I sat down the other day with my lovely new diary and a notebook and tried to plan out my writing year. I started out with the list of goals I posted in October, and added and amended a few. These are my goals in a nutshell:

JANUARY - Edits
First and foremost, I need to finish typing up my line edits and get them sent out to a couple of beta readers. I was aiming for the 13th of January, but given that I'm now working most of next week I've moved that up - I want to get this done over the weekend. I'm averaging about 30 pages an hour and have about 270 pages to go, so I guess at that rate I'm going to need nine or ten hours... I'm hoping that I've remembered correctly and that there's less red pen on the later pages in the manuscript! And I have serious incentive on this one - I have a 10% discount for the Festival of Writing if I book before the 15th, and unless I get this done, I'm not letting myself go. At all.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY - First Draft
I need to finish the first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel. I've been working on this intermittently since the end of NaNo, mainly on my Alphasmart on the way to work. My solid deadline is the end of February, but ideally I want it done before then. I was aiming for the end of January, but I don't think that's very realistic since I'm at 58K and probably not going to be able to stick to NaNo pace - certainly not until the edits are done. We'll see.

MARCH/APRIL/MAY - Edits
After that, I want to start editing the novel I started for NaNo 2009, The Bonded. I'm looking forward to that. Needs a lot of work, but I'm hoping three months will be enough to get the bulk of that done.

JUNE/JULY/AUGUST - Short Stories
I'd been considering getting another novel draft in here, but then I thought about it and realised that I really don't want that many unedited manuscripts sitting around at once! So I'd like to spend a couple of months working on short stories, partly to give myself a break from the edits and partly because it's a form I'm still not very familiar with. I think I'll go back and work through some of the stuff in Merrilee's Creativity Workshop that I didn't get round to, and revisit the stories I did manage to write. I'd like to get five short stories ready for submission by the time September rolls around.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER - Edits
After that, it'll be back to edits, aiming to get the line edits done for The Bonded.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER - First Draft
NaNoWriMo - the only time of year I seem to be able to sustain a decent writing pace for more than a couple of days, so it will be time to work on something new!

These, of course, are only the bits that I think I'll be able to control. Once I've got feedback from my betas, fixing any problems with Amulet will become the priority again. When that's done, I think it will finally be ready to face the world. So somewhere in all of that, I'll hopefully start querying agents.

The skeleton outline of the year is all very well, but my biggest goal is to make writing a priority. The funny thing is that it already is in many ways - but it's all too easy to let it fall aside from time to time, and that's what I want to avoid. I'm aiming for at least two hours of writing/editing on 'easy' days, i.e. those days when I'm not at work or particularly busy, and 30 minutes a day on busier days. Two hours is a lot, but I think I can do it. Some days, at least. ;)

So far, 2011 is looking like it'll be rather busy!

So... I guess it's been a while, huh? Apologies and all that. Must be time for a brief update...

Creativity Workshop
Sadly, my last blog post was the last time I did anything directly related to the workshop. Other things took over, and although I would very much like to go back and work my way through the last few weeks of the workshop at some point I had to put it aside. That snarky mercenary is still in my head though, and I doubt she's going anywhere! I suspect she may end up with her own novel at some point, but she'll have to wait a while.

The Amulet of Sìochàin
I finished my story bible, eventually. It was useful, I think. I know the name of the town in the novel now, anyway. It may prove more useful in the future, if I ever get round to writing the sequel. Either way, I'm glad I did it, but it did seem to take forever. I'm now (finally) on line edits, and they seem to be taking even longer. But I've sped up in the last week or so - until this week I was having to limit myself to doing 15 minutes at a time, because it just seemed so tedious. This week though I've worked on it every day, taking advantage of extra pockets of time where I've had them, and I'm now on page 228 of 373. I can't tell you how long I've been working on it, but it's been weeks, and yet in the last week or so I've probably doubled my page count. This means that if I can get through nine pages a day for the rest of October I will be done in time to start NaNoWriMo. Talking of which...

NaNoWriMo
I told myself that if I hadn't finished my line edits by November, I wouldn't be allowed to do NaNo this year. I've participated in and completed it for the last three years, so that would be bad. To be honest, I'm not sure I'll really have the time to complete it this November anyway, but I want to give it a shot at least. Apart from anything else, I really need an excuse to write something else. I've been working on these revisions since January. Okay, they were extensive and required lots of new scenes, but apart from a couple of short stories I haven't written anything new since I finished last year's NaNoWriMo book. I have a one-sentence summary of the book I want to write. I'm really really hoping I finish these line edits in time to do just a little bit more plotting though.

Goals
So, goals. I'm never very good at these, but it seems a good time to make them all the same.
Finish Amulet line edits by 31st October Participate in (and win) NaNoWriMo Complete NaNoWriMo novel (this will probably take me through to January) Type up Amulet line edits Do a final read through, put together a decent query letter and start sending it out Start on The Bonded edits (last year's NaNoWriMo book - love the concept, know it's going to need just as much editing as Amulet) and get it ready to submit to agent/book doctor at the Festival of Writing Attend Festival of Writing (end of March) And that's as far ahead as I can bear to look.

