Category: #amwriting

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#amreading #amwriting Novel 4

Writo De Mayo, Day 4

Well, today is technically “Day 1” for me in terms of actually writing so far this month. However, Writo De Mayo officially began over at the NaNoLJers community on May 1, so yes, I am a little behind. I wrote a little bit in Novel 4 right now, and, when sending the draft to my email account (as a back-up), I noticed that the last time I worked on the novel was at the beginning of March. Yikes, has it really been two months?

I was stuck in a sort of limbo over the weekend, and only today am I able to focus a little better. I couldn’t fully sleep the past two nights since I found myself adjusting to yet another new schedule due to my brother’s changing shifts at work. It’s unfortunate that I am a light sleeper, that any light noise wakes me up and keeps me up for some time.

I finally finished Catch-22 late last week, and all I have to say about that book is that it’s confusing. It’s probably a more enjoyable read for people who enjoy reading anti-war books; not to say that I like reading pro-war books, but that genre in general isn’t of interest to me. Plus, the whole book itself was a huge contradiction/Catch-22. That was probably the whole point of the book; well, it was decent enough to read for a month, but I probably won’t go back and read it again anytime soon. I’m back to reading some nonfiction this time around; a couple of self-help books to shake things up.

I’m hoping I’ll be able to update a little more this month due to the Writo De Mayo challenge. I need to pull together more motivation to get this writing done. I have no problems writing daily entries at my other blogs, but somehow, I just can’t muster enough strength to get back to writing fiction. Gotta keep plowing through somehow.

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#amwriting challenge editing goals poetry

Craving spontaneity & Setting Goals

Today seems to be a day where routine is simply thrown out the window: I have a list of tasks that I’d like to complete for the day, but it seems I just don’t feel like doing it. During this whole past week, I’ve been feeling restless again and craving spontaneity.

I’ve also found myself crawling out of some dark mazes with renewed inspiration for writing ideas. Yesterday, while proctoring a test at work, I suddenly found a long-incubating idea sprout forth from my mind and furiously wrote down the whole thought. The incident made me realize that I should really bring a bigger notebook along with me from now on, for future moments like this one.

An hour ago, I caught up on this past week’s prompts from the Poem-A-Day Challenge. Poetry is one area of writing where I feel I may never truly excel in, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still write for the fun of it. Probably the whole point of the P-A-D Challenge is to hone my craft a little more, but I find that I’m just writing for the sake of writing. It’s that whole NaNoWriMo mindset–just get the words down. However, I have been posting my poems on each day’s thread at the challenge, so, unlike NaNoWriMo, I’m showing those rough drafts to the world. Raw, unfiltered poems: I suppose it’s my specialty.

Speaking of community challenges: I signed myself up for the 2nd annual Writo de Mayo over at the NaNoLJers community. What makes Writo de Mayo different from NaNoWriMo is that each participant sets his/her own goals for the month of May and strives to meet them for the month. I tried participating last year by attempting to finish Novel #2 that month; however, it was much harder for me to pull the motivation through the month since I didn’t have others posting their word counts, fueling me along. I still managed to make some progress on that novel, but not enough to finish it off that month. This year, I intend on completing Novel #4 in May and also pumping out 50 hours of rewriting for Novel #1 (which would have been an appropriate goal for last month, NaNoEdMo, had I not been so distracted by other things).

So there, I’ve set out my goals for all my blog visitors to read. Now I must follow through with these ambitions and put them into action in the coming weeks.

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#amwriting

Reflection upon writing

As I look around me, not only do the seasons change, but again, I find myself looking within and wondering where the time has gone.

I at least got some time in yesterday with the Poem-A-Day Challenge at Poetic Asides. It just feels nice to get some words down, even if they’re not the best. It’s a little nerve wracking having others read my work-in-progress poem, but it’s also humbling. I believe that oftentimes the best work may be created on a whim with only the thoughts of the moment; in other words, no real thinking. It may be a controversial view for me to express, but at least for myself I find this theory true. When I didn’t put much thought into writing for NaNoWriMo, I just found the words flying out with abandon and filling up the pages of my novel. Some parts I could have done without, but other parts surprised me with how they came about at the spur of the moment.

Living in the moment is the best, after all.

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#amwriting poetry

Set aside; time for poetry (again)?

Halt.

Screeching.

The month of March is winding down in a couple of days, and April will then begin. This month has been quite a bit of coasting without writing. Then again, a lot of changes in my environment have been happening. It’s not an excuse; merely an observation.

Today I shuffled away my folder of short story drafts into my writing file; it was taking up space on my desk. I find it hard to focus when I have something in my presence (e.g., my writing on my desk) which my subconscious knows I should be progressing upon but I’m not; therefore, I just need it out of my sight for the time being. I’ve stopped penning in time for my rewrite the past couple of weeks; maybe I just need a refresher, some time away from all the writing. Well, at least, time away from the longer pieces.

I signed up for April’s Poem-A-Day Challenge on Facebook (via friend Robert Brewer); last year, I wrote a poem a day during the month of June, completely unaware that a challenge in April was available for me to participate in. These days, poetry is harder to write since I’m so used to writing longer passages. When I was younger, after I put my short story experiments away (perhaps it’s a cycle…), I dabbled in poetry for a couple years, writing up short books of poetry to print out and show to my family and friends. Then, that poetry phase went away as well…

We’ll see how the month of April pans out with this challenge. Sometimes I just need to have that feeling that others around the world are doing the same thing with me, that I can’t just put it off “for another day”. Here’s hoping for some sparks to come through.

Categories
#amwriting Slice of Life

The irony of the months.

It seems like I hit a bit of a dry spell each month when it comes to overall inspiration. No, I wouldn’t think it’s because of “that” time of the month, but it seems to be a monthly thing for me nonetheless. Last month, around this same time, I lost motivation/inspiration for doing much writing or anything else that involved creativity. And here I am, one month later, feeling about the same. My grocery shopping this week has been uninspired, yawn-inducing for me.

It’s ironic to me, in many ways: lately I have been doing more things that are out-of-the-ordinary from my routine, e.g., going out and discovering different local events. Most of the time, I go out alone since I feel a strange sense of comfort for doing things on my own rather than having a friend around and feeling like I have to accommodate their wishes. There’s just more of a sense of freedom involved when I am able to decide what I want to do with my free time.

So, one would think that with the explorations I have done recently, I would find some inspiration for writing, for cooking, and so forth. But no, not really; it’s already good enough that I’m able to find material to continue to blog with, but in terms of writing stories/finally beginning on that rewrite of Novel 1, I hit a block. Same goes for cooking.

Some say there’s no such thing as Writer’s Block; the muse is just missing, and I just have to hunt it down in order to start writing again.