Or whose emotional baggage is this?
I have a rule; ‘Don’t date guys whose mother died or left them when they were young.’ The reason I won’t do this is that they often have issues around women leaving them, they are unsure how to relate to a grown arse woman and the have a fear of intimacy and commitment because they fear that you too, will leave them.
Sounds reasonable, right?
I have dated a couple of guys who lost their mother in one way or another when they were young and they displayed these traits and ultimately broke my heart because no matter what I did, I couldn’t fix what was broken in them. …
The new job is taking up my time and energy.
Last week was all about the training for my new job. And researching an article.
I didn’t even get around to posting last weeks weekly diary yet. Hopefully, I can get to that before I start this morning.
I have three more weeks of training, and I just need to accept that my writing is going to take a backseat while I settle into my new job. The panic comes from worrying that I will stop. That like so many other projects in my life, I will not complete the final leg. …
So life gets in the way sometimes.
The training for my new job is intense. Excellent but tiring.
Today is my writing day. The day I should be researching agents or making changes to my WIP.
But I just want to go and watch The Crown. I was going to watch it last night, but dramas beyond our control kept taking precedence.
Do I let myself off the hook and go and relax or do I at least try and get some writing-related activities done?
How about if I get some decent work done this morning? Can watch TV all afternoon then?
But I can go and have another coffee first. …
I know I said I was finished but…
Agents, agents, agents.
Wow, this is an overwhelming task.
How to find the right agents for me.
How to find agents in Australia.
How to find the right agents for an Urban Fantasy when Urban Fantasy does not get listed as a genre.
How to find the right agents when if Urban Fantasy is mentioned, it is described as not wanted right now.
Then once I do find the agents I like, who are open, who want fantasy, preferably urban, and in the same country…
How to choose the six agents I want to pitch to first.
My first instinct was to start with Laurel K Hamilton or Charlene Harris or Ben Aaronovitch’s agents and work my way down, but funnily enough, their books are closed. …
I finished it, I finished the draft!
I am so close to finishing this draft now.
It is hard not to get “distracted” and avoid it entirely because it is sort of terrifying.
The other temptation is to rush it and be “done”.
Either way, if I can get this finished, then the next step is writing the synopsis and a query letter.
Then research agents.
Then I guess I send it out to the right agents?
Really?
Do I have to?
I don’t want to.
Except I really do.
Except what if it really isn’t good enough?
Perhaps I should finish it before worrying about that.
I have finished it! …
Nothing inspiring here folks.
Okay, so that week was not a week for writing or editing.
There were dramas and teeth pulling and distractions galore.
I am continuing to edit.
I am having trouble getting started this morning.
I am tired.
I did work-related things all weekend.
I just keep allowing myself to be distracted.
I need to have another coffee.
I need to get on with it.
Once I start working again, I will need every ounce of discipline if I want to keep writing as well.
Or I could just stick to a routine and not get distracted. …
Almost two-thirds of the way done, I think?
Okay so I have thought about my new added scene, and I haven’t come up with anything brilliant. Serviceable, yes. Adequate, yes. Brilliant, no.
I will have to go with what I have got, for now, or I will get stuck here and not keep the editing momentum going. And the clock is ticking. My self imposed deadline of finishing this draft before I start my new job looms ever closer. And with doctors appointments, dentist appointments and social interactions that time is slipping away before my eyes. …
I want Bloody Dawn to be the first in a series.
I got the job!
I get to be a counsellor.
I get to use the two degrees I went back to uni for.
I get to have a regular wage and a part-time job that will allow me to keep writing.
I am happy about these things.
Okay, that’s enough now let’s get back to making this book amazing.
Editing is hard. Writing new bits is hard. Moving the things around is hard. Making sure you haven’t screwed up another bit of the story by moving that other bit is hard.
I am making progress, though. It just feels hard.
I really feel like I am getting somewhere now. I feel like I am getting to grips with this whole process and moving at a decent pace. I would love to be progressing faster, but it really is something you can’t rush. …
Working hard, editing harder.
It was a slow start yesterday.
I worked hard but didn’t feel like I achieved a lot. Although I think I can safely say I have got Chapters one and two into a reasonable state. Without exciting word count targets, it is hard to see how much you have achieved.
Moving five words around or cutting two paragraphs can be a 10-minute job or an hour-long one.
It is hard to assess, so instead, I am just working through the chapters.
All of which need different endings to the ones they have now. …
A short writing week but a productive one.
Conquering fear seems to be an overarching theme as I continue along this journey.
So many new skills, new experiences and new challenges and often I find myself feeling scared by the things that lie ahead. Fearful of what I might not be able to do. Worried that I won’t be up to the task.
However, all that is tempered by the thrill I get from learning the new skills, facing the challenges head-on and realising that I am progressing and learning and getting better at this being a writer thing.
None of that has been done alone. Belonging to Dream Author, doing courses, having followers on Medium, supportive friends, and a supportive family has made it possible to keep going. That support has been particularly helpful during the times I have doubted myself and my ability to write anything worthwhile.
Finishing the first draft was a big achievement. In the past, I have scribbled so many lost ideas in notebooks, started writing so many unfinished stories, to actually realise an entire novel of 80,000 words felt fantastic. To then have it really hit home that it was just the beginning of the work was daunting.
So I am about to embark on the next draft. I will be taking the editors comments on board and doing my best to turn this book into something I would love reading. At the moment if I picked it up to read, I would enjoy it but not think too much about again. Now I want to turn it into something I can be really proud of, and that other people will love so much they will want to buy the T-shirt.
Conquering fear is also something my protagonist gets to do to. She gets supernatural powers to do that, though. …
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