Tag Archives: bullet journal ideas

Current Status: Off to South America

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Things have been quiet around here lately, publicly at least. One of the reasons for that is because offline, things have been crazy busy. I’m always envious of those authors who can have a manic real life and somehow still maintain a nice active social media presence – without massive oversharing of course. Having surgery, come snapchat with me and I’ll show you my scar is really not my kind of thing.

All of the busyness is now culminating in what is likely to be another bout of radio silence, albeit intentional this time. I am off to South America to spend some time with my wife-to-be (who will be my actual wife by the time I get back to posting again), to take a much needed break. Plus, I get to see some new places, which is always fun when you’ve traveled around the world as much as I have.

This will be part relaxation and part business. I’m hoping that the former will segue into the latter, so that once I return, I will be ready to hit the ground running with the next set of projects that are relevant here. I have a new book to draft out and one to polish up before its release at the end of July. I’ll also hopefully be better at scheduling time for this kind of stuff now my larger offline projects are out of the way.

So thank you for reading, thank you for your ongoing support, and I look forward to having some shiny new stuff ready for you soon. Until then, go and make some time for your own mental and physical health like I am. It will be worth so much more in the long run.

Questions of certainty

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It’s strange how you can be doing something you love and, for that matter, for it to be going really well, but still experience moments of absolute terror and doubt.

This is completely what happened to me this week. I had a moment when I questioned, for the first time in probably nearly two decades, what I would do if I decided that writing wasn’t my dream job and I should just give it up.

Live some kind of normal life instead.

It was a strange, dark and yet, at the same time, completely illuminating moment. I have been writing for so long that I still do it for pleasure, even when I have no intention of sharing it with an audience. If I don’t write for a few days, I start to get twitchy. I have creative energy and I need to use it. God didn’t give me any other talents, so writing it is.

But that traitorous little voice was there, the one that reminded me how much easier it would be if I just gave it all up now. If I stopped and concentrated on another career instead. How I would get so much of my time back, time that I could then spend with family and friends or on other hobbies. How I wouldn’t have to deal with rejection and failure that is part of every writer life, even once you are published and successful.

It was Steven Pressfield’s Resistance in full force and it nearly took hold of me completely.

I’ve pushed that feeling down and have been coming back to myself and my dreams with a fresh pair of eyes. It is hard, this dream of mine, possibly it is yours too. It doesn’t end and it is always challenging. But despite the free time and the glittering grass on the other side, it really is what I was meant to do.

So, tonight, I’ll sit here and keep on doing it. But if you have those moments of doubt, about anything that part of you truly believes in, know that it is entirely normal. It’s better to work through it than live a life not trying.

 

Slips back into the world innocuously…

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Well, it’s been a crazy, relaxing month since I last posted. Forgive me platform-building gods, for once again I have sinned.

November really was a month of contradictions for me. I had just over two weeks where I did nothing other than read amazing books and lie by a pool in wonderful tropical heat. No business books, no personal development, just fiction of all genres. I told myself I didn’t have to do any writing at all, there was no pressure unless something started buzzing into my brain and needed to be let out.

Luckily, I came up with a tonne of creative ideas, which was just a bonus. Most of them writing related, but some not.

The other two weeks of the month were solid writing. I mean, SOLID. In a few days I completed NaNoWriMo at the beginning to get traction on a project I needed to get done. So I was pretty wiped out after that, because 10,000 words per day when you have forty hour day job commitment going is tough. The there was a (lovely) surprise request for a full edited manuscript. A structural and line edit on a 120,000 novel is a tough thing to pull off in ten days but I think I just about squeezed it across the line.

So crazy and relaxing just about sums it up.

So now I have until the New Year off from writing, to concentrate on letting my brain recover and planning for the coming year. I have a couple of business and personal goals I’d like to achieve, so I need to give them the attention they deserve.

Also, I need to begin Christmas shopping. I’ve still got ages though, right? RIGHT?

Normal Service Resumes

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Last week was just a whirlwind of stuff. Seriously, I felt like I ran flat out through the week with flailing muppet arms. There was no time for playing around on social media, no blogpost time scheduled and definitely no going to the gym.

I was up against a deadline that happened to coincide with an already heavily scheduled calendar. Happily, normal life resumes today as I handed over the story yesterday so now it sits in the laps of the gods*.

I’ve deliberately now given myself two weeks of downtime. I’ll be doing NaNoWriMo again this year and I know I won’t fit in a full length project between now and then. Instead of seeing this as frustrating, I am seeing it a blessing. It will give me a chance to get the business side of life up straight (yay – taxes) as well as work on those smaller pieces that somehow always get pushed onto the back burner.

It will soon be time to think about what to even write for NaNo. Hopefully the downtime will free that creative space back up in my brain and I can come up with something that will engage me to plough through a disciplined 50,000 words before I go on a mini-sabbatical at the end of November.

Now that part of things I am really looking forward to.

 

 

*may be a mild overstatement

Notebook find of 2014: Field Notes

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As a writer, I constantly need to have a pen and some paper handy to capture ideas when they come to me. Honestly, my memory is absolutely terrible for things like that. Which is fine – I have a system so I can write things down and stop worrying about them, rather than trying to keep a gazillion things in my head at the same time.

This year on my travels I discovered Field Notes. I liked the idea of them at first, but was a bit uncertain as to whether they would actually work for me. So I’ve given a few a go…

fieldnotes

I think they are the kind of brand that you either love, or really don’t get what all the fuss is about. I love the appearance of them, but I had a few reservations about the practicality. At only 48 pages long, I get through one in about a month, sometimes a few weeks. It makes going back to find something you may have only written last Thursday tricky if it is in a separate notebook. But they are slim enough to fit in a back pocket or pretty much any bag without being too bulky. In my opinion, they look better too once they’ve got used and a bit battered.

I’ve found that working with the grid layout (available in the standard  books and some of the colors editions) is great for using with the bullet journal system. I have to share my personal/writing schedule with one other person and my work schedule with at least three others, so I’ve come to terms with the fact I won’t use the calendar element of the system anyway.

If you can get your hands on one, then I’d give them a go. They don’t sit nicely in the corporate world (with the possible exception of the latest Ambition Edition) but they are fun. Sometimes, having a tool that you want to use and try out is just the encouragement you need to get writing and thinking again after a dry spell.

They won’t be my only pocket notebook of choice for 2015, but they will be a nice break from a Moleskine or Leuchtturm in between.

LGBT Main Character In Urban Fantasy – Too Niche For You?

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I am working through some final edits of my (hopefully) soon to be published book and am currently receiving conflicting views from my beta readers, so I am asking for help.

My novel has a female protagonist, but the very important second character is also female. Most urban fantasy stories I read have an element of romance running through them even if they are not dark romances as such. This inevitably seems to be heterosexual (if it isn’t heterosexual then it seems to be emphasised as lgbt automatically, even if that element is incidental). During the first and second drafts, my female leads developed an intense sexual chemistry which I have been previously attempting to edit out so it is not off-putting to straight readers. Particularly straight female readers, I suppose.

Unfortunately, I think that as this series develops, by doing this I am going to be cutting out a strong element of the story, so am reluctant to do so. Of course, that could mean they ultimately end up together further down the line.

Would this turn off the average urban fantasy reader? Any hot girl on girl action would be (for now at least) incidental to the plot and purely character development.

I’d love it if you could fill in the survey below to give me an idea of which way to swing on this (every pun intended). If you don’t have time for that, a quick note in the comments section below would be awesome.

Survey Me – I have opinions!!

Thank you to everyone who takes part!