Rebekah

With a little push from a prompt over @thedailypost here is my offering for the writing of last months horoscope.  I cheated a little bit though however and the horoscope refers actually very little to me and more to a varied set of circumstances and exaggerations that I adopted for my character of Rebekah.  I consider these little prompts to be purely exercises, trying to train my brain to become a writer and i in no way claim that this is anything more than rough and raw material. Thanks for your attention 🙂

As a Capricorn, Rebekah was the sort of person who could quite often overreact.  Lately she was doing that more and more and everything her husband did or said seemed to incite a riot.  Her head was currently clear but too much so.  She had reverted to a placid non feeling state where she just drifted along with no feeling toward the outside world..  She was losing herself, and her current situation seemed more empty than anything, where she was becoming a shell of her former self.  Last month her horoscope had predicted the toxicity that would follow so accurately, that Rebekah was considering to blindly follow its comments from now on like a person of faith would follow their holy book.  She began to feel guilty, wondering whether if she had paid more attention to it whether she could have avoided at least some of the negativity that now hung around her like flies at a picnic table.  

Love, it said, would have a rocky time this month.  It would be difficult and it would be tested.  A drunken night had helped this one along as love was tested and love failed.  It said passions would run high and she genuinely had hoped that she would find that at home but romance there was bleak and passion was scarce.  Booze and attention had dragged her into its spiral where her mind whirled and reeled with desire and the longing to be wanted.  The next day and the passion had subsided and the guilt had sent her crashing down the scale of despair into the next part of the horoscope.  You will be conflicted and something will weigh you down is what it said next.  This was obviously the regret that fell heavy on her heart during the days after.  Then the conflict became arguing and torment as a storm drifted through the rooms of the house.
The last observation it had made was the one that had become all the more unsettling.  It had said good news would follow, and then Rebekah missed her period.

Entwined

Rebekah was drowning in her obscured reality.  She has built up her life on an ideal and a fantasy of what she deserved fighting against what she needed.  Life had drifted by her and she had managed to hitchhike her way to certain expected life goals while blurring lines of how she had made it there in the first place.  Now she was treading water, as parts of herself drifted down beneath the murky depths.  She couldn’t see what was down there and the thought of it chilled her core being.  It was the leap of faith, it was the edge, it was the unknown.    Recently the shadows had begun to clear and the fathoms were becoming more and more enticing.  They sparkled with possibility and chance and the mystery of its wonders were alluring.  She wanted desperately to dive down and yet it felt so wrong.   She often felt like this when she was alone and this is when the voices began to pull her.  The lustful one wanted passion and excitement.  It wanted to dare her and tempt her with its mischievousness.    There was also the voice of gluttony which wanted everything all at once and worked tirelessly to distract from the guilt that would get us there.  Lastly there was the much more menacing voice, the one which turned speech into outbursts and accelerated drama which it fed on thrived the more Rebekah began to lose herself.
She needed to get out.  She had sacrificed so much that she didn’t even know whether she had anywhere she could go.  She desperately needed to be stimulated and that meant getting out from between these four walls.

In an ideal world…

Before I knew any better and before I began to really even know myself, I believed that being creative was a lifestyle choice. I thought that creativity was a conscious choice where you decided to forego all practicality in favour of the outside of the box approach. I imagined that it was the only way that some people could ever begin to express themselves. In reality creativity is not a choice.  It is something that, if encouraged, seeps into your daily life with fiery passion.  It grows more demanding as it flourishes in your daily life: your home; your career; your dreams. The reason for this flowery blog, has stemmed from the fact that recently I have been struggling to turn my creativity into anything productive.  I think the best expression that explains this is that I am trying to have my fingers in too many pies. Recently I got married and it provided a perfect focus for the creative itch.  Since then there has been too many things spreading my creativity too thin.  Don’t get me wrong I love every single one of my projects and I am lucky enough to have a great job where I am allowed to have free creative reign.  Every other project however, remains unfinished.  I really need to narrow my vision, at least until I can begin to control my new found superpower/curse.  Anybody else been through this crisis of inspiration and how did you deal with it?  In an ideal world, it would be amazing to not have to split our time between things that we are considerably less inspired by. Thanks for your attention 🙂 .

