The Week In Review - CW11

The Week That Was

Landscape designer, Lizzie, is the career-driven, single, child-less granddaughter who never thought her dream of inheriting her grandparent's farm would come true. She barely admitted the dream to herself before the weekend of her grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary when her whole family comes together in celebration and everything changes. Not least of all her new, gorgeous consultant appearing as the farm's manager.

Amongst flooding, cancelled flights, lambing season, weary parents, broken fences, screaming children and lost horses Lizzie finds her all her dreams coming true.

I found myself delving into the strange and wonderful world of story families this week. It was daunting, overwhelming at times but in the end I found some really fantastic characters in Lizzie, her grandparents, her parents and her love interest. I wanted it to be a big family and I discovered that it was necessary to flesh out only so many characters centering around the main conflict before I felt ready to start writing. I'm learning to trust this instinct and though I didn't get any words down this week I found I was only getting more frustrated and more resistance from my muse if I kept trying to develop the idea.

After reading Why do women still change their names when they get married? I was struck by another story idea that centred around family. What if... as part of marriage or the birth or naming of a child the two families must compete to determine whose name will be carried on.

"Writing is like making love. Don't worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process." - Isabel Allende (from a cat of impossible colour)

This was a fun post about the exact problem I was having with my writing that I'm sure caused me to hit rock bottom. I was worrying about having a novel of publishable quality to submit rather than concentrating on the act of writing just because I thought that's where I should be in my writing career.

Creative But Not Cliched. This reminded me of the advice when brainstorming endings to a story to reach past the first, second and third ideas to the fourth, fifth and even sixth. It's those later endings that will come as more of a surprise to the reader as well as being much more original. It's just another way of reaching past the cliches. My muse also latched onto the idea of taking a cliche and making it original by using Maggie's trick and flipping cliches on their head. Take the hunky, macho hero and put the complete opposite type of character into the same situations. What if it was the ugly, simpering step-sister who had to save the world?


The Week To Come
It's all about the ideas for the rest of the workshop so I'm going to let the Naming Competition idea grow. I also have yet to explore a story that features strong friends and friendships so I think I'll try give that some thought too.

The End Is Nigh

I haven't participated in a writing challenge (the creativity workshop excluded) since SoCNoC two years ago when I attempted to wrangle my last novel into shape. The creativity workshop wraps up in the beginning of August and I'm going to be coming out of it with several short story ideas, a couple novel ideas and a half dozen or so beginnings. I've really been enjoying the pace of the workshop and want to continue with small challenges so I can continue exploring my writing, my creativity and how both can merge into my life. To this end the next month long Kiwi Writers challenge has come at a perfect time.

The End Is Nigh runs through August and challenges writers to complete at least one writing related task or project. I've worked on brainstorming ideas and beginning stories for the past three months so it seems timely to try and finish the first draft of some of those! I'm not sure which ones yet but I'd like to get at least one first draft complete and would really like to have three first drafts complete by the end of August. There are plenty of ideas that I'm excited to write so it will be fun to pick one.

The Week In Review - CW10

The Week That Was
This was the first week in the creativity workshop that was an epic FAIL. I did nothing. I wrapped up last week late and then my visitors arrived and it's been all life, life, life. I did start thinking about an idea the other day and worked out how the holiday (50th wedding anniversary) fits in with water (flood causing an isolated farm to become even more isolated).

I did catch up on the creativity workshop posts though I still have some creativity exercises to do. I don't feel bad that I've made such little progress this week which I think is evidence of my growth. I'm still in this and am going to make more effort to think about stories and ideas and develop some interesting family characters and relationships with a goal to at least being able to present The Sentence for a story each week.


The Week To Come
I'm going to continue with my 50th wedding anniversary flood idea this week and see if I can build up some family characters and relationship that will make for some interesting conflict. I've already got an idea about what's important to the grandmother and grandfather whose anniversary it is. I've also got some ideas about a central conflict that will have all this other fun family stuff bubbling around it.

Catching Up On Creativity

I'm catching up on all the great guest posts and Merrilee posts from the past couple weeks of the Creativity Workshop and as always they're making me challenge my attitudes towards writing. Some I didn't even realise were a problem and others I just didn't know how to tackle until I read the post.

