Update Day is today, and that means re-capping my very
uneventful May.
First things first. For those of you out of the loop, and there’s
about 16 of us currently in this blog hop, Update Day is part of the ‘DO YOU
HAVE A GOAL?’ blog hop.
Hosted by authors Misha Gericke and Beth Fred, it’s also informally
known as the Big Dreams blog hop
because all of its bloggers share one big crazy dream they have and they blog
their adventure towards achieving that goal. Then on every last Friday of the
month we gather and dictate said adventures in a monthly re-cap post. So everyone
knows what’s been going on with each other. Like playing catch up. ^^
If you’re interested, sign up is right over here or click the banner above. (<-- clicky, clicky!)
And it’s entirely my fault. I had set one goal in particular,
and I failed spectacularly. To put it short, I wanted to continue writing
steadily on-wards from my early finish in April’s Camp NaNo, instead I burned
out really quickly.
The first half of the month I spent writing off and on, and
then I fell in love with this one project and started writing daily until the
high wore off and I realized that I’d have to start from scratch – the story
just wasn’t picking up where I wanted it to pick up. I already am aware that I
have a problem plotting and organizing and figuring out where to begin, and
this usually results in a lot of petering around, a.k.a. false start pages.
After 1.5 weeks of back-and-forth writing then scrapping, I
decided to take a break again and focus on reading and pursuing other hobbies
(*ahem*playingLoZ*ahem*).
So I did that, and here I am a week and a day later still
sorta clueless as to how to start writing again. And I always get this feeling
at the end of a hiatus from writing. I would almost equate it to forgetting how
to ride a bike, or the fear of potentially having forgotten to ride a bike.
Not to say my writing-free break was useless. I did do some
blogging, and more reading than typical and a lot more thinking. I realized I’m not very good at reading
through what I’ve written, as in I write, write, write and never read.
Yeah, you read that correctly. So far I’ve never read
anything I’ve “finished” before. And then it hit me: I don’t even know if I’ve
ever finished a novel before, at least not if I’ve never read it.
Which makes sense…
I was pretty convinced that I hated editing. I don’t hate editing as much as I’m scared to
read what I wrote and hate, well, my writing and myself.
-- basically there was a lot of mayhem going on in my mind when it had no business there.
Since this personal blog is to document my journey on the
road to becoming a published author, and my million-word goal for this 5-year
blog hop is to help move me along, I decided to scrap the words I currently
have totaled towards that one million and to start from scratch with the works
that I have READ after finishing writing them. It’s not enough to whip
something up, believe it’s done and count it towards what becomes an arbitrary goal.
Especially if I’m not taking the time to submit myself to the mess my writing
can be and grow from the mistakes I’ve made.
The rest of the rules of my one million goal – found here! –
remain the same though.
And as far as my reading goes, I’m all right with that. I DO
want to do a vlog in the future discussing the balance between writing and reading
simultaneously. I think I finally found a balance between the two, or at least
a balance that works for me.
Until then, enjoy the last few weeks of spring. See you in June!
It is scary to look at your own work after a while, but it needs to be done. Just remember to focus on what you like instead of what you don't like. The latter can be fixed, but if you can't see the good in your own writing, you're screwed.
ReplyDeleteI'm one of those rabbits-in-the-headlights kind of people, fear just paralyses me. It took me a month to pluck up the courage to start edits on my novella. But now it's out, and picking up wonderful reviews. And I'd convinced myself that I was the only person who would find the story interesting. I think we're all way too hard on ourselves. One thing that revolutionised both my writing and editing process was switching from aiming for a daily word count, or number of pages edited, to just a daily time limit. Because some days go slower than others, and allowing myself to accept, and even embrace that, improved my productivity immeasurably.
ReplyDeleteReading and writing just go together and I hope you find that balance! I don't always love to read what I've written, but eventually I have to edit it.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes with those million words and your revised rules!!!
I'm having a hard time writing right now too.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you're right to modify your goal. It's not just about the number of words you write, but about the quality of the words. And the quality will only improve if you re-read and critique yourself. You just have to be careful about not being too harsh on yourself :)
ReplyDelete