You are currently viewing The Wordwitch: A Writer’s Life in Pictures – January 2019

The Wordwitch: A Writer’s Life in Pictures – January 2019

Another month whizzed by which means I have another collection of the Wordwitch drawings for you. Enjoy!

Art

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of art things, both traditionally and digitally, and it felt good. Like… actually having a hobby, because as much fun as I have writing, I do treat it far more seriously than I treat my art activities.
What is your hobby? Do you have a hobby that became something more?

Fixing Chapter 1

For the last two weeks, I’ve been rewriting and reworking chapter 1 of my epic fantasy. I didn’t expect it to take that long, but well… sentences were stubborn and the chapter was resisting, so it was like a constant struggle with words.

But I’m almost there!

Too Many Ideas

They say there’s no such thing as too many ideas. But when I have all my work planned out, stumbling upon notes for yet another project I entirely forgot about and getting excited about writing it isn’t exactly what I need.

I need to finish all those other things.

That Devouring Addiction

I had things to do on Monday, so I went to bed early on Sunday. I worried that if I stay “just a bit longer,” I’ll end up reading all night. Guess what? I started reading as soon as I woke up.

Beside tea, reading is my only other true addiction; one I can’t easily walk away from: if I start reading, I often end up on a binge beyond reason, so the drawing seemed amusingly accurate.

What are your reading habits?


If you’d like to be up to date with this series, you can head over to my Facebook Page every Tuesday or check Twitter for #thewordwitch hashtag. You can also browse other posts from the series.

Joanna Maciejewska

Joanna Maciejewska is a fantasy and science fiction author who enjoys all things SFF: books, movies, and video games. Her short stories appeared in magazines and anthologies in Polish and in English. Her epic fantasy adventure series, starting with By the Pact, is available in ebook and paperback at all major retailers.

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. Alex Kaiser

    I used to do a lot of traditional arts stuff, but since I’m writing full time I use my free moments to get movement whenever I can. I have my little trekking bike–called Stürmchen–and I raid the Bavarian landscape all year round. It’s a great way to think up solutions to writing problems. I call it thinkbiking, so it sort of clicks into my work. What do you do to think up solutions?
    If the weather is bad, I play tabletop T-RPGs and boardgames. It was actually RPGs that led me to writing, because after 25 years of being a GM I started sensing the limitations of the T-RPG medium. Maybe it was a GM’s frustrated epiphany of, “All right, you herd of willful kittens! For once I want the campaign to end my way.” Nowadays I restrict RPGs to sandbox crawls and some occasional epic opera. It’s often light hearted and a little bit monty pythonesque. In other words, my angst-existentialism Sturm-und-Drang days are over and now go fluently between burlesque and tragedy.

    Hey, I’m at fixing chapter 1 of my novel, as well. And yay, it’s been a royal pain in the arse, too! Writers unite! 😀

    Oh, and I can relate to that too-many-ideas problem. I have a special vault in my head, called the Vault of the Unspeakable Conceptualizations. When I need a new idea, I sneak in there when they’re all asleep, snatch what I need and dash for the door, slam and bar it. And then you hear it: thousands of fresh ideas, waking, running for the door on their tiny little feet, all calling “Hey! Pick me, Alice!”.

    My reading habits are… odd, I guess. I read in pulses. One month it’s all history. I read everything I can get on a specific topic, listen to lectures and read some novel related to the theme. Then I have a month where I snatch up philosophy and read only Nietzsche, for example. Then mythology, so I chew on Jung and nibble on the Illiad. Then comes a month where I barely read (because I’m writing intensely, for example), or my free time is gobbled up by something else (like Morrowind recently), or I just can’t find a book that would draw me in. Do you also have such pulses? Do you read less when you write intensely?

    1. Melfka

      For solutions I do “other stuff” – from thinking about it in the shower to playing video games. Back in Ireland, I used the “commuting” (a.k.a. walking to work) to figure things out, but now it’s not possible really.
      As for pen&paper RPG, it depends how it’s ran. I had a great group who was focused on the story side, so we would often “reset” scenes that felt flat or pushed the story in a weird direction and start over. We also discussed what would make an exciting story, brainstorming and planning. Everyone enjoyed it as much as the actual role-playing part.
      But yeah, writing is “easier” in a way when it comes to controlling the plot or making dialogues fun.
      My reading is all over the place. Mostly, because I can’t find books I really enjoy (I like “higher shelf” books, but since I don’t write them, I also want to read the ones focused more on entertainment), and end up disappointed. On the other hand, if I find something good or fun, I end up binging baaaadly…

    1. Melfka

      Thank you! If you’re enjoying them – they appear weekly on my Facebook and Twitter, and monthly – over here.

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