Tag Archives: 750words.com

Creative journal stored

I am creating a writer’s journal that is private and sending it to my cloud.  It is all about my thought processes throughout all my creative ventures and things that occur because of it.

I do want to be a writer and get published and I know that doesn’t seem like a reality right now in my life, due to the fact that since September I have probably written towards my novels no more than perhaps six times due to extreme depression.

But the dream is still there, to be a writer that is published.

I am trying to focus my thoughts and ignore the crap going on in my life so I can get on with it, because not writing my stories is like someone putting a chisel to my temples… its torture basically.

I thought, all the best creatives in the world keep a diary don’t they?  Well, why don’t I?  But this one with the intention of keeping it for future historians is that conceited of me?  Is that really a bad thing?

I like to think that it’s appreciated rather than judged as a form of egotism.

There are things in the diary that won’t be published until I am dead, because it will reveal problems I have undergone to maintain my individuality and it will talk about people who have literally stolen ideas from me because I talked too much in my earlier years as a writer because of the advice of “how to write” books.

It won’t just focus on my writing though, it will focus on my whole being as a creative; stories, poems, art, music, everything that inspired creation in me and had a part in the works I’ve done.  I will talk about all my projects, even those that might never get published.  Those that might never get published will always be stored away somewhere, so that in the future, perhaps someone will publish them because they want them, because they want more of me.

Again, not to be conceited, but I have to think about how much people want these things and they will and they do this thing with other posthumous authors and creatives, so why should I be any different?  It’s just forward thinking that’s all.  We often get pent up with all the process of just being ourselves we forget the larger picture, we presume we are not good enough to get to that stage where we become historical, but who are we to judge in the end?

Nobody thinks highly of themselves enough to assist historians do they?  Some do, but not many and it is a frustrating thing for historians.  I have a love for history and I have a love for certain authors of which I wanted to know more on a deeper level but they felt that they were being conceited if they spoke about themselves a lot – humble creatures really.  I am too, but I understand people and the things they yearn as I am a person too.

So that is what I am doing.  I am, from today, creating a creative diary about my writing, its processes, where I got inspiration from, my rivals, my thieves, everything about my creations is going to be documented.  If nothing else it will make me write more than I do, because it could be used as a warm up to writing instead of playing online games or ranting in my 750words.com

I will enjoy it.

Thanks for reading…

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Push me to be productive

WordPress has updated some features I think?

I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a streak counter before, there is one now and that poses both a solution and a problem to me; I am a sucker for maintaining long streaks on various websites, so this will now mean that I will be obsessing over maintaining this streak of blog posts, because of the streak counter.

I have this same problem on DuoLingo it isn’t the lessons keeping me there as much as it is the streak counter and the same thing too, with 750words.com though saying that, I am very serious about learning Italian to fluency. 

I have been learning Italian on DuoLingo now for 432 days!  I do a minimum of one lesson which is 10 minutes per day, to sometimes 1 hour.

I had to give up my streak on 750.words.com because I can no longer afford to pay a monthly fee.  That really grinds me too.

If I am to be a productive person, I mean really productive. I need streak counters and tight schedules set by others, or I don’t tend to take things seriously.    This is how I know, if I am ever published, I would be addicted to writing more than ever, because of the pressures that my colleagues may or may not impose on me to do things.  I at least hope it to be the case anyway.  I guess it will be so, because I do love schedules and maintaining streaks etc. 

I think this is why I tend to finish NaNoWriMo early on the times I do it undisturbed.  I have been unlucky to get pneumonia one time doing this and very unlucky that my son became extremely sick with gastroenteritis another time. 

One thing about me is that when I have been in work, I have become quite quickly a workaholic.  But it takes me a long time to recover if I am released from positions for whatever reason.

I thrive with work and tasks and I literally wither away without it.

The thing is, Paul can be too liberal with me, he isn’t pushy like other people have been in my past and that is both nice and also in some ways bad too.  Because I need someone to nag me, shouldn’t you be writing now?  I mean you have been on Spore now for 4 hours…

I do lose track of time and sometimes I need that wake up call!

“Gosh 4 hours, you sure? shit I don’t have time to do this other thing too, yes, I should write”.

But no, that doesn’t happen here, I lose days at a time by being consumed by games, books and YouTube videos and nobody brings me back to reality, I am alone in trying to figure that one out for myself.

