Writing | Amy C. Shaw

The Wheels Fell Off My Bus But I Don’t Mind

May 1, 2014 • 6 Comments

April is over, and I failed to meet my word goal for Camp NaNoWriMo, even though I lowered it 10,000 words from my original goal of 20,000. But it didn’t just slip past me. I simply stopped writing new material after the first week and a half and I knew what I was doing. My April was filled with a lot of things going on in my life, and I quite frankly wasn’t inspired to write any story other than my November NaNo project.

Now, I do understand that I need to write even when life is crazy and I’m not inspired, but I think you can take a break sometimes, so after about a week and a half or forcing myself to write in April, I just stopped, minus a little editing for my other project and a couple of other odds and ends added to older story ideas (I have well over a dozen story documents that have been started but are no where near fleshed out, but that’s another post for another time, I suppose). I was busy, but I had chances to make the time, and I knew it.

But over the next month or two, I believe I will have the chance to refocus. May is already shaping up to look like an interesting month, but a good one. So after my failed attempt at Camp NaNoWriMo, I do intend to reevaluate how I spend my time writing, and trying to construct a more workable schedule for me. I don’t intend to always allow the busy nature of life to delay my dreams. I need to keep writing, and keep practicing, and slowing down on this blog has been helpful. Thanks to everyone for their patience. Having friends who are rooting for me seriously helps me.

Worn Out

April 14, 2014 • 18 Comments

You know when you have just weekends in a row that are packed with things to do, in addition to your already usually busy weeks?

That’s what April has been for me. And will continue to be.

And to make it worse, I’ve been feeling some pressure of trying to complete this 20,000 word goal for Camp NaNoWriMo that had potential to be feasible, but when working on a story I am not excited about and have not plotted out, and when so busy, well, I have found myself falling further and further behind my daily average word count. I think I’m going to decrease my goal word count, to 10,000 but it feels like a cop-out.

I could try to push myself harder for 20,000 words, but I don’t want to push myself in ways I don’t need to be pushed. I needed it in November. Right now, I really just need to edit and improve my NaNoWriMo project, and then once I finally get it off to some beta readers so THEN I can think about something else IF I want to. I thought I might reach that place by this month but I didn’t, and so now the edits have been delayed by forcing myself to write for a story that I am not as interested in as that one. And when it comes to blogging, I feel I’m in a pre-slump, as Stormy put it recently. I’m afraid I might burn out soon. But I think I can avoid it.

And I think the way to avoid is may be to post less over the next month or so… and not beat myself over it.

I already post less than I want to due to time. I try to post three times a week, but I would prefer four times, and sometimes I end up at two times a week. And I feel guilty when that happens. But I don’t get upset with others when they need to slow down or take a break. So I hope and assume you would all feel the same about me.

So for the rest of April and possibly through May, expect even less activity here. I will post only when I absolutely want to, meaning not because I want new comments (because confession: sometimes that’s my motivation) ,but because I have a post that I am excited to share. Who knows, that might mean one week I’ll post 3 times and the next week I won’t post anything.

Meanwhile, I need to focus on editing my November NaNo project, focus on other life stuff, and take each day one step at a time.

So this is not an official break or hiatus, but please be patient with me as I try to get my mojo back. I probably would have stopped this a while ago if all of you weren’t so awesome, so thank you for that!

A Tale of Two Fails

March 27, 2014 • 16 Comments

Have you ever written a post you were so excited to share, only for something from it to end up becoming irrelevant just weeks later?

Yep, that happened to me just now. Twice.

Remember how excited I was to discover how I could download audiobooks to my phone (or Nook) without worrying about my data plan? I had a couple of free audiobooks I had acquired late last summer and finally figured how super easy it was to transfer them to a device with an Overdrive app, and that I could listen to them without an Internet connection! I transferred Sherlock Holmes over to my Nook successfully, but after that, NOTHING ELSE WORKED. I tried my other free audiobook as well as a library audiobook, and I tried transferring to both my phone and my Nook, but nothing happened. It seems Overdrive simply stopped transferring my stuff over after doing so ONE TIME.

I assume that this has something to do with the update Overdrive keeps telling me I need. But the problem is, anytime I try to update it, I can never get the update to come up! Just a browser window set on the default home screen comes up. I tried doing a search on their website about getting the update, but to no avail. I thought about downloading it all over again but chickened out, afraid it might mess something up. So alas, while I enjoyed listening to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (particularly because it’s basically just short stories, so you could listen to like one 30 minute story a day and feel satisfied), it seems that’s my only audiobook option until I can figure this mess out! If anyone has any ideas, please share!

Fail #1 goes to Overdrive.

Fail #2 goes to Camp NaNoWriMo.

Remember how I was excited for this “camp” in April where I can set my own word goal and I was going to start working on a new story and I asked all my blogging friends who are also participating to let me know their username so I could request for them to be in my “cabin” and we could all cheer each other on as we wrote throughout the month?!

I requested whatever the max amount of friends was, like five or six, and I know some of them requested me too.

