Spending Vast Sums of Money (2) and NaNoWriMo

I've just got my tickets to New Zealand. I spent about four hours staring at different websites, ringing different travel agents to get them to explain their terms and conditions and then telling them that, no, I didn't want to book over the phone (I'm paranoid they'll spell my name wrong and tick aisle seat instead of window seat, and then I'll have to change EVERYTHING and these things are costly to change) but at last I clicked the final button and took the plunge and poured lots of money into the mouth of the travel beast.

It is stressful clicking that last button. Double checking dates and times (what if I've booked for 2014? What THEN? Oh, you mean you can only book a year in advance? Okay, then. But what if it's SEPTEMBER not February?), card numbers, spelling of names (obviously I might have spelled my name wrong. Or given a different name. Or just put 'Name' instead of my actual name. I did that once), trusting that this is a reputable website and most of the reviews I've spent the last hour trawling are okay, or at least acceptable. And then screen-printing pages in two different ways to prove I've seen the confirmation and can brandish it in people's faces if anyone dares to suggest otherwise.

I'm not paranoid, am I?

Thirty-six hours each way. It doesn't matter when you leave or when you arrive, because time doesn't really have a meaning anymore. You're not on London time, and you're not yet on NZ time. It's a long grey limbo of the body-clock.

I suppose it does kind of matter when I arrive for people who want to meet me at the airport. They're nice arrivals times, don't worry.

My plan for today was to get all my NaNoWriMo done by midday, which of course didn't happen. I was a bit behind until yesterday, but I caught up and am back on track. I'm not using Scrivener, because I found out that, if your computer crashes, the Scrivener index file corrupts and you can't use it anymore. I decided that, with my usual inability to turn my laptop off for weeks, it wasn't worth the possibility that all my extra notes and pretty structure would become unusable if the computer crashed. So I'm back to MS Word, which is kind of strange after so long using Scrivener.

Writing so much and rationing my time is strange. Normally, I must read over what I've written quite often, because I'm not really doing that now and I feel like I'm writing blind. This is funny, considering that this time I have actually done a bit of planning and I know where the story is going, whereas last time I did NaNoWriMo I had absolutely no idea. I'm enjoying it though, and getting to know characters that I hadn't realised were so interesting. I think I may have built some rather large plot holes into my plot, however, so there's a bit of work needed to fill them in.

Have a good week!

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Writing synopses (and pretty bunnies)

First, an update on the weather. We had about an hour of extreme sun on Tuesday! I.e. the sun shone in a steady beam unhampered by clouds. Following this, we had a bit of extreme rain, then some extreme hail and some extreme thunder and lightning. Interesting day for weather.

In other news, I have been writing a synopsis. I followed some advice given by Nicola Morgan (she has an excellent writing blog, by the way, and also writes very good books) and left all my notes at home with my laptop and iPad and sat in town (45min away, or that particular day, 2 hours of defective tube train away) with nothing but a blank sheet of paper and a pen.

The idea here is that you write what you can remember of your story, and hopefully these will be the most important bits. You don't get hung up on trying to condense each chapter into fifty-seven words, and you get into the flow of writing rather than thinking about how to fit everything in.

It was an interesting experience. I write so much on my laptop or my iPad that it took me a bit to get back into writing by hand. Once over the initial hurdle, though, I got right down to it and got some good stuff out (I think).

I did notice an interesting thing while I was doing it. My procrastination was a lot more noticeable. When you're on a connected device, it's very easy to convince yourself that Wikipedia research is very necessary and needed right at this moment, so you don't really notice that you are procrastinating. When it's only you, a pen and a piece of paper, though, the difference between work and not-work is much easier to define. At one point I found myself staring at my pen and thinking 'ooh, pretty bunnies', which I immediately knew was not work (it was a new pen. With bunnies on it).

I guess it's good to switch modes of writing every so often, to give yourself a change and see if anything new and more productive comes out of it. I know I wouldn't have done as much if I'd been on my laptop. I would have been too busy checking things and changing things and believing it was all work.

Being Critical

Happy Leap Day!!

Sometimes you read over things and they’re just not very good. Sometimes you read over many things in a row that aren’t very good, or just not up to your exacting standards. At this point is the time to step back and write a blog post about it.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I am overcoming it, I am taking classes in slap-dash (imagine classes in slap-dash. Two doors down from the classes in procrastination and across the hall from the classes in three pm naps). Slap-dash isn’t good either, though, so I guess you have to balance yourself. Perfectionism can be appropriate at times, but you’ve got to control it and figure out when you should just stop tweaking.

Another danger of perfectionism is looking at something half-finished and deciding it will never be any good and to toss it – if it can’t be perfect, why try at all? Yes, some things do need to be tossed, but sometimes they just need a few rounds of revision or possibly a bit of a rewrite. Especially if whatever you’re reading is just a rough first draft. Especially if you’ve looked at the same bit of work on another day and thought it was actually quite good.

Maybe I’m just in a critical frame of mind today. I will forge ahead.

Do you have critical days and non-critical days?

Procrastination

Okay, I’m slack. Or just sharpening my skills at procrastination. There will be a round-the-world book this week! The thing is I haven’t finished reading it yet.

On Sunday I went to the main (not very good) library and got out two books. Then I went to a suburban (awesome) library and got out five books, one of which is my round-the-world book and actually quite good. Unfortunately I convinced myself that reading other books as ‘research’ is just as valid as reading my round-the-world book, and as it’s been my birthday this week I felt justified in procrastinating. Or perendinating (=super-procrastinating). So I started the book on Sunday, but since then I’ve finished four other books and started a fifth. I tend to chain-read.

But it shall be up later. I made a goal and I am sticking to it. Or sticking in its general area.

What do you do to procrastinate?