then, to the second comment I say 'pah.' Writing is work like most other things. No one says 'don't exercise unless you really, really feel like.' How many people come home from a long day at work and think 'oh yah, an hour at the gym' initially? Once you realise the high that exercise can give, once you have made it habit, then you can think 'yah', but before that you just have to go because you know you will feel better afterwards. I find writing very much the same. Afterwards I feel fantastic, before... well, I could read, or watch TV, or just sleep. So, do not be discouraged if you don't immediately jump into writing every day. However, if you can't make yourself do it even when you have said it's only for fifteen minutes, I do recommend you find something that brings you more joy.

Second, you now have a month's worth of writing on whatever your mind wanted to focus on, which you shouldn't have touched or re-read. Now is the time to do that. Go through and note what you write when there is no directive other than to write. Dorothea suggests that this indicates what you naturally like to write and will show the style and type of writing you could do. If you enter into longer descriptions, setting up longer plot lines, or diffuse character descriptions, then your natural style of writing is aimed more towards novels (which doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't write short stories, but that you might be happier writing novels). On the other hand, if you enjoyed doing short character studies, describing small scenes etc., possibly short stories is your natural medium, though you can train yourself to write out longer scenes of course.

So, if you are thinking of becoming a writer, or are a writer but you're having trouble with actually writing, I highly recommend these exercise. Obviously my writing challenge is allowing me to do much the same in a different way. By setting a word target that so far out there, it has made me really stretch myself. I used to find doing 1,000 words a day really difficult. Now, the first 4,000 or so are super easy, it's just the last 4,000 or so I struggle with. But just think what an improvement that is over 1,000!

Brief summary of my day yesterday. Wrote pretty well in the morning, got just under 3,000 words done before work. But then came home and forced myself to the gym and felt better after that but honestly just needed an evening of reading. With my writing schedule, which I'll outline next post, I'm struggling to get enough input to balance with my output. I've only been able to snatch 10 mins here and 10 mins there to read. And I got to the stage where I just wanted to soak in a book for a while. So I did. And today, I feel much better.

Good luck with the exercises, and if you need more explanation, I recommend reading Dorothea herself.

And feel free to let me know how you go at the end of it! If people wanted to set up a little group doing the challenge, I would encourage it. You could even make badges that said something like “Excuse me, I'll be disappearing at 4.30pm, please don't be surprised or offended, but I'm writing.” Or “Do Not Disturb, Writing in Progress”. 

Misguided Beginnings and Finding the True Path

Well, shot myself a bit in the foot, but appear to have been able to limp back. To fully explain, I'm going to leave my entry for yesterday unedited (which I didn't get to post because of internet troubles, but I've worked out a way around it now, I think). And afterwards I'll tell you about today.

Starting from Scratch.

I am sorry Ben, I ignored your advice to my own detriment.

Instead of continuing on with the final book in my trilogy, I decided to start something completely new. Within minutes I realised that these next two weeks are going to be a serious test of my dedication to the challenge.

I started on the next book on the list, which is really the prequel for another story I have wanted to write and have quite a few notes on. All I knew about this story was that it was a historical romance which ended with her escaping from France with him, and them getting married. Not really a lot to go on. I didn't even really have a starting image (I just have the end image of the wedding), so couldn't even begin by describing that and seeing where that led me. (also, these two characters are the parents of my main character in the next book, so don't even know what they are like.)

So I started a few different ways, and realised they were more a brief summary of my main characters, rather than an actual story. So then tried just starting a scene: you come in with him being told by the hostess of the party that uninvited guests are always welcome, when they are my Lord Averley. I thought it would be a debutante party for hopefully my main character, and it is her mother greeting my main guy.

But he couldn't come here for her, because they have not already met. So he's come to meet up with someone else.

That led to secret messages and I soon found that I was in trouble of just making him the Scarlett Pimpernel, who has already been wonderfully written. But I did want him to have a purpose other than being an aristocrat, and decided it would be fun to write an adventure book, that just happened to have a very satisfying romance in there. So, not the Scarlett Pimpernel, what else is sure to involve adventure? Thought about smuggling, but then couldn't think of a way to make sure he was also honourable. So hit on spy. James Bond for the 18^th Century.