Free Writing. I still struggle with thinking that since I have so little writing time it has to be super productive and that means keeper words on an existing project. *lightbulb* Me thinks the pressure of this mentality could be freaking out my muse and being completely counter-productive. Yikes! The free writing thing also sounds like a whole lot of fun and writing should be fun. I think I might do a week of free writing exercises each day to see what comes of it.

Share Your Insights. To really have fun with writing again I have had to let go of the submit for publication pressure and understand that if I give ideas and stories the time they'll always be there. They'll always grow better if I do it just because it's fun and it makes me happy, not because I have a self-imposed deadline of where I think my writing "career" should be right now.

Photo credit: Maz Hewitt via Saturday Prompts

Turning Disappointment Into Ideas. This is how my goal for this last set of stories came about.Except it was disappointment and frustration with my own writing. None of the stories I write have a strong presence of family or close friends in my main character's life or being integral in the conflict. It's become a cliche in my own writing that my main character comes from a "broken" home and has usually lost one if not both parents. I want to try my hand at stories where my main character has a life full of loving family and use these characters to help create and enhance conflict.

Photo credit: Carlo Nikora via Saturday Prompts

Productivity Tool: Decluttering. I write everything down. Everything. If it's not written down then I take no responsibility to get it done. My brain cannot function if it's under pressure to remember things. During my week of reading deprivation I learned to take this a step further and to declutter my mind of the 'shoulds', of the distracting emotions left over from the day and be able to tackle each task with complete focus.


And with the exception of the Real People, Real Problems exercise that I'm keen to try that brings me up to date!

The Week In Review - CW9

The Week That Was

Investigative Zoologist must put her secret passion for birds at risk to keep up appearances at work and with her co-worker crush.

Did I focus on the journey each day? No... but I half expected that. Last week ran into this week and the end of this week was taken up by fun social things as the rest of my time participating in the workshop will be. I'm pleased that I came up with an idea that made me consider Light, Fun & Comedic moments in my writing another different way.

Where have the light, fun & comedic moments originated from? Do they fit with the story or feel forced? No prose to analyse this week. From the idea I can see that the light, fun and comedic moments will come from my Investigate Zoologist trying to keep her avery of boisterous birds unnoticed by her work colleagues who happen to be finishing up an investigation in her home. It makes me giggle just thinking of what mischief the birds could get up to!

And because it's the end of the second set of stories...

What have I learnt about writing light, fun & comedic stories? There are all sorts of ways that light, fun and comedic moments can be incorporated into stories no matter what the genre or theme. To have the moments really fit with the story and not become farce or parody they have to come from the characters. After I got past the first story I feel I really got the hang of it and found some ideas that I could really have fun writing.

How is the relationship between me and my muse? It's not as good as when I finished the first set but it's still much better than when I came into the workshop! The past couple weeks I haven't spent as much time with my muse. I've come up with ideas but haven't spent the time to write and I am noticing the difference.


The Week To Come

I'm going to write four stories of 2,000 - 5,000 words where the main character has a large family or group of friends that are a large part of his/her 'story' life and the central conflict comes from the main character's relationship with her family or friends. I will include family and friends in at least two of the four stories. The stories will be linked by the theme of holidays and motif of water.

I don't naturally write stories where my main character's family or friends play a large part in their life. They then only rarely play a part in the story that I'm telling. Out of the eight stories I've begun during the workshop only one has a large family including both parents involved in the main character's life. I might even use it for one of my weeks to allow me to jump directly to the writing. Otherwise with visitors and holidaying and other social engagements this month I'm really only expecting create ideas.

Here's to friends and family!

The Week In Review - CW8

The Week That Was

Retired fairy godmother is given her biggest challenge in trying to grant her angst-filled granddaughter the dream that she doesn't even know she has.