So, once again Tuesday's come around and I haven't yet posted my review of last week or started work on this week's story. I'm getting things done, but slowly, and I'm having trouble keeping my head in story-world when I'm not actively working on it. This is true of both my short stories and my novel at the moment. But like I said - I am making progress. It just doesn't really feel like it.

Last week I got my short story done in just two sessions. I wrote it by hand again, and it was two sides of A4. (No idea what that is in words, but my writing is fairly small.) The story surprised me by being quite dark but very much contemporary. Since this block is all about relationships, it explored an old friendship, and I think it was fairly successful, but not in the way I expected. It became more about the loss of a friendship than the experience of one. It was certainly new territory for me though, and although I'm not completely happy with the ending I think the central story is fairly solid.

When I'm not actually working on anything writing-related, my mind seems to be a million miles away - I seem to be very detached from it at the moment. With the novel, I'm not surprised, since at the moment I'm doing a slow read-through, using my iPhone (which I'm not too keen on as a reading experience, but it's less hassle than carting a lever arch file around with me). As I mentioned last week, I'm making notes about character and setting to make sure it's all consistent, and it's definitely the most tedious part of this revision so far. I'm about a third of the way through, but I'm finally beginning to pick up speed and I'm hoping I'll get through the rest relatively quickly.

I think one thing I'm learning in this block is that there's a reason I choose to write fantasy. I think - I'm not completely sure, but I think - that part of the reason I'm not engaging properly with the short stories is the fact that they are so different to what usually sets my imagination off. I'm still getting the words down, and I'm still fairly happy with what I'm producing, but the stories just don't seem to excite me in the same way. I may be imagining things - it may just be that the last couple of weeks have been a bit of a slog all round. But it's an interesting thought. Either way, I'm really glad I'm trying this - I think it's fair to say I probably wouldn't have bothered to spread my wings in this way without the help of the workshop. And who knows - maybe this week will be different. If I ever come up with an idea, that is.

I'm behind on the exercises, but I am working my way through the various posts. I'm now on the last page of my second notebook - mainly because I ended up writing the week before last's story in it, but I have been doing my idea generation exercises too.

So I'm still here. I'm still in. I'm just plodding behind a little bit, that's all. :)

Well, I actually got my short story done last week, which was a definite plus. I have no idea how long it is, since I wrote it by hand, but it contained no magic whatsoever and I think it dealt fairly well with the mother/son relationship I was trying to explore. Okay, so the situation they were in was a little out of the ordinary, which wasn't quite the plan, but it worked. It was actually one of my morning idea generation exercises that sparked the plot, which was quite exciting. I then used the wagon wheel concept described by Rachael Hale to develop the concept. I was really pleased with how well the tools worked together, and I'm hoping to use the same method this week.

Unfortunately this week is getting off to a slow start. I spent the weekend with my parents, and haven't yet got back into my routines - I'm getting lots of housework and general organising done, but apart from 30 minutes yesterday working on my story bible I haven't done anything writing related since Saturday. Hoping to get that problem addressed later today.

The story bible (or series bible if you prefer) is proving useful, however. Prompted by this post over at Deadline Dames, I decided it would be a good idea to get one together. If I do ever get a chance to write the second book, it will be invaluable - but right now it's giving me a really thorough grasp of a few inconsistencies, in my settings in particular. I've worked through six chapters so far. There's a bit of a way to go, but once I've done that (and the exercise on settings too) I should be ready to get on with line edits. (But then, I've said that so many times already that I'm not holding my breath.)

This week's short story is rather vague so far, since I haven't even thought about it properly yet. I'm thinking I'll try exploring a relationship between two old friends this week - but if my idea generation exercises point me somewhere else, I think I'll go with it.

So, I said I was going to be working on those exercises on integral setting, right? Yeah. Well, I started to. I did the first exercise (I chose ancient Athens, incidentally) and found it really interesting - I think Merrilee's post really got some important points through for me. And then yesterday I started on the second, and it looked promising - I decided to do it for the novel I'm currently revising, since it's so fresh in my head. But I didn't get very far. I was going to continue with it this morning, but... well. Somehow I ended up in plotting mode for the second book in the series, and this is what I ended up with:

Essentially, I suppose they're mainly character sheets, with notes on the issues they're all facing and some of the most important things they'll have to do. I had been planning to do some collaging this week, but at the moment I don't have access to a particularly good printer so I haven't been able to do that yet (although I have found a few interesting pictures that I'll be using). But this may well have been the more productive option. I don't yet have my inciting incident, but I do have a good idea of my character goals and motivations (which is very rare for me at this stage) as well as some of the key events plotted out. I know where they're starting from, I know where they're going, and I know some of the places they need to visit along the way.