Paul just seems to think and feel that I need to be left alone, to do whatever I like, like some spoiled child.  He does spoil me, lets me get away with far too much and I am not so sure he should to be honest! Though it is nice he is so liberal, it is also very frustrating that he doesn’t seem to remember to help me get back to reality, you know?

I am not blaming him for my lack of focus far be it, but I do feel I need a personal nag machine.

Maybe this will change when Paul gets the Amazon dot, maybe I can program Alexa to nag me?

Worth a try, I think.

Happy Reading! 

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Sunday Word Count 6

Sunday word count time!

Unfortunately I hit “The Wall of Shame” again with this amount of words done towards a novel this week.

7896 words

Well at least it is better than last weeks!

Here is how it is broken down.

25th August – 1564 words – not bad considering the week before I hardly wrote a thing per day.

26th August – 867 words – quite low about two pages.

27th August – 2919 words – excellent, I should have more days like this!

28th August – 832 words – hmm, low again.

29th August – 879 words – I am not happy with the way the novel is going if I have to be honest – which I do!

30th August – 835 words – low again, getting bored with this particular novel, so I probably may be like this for some time until this draft is complete then start again for the 6th attempt!

31st August – nothing – well I was getting bored and sometimes it’s best to step away if this happens for a small while and then get back to it at a later date.  But I had other ideas I was working on, so this day and the other low days really should have been filled up doing the other novels, not just concentrating on just this one and thinking about my new musical instrument all day!

So the summary is this, quite low word count with quite low quality writing for much of the week!

My excuses are;

There are no excuses for such poor quality word counts and writing other than the fact that I was bored with the one particular story I was working towards!  So, I should have moved onto another story that I am writing which captivates me better – which I did not do!

Why?

A new musical instrument entered the house on the 28th August and I fell in love with it.  I have never seriously learned an instrument before and this is one where I intend to seriously learn it – I have done approximately fourteen hours of self-taught (via YouTube) lessons since, this averages to three hours per day; plus I am trying to learn music theory and notation, something which I have never done before, trying to learn the names of the notes I am playing and how to read music so that I can eventually write music!

I have always had this desire in my life and it was never as strong as it is now. 

I thought if I don’t learn to read and write music now, then I probably never will and so I decided that never is NEVER going to happen! 

I write a lot of poetry, but I also write a lot of songs, the songs I rarely post on my blog and my brain has always taunted me with music that should go with the songs – it is getting torturous lately, to say the least, so this is why I have to learn music professionally.

I have always been like this with music, so it is astounding why my brain has to literally send me loopy in order to get me started on taking music more seriously.  I suppose I always used my left hand disability as an excuse?  “I can’t because my left hand, what if they want me to demonstrate the music”?  Whine, whine, and whine!

I started to practise by ear only when I was very small on my grandmother’s piano around the same time I started to learn to read and write – so music has been with me for a very long time, if not longer than writing!

I am excited by learning musical notation because I have learned that each musical instrument has the same basis and therefore once I learn where the notes are for each instrument I have previously played I could in fact learn the same tunes on every instrument.  I don’t know musical jargon yet, but I am getting there!

The types of music that are in my head vary in genre from mostly classical, jazz and rock but especially classical!  I hear so often these days that “classical music has no future” and I really want to stick my middle finger up at people who say that!  I believe it does and if anything it is hearing this regularly which has spurred on my insanity to prove them bloody wrong!

In fact I am under exaggerating here, I am practically getting psychotic about showing people they are wrong about classical music becoming a dying force in the world.

I do have some music still available from my old floppy disks from 2000 that I composed by ear on Cubase with my keyboard, I don’t know if my computer or modern technology can upload it here on the blog successfully, but I think I will try!

I think I will upload my storm music.  Or try.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work here, sorry – I tried.  MP3 floppy 20yrs old, don’t know how to convert that, can anyone comment below if they know how – please?  

Also and I don’t mean to pick on the poor chap, but Henry doesn’t go back to school until the 3rd of September, so perhaps my writing will improve from then onwards?  If it doesn’t then I am a rotten mother who uses her kid as an excuse, which I think I am that anyway!  Talking of which Henry been trying to get me to become music teacher for him, despite it being the lame leading the lame at the moment, lol.  He hasn’t the patience to learn for more than 15 to 30 minutes a day like I do.  He is too addicted to Robot Wars, Ryan’s toy review and now WWE wrestling!