BUT NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM ENDED UP IN MY CABIN.

Seriously NaNoWriMo?! What was even the point if you were just going to assign me to whoever the heck you felt like anyway?!

I considered, briefly, staying with these strangers. Maybe it would be a good experience for me, yadda yadda yadda. But you know, it’s going to be stressful enough without feeling like I have to be accountable to people I don’t know. I only wanted to do a cabin so I could cheer on blogger friends. So I opted out of that cabin, and all cabins, completely. And I decided to take matters into my own hands.

So, if you’re a blogger friend who is participating in Camp NaNoWriMo next month and are interested in being a part of a “group,” regardless of whether or not you’re in a cabin, I have set up a Google + Community for the occasion. I set it as private because I didn’t want random people finding it and joining it, so either leave me a comment below or send me a Twitter DM with your e-mail address so I can send the invite to you directly. And as long as you’ve “spoken” to me at least one other time and are a blogger, I’ll send one to you. And we can cheer each other on our way, thankyouverymuchCampNaNo!

Have you experienced any “fails” lately?

New Writing Goals!

March 8, 2014 • 36 Comments

As many of you know, I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time this past November. It was hard, but such a worthwhile experience. I exceeded the 50,000 word goal and even completed the first draft of a brand new novel ALL IN ONE MONTH. Considering that the first novel I wrote took, uh, years, I was floored I was even capable of that, even if a lot of what I wrote needed to be reworked, revised, rewritten, or flat out deleted. But at only 51K, I knew my story was still a little underdeveloped and I would need to beef it up. I stepped away from my story in December but finally came back to it in January, though I didn’t add much until these past few weeks.

Now this is where I’m at:

It feels good to have 10,000 more words that my November goal, and to feel my story has some more of the development it needed. It still needs work, and I am very aware of this. I have decided to spend the rest of March writing and revising as much as I can stand, and deciding who the very first beta readers are going to be that I will send it to, the ones I trust will read through the crap and see the good stuff and tell me where to expound on the good and get rid of the bad.

Then for April I have decided I will reset my sights to something new…

Camp NaNoWriMo is run by the same folks who run the November event, but it’s done in either April or July, and you set your own word count goal ranging from 10,000 – 999,999 (for the record, pretty sure I’ll never be able to do the latter for one story! Especially in one month!). You can’t tell from my profile page here, but I have decided to set a goal of 20,000 words, which after what I did in November is extremely doable, but is also more than I generally do in a month. It averages to 5,000 words a week, which helps break it down into smaller, even more doable goals.

As you can see, the title is “TBD,” meaning I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet. I do know it will be one of my older ideas that I’ve started but not gotten very far with, and I think I know which one I’m leaning towards, but I can also change my mind over the next few weeks.

After April, hopefully my 2-3 beta readers will have suggestions to help me dive back into revising Earthbound (my project from November), and I’ll probably rework that and go through more beta readers again before I get back to what I write in April. But after what NaNoWriMo did for me, I can’t ignore that setting these goals for myself and having the chance to mark these milestones really works for me, much more than when I’m just trying to write willy-nilly, and so I want to do it again to get the ball rolling on another story.

If you’re doing Camp NaNoWriMo in April, let me know! I was thinking about doing the cabin thing but want to request cabin mates I know!

My Top Ten Goals for 2014

January 7, 2014 • 24 Comments

Short intro for this list: Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Today’s topic is my Top Ten Goals/Resolutions for 2014 (bookish, not bookish, or a blend).

Long intro: When 2013 came to an end, I wasn’t super reflective. I do think I grew in some ways in 2013: as a writer, as a wife, and hopefully as a person, but I also struggled with things I’ve always struggled with, frustrated that I just could not move past them. 2013 wasn’t a great year or a terrible year, but just like every other year of my life it was important, because just like every other year of my life it shaped me. But New Year’s has gotten to where it feels so blase to me, which is the biggest reason why I didn’t feel the need to reflect on New Year’s Eve and makes all kinds of resolutions for the new year.

But that being said, making goals for myself, regardless of the time of year is important to me. Last February I decided to start this blog and set some writing goals for myself. Well, I failed at the writing goals, or… maybe not. I did fail at meeting the specific goals, but as I look back on them now I realize they weren’t really the right goals for me. I did write more, increasingly more thanks to NaNoWriMo, a goal I had not set for myself in February of last year but I achieved and am so proud of myself for having accomplished it. This year, I have more writing goals (in addition to reading and blogging goals) for myself that may or may not get met, because they may or may not be the right goals for me. But the bottom line of these goals is to pursue them, the heart behind them, and take the steps I need to at this point in time for my life. I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew, but I don’t want to hold myself back either. This year, I want to continue to strive for balance.

All that being said, here are my goals for 2014, related largely to writing, blogging, and reading.