It was probably the most exhilirating plotting session I've ever had - I was buzzing long before I sat down with my pencil and paper. I learnt some things about the bad guys I hadn't realised before, and I realised that one of the relationships I loved so much in the first book isn't going to survive this one. There were a couple of things I came across that I am going to have to feed back in as I go through and do my (hopefully) final revision on the first book, but that's all to the good - nothing major, more foreshadowing than anything, but important all the same.

I'm excited about this book. I have no intention of starting to actually write it any time soon though - I'll get a more linear plan in place, and then I'll put it away. My current plan is to finish this revision and send it out, and then start working on the revisions for last year's NaNoWriMo book. It takes place in a completely different world, and it's one which I'm itching to get back to. That way, if things go really well, I have a plan for book two of the world of Amulet ready to go; if they don't, I have a whole other book and concept that I can bring up to scratch and start sending out. It does mean that I'm not going to be able to start work on a new book just yet, but I guess this is the year of extensive revisions, and that's okay. Last year I finished one first draft and then a week later jumped straight into the next, so it's only to be expected! If I can get Bonded revised by November, then maybe I'll get to work on another first draft for NaNoWriMo - but that's still some way off, and I don't want to rush anything.

Creativity Workshop Week Seven: Coming Up
This week, though, I need to get back into the workshop. Firstly, that means getting the second exercise on setting done and dusted - I have a feeling it will be useful to have that done before I jump back into the third draft. I think I'm going to put the third exercise aside for now and come back to it for the third block of the workshop, which is going to be about setting.

The block which I'm now in, although a week late, is about relationships. I'm really hoping my plotting frenzy continues tomorrow so I can get some solid ideas, but we'll see! I originally planned to explore four kinds of relationship, but with only three weeks that's a little more difficult, so I'm cutting out the housemates story. This week, I want to try the mother and son relationship - it seems appropriate, since we're spending time with both my parents and my in-laws over the course of this week! I think this is going to be a challenge for me, since, for obvious reasons, I have never been a son, and have yet to be a mother. But it will no doubt be interesting. All I know about the story so far is that it's set in a small town. Tomorrow, hopefully, I will learn a bit more about it.

Yes. Finally. I got to the end of the second draft. It came in at a total word count of 103394, which I'm very happy with. So now I'm going to put it to bed for a week, and leave it alone. I may play about with some collaging for another novel idea, but then again, I may not. I might just concentrate on the Creativity Workshop for a few days. Then, at the end of next week, I'll print off my manuscript again and start making the smaller changes - moving words around rather than whole scenes.

I'm fairly confident that the structure is pretty much all in place now - there may be a few small modifications to make, but overall, I think the story itself is now in pretty decent shape. It's taken me far longer than I anticipated to reach this point, but honestly, that's okay. What's that saying - anything worth doing well is worth taking your time over? Well, I've certainly done the latter. Hopefully the first part is at least vaguely applicable too.

So, with that done, I actually have the time to address the questions Merrilee posed in her How are you doing? post, and now seems like a pretty appropriate time to do so. Even if it has taken me two days to do it.

1. Creativity

1a. Am I doing my daily creativity exercises?
I had been doing really well at this, but when I stopped working on my short stories, I also stopped doing the idea generation exercises every morning. It only took me a few days to realise that I actually really missed doing it. I haven't yet had anything overly remarkable appear on the pages of my notebook from them, but they were getting me into a generally more creative frame of mind, and after a few days of not doing them I realised my other writing was suffering because of it. So now I'm back on the wagon, so to speak.

1b. How full is my notebook?
I finished my first one, and I'm a few pages into the second one. Okay, they're only Pop Notes books, but they're perfect for carrying around with me, and there are 50 pages in each one. I'm using them for my idea generation, and also for taking notes on blog posts - mainly the ones from the workshop, but also from other blogs I follow when something of particular interest comes up. When Merrilee has set exercises to do, I've used it for those as well.

1c. Do I look around me and collect inspiration as I go about my day?
I think so, some of the time, but it's usually from objects and places rather than people. I need to work harder at people watching and using those observations - I suspect my character development would really benefit from that.

1d. Am I looking for inspiration, instead of waiting for it to appear?
I've noticed that my gaze will fall on something, and I'm almost automatically asking myself the "What if...?" questions Merrilee mentioned on her More ideas than you can write blog post. That feels pretty good, and I'm really very happy about it.

2. Focus

2a. Am I examining ideas that excite me?
Not really, to be honest. But then I have been trying to focus hard on my revisions, so maybe this will start to change now.

2b. Have I found a particular genre or topic that really means something to me?
Fantasy is my genre of choice, always has been. Lately I've found myself working family issues into my stories a lot, and I do find that fascinating.

2c. Is my exploration leading me to new outlets for my creativity, or do I feel like I am going in circles?
Hmm, not sure about the new outlets, unless short stories in general count. And they're not entirely new. But I don't feel like I'm going in circles - I have felt lately as if I'm on a neverending path with my revisions, but that's different. I knew I was moving forward, it was just slow.