I wanted to say that the writing I am clocking up every week is purely towards novels I am working on, it is not research notes, synopsises, plans, blog posts, daily pages like 750words.com or anything else that I might be working on – so I don’t have lazy writer syndrome, if you are interested in seeing just how much I do write per day, let me know in the comments below and I will give you an entire summary of all my work in just one week and one week only! 

Anyway, those are my excuses for this week and I am sticking to them!

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Just NaNoWriMo today and 750words.com

1700 words on NaNoWriMo today, that’s all.  Nothing else, except for 750words.com.  Disappointing day really.

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NaNoWriMo update 5th November

Doing well, despite being in bed most of the day, sick with whatever I’ve got.  I think it’s mostly throat and ear infection rather than flu, but anyway.  Forced myself to do 2592 words towards my novel today and 1717 words towards the nano badge of 750words.com

Not bad considering I feel like passing out, though everything took me four hours longer than it would have been on a normal day to do.

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Ugh, flu season earlier than expected by 2 weeks

Woke up today feeling really ill, yes the flu season is upon us but it hit me earlier than I expected, anyway, I forced myself, literally forced myself to write for NaNoWriMo and 750words.com today, the internet has been tetchy off and on today where I thought for a long time that I won’t be able to add any updates to any website too, so I really did feel the fates were against me today, but I pushed through willy nilly and I managed to do both my 750words and 2191 words towards NaNoWriMo – take that, negative vibes!

According to the NaNoWriMo website, if I continue to write as much as I am doing, I should be finished by the 21st November, now how’s that?

Hope things don’t get worse!

 

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Words, NaNoWriMo and more…

A pixabay image

Despite what I had promised myself last year, I am trying to do NaNoWriMo again this year – why did I make this decision?  Simple, in the past six weeks I have been consistently writing daily my 750 words along with a random two thousand other words (mostly not towards a novel). 

To those who are not in the know, you may be thinking “What are 750 words”?  Well, 750 words should be daily written and is an idea based on Julia Cameron’s activities for helping your inner creativity to flow.  This idea can be found in a book she wrote called “The Artist Way”.  There is a website to help you track these daily words, Julia doesn’t specify 750 words, she specifies three pages of long hand written work to be done in the morning, I don’t do long hand so I decided to join this website called 750words.com which worked out that three pages of long hand writing averages to around 750 words per day.

So every day I try to accomplish 750 words from the website, plus adding to my novel and doing poetry, writing songs and research papers for my novels and short stories.  All in all I average around three to four thousand words a day, not really focused in one area – NaNoWriMo is trying to teach me to focus my efforts on one particular thing – I may be successful this year, who knows?

I have heard of a method which kind of makes wrimo easier for people during the flu season, which is reversed NaNoWriMo, where you do three thousand and odd words on the first day and condense it down every day so that on the last day you only write one word, which I think is a brilliant idea because most people are pumped up for NaNoWriMo in the first ten days and then they kind of get fed up, a bit like a diet.  Not to mention a lot of people quit halfway through wrimo because of the flu, as I said it is flu season, so, do a lot now whilst you’re healthy and you can lose a day or two without affecting your goal.

Anyway, daily updates on NaNoWriMo and other writing activities will be posted on here.  There may be fewer poems this month, who knows?

The words for NaNoWriMo yesterday were 1672 (I know, not the three thousand I said I wanted to do – that’s for today) along with 1711 words for my 750words.com account (sometimes I get carried away ranting about life) and another 495 words elsewhere. 

Today so far I have done 1784 words for 750words.com and nothing towards wrimo and around 500 words with this post and I do have an urge to write a poem right now.

So I am going to get going with that and I shall do my wrimo words when my son is in bed tonight.

Fingers crossed I will accomplish wrimo this month and this year, just for the feel good factor, I am writing about my vampires in a new story, as I said many times before, I am very possessive of my vampires so it is unlikely I will get that book published by the end of it.

Ciao for now.

 

 

 

 

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Daily goals as a lifestyle

I no longer want to be in the league of procrastinating artists and writers, things are going to change.