Things harder than writing a novel.

Things harder than writing a novel…

1) Creating your pen name
2) Editing your novel
3) Deciding on names for your characters.
4) Choosing a name for your novel
5) Balancing your life so you can find time to write

I’ve been really struggling with what to name my latest work.  As much as people probably shouldn’t, a lot of people (including myself on occasion) are prone to judging a book by its cover.    The title can be just as much of a put down factor as the picture on the front and therefore it is a very important decision that could make or break my book when its ready.  I could go for something that hints at the nature of my book or it could be and eponymous novel (it worked for Harry Potter right?).  Whatever I decide, I’m feeling the pressure, either that or its a procrastination.  Either way I’m starting to realise that there are a million different obstacles to writing a book and as I start to jump some of the smaller ones I get ever closer to having a finished piece of work.

Thanks for your attention 🙂

A celebratory taste!

As the word count for my first novel has just hit the 10,000 mark (not a lot for some but an achievement for me) I have decided to post just a small ( I mean really tiny) part of my work so far.  It isn’t much yet and although it has gone through a few minor editorial stages it has still to be really worked over to see if it makes the cut into the final draft.  I’ve also tried not to give too much away, but feel free to leave me any comments that spring to mind when reading.

Thanks for your attention 🙂

Here lies Olivia, not yet dead but fast approaching the narrow tunnel as the edges of her sight began to fade. She is lead there not by choice, but by her body’s need to find shelter and safety from the perils that had befallen it. She was not in a position to choose fight or flight but to merely accept what is happening in the hope that it’s the right thing.  There was nonetheless an involuntary need awakened deep within her to survive, and to get as far away as possible from the pain and the danger of the outside world.  There was something else too.  She could feel some other pain that was there in the background, something she did not yet know, or she at least did not want to admit she knew.  The information crept around at the back of her mind vaguely skulking in the shadows though knowing that her realisation of its secrets could mean her end.  If it revealed herself it would add up to one enemy too many and in her current state she might find herself slipping away for good.

Pen name.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the pen names writers choose to adopt lately as for me it was one of the most difficult decisions I have had to make so far.

Some authors, such as the Bronte sisters, chose names to hide their femininity and keep their gender a secret for fear of the real merit of their work being ignored.
There were probably a number of reasons that made J.K.Rowling adopt the pen name Robert Galbraith later on in her career.  Maybe it was so she didn’t confuse her readership who were expecting more of the same from the Harry Potter actor.  Maybe she wanted  to test the novel, without it being compared to her previous works, by giving herself a fresh start and therefore being able to cement her skill as a writer by being able to write with credibility in a new genre.
Whatever their respective reasons, it’s clear that the names chosen by authors are given a lot of thought.
For me my reasons have been fairly new.  I had trialled many names in the past, some were for personal and sentimental reasons of honouring a loved one whereas some were in tribute to figures I personally admire.  I also toyed with the idea of anonymity from the people around me in the hope that in the future they could give me the confidence of their (hopefully) abundance of positive and unbiased feedback.
In the end the name I chose was my own and the reason I chose it was to keep my identity long into the future.  As someone about to get married I have battled with the idea of giving up my name and although  I realise I don’t have to and that many women choose not to nowadays, the idea of me and my future family sharing the same name is evenly weighted against the desire to keep my strange and unique name.
Nobody can spell it.  People can’t even pronounce it.  I have been correcting people for a good few years
All that being said it is memorable and has provided a fair amount of amusement over the years.  I guess it could also be a tribute on a personal level as it was the name brought by my dad who is no longer with us which is probably another reason why I am so reluctant to part with it.
Really I have realised that the name I have found so irritating and annoying for all my life is really a bigger part of me than I ever knew to the extent that I now feel like I’m losing something important and that’s quite sad.  On the other hand, now I am embarking on a new chapter in my life, I am lucky that I have this way of keeping up with the old me and still being able to journey on my new adventure.