2d. Am I finding it easier to concentrate on a project on-demand, or do I get distracted easily?
I'm usually pretty good about sitting down to write, but I do tend to work in spurts - I'll write a scene and then go and check Facebook/Twitter/blogs for a while. I'd like to work on writing for longer periods at a time - I know I can do it, but I'm not doing it regularly enough. Timing myself helps - I guess I need to start increasing the length of time on Write or Die!

3. Productivity

3a. How many stories have I started?
Three so far.

3b. How many stories have I completed?
I've completed first drafts of all three, though they will need editing - especially the third one, which rambled and meandered a lot! This is the second week I've skipped, but every week I've tried, I have managed to finish the story.

3c. Am I writing as often as I could be?
Probably not, but I am writing nearly every day. The last week or so I've been skipping my evening sessions, which is bad - and silly too, since I feel so much better when I do fit them in.

3d. Do I bring the story to mind every day, even when I’m not writing?
I've definitely been doing this with my novel - I think I was doing it with the short stories too, but can't honestly remember!

4. Goals

4a. Am I meeting my goals?
I think overall I am. As I've said, it took longer than expected to meet my novel goal, but it's done now. And I made a conscious decision not to push myself to do the short stories for this week and last, so I don't really feel like I've failed at that.

4b. Do I remember what my goals are?
I think so!

4c. Do my goals reflect my desires and where I want to go as a writer?
Yes, I think they do - my overriding goal is to get my novel to the query stage, and my goals for the Creativity Workshop are all about exploring different avenues and techniques to see what works for me.

4d. Am I keeping my goals in mind whenever I get excited by a new project?
This hasn't really come up so far - there are too many things already in the works. But I am keeping my goals in mind as I decide which parts to focus on.

There. I think that's a long enough post for now. Today I'm going to start work on some of Merrilee's exercises on integral settings. Tomorrow, who knows. I'm taking it easy for a couple if days!

Towards the end of last week, after completing my third short story for the Creativity Workshop, I realised two things: one, that my chances of completing my second draft before the 31st May were next to none, and two, that I'd already achieved what I'd set out to try and do in the first block. I'd explored objective POV in my first story, and weeks two and three explored first person viewpoints of two of my characters. I'd already told most of the story (and had creeped myself out considerably in the process with my shapeshifter killing maniac), and so I decided to take Week Five off and concentrate on my revisions.

It went well for the first couple of days - on Monday I added 8K, and on Tuesday I added another 6K. I'm now up to 91K in total, which is about 20K more than my first draft. I think the structure's much stronger, and I'm pretty happy with my characters. I still have a few more scenes to fix and write though - the second half of this week has been less productive. This morning I got up to write and realised that I just wasn't in the right frame of mind, so I've been finding new pictures for my Daily Photo Prompt blog instead.

Merrilee put up a great blog about writer's block, and for me, this is how it usually manifests itself. If I force myself to try and write, I'll get frustrated with myself, so I've learnt that it's usually about needing something specific. Often it's because I haven't been getting enough creative input (not reading enough, mainly), or simply because I'm too tired. This time, I think it's the latter - I had a dreadful night's sleep for no good reason. I usually find that being productive in other ways can help me quite a lot in getting past this, so I think this morning will be dedicated to housework. The laundry's already done, the kitchen is next in line for a cleaning, and then I'll try and get a bit of writing done.

I've rarely found myself blocked because of the actual story itself, but it has happened - in the first draft of Amulet, I wrote a particular scene and then just couldn't get past it. It took me a couple of days to figure out that while my hero might be a bit of a bad guy on the outside, I'd taken his evil tendencies a few steps too far until he was behaving wildly out of character. For one of the first times ever, I scrapped that whole scene in the middle of the first draft and wrote what actually needed to happen instead. I'm a big believer in writing through to the end of that first draft, but sometimes, it just can't happen. I have also found from time to time that I'm really not as much of a pantser as I once thought - sometimes, I just need to brainstorm until I figure out what needs to happen next.

So. This week, I haven't been working on a short story, and I'm happy about that. I couldn't have given it any kind of decent attention, and the story I was planning just didn't interest me that much anymore since I already knew everything about it from the other three stories in this block. Next week, I think I'm going to wing it a bit. At first I was very frustrated not to have reached my goal, but I'm over that now - I realised quickly that there were a whole lot of reasons why the second draft done was taking longer than I'd planned, and so I'm just going to get it done as soon as I can. I think it still needs to take priority for me at the moment though, so I may take this week just as a planning week, with my goal for the second block being to produce three short stories again. It depends - if I manage to get to the end of this draft in the next few days, I'll be right back on my AlphaSmart working on another story. But I want to give myself the space I need to finish this draft.

So, that's where I am. And until I'm done with this draft, I'll probably be a bit quiet. Could be three days, could be a couple of weeks - but I'll let you know. ;)

It's been another mad week for me, having slept in three different counties over the course of the last seven days, but all in all, it's been positive writing-wise. Although I haven't always felt very positive about it.