I started to write a new opening scene where my main character is escaping from a village earlier that day with secret documents.

Then came the huge problem. What are the secret documents? Who are they from? Why are they secret? I can write with enough detail about English society around that period, as long as I get to stay vague as to what year it is and what is happening other than the Gunning Sisters having been a hit and Mr. Brummel is leading society. But first of all, this was France, and second, if he's going to be a spy, might actually need to know something about politics and international affairs at the time!

This caused me enough angst that I almost threw away the idea. Instead, I went to grab a cup of tea.

On my way back, I glanced at my bookshelf and noticed Matthew Reilly's 'The Seven Ancient Wonders', and thought that archaeology is something I know a bit about and remembered (possibly from Lara Croft Tomb Raider the second movie) that Napoleon was supposed to have mounted a expedition to Egypt. So what if my main characters get in a race with Napoleon to find some ancient Egyptian artefact that would change world history?

I started to read up a bit on Napoleon's expedition, which really just pointed out to me how very little I knew about the period, and so did what any writer does when stuck, went and had a nap.

In my dream I started working out a brilliant story and writing it down, but on waking up realised it wasn't quite as good as I thought it was. (It did involve my main female character passing herself as Chinese, Indian and then French. But totally worked in the dream.)

So came back to the computer and started doing some random history searching for what was happening at the time, which just reinforced that I knew nothing. So tried to continue writing the story as vaguely as possible, thinking that if I got something out, then I could check out the details etc. later. I know this is not the desired way for historical writing, but remember my aim is to write first drafts to see if I like the style, not spend weeks doing research and then finding out I suck at writing action sequences.

So have now been working for many hours, and have a total of just over 3,000 words, which still hasn't really helped me know where to go or even when I'm setting it.

Now I have become caught in an awful time pressured loop: can't write until I have done more research, don't want to do research because I have no idea what I'm writing and can't waste time researching anything that might not be useful.

I still think there might be something in doing a Napoleon race to save the world from Egyptian artefact, but not sure.

I would need to work out how they could actually know anything, since this is really at the very beginning of Egyptology and very little was known. Then I would also have to work out what Ancient Egyptian artefact I was going to get them to find, and its powers.

Though, instead of starting in France, if I start somewhere I know like Oxford, could get myself going before needing to seriously panic. Not much at Oxford has seriously changed in the last three hundred years, I should be pretty good (except for the girls, need to take out the women, of course).

So, the next two weeks are going to be interesting. My biggest fear is that I just won't be able to make myself keep writing when I don't know where I'm going and don't have anywhere near enough research at hand. Can the academic in me let go of the reigns to let the creative youth just make it all up and then in the second draft check out if it all works? Also, I am now 10,000 words behind, if I don't use anything I've done today. So it is going to be a long two weeks, but hopefully fun.

So that was the end of my post for yesterday.

This morning I woke up, had breakfast and sat down to write and got struck by fear. In the night I had thought of a few ideas, a few starts, but it was no good. I realised that my Muse just wasn't with me. He might be with me on the idea in the future, but right now wasn't really interested. He wanted to complete the trilogy I had started. Wrap it all up nice and sound while it was still fresh in my head

(Yes Ben, God agrees with you.)

So I then moved over to my final book (I think), in my Sally Hunt trilogy, and started writing. I knew very little about this one, except of course all the characters. I won't tell you the end of the last book, in case I can convince you to actually read it, but basically it was a bit of a shock, even to me (I thought it was going to happen in this book), and left me starting this book from a totally different place.

However, managed to get 3,400 words done before gone to work and tonight, with full use of the flow (joined a new gym and had a really yummy dinner) I got up to 8,465. So, will need to keep working at the super pace as I'm one 10,000 word day behind, but my Muse has not abandoned me!

Will be interested to see how I manage to wrap it all up. I know there must be something big, but the big thing I was expecting already happened in the last book! So, like all of you, I will just have to wait and see.

And if you think an Ancient Egyptian/18^th Century romance/adventure novel could work, let me know. All ideas welcome. Also, if anyone could suggest any good books to read about the period, that would be great.