 

Thanks for your attention! J

You wait weeks for a post and then two come at once!

My dabbles have branched out recently in the form of poetry.  Ive always enjoyed it and even at school I was always the nerd who silently cheered when we were doing a poetry unit.

So now I’ve had a go at my own and I have realised that with all the annotations and essays I wrote about various poems I have no idea what a good one looks like.  So here’s one of my trials I hope you like it but anybody with any more of an idea than me can feel free to edit the stuffing out of it!

The Dream

I crunched my teeth,
They were glued together.
I panicked slightly
I could grind them apart
The bits washed around my mouth
Then bound again
To a clenched jaw.
And tight lips
Spent the day afraid to close my mouth.

Later on that week,
Blast off.
Anti Gravity is a bitch
My face hurts
I won’t be going to space,
Doctor Who makes it look easy
This just made me queasy
Spent the day expecting to leave the ground

The tiny thing,
Laid in my arms.
Emotional attachment
Though he was unknown
And I’m not broody.
Nothing happened
Yet  everything  happened
Spent the day thinking I had lost something.

Well it has been a while!

I thought I was doing better this time.  I thought this blog would be the one that went the distance and yet despite me having a greater emotional attachment to this one it seems that I have struggled to find the time for it that I know it deserves.

I have excuses, I’m full of them in fact.  Planning a wedding, tinkering with another couple of little projects and then work and actually writing my novel on top of that but theres always something right?

Which got me thinking about the traditional publishing vs self publishing routes that I will have available to me.  The plan was to self publish and yet for it to really  take off I will need to market it myself.  There lies the problem.  I cant even keep up with my blog.

Hmmm is there an option C?

Thanks for your attention 🙂 xx

When a plan comes together.

Recently I had bought an on-line course on children’s book writing from groupon.  It wasn’t flashy or particularly ground breaking but it gave me a direction as well as a few ‘obvious-and-yet-I-still-hadn’t-thought-of-them ideas.

The main message I got was how important the planning process was so after reading it I was inspired to buy a notebook and fill it with the ins and outs of my story.  I couldn’t do it.  As much as I tried I couldn’t get past my general idea with more than just a few interesting questions and points being made.

Now writers plan in different ways.  J.K.Rowling for example, supposedly has several notebooks filled with hundreds of notes, half of which have never seen the light of day.  In a similar way some writers collect ideas and pictures and display them in whatever artistic fashion helps them.

I do the planning, just not before I start.  I use the questions I have already come up with to flush out the plot and make sure there is a clear motivation for a character.  Once I start writing it is out of my hands and the characters take over, leading me in whatever direction will help them to overcome their problems.  I carry on my planning process as I go along so if my character does a certain action, I make sure I have set up enough of a reason for them to do it.  Usually as my characters begin to have depth and become more real to me I can then come up with other things any like J.K.Rowling I may never use them but for me my character is becoming a real person and not just one who is confined to the pages of my story.  This is something my writing partner is particularly good at and his characters really come alive in his details where he tells us some really intimate and personal elements of his characters lives to really give them the sense of realism.

I would be really interested to know how other people plan out their projects and as always…

Thanks for your attention

Writing for two

I can’t stress enough how important having a writing partner has been to me.  Ideas have bounded back and forth developing in mid air; confidence has been nurtured; egos have been boosted and projects have been framed with a mass of coloured notes.  My writing partner has been my support, my editor and my inspiration.  Recently more than anything he has been the kick up the backside my (lazy) unmotivated mind needed.  It needed stimulating and yet was reluctant to get out of its funk and produce something productive.

It also made me realise something about myself.  I love editing (though not so much my own work that’s just hard).  I’m like an expert tennis player, except my rally is with ideas and the development of them on each volley.  Having somebody else’s project to work through is also a good excuse for a distraction where you can continue down your path of creativity and motivation while letting your own work have a little rest.

If any of this sounds like you then consider whether a writing partner would help you.  You never know there may be someone out there feeling the exact same as you.

Thanks for your attention 🙂