Week Two: In Review
This week's goal was to write in an entirely objective POV. I actually found it a little bit easier than I'd expected, but with a caveat - writing without a character POV makes me write short. My story covered a longer period of time than I'd anticipated, but it only came in at 2332 words.

I got all my planning done in my little notebook on the Monday, so I started the actual writing on Tuesday. Writing about 500 words a day (which I was very happy with) I finished the story on Friday. That left me Saturday to do an initial edit, and I have to say I quite like it. I don't think I'll do anything with it necessarily, but I think one of the other three parts to this block might have potential. The story itself feels pretty solid, and I think I met my goal as far as the POV goes - I've just discovered that while it was a useful exercise, I definitely prefer having a character POV, however deep or distant that might be. I think I did reasonably well at communicating my characters' feelings and so on as much as possible through body language and so on, but it's not the same and I'm quite excited now about actually experiencing the story through them.

Some of the story didn't pan out quite as I'd expected, but that turned out for the best and gives me a LOT to work with on the next three stories. Well, two of them at least. The third... well, I'll get to that in a minute.

I found Merrilee's idea generation exercise really useful, and have spent ten minutes doing that each morning. Some of the ideas I've had have been rather dull, but others have been quite interesting, and if I didn't already have two novels to revise and another three to plot I might be looking at them differently. I have yet to actually return to any of my ideas later in the day, however, and I want to make a point of doing that this week.

In terms of other writing, I managed to get at least 30 minutes of revisions done each day, so I'm definitely counting that as a success. The novel is seriously dragging on now - technically I know I'm working through it much faster than I was, but it just feels like the last 10K or so have been going on forever. However, I think this is partly because I've made the same mistake as I've made before - a few weeks ago I finished a book, and since then I haven't picked up another one. That's fine for a week or two, but I'm realising that actually, I need that additional creative input. Watching TV can help sometimes, but ideally I need to read. I think I need to get back into listening to podcast fiction - I spend so much time travelling, and because I get motion sickness I can't read while I'm in the car or on the bus, so audiobooks seem like a good way to go. The fact is, though, I always get far more excited about a physical book than I do about fiction in any other format. So today I've started reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss - the back cover copy had me completely hooked when I read it in Waterstones a few months ago, but somehow I haven't got around to reading it until now. So I'll report back next week on how that affects my revisions!

Week Three: Coming Up
This week is supposed to be the first of my 1st person POV stories. I have a bit of a problem with this, however. The character I was intending to use didn't excite me much at all, and really is just an observer in the story - to be honest, he probably needs to go. So that leaves me with something of a dilemma. I did, however, encounter a character I hadn't anticipated at all, and she's much more interesting. It will kind of mess up my plan, which was to steadily zero in further and further week by week to the heart of the main shapeshifter's story, but technically it will fulfil my brief. And she has a whole secret life of her own which really intrigues me, so I think I'll have to follow up on that. Gregory, the old fisherman I was planning to write about, will just have to stay in his boat on his own. I think.

So. Monday and Tuesday will be designated for planning, as before, but I don't really expect to take up both of those days. (Not if I can figure out who to write about, anyway.) Once I start writing, I'll stick with a daily minimum of 500 words (or 30 minutes, depending on constraints) until I'm done, unless I haven't finished by the end of the week, in which case I'll set it aside until after the workshop.

In terms of idea generation, I want to keep on doing my daily ten minutes, but I want to add a review habit to that later in the day - maybe in the evening just before bed. The kernels of ideas are there, but I suspect going back to them again will give things an extra dimension.

I plan to stick with a minimum of 30 minutes of revision each day. I'd like to up this, really, but I just don't have the time at the moment. I have fifteen days to finish this draft if I'm going to keep to my goal. I don't much like my chances, but I won't give up on it until I hit midnight on the 31st!

It's been a funny sort of a week for me, with the usual madcap travelling as well as car trouble and the distraction of the General Election, so things haven't been as structured and disciplined as I'd like. But I've got things done, and I'm getting ready to start on this week's goals.

Week One: In Review
I made a good start on the Icebreaker exercise when it was first posted, but never quite managed to finish it. I have yet to comment on everyone's blogs, but I'm getting there. I enjoyed the He Says, She Says post on creativity, although I read it quite late one night so perhaps didn't get the full benefit of it. I meant to go back to it the next day, but never quite got around to that.

I started making notes in my little notebook regarding my goals on Thursday, and by Friday evening I managed to have a fairly solid list set out. I felt a bit uncertain as I sat down to write the post, but in the process of typing it up the ideas came together much more clearly, and I'm quite happy with them as they are.

I did also manage to get some editing done on Amulet, but not as much as I'd like. It's still slow, sometimes a bit painful, but it's progress all the same.

Week Two: Coming Up
My goal for this block is to explore POV, and in order to do this I'm starting with an entirely objective account of an event. That means that my first task this week is to figure out just what this event is and who's involved. Once I have a better idea of that, I can start writing. It's going to be a challenge to not view the scene through any of the characters' eyes, but I'm looking forward to it.

