Time doesn't exist

This is a theory debated in a good movie called IQ.  Very funny and romantic movie.  But yesterday I had two separate conversations that seemed to highlight the calendar of my life.  I don't live in months, years, days or weeks.  My life has seasons: Spring (Jan 2-May 5), Summer (May 12-Aug 5) and Fall (Aug 19 - Dec 5).  I also call them semesters.  I'm currently 9.5 semesters old.  My spring starts cold and snowy.  This year my summer hasn't been very warm. 

What does all of this have to do with writing?  Well, when your life is broken down into such small chunks and you feel like you have thousands of things to do in those short periods but no time to do them, something has to be sacrificed.  In most cases, it's the stuff you like most.  In my case it's writing.  The world of the Oak Wand is calling me but I just can't seem to make the time to answer.  So time doesn't exist.

This is the Novel Mage saying, *POOF*

Dropped the ball

Well, I made an effort to get my piece ready for the writing club.  I even drew up a world map that those writing after me could reference and then things didn't work out for me to go.  Crappy.  But at least it got me to write, right?

But I did come to the realization that a round-robin would have taken all of my writing time.  Not that I have much as it is but I think I really needed the recharge to the creative batteries so I can tackle the Oak Wand again.  Maybe I should have put that in a round-robin.  "Read the first 90 pages and then add to it."  My goal this month is to spend time with my novel in hopes of moving it forward some more.  June is halfway done and the end of the month just gets hectic so I'm not even going to try and hope to finish chapter 7.  I guess we'll see.

This is the Novel Mage saying, *POOF*

Directional Drift

Writing club is coming.  No, I have not been terribly active in it.  Yes, I like the idea but school and slowly getting re-acquainted with my family are higher priorities right now.  But our fearless leader told me they are starting a round-robin again.  I can't miss that.  The first round-robin got me started on my novel.  Who knew that hastily pounding out a little over a page DURING the meeting we were supposed to have it done would turn into quite possibly the best writing I've ever done?

So what am I doing this time?  Well, I've found that now I'm getting story ideas like I used to get poetry.  They just begin flowing into my head.  Granted, with poetry I could have a finished product in thirty minutes but I find now that the ideas are not fleshed out.  They still come in flashes of images, blips of description without any obvious direction.  So it is with book one of The Phoenix Cycle.  I've created a world, a setting, a character, conflict and have absolutely no idea where it's going.  During the first RR, one of the writer's proposed a ridiculous situation in my story.  The dialogue was campy and awkward.  But I wondered what could possibly make that situation believable?  How could I make people believe this would happen and care about whether it works?

I'm hoping to find that same bit of inspiration this time around.  I'm not expecting to come away with a fabulous story already written for me.  But I do hope to find that gem of direction that will map the path of the main character and save him from my current directional drift.

This is the Novel Mage saying, *POOF* 

Reading the written

I decided to re-read my novel as it has been a while since I worked on it.  This proved to be fairly inspirational and I started writing again once I got to the end.  The only thing I realized is that as this gets longer, if I don't just sit down and write it on a regular basis, re-reading will take FOREVER!  I'm not sure how to remedy that until I'm done with school so I guess I'll just have to see how that goes.  But I recommend re-reading once in a while to make sure that you keep things consistent and who know what you may be inspired to add when you're done?!

This is the Novel Mage saying *POOF*

Curbed Enthusiasm

I spent the two weeks off from school doing very little writing.  Why?  I had a great opportunity to write in the evenings that were homework free.  But I didn't.  Well, first I had several home improvement/basement finishing jobs that needed to be done.  Alas, they took priority.  Second, I actually finished compiling my poetry book.  I just need to actually do the hard thing of putting up for publishing somewhere.  And third, I really kind of enjoyed NOT being on a computer every night. 

Thus, my writing has not progressed.  But don't worry.  It hasn't been forgotten.

This is the Novel Mage saying *POOF*

Booking it!

So I haven't really written much lately.  I blame the end of the semester and a slight desire to NOT be on the computer after work in rebellion.  But at the prompting of several people at LTUE and a neighbor or two, I'm compiling my book of poetry.  I've decided that a big book of poetry could be overkill (and self-publishing makes it expensive).  The biggest problem with that is I have to pick and choose what to include.  Trying to make a 50-ish page poetry book when you have roughly 129 poems and you can only fit one per page in most cases is tough.  What to put in?  Poetry comes from the soul and in many cases (for me) it holds a personal memory or instance with it.  Which memories do I share?  Which shouldn't I share?

I see the attraction to fiction.  Truth is veiled in a story accepted as not true.  A lot of my poetry is truth colored as I felt it.  Rejecting my story is one thing, but having your soul and life rejected.... well I better start working on that thick skin the LTUE authors recommended.  At my current pace, it will be eBook ready in about a week.

This is the Novel Mage saying *POOF*

Make a break for it

The semester is drawing to a close and I will get a one week break between semesters.  I just need to plow through the next two weeks and I will be free to write, when I'm not working on the basement.  I started chapter 7 and decided that I just needed to get stuff down on the page and not worry so much about whether I'm using "was" because it slowed me down.  I'm a story-teller.  Which is different from a story show-er.  (Yes, I put a hyphen because otherwise it's 'story shower' and that is just silly).  My kids like that I can tell stories, but readers like you to show them.  So hopefully on my one week break, my goal is to pound out another chapter.  That will put me close to half way done. 

April is script-frenzy too.  http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/  I had every intention of doing it this year but with finals and a basement nearing completion, I think I'll have to post-pone.  But if you are an aspiring script writer, by all means join!

This is the Novel Mage saying *POOF*