Best Self Card: What's the hardest thing you're trying to accomplish right now? Describe the smallest thing you could do today to move closer to completing this?
Well, after what can be described as the day from purgatory, the thought of writing this didn't seem like a good thing. But this is a good Best Self Card to do under the circumstances.
So what are the hardest things I'm trying to accomplish at the moment?
Well, other than losing weight, the hardest thing I'm doing at the moment is writing a novel.
I'm likening writing a novel to running a marathon whiles eight months pregnant with triplets. It's that bloody painful - especially at this early stage.
I know I have a great idea. I know I can write fairly well. Well, I know can I write really well. But god it's hard. It takes commitment. It takes time. It takes a sense of humour. It takes a little skerrick of completely nonsensical delusions. It takes an organised mind. It takes a little bit of inspiration. It takes a hell of a lot of faith. It might even take a skerrick of talent. I don't think I have any of the later. I can sort of bodge my way through with faith, inspiration, organisation and delusions.
Writing a novel is HARD WORK!
But yeah, this is the all consuming thing in my life at the moment. I berate myself when I don't work on it. I get frustrated when I don't spend time on it. I find myself feeling hopeless about not being about to write as well as I want. I occasionally think I've done something okay. I get morose when I see the quality of some writer's work and feel so inept (just as I occasionally question how some writers get published), but then again, as I'm finding out, and know, writing is a process, You can't pull words out of your arse. It doesn't work like that.
But tonight was a good night. Tonight, after a good session with Cleo where I thumped the crap out of the boxing bag (helps after a bad day) I wrote along with the Gunnas ,a group I meet up with once a month - we met on Catherine Deveny's Gunnas Writing Retreat and once a month we get together to write together. Normally with a glass of wine to hand.
And despite the dreadfully long, terribly tedious, absolutely revolting day I had today, I managed to sit down and get some novel preparation done.
So what did I do to get further toward this goal? I sat and wrote for 20 minutes. I did one of the exercises I learned at school last week. I put myself in the shoes of my protagonist and I wrote down some of her memories to get to know her.
1000 words later and I felt a lot better.
How this will translate into sparkling, witty, glorious prose, I don't know, but I feel like I'm winning tonight.
And I've had this cracker of a song from the seventies in my head all day. (and I had a really good food day today - even if I did get in Vietnamese at the local restaurant because the day was THAT intense and sometimes you need prawn dumplings - prawn dumplings fix most things on a bad day).
Today's Song:
Well, after what can be described as the day from purgatory, the thought of writing this didn't seem like a good thing. But this is a good Best Self Card to do under the circumstances.
So what are the hardest things I'm trying to accomplish at the moment?
Well, other than losing weight, the hardest thing I'm doing at the moment is writing a novel.
I'm likening writing a novel to running a marathon whiles eight months pregnant with triplets. It's that bloody painful - especially at this early stage.
I know I have a great idea. I know I can write fairly well. Well, I know can I write really well. But god it's hard. It takes commitment. It takes time. It takes a sense of humour. It takes a little skerrick of completely nonsensical delusions. It takes an organised mind. It takes a little bit of inspiration. It takes a hell of a lot of faith. It might even take a skerrick of talent. I don't think I have any of the later. I can sort of bodge my way through with faith, inspiration, organisation and delusions.
Writing a novel is HARD WORK!
But yeah, this is the all consuming thing in my life at the moment. I berate myself when I don't work on it. I get frustrated when I don't spend time on it. I find myself feeling hopeless about not being about to write as well as I want. I occasionally think I've done something okay. I get morose when I see the quality of some writer's work and feel so inept (just as I occasionally question how some writers get published), but then again, as I'm finding out, and know, writing is a process, You can't pull words out of your arse. It doesn't work like that.
But tonight was a good night. Tonight, after a good session with Cleo where I thumped the crap out of the boxing bag (helps after a bad day) I wrote along with the Gunnas ,a group I meet up with once a month - we met on Catherine Deveny's Gunnas Writing Retreat and once a month we get together to write together. Normally with a glass of wine to hand.
And despite the dreadfully long, terribly tedious, absolutely revolting day I had today, I managed to sit down and get some novel preparation done.
So what did I do to get further toward this goal? I sat and wrote for 20 minutes. I did one of the exercises I learned at school last week. I put myself in the shoes of my protagonist and I wrote down some of her memories to get to know her.
1000 words later and I felt a lot better.
How this will translate into sparkling, witty, glorious prose, I don't know, but I feel like I'm winning tonight.
And I've had this cracker of a song from the seventies in my head all day. (and I had a really good food day today - even if I did get in Vietnamese at the local restaurant because the day was THAT intense and sometimes you need prawn dumplings - prawn dumplings fix most things on a bad day).
Today's Song:
1 comment:
You can do it. You're doing all the right things. Keep going! It's good you have a writers' group you can check in with too. It's good that you put in some work even on a bad day. Prawn dumplings good idea.
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