So, Monday and Tuesday, I plan. By Wednesday at the latest, I want to be writing. I don't have a clear idea of a word count in mind - I'll just write the story and see how long it goes. If I'm not finished by Saturday, I'll put it aside until the end of the workshop. On Sunday I'll post my review of the week.

I desperately want to ensure that I don't lose sight of my novel, however, so I'm planning to dedicate my morning sessions to the workshop and my evenings to the novel. I haven't been getting two sessions a day in as often as I like to, so I'm hoping this will push me to do that.

So here goes - tomorrow, we dive in, and I meet my shapeshifting hero for the first time. Should be fun.

I like revising, as a general rule. I like the feeling that I'm making something better out of what's already there, and that I have the power to reshape it into what I actually want it to be. But, as you may have gathered if you've been following my blog lately, this particular revision is proving rather arduous. I'm plodding through the woods of the Beyond at a pace I'm finding very frustrating, and although I know that I am still making progress it doesn't really feel like it. On the plus side, it's helping me empathise just a little with Cayden, who is finding his companion's walking pace equally irritating.

One of the really useful things I took away from my one-to-ones at the Festival of Writing was the need to make my world more real to the reader - the characters are solid and grounded, but although I know how the world feels in my head I don't seem to have communicated it very well in the opening chapter. This weekend I managed to get in some extra (unplanned) research and took a whole lot of photos, mainly of trees, which is already really helping to make sure I actually get in some of that subtle show-don't-tell description that I'm missing as I work through the revisions.

I'm now up to 30K of revised/rewritten scenes, but having just realised that adding another point of view will really help the story I suspect I'm probably more like 35-40K into the novel now. My immediate dilemma is whether to go back and write in those additional scenes now, before going further, or instead to power on through with where I'm up to and add the additional PoV in on the next round. I want to go back, I think, especially since the new PoV character's story verges with my protagonist's again fairly soon, but I'm worried that if I do I'll just make this wall harder to break.

I'm pretty sure that I can break through this wall soon - from this point on in the book, the plot's already fairly solid, whereas this first third has been full of new scenes and complete rewrites. I've almost forgotten what it's like to simply edit a scene on a printed manuscript rather than writing it from scratch. Not that I mind new scenes - it keeps the process fresh and interesting and means that the creative side of me isn't entirely submerged under the wave of editing. The critical part tells it what to write with much more certainty than it ever displays in a first draft, but it's still the creative side that gets to actually pour out the words.

But right now, I want that critical part to be able to take over, because I really want to power through the rest of this draft now. Another really huge thing I took away from the Festival was that I need to be thinking about series, and I now can't stop - the second and third Amulet books are starting to plan themselves in the back of my mind, and I'm trying really hard not to give in and scribble them down, because I never ever come back to a scribbled note and actually find the joy in it that I felt when I wrote it. I need to wait until I can actually pay the ideas the attention they deserve, and then I'll be fired up because I haven't done anything with them yet and I'll be able to sketch lovely outlines and do some collaging and generally explore the potential for new stories to be told.

But not yet. First, I have a second draft to finish. And then I need to go through the whole manuscript in its new form and do line edits. I'm setting myself a deadline - by the 31st May I want to have this draft done. That gives me over a month to do it. My not-so-secret hope is that I'll manage to get the line edits done as well, but that's not my goal, since looking at how long it's taken me to get this far I'm already challenging myself enough. I'll keep you updated if I have something interesting to say about the process. If not, I'll just keep on updating that word count bar on the left hand side of the page, and that'll tell you all you need to know.

Either way, 31st May, here I come..

I'm now home from the Festival of Writing at York, and boy, was that an incredible weekend. Utterly exhausting and by Sunday night I was feeling completely drained, but so worth it. Absolutely invaluable.

Workshops

Over the weekend I went to six different workshops. Some of them were more practical than others, some of them weren't quite what I was expecting, but they were all very interesting. Literary agent John Jarrold's workshop on the market for SF and fantasy was very useful and illuminating (despite having to miss the first twenty-five minutes for one of my one-to-ones), and I came away with a much better understanding of that aspect of the industry. Author Veronica Henry's talk on multiple protagonists was very entertaining, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for her books in future! More than that, though, it was full of practical advice and gave me a great set of questions to work through on the train home which really helped me understand my character arcs. The other highlight for me was The Business of Publishing, which was run by literary agent Clare Alexander and two of her authors, Emma Darwin and Fiona Shaw. The workshop gave a really fantastic overview of the relationship between an agent and an author, and how that relationship might be different from one author to another.