Finally, just to let you all know what a sense of humour my God has: have been praying for either a motorcycle (cheap, but fun) or an old MX5 (hey why not be outrageous? I look really good in a convertible, except the end of my nose tends to get sunburnt and then peel, but still). I thought either of these two would add to my eccentric image which I want to cultivate as a writer. What is the point of spending the majority of my time locked away writing if when I come out I don't get to be weird? Well, guess what? Just got given a free Holdon Vectra, circa 2001. Might not be adding to the 'eccentric' element of being a writer, but my inner 'impoverished' writer is loving it. So big thanks to my Aunt Louise! (She is also writing a book, though hers is all serious. But when it comes closer to actually coming out, I'll tell you more.) 

A Tried and True Method for Overcoming Writer's Block

Dorothea came through! Yes, a book written 80 years ago - just as good today as it was then. 

For those of you who didn't read my last post, I was suffering from fear and decided to turn to Dorothea Brande's classic 'On Becoming a Writer' to see if she had any help. 

So, my problem: kept getting stuck editing what I had already written, and couldn't bring myself to write anything new, secretly afraid that the work was weak and the story just wasn't going to hang together.

Then Dorothea explained it all to me.

Ms. Brande discusses the writer's temperament, and argues that to be a writer, the individual needs to cultivate two natures which for ease of identification I am calling the elder and the youth. The elder is the practical side of a writer, which is often neglected in descriptions of great artists, but it is the part that makes you sit down to write when you don't feel like it, and when it comes to the second draft brings in the critical eye, etc. The youth, on the other hand, is the wild, creative genius that comes up with brilliant ideas and cares not for proper grammar, story arc, or such mundane things as whether it is marketable. It cares only for the creative flow and story.

Ms. Brande argues that you need both, need to develop and cultivate both, but also learn when to reign one in and when to allow the other their head.

My problem, according to Ms. Brande, was that I had allowed the elder to step in while I should have still been working in the youth. The elder will always slow down work, because they are worried about how things fit together, searching for a better way, critically examining what is being written. This is fabulous for the second draft, but is of very little use until the youth has completed the first. In editing my work as I went, I restrained the youth, told them to take a back seat and then was surprised when I could no longer find that flare to write.

So today, keeping this in mind, I let my mind run riot. On a number of occasions I caught myself trying to control what I was about to type, maybe find a better word, or go back to that last sentence. I stopped it, held back the elder and told my youth to carry on. And he did (don't ask me why my youth is a male, he just is, and so is my elder. I'm sure psychologists would have a field day with that, but as long as I can keep writing I don't mind). A few times I faulted, but I whispered encouragement to my youth, told him he would not be judged on what he came up with, and just let him go again.

And I got the third chapter completely written. It worked for me fabulously.

Unfortunately, most of the writing I'm going to be doing will be purely in the youth because of the focus on first drafts. I will be lucky if I get one day a fortnight to work in the elder actually editing. Though the elder is also the one that makes sure I actually sit down and write. If I left it to the youth to write when he felt like it, I would be like I was for the last 10 years, without anything to show for my desire to be a writer.

So, for anyone that is feeling stuck and might be suffering the same thing, I highly recommend seeing if you are holding your youth back and trying to write too much with your elder. Elders are not creative, they cannot make a draft, they can only edit it and improve it later.

So, I am now up to 70,050 words! As my first novel was 70,000 (I was entering it into a competition which had a max word limit for young adult entries of 70,000), I feel that I'm doing well. Story-wise I also feel like I'm almost at the end. I just have to write the final scenes. This might take another 10,000 or so words, but we will see.

I currently have a friend from overseas staying, who only has two days to see Melbourne (pah, I say, Pah!) so am going to be spending some time showing her around (and did spend most of tonight catching up, which is why I'm writing and posting so late) but I still have high hopes that I will finish the novel at the latest by Thursday and have Friday to do a read through edit. I will then put it aside and start thinking about the next in the series.

It has started to play on my mind that it might actually be four books. The first one happened over a school term, and I thought this one would take place over two terms, but in fact it has only been one term. So maybe the last one will be two terms, but it wouldn't surprise me now if it was another term itself and then the final one would be the end of the year. But that would be the end of that. Luckily I kept one fortnight free in my planning just in case I did decide to lengthen out one of the series. So not all is lost.

Sleep tight my elder, my youth and my reader.

Yours,

Buffy.