Did I focus on the journey each day? Yes. I'm learning just how inspirational images are for me and this week was absolutely inspired by images. I brainstormed ideas and I collaged! The images were of the setting but connecting to a story through images and making them my own was certainly something new. I'm not sure that it gave me a better sense of the story but I know that the details of the setting will be much richer because of it.

photo credits: wili_hybrid

Where have the light, fun and comedic moments originated from? Do they fit with the story or do they feel forced? I only wrote 130 words this week so I don't have enough to identify specific moments. This is the first story idea that I've had that is founded in a light, fun and comedic premise. The setting and culture is one where cities, towns and villages are either modern as we know them or have retained their fairytale lifestyle and sensibilities. The story then brings an angstful and angry teenager from the modern world into the fairytale world that she despises. In this way the story will have a light, fun and comedic foundation with darker, more serious moments in it. This is completely opposite to how my stories are usually structured so I'm thrilled to even come up with an idea like this that I'm excited about.

What unexpected things happened this week? I didn't write any where near what I expected to. 130 words compared to 3000 the week before? I think it's because I went into the reading deprivation week with an attitude that I could do anything I wanted. I didn't think that I would have to carve out writing time when I had all this non-reading time where I could do anything. I really do go from extreme to extreme so that's something else to work on.


The Week To Come
Also known as the week that's half over and will be further eaten up by a friend visiting and fun social things. It's the final week of Light, Fun & Comedic stories and I'm throwing it open to any genre but the theme of discovery and motif of keys will remain. I'll be happy if I get another idea but I doubt I'll be writing much! I think my idea this week will be inspired by this image.

photo credit: see-ming lee

Returning From Deprivation

I'm back in the world of the internet and books after my week of reading deprivation. I'm not sure I picked the best week to do it since I had very social plans. There were just two evenings when I really had myself to myself. I thought that I would get to a point very quickly where I was bored and would have to fend for myself. Turns out I'll need more than a couple evenings to get to that point. I did cheat a little bit but I also learnt some important lessons. I'm want to try it again. I want to see how I deal with getting to that point where I'm bored and forced to really entertain myself. I'm thinking of trying it again when I reach week eight of the Artist's Way. It's taken me 60 days to get through week four so that will be a fair way off yet.

photo credit: otherthings

I spent a lot of time cross-stitching. It keeps my hands busy and leaves my mind free enough to think, or not to think. It took a long time for my mind to quieten down. On reflection I can see this must be a little meditative. I brainstormed a Light, Fun & Comedic idea for the creativity workshop which I will talk more about in the weekly review... coming soon. I did chores, lots of chores and cleared out my wardrobe and drawers. I browsed FlickrCC for images and I devoured images. Images inspired my short story for the week and drove me to create some setting collages which were a huge amount of fun. I'll be posting them in my weekly review too.

photo credit: Kieran 2009

I first cheated on Wednesday, which I called an exception going into the week. I went to see a movie with friends. Thursday I cheated a little by following the commentary of the All Whites last game of the 2010 World Cup but I don't feel bad about that one at all. Saturday I cheated a little by doing cross-stitch in the lounge where the football was on TV and then a movie. I didn't watch it per se, but it stopped my mind from getting nice and empty. Sunday my hubby and I took a six hour cruise along the Manchester Ship Canal in the gorgeous summer sun. I didn't take any reading material with me and there's not a whole lot to do expect gaze at the scenery and bake in the sun but we did buy a souvenir book that I may have read.

photo credit: Natalia Romay

Despite a very mixed week of activities I did learn some very important things that I'm sure I wouldn't have realised nearly as quickly if at all.

1. Life experience is an important ingredient in writing. I'm at a stage in my life where I'm gathering experiences. It's okay for my writing to recede. It is not okay for my creativity to recede.
   
   
2. I like being happy. I like having fun. I do not like the frantic stressful person that I had become. My output may have been higher but if it's not making me happy, if I'm not having fun with it, then that's not what I want to be doing. I want to be happy. I want to have fun.

In taking those lessons to heart I've already changed my thinking. I'm working on only doing one thing at a time. Like now, I'm writing this blog post. I have no other windows open. I have my cross-stitch at hand for when my mind stops giving me the words and that's it. I'm not rushing to finish it so I can do a dozen other things tonight and I'm not stressing about the things that I haven't done. I'm keeping my mind clear and allowing myself to focus on just one thing at a time. This might finally be what I need to enjoy the journey instead of only enjoying the fleeting moments of success that were always over shadowed by wanting more.