things to do this November.

1. 3,000 word essay

2. short story proposal

3. lots of reading (a few plays and dissertation stuff)

4. write a novel

5. See people about dissertation

6. creative writing journal

it could be worse....

inspiration?

I spend a lot of my time writing, or thinking about writing, or reading. Which I suppose is only a good thing.

However, its just over a week until NaNoWriMo starts and I'm itching to start my idea. I want to start it now, so I'm stuck in that strange inbetween period, whilst editing other stuff, I don't really have anything I'm particuarly working on. Which saddens me because I want to be working on something. Yet in a week I will be starting something. I have tonnes of ideas for longer pieces, but nothing for anything shorter at the minute, and considering my creative writing module I'm taking this term is focused on short fiction I feel like I should be collecting some ideas for that and writing some short stories. Yet nothing is coming to me for that. I'm writing lots of background for my NaNo, and I know that's important, but it feels like it will all soon be irrelevant, when I could have been working on some short stories for later in the term. But I have nothing. I've tried just writing and I don't get anything I like. My head is too focused on all these other longer things I want to write, or am still editing.

Although I bet when it comes to it, I'll have loads of ideas for one and not for the other.

I just feel like I should be writing. But what?

editing, more writing and planning.

So I reached the end of the first draft. And then tried my best to leave it at least a week before looking at it again (which I managed). Having spent the last few days reading through a chapter or two when I've had time, noting anything which was inconsistent, I didn't like or needed to add, and I'm quite happy. Okay, so there's loads that I'm unhappy with and lots of adding in I need to do and things to change and all of that, but its there, there's a shell of something. And I like it. Sort of. Bits of it. Just a lot more editing to do. Fun times!

Whilst I've been doing that, I've also been doing various assignments for my creative writing module, and keeping up my writing journal for that. I usually keep a journal/notebook anyway so this isn't much of a hardship, and we had to do it for assessment purposes last year, so I'm well used to it. It is strange though what modes you find yourself stuck in. At the minute I'm struggling to do the assignment set for us, because it involves us really thinking about different 'writing modes' we use and being very aware of them. For some reason this makes it hard and my mind has gone blank on good ideas. Or what I perceive as good. The assignment for the first week however I found 'easy' and had an idea straight away. This is a little tougher. Around this I've found myself writing background for the next thing I was going to talk about.

Planning my NaNoWriMo novel for this year. The idea I'm going with this year is one that I thought quite a lot about over the summer and has been festering there for a few months now, so this seems like an opportune moment to write it, as I may never write it otherwise. I wasn't going to do NaNo this year, but after five years it has kinda become part of my routine for a November, and I can't imagine NOT doing it. And my good friend persuaded me to do it. Mainly because we always send each other packages and I didn't want to say no. I hadn't really thought about whether I was doing it this year until then. But hey ho, I am. And I can incorporate the stuff into my module this term. It will be good to develop characters and such. Good times.

Trying to finish this task at the minute, but watching AVPM at the same time is not particularly constructive.