August was another month that whizzed by faster than a speeding car. I found myself torn between taking it easy after the Camp NaNo’s final rush, and keeping the general progress, so I finally settled on writing three short stories I’ve been meaning to get ready. It seemed like a reasonable goal, but things didn’t go exactly as planned. (more…)
I’m going on an assumption here, but I think that majority of writers and aspiring writers is, at some point of time and their writing career, getting over the fear of writing—or at least trying to get over it. It’s usually the fear of being not good enough, of writing something that won’t be worth reading, or even worrying of how the readers will react to our innermost thoughts. (more…)
Another month went by, marking the half of the year gone. As usual, I had big plans and ambitious goals, but at the same time I took into consideration the approaching summer. Last year, the heat I’m not used to anymore, thwarted most of my productivity, and I feared this might be the case. Thankfully, June turned out better than expected. (more…)
Some time ago, I read a book series. I think I was already reading a third or fourth book in the series, when I some point I fell the pace slowing down and losing my attention. I checked what page I was at, and I immediately thought: “Oh, it’s page X. It means that there will be the big reveal or the main battle in about ten pages.” That gave me a stumbling pause, killing all my reading pleasure as I realized all the author’s books are exactly the same in their structure, and therefore very predictable regardless of the story that author is telling. In the end, reading the series became boring and lost most of its appeal. (more…)
After a little glitch and my website being down for a while, I’m back and fashionably late (at least that’s what I’m telling myself!) with another Writer’s Life report. May turned out a strange month for me. It seemed it just started, and before I realized, most of it was already gone in some unexplainable way. I sure hope that “runaway time” is not going to be a theme for the rest of the year… (more…)
It seems that the shorter the work, the harder it is. Sure, a novel takes longer to write, and requires a good deal of perseverance, but writing a captivating novel is easier than writing a captivating short story as the volume of the former will allow for some mistakes to be excused. Then, writing a short story seems easier than writing a synopsis, and synopsis can be much easier than a pitch in for the query letter. This makes coming up with titles the most challenging part of writing… Well, at least it does for me. (more…)
After a very bumpy January, I was hoping for a much better February. I planned on catching up with everything that fell behind, and was quite optimistic about it. I don’t know whether it was the winter aura lowering my mood or the stress of the previous month still lingering, but the start of the month was quite slow. I didn’t get sick, but my health definitely seemed a little bit worse (with some random pains disturbing me), and on many days I’ve found myself tired or sleepy which wasn’t helping my motivation. (more…)
Back in December 2016 I was looking forward the New Year with excitement and many plans. I’ve joined the 365 Writing Club (which changed its name from the 365k Club to emphasize the writing routine instead of high word counts) for the third time, and I wanted to focus on polishing my existing works while still planning some new writing.
Of course, as usual, life decided to interfere and within the first days of 2017 it threw me off the track. (more…)
It’s been quite a while since I’ve last posted my music inspirations, even though my Spotify writing playlist now boasts an awesome 15 hours worth of music. Mostly, because I rarely search for songs that would reflect specific scenes. Instead, I either listen to my playlist in a shuffle mode or pick a song that keeps me focused and motivated.
Still, some songs come up and seem to be fitting perfectly to scenes or plots I’m writing and I tend to put those songs in a loop until I’m done, and these four songs stuck with me. (more…)
If you follow my Gaming Writer’s Saturday posts, you already know I love video games and share my time between writing and gaming (and few other things), but those two hobbies are not as separated from each other as one would think. I play video games whenever I feel uninspired or when I need to fuel my creativity, and in a way, video games are a part of my writing process. They might come before I even write the first word down, but they definitely contribute to my plotting, worldbuilding, and outlining (in one case, a game and its soundtrack inspired a whole novel). So when a friend asked in a writing group about video games, I couldn’t stay silent, and my response became the root of this post. (more…)