For the past three weeks I have been living my life on a goal based lifestyle, thanks to some very motivational videos I have found on YouTube and the book I purchased last month called “Think and grow rich” By Napolean Hill.  Now I don’t fool myself for one second that art and writing is going to make me “rich” at all, don’t get me wrong – I am not just focusing on the money aspect, I am focusing on the aspect of happiness and feeling like I am achieving something, even if the rewards are purely emotional.

Obviously money would be nice, but ultimately, health and personal achievements for me, leads to a happy life and that is more important to me right now than financial gain.

I have had these talks before on my blog, the “No longer procrastinating personal prep talks” and they have always reached a point of returning back to old comfortable habits with excuses after excuses after excuses – I am sick and tired of failing myself and I watched on one of these videos last week that when you reach a point of being sick and tired of being sick and tired that’s when your life will start to change and I have reached that point in my life.

Living life day to day with goal based intentions for every day, is working out for me.  On the nights I forget to give myself a goal for the next day, I notice I go back into old habits, so I am almost paranoid that the last thing I do before I go to sleep each night is to list my goals for the following day, so I don’t slip up again.

Most of my goals are simple and may seem like nothing to anybody – how much do you think you are going to achieve in a day by doing these things which in their eyes, could be procrastination anyway – but for me, it is constructive.  It keeps me doing the “good habits” which make me a productive person.

My usual day to day goals are;

To write my morning pages via a site called 750words.com – this is non-negotiable, this is a must do, everyday forever.

Revising at least two pages of my old NaNoWriMo attempt from 2016, this was abandoned and forgotten in my drawers since 30th November 2016.

Writing two poems for advanced schedule posting on my blog, I am a month in advance at the moment, so the poems you are currently reading were written approximately a month before you are actually reading them.

Practise some sketches and art pieces in my sketch book, at least half a page a day.

Then there is a fifth random goal, it could be anything, such as take a walk, do something particular in the garden, bake a cake, visit someone, anything really.

This isn’t all that I do in my day, this is part of my daily goals, the idea is to get me into the habit of having something to wake up for, something to do.  I lost my purpose in life by allowing sickness to dominate me, but now I am trying to take back some kind of control in my life again and so far it is working.   I would never have thought about living my life in a goal based day to day way, if it wasn’t for the motivational archive on YouTube.

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Day 3 of NaNoWriMo

Today is day three of NaNoWriMo, I may write more later on, but probably not too.  I have completed today with 2185 words, this total’s my whole NaNoWriMo score for the 3 days I have suffered from repetitive strain injury on my right hand as 7779 words completed towards my 50k goal.

I am not just doing NaNoWriMo, I am doing my normal writing as well as the 750words.com nano challenge, this means other than writing for my nano novel, I am dishing out a further 1700 words on average for 750words.com badge and another 1000 words for anything else.

Plus whatever the word count for this is – oh and I have also been handwriting outside of typing.  Sighs.  I dare anyone to tell me I am not productive this week, I dare them to say it!

*Sits watching and waiting for an idiot to take me up on the challenge of saying it*.

 

 

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morning pages and progress

I have been feeling a little better about writing since I have been writing more often my morning pages on a website known as 750words.com

I had written 24 days in a row before becoming seriously ill with such a bad ear infection that I needed to go to A+E and was sent directly to the ENT department in Coventry and was given ear wicks; I was told that I came very close to being admitted in hospital and having to have antibiotics intravenously, the infection came on very quickly, I’ve never known an infection to react to my body so fast and it even went into my jaw and prevented me from eating solids for days.

Anyway, after 10 days of antibiotics I got back into my morning pages again, this time I have been doing them 7 days, I am confident that the inner writer/artist has reawaken, the desire to be creative has come back.  This is amazing because for the last three years I had thought I would never write much again, I lost interest in it, I didn’t enjoy it anymore, but now I look forward to waking up just so I can write.

Today I have written over 600 words without doing my morning pages to awaken me into the mood to write, which for me is a huge progress.

I have decided to take note of my previous post here and to do at least one post each day, even if it has nothing to do with a poem or story, just a little update about my life.  Because it is my duty to feed my fans the stuff they love.

I have chosen to start as from tomorrow, posting about my thoughts on various mythological creatures.  There will be at least one post per day henceforth, however, there may be more than one post per day, depends on what happens, but ultimately there will be at least one a day.

Thank you for staying loyal to my blog. 

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