Reading Goals

1. Read Les Miserables

I know this is a crazy goal. This book is over 1000 pages long. But my sweet husband got this book for me after I mentioned it on the blog, and the good thing about him doing that is that it was the push I needed to actually motivate myself to read this chunkster. So here’s the goal: to take as much time reading this book as I need, chapter by chapter, this year. Instead of sitting down with this book and reading it straight through, I will read a few chapters here and there, at my leisure, and my only goal for finishing is to have it done by the end of the year. And if I have to carry it over to next year, as long as I’m still reading it, I don’t think that should be marked as a failure. The resolution is to just keep moving forward. The goal is completion by December 31, 2014.

2. Only Read What I Want to Read

This may sound a little silly, but this year I found it easy to get so caught up in what other people hyped that I would start reading books I didn’t have much interest in. This did pay off sometimes, but sometimes it backfired. I read about a fifth of what most of my fellow book bloggers read last year, so I have to be selective. So that means I am going to try this year to more carefully choose what exactly I read, based on multiple reviews and dissecting what people are saying in those reviews. I may still end up disappointed, but that’s OK, but you can still learn from reading something you don’t love.

3. Continue to Expand My Reading Horizons by Reading the Following…

Here are a few more reading goals rolled into one…

1 more Jane Austen book: I read Pride and Prejudice in college, then in 2012 and 2013 I made the effort to read another one of her works in each of those years (Northanger Abbey in 2012 and Persuasion in 2013). I love her stories but not her writing style, so it is a little bit of a challenge for me. This year I am thinking I’ll probably read Emma.

1 classic science fiction book: This will probably either be Ender’s Shadow or Do Androids Sleep of Electric Sheep?. I really want to read more in the science fiction genre as my appreciation for science fiction in TV and movies has grown.

1 writing book: In 2012 I read a writing book as well as in 2013, and I think both helped me some. I believe that as a writer, it’s important I continue the practice of reading books about writing. There are some books about plotting I might like into, or Stephen King’s writing memoir On Writing.

1 non-fiction book: In addition to the writing book, I want to read another non-fiction book. The one I feel is the most likely candidate right now is 1776, but it’s possible I may choose to read an autobiography, a psychology book, or even a science book (if I can find one my unscientific brain can comprehend). Of course, I think reading more than one would be ideal, but I’m aiming for at least one. (I read two last year.)

Blogging Goals

4. Blog When I Want to Blog

I have been pretty much doing this for the past few months, but I want to try even harder to not feel too much pressure from inconsistent blogging this year. I do think consistent blogging is great, but I have other things in my life I need to manage, and more passions to pursue. But I certainly have no intention of leaving you all hanging completely. I have met some wonderful people in the blogsphere and I’m not leaving you now! 🙂 If it wasn’t for you, I know I wouldn’t have kept the blog going this long.

5. Blog Only Meaningful Content

I think this goes hand-in-hand with my previous goal. I want to blog not only when I want to, but also what I want to.

Writing Goals

6. Focus on One Writing Project at a Time

This is going to be crazy hard, because I have bad writing ADD. I have literally started over a dozen novels, but how many have been completed? Four. Two of those four belong to a much larger story arc of a series that I still have not completely worked out yet, and one I just wrote this last year for NaNo. (The other is my long labor of love that I have been working on since high school, but I am giving it more room to breathe right now) This year, I want to focus on my story from NaNo. Start revising and rewriting, get beta readers, rewrite and edit again, get more beta readers, rewrite and write again, and then hopefully, if all goes well…

7. Start Querying Agents

Last year, I set a goal to start this process in March 2014. That was unrealistic because up until November, I was still suffering from Writing ADD. If I am fortunate enough to feel that my project is ready for querying this year, it will be later in the year. Right now, I am thinking I would love to start this process in September, but if I start at any point this year I would love that. And if I don’t, hopefully 2015 will become that year for me. Again, as long as I am actually working on writing and not getting distracted and doing the very best I can, I will be satisfied with that progress.

8. Make Writing a Top Priority

I let writing fall by the wayside most of the year for blogging and reading. I don’t really regret it because blogging helped me write, helped me read, and helped me better understand the publishing process and industry. And of course I can’t regret reading because it helped me write, and of course it’s just rewarding in of itself. Really, writing and reading will probably be more a joint top priority, as I will probably read during lunch at work and write when I get home. But blogging will definitely suffer a little because of this schedule, and I hate that, but…

Life Goals

9. Pursue my Passions More Seriously

This is vague, but I have specific things in mind when I say this, some of which I mentioned here. Writing, creativity, stories are all my passion, and I want to more seriously pursue ways to incorporate these things in my life. Blogging helped me with that some this year, but I do feel I want to pursue other routes with these passions this year.

10. Prepare for 30

As much as I have a hard time acknowledging this, I’m in my late twenties now, and I’m not getting any younger. With 30 not too far down the road for me, I want to try harder over the next few years to make a more conscientious effort to prepare for the third decade of life physically especially, by eating better, becoming more active, buying better skincare products, etc. I am sure there are other ways I need to prepare for 30, so I will be trying to recognize those and do them as I go.

What are your goals for 2014?

Category Archives: Writing

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