One-to-Ones

As a whole, I think the one-to-ones were a great success - I certainly got a lot out of mine. I got some very helpful feedback on what's good about my writing and what probably needs work - my voice seems pretty good, my characters seem nicely grounded, my plot and the details of the world need some work. That's all great to hear. I also discovered that I've been working to the wrong rules - I think my problem is that I've been following too many American agent and author blogs, and it seems that things are a little different in the UK fantasy market. This feels like a really great thing for me - it turns out that my word counts should be much longer, and that selling standalone fantasy novels is actually very rare. This gives me new territory to explore - I can make my plots much more complex, and I can stop thinking that everything needs to be tied up perfectly at the end. I can write trilogies! I'm really excited about this, and for me the weekend was probably worth it just for those two ten-minute meetings alone.

Unfortunately I'm not sure everyone could say the same - I was surpriseed to hear that some submissions weren't read by the agents/book doctors before the meetings. I think in the majority of cases this was due to postal problems (although I have to say I would have thought that if there was a chance paper submissions hadn't arrived they should have been emailed through). I don't think there were too many of these overall, and I know lot of the agents and book doctors really did go out of their way to make sure the writers got as much as they could out of the session. One agent sent out feedback before the Festival even started, and then devoted their ten minute sessions to making sure the writers could ask anything they wanted; another who couldn't make it in the end will be holding phone consultations with those writers who had been hoping to meet him. It sounds like some of those agents and book doctors who did have problems getting the material beforehand are making arrangements to deliver feedback in some other way, but I'm not sure if that's true for everyone. I hope it is - for me, the chance to get professional feedback on my work was crucial to my decision to attend the Festival, and I'm sure that's the case for other people as well.

Keynote Speeches
The opening speech was given by the extremely lovely Katie Fforde, and it was entertaining, amusing and helpful. Katie gave a list of ten top tips to guarantee publication, and it was a great way to kick-start the workshops. Later in the day there was a fascinating panel with publisher Barry Cunningham (of JK Rowling fame) and agent Simon Trewin, which gave some really interesting insights into the industry. The final keynote speech was given by RJ Ellory, who encouraged everyone to keep on writing with a well-blended mix of his own words and some great writing quotes.

Catering & Accommodation
Huge thumbs up to York Conferences, who provided a superb selection of food throughout the weekend, from the get-up-and-go breakfasts to buffet lunches, the beautifully presented Gala Dinner and the numerous crucial tea and coffee breaks. The accommodation was clean and tidy - it was unmistakeably university accommodation, but more than adequate and very comfortable.

The Rest Of It
I met some wonderful people over the weekend, from the moment I got on the bus from the railway station right through to the bus back, and there's no doubt that they played a huge part in how inspired I felt as I came away. I've never been surrounded by so many writers before - and not just writers, but writers who are genuinely and completely passionate about what they're doing. It was a real thrill to be able to wander around and literally ask just about anyone, "What do you write?" And if by some chance they did turn out not to be a writer, they were almost certainly an agent or an editor. I'm slightly worried I'll be asking that to random people I meet for a while now!

As well as the workshops, there was also the Speed Networking (fun, but hectic, and difficult to really make any proper acquaintances when there was less than five minutes to get round eight people), Authonomy Live (really interesting, with some great entries, but went on a little longer than I would have liked) and the Literary Death Match (which I'm sure was wonderful, but I only managed to sit through three entries, since my eyes were drooping before it even started - not helped, I think, by the wine). The best time to actually meet people though was at meals - a different table, a different group. I met some great people at dinner on Friday and Saturday, and because we were sitting together for a decent stretch of time we were actually able to talk properly. A lot of people seem to be on The Word Cloud, which I've now joined - Facebook for writers, apparently. It looks good. I like it.

All In All...
A fantastic weekend. Great people, great place, great work. Time to start saving for next year...

Well, here goes. I'm currently sitting on the train heading to York, going to my first ever writing conference, the Festival of Writing. I think I'll be fine when I get there, but at the moment I'm mainly trying not to think about it! I'm definitely excited, but I'm also pretty nervous. It's an amazing opportunity to meet some fantastic people in the UK writing world and get some helpful input, and I'll try to post some kind of report soon after I get back.

But that's all to come. For the next hour and a half, I'm just aiming to get some revising done. This revision is taking much longer than I'd hoped, for a number of reasons - my routines have been entirely shot to pieces lately, so time hasn't been on my side, but my process is also proving difficult.

For some reason, I'm finding that this time around - perhaps because the revisions and rewrites are just so extensive - I'm having to do a few scenes on paper and then type them up and slot them into place. Last time I was revising I did the whole thing on paper first - I marked up my existing scenes and wrote in new ones, but nothing got typed up until I'd worked through the whole manuscript. This new process is helpful, since it's giving me a much better grasp of how the whole thing fits together, but it does feel much slower and as if I'm stopping and starting a lot.

Still, I'm getting through it, although I'm itching to get this draft done so I can start playing with my new shiny plot idea. All I've let myself do is write down a couple of sentences on what the story's about, and I really just want to get on and start discovering the rest. (Ideally, I'd be doing the discovery along with the Lucy March/Lani Diane Rich workshop over at Storywonk, but unfortunately my budget needs time to recover from the Festival!)

Well, that's where I am. And since I'm now fifteen minutes further into my journey, my manuscript is now screaming for attention.

Have a great weekend!

ETA: All settled in now, have been to afternoon tea and already met lots of people, including (albeit briefly) bestselling novelist Katie Fforde. Will shortly be off to the literary speed networking event!

I'm ploughing on slowly through my edits. Well, actually, the editing itself is going pretty well, and I even feel like the synopsis is pretty good - the difficult part is the introduction and author bio I have to write. Essentially, it's a query letter, and having never actually had to do one of those before I'm struggling a bit. I have two days left to get it how I want it. Then I'll have to get it sent off, so at least then I'll be able to concentrate properly on the actual revisions. But yuk, it does feel very messed up doing this now, when I still have so much more editing to do. I know it'll be worth it for the chance to get some decent feedback, but it just seems very unnatural to be essentially writing a query letter before I've properly finished the book. Mainly because it is. And in an ideal world, I wouldn't be doing it. But hey - I covered all that pretty thoroughly in my last post. Kindly allow me to shut up, and I'll try to talk about something else.

I've been feeling a real need for other creative input in my life lately, which has mainly manifested itself in something of a book-buying binge. Financially, this isn't a great thing, but from the point of view of that whole filling-the-creative-well idea? It's fantastic. It's not that I'm feeling all that uninspired, or that I'm finding it particularly difficult to write just now, but I think it's a pre-emptive thing. It's been a while since I had an obsessive reading splurge, which is a shame, and I think if I hadn't given in to the urge I probably would have found myself running on empty pretty soon. (I may still do so, who knows - but I'm hoping not, with all the new and exciting territory I have to uncover in that pile of books.)

The only problem I'm having at the moment is that I'd bought the first two books in a series (Holly Lisle's Secret Texts trilogy) and once I'd finished those, of course, I had to have the third one. I immediately ordered it online, and it was posted on Tuesday, but it has yet to arrive. Now, I have that whole pile of other books waiting to be read, and there's a part of me that wants to just dive one of those - but I'm still very much in that particular world, and so I'm really, really hoping that the third book arrives tomorrow. If not, I guess I'll just have to try something else, because for some reason I'm seriously craving other people's writing just now. I mean, I always love to read, but at the moment, it's making me a little crazy!

The other thing I'm obsessing about just now is fantasy art. Not just looking at it - no, I want to draw it. The problem, of course, is that I can't draw, never have been able to, and so, although I am dying to pick up a pencil and start sketching, I know without the slightest doubt that the moment I do, I will be disappointed. But I think I may just have to risk it. Maybe I just need that additional outlet, even if the product of said outlet ends up heading straight for the dustbin.

What do you do to keep that creative well from running dry?

It has to be said - I never expected to be working to a non-self-imposed revision deadline before even attempting to get anything published. But because attending the Festival of Writing in York this April includes two meetings with agents/editors who have read through a first chapter and synopsis beforehand, I need to get those together. And I now only have three weeks left to do so.

I've been using the How to Revise Your Novel course by Holly Lisle so far, and it's been incredibly useful in highlighting problems I would almost certainly not have noticed without it, but I'm going to have to wing it a bit from this point on. I don't have enough time to put Amulet through the rest of the course, so it's time to take everything I've learned so far and start figuring out how best to use it to ensure that my first chapter is gripping and my synopsis is accurate.

There are a lot of changes that I know need to be made to strengthen the story. By necessity, I need to figure out all the intricacies of my new plot now, so that I can get my synopsis sorted. Then I need to get on with tidying up and rewriting that first scene, before working through the rest of the story. It's far from ideal and obviously if this were for a traditional query I'd be holding off on sending anything out until the story were as ready as I could make it, but under the circumstances... Well, I can't afford to miss out on the opportunity for professional feedback.

Today I've made some decent progress, writing out the scene by scene synopsis of the manuscript as it currently stands and then marking in broad strokes what needs to be kept and what needs to be cut. But there's a long way to go. So I'd better get started.

Quite some time ago - approximately eight months ago in fact, when I first moved into this house - I promised the Wiffers some photos of my writing room. And since I am way behind in my blogging and currently trying to make my way through the rather messy world of my revisions on Amulet, this seemed like a good time to make good on my word. Well, better late than never, right?

So, here we go.

My whiteboard is on the left, with the collage for Amulet taking up most of the space. While I was working on the first draft of The Bonded, that collage was up instead. I use the part below the collage for random notes, key quotes, and change it whenever something better or more relevant comes along. On the right I keep track of my goals.

Then there's the desk, as you can see. When I'm writing, the laptop's in pride of place. Since I'm editing at the moment, there's revision notes, pens, index cards, and usually the lever arch file containing the manuscript.

And there's the view from my desk, looking out onto the park. I got lucky there.



The rest of the room consists of two bookcases, a filing cabinet and my craft drawers. And that's it really.

I like it. I'm not really at home often enough to take full advantage, of course, but when I am, it makes a pretty good writing space.

What about you? Where do you like to write?