Awesome news in terms of Alex J Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group. There's a full website now! I'm very excited to be apart of this group in the mist of the awesome upgrades. You can find it here!
Now, on to how freakin' insecure I am. It's quite entertaining as it reared its ugly and nonsense head last night.
October has begun, and with my, my goal of having my novel plotted out by November 1. Nails already chewed off, I get home from work knowing I would get something written down by the end of the night, some sort of early planning.
What came out of it was Adam fully realizing how my brain operates, or cannot operate, between my actually diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder and my pretend diagnosed obsessive compulsiveness. Because we both have a twisted sense of humor, we got both frustrated and laughed hysterically knowing I was going in circles and he was about to have a nosebleed trying to keep it as simple as possible.
I look at my big goal, the main goal, write a novel, and that's all I see. Okay, that's fine. But really, marketing and publishing and revising aside, actually WRITING it takes steps. And then, the steps take steps. This is where my head goes, "Bitch, you're on your own," and looks to go play World of Warcraft or some other game, maybe even wash the living room floor instead.
I wrote down research undead and then plot novel, and immediately complain that I can't come up with other stuff. "I need to decide on the ending." "Okay, put that under plot a novel." "Wait, I didn't make room, DAMNIT." *rips out paper and starts again*
This was an hour and a half... plus with the also pretend diagnosis of ADHD, we both kept getting off track arguing about how a disease would still be in the family with chromosomes and how I had a brief lesson on that as I nearly failed biology in high school.
I still wanted to come up with a daily goal of what to accomplish, weekly goals of what to accomplish, just a plan; I need a plan down because if I don't articulate every little thing, I won't do it, or half-ass it, and then thing I know it'll be October 30th and I won't have anything but this written down:
 |
| Literally my title right now. |
So that's happening. BUT! The ONE THING I decided on was, by Friday, have the timeline written down.
Which I am already scared to do because I need to plot out the plot at the same time, but need to work on the characters that I have in mind...
Oh god, not again.
And question for those who use Blogger for their blogs.... how the hell do I tell Blogger to stop putting a thick, white frame around images I put here? It's obnoxious and I find it ugly. I will cry if it has to do with the HTML. All I do is click the "insert image" button at the top while drafting a post and then Blogger gets all, "Hey, let me put this stupid shit around your image for you." Can I get around this easily?
"...pretend diagnosed obsessive compulsiveness..." LOL! Relax, Dara. Take a walk, eh? It will come if you cool your heels. ;)
ReplyDeletePlotting before November first? You must be getting ready for NaNoWriMo! If you are you should add me as a writing buddy: randomdanni ^.^
ReplyDeleteIf that's the case, then cut yourself some slack! Having everything mapped out is great, but it's not 100% necessary. Just get down what YOU need to get things done, don't worry about it being 'perfect', just get it to 'good enough'. There's no right or wrong way to do things, the only way to fail is to not try at all. Ok, I'll stop acting like Yoda now... Best of luck!
You still have a month to plot and plan for NaNo - don't panic!
ReplyDeleteAs for the border - no idea. I've never seen it before.
One thing at a time. Take a couple of weeks to work on characters and a couple to work on plot. If that kind of thing works for you.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the border, I think it's a part of the template. I don't know anything about html, but you might be able to fix it there. Otherwise you would have to go with a different template.
Good luck with NaNo.
It's the template! I couldn't find the actual HTML to change, but I found a CSS code (thank you Google gods) that will override it. :)
DeleteIt sounds like you're getting ready for NaNoWriMo. One more month! I think you're going to be ready.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me I have to plot for Nano as well. Eep. And I have no idea about the border. I'm completely useless with technology. Chin up, you can do it!
ReplyDelete--Ilima Todd (IWSG co-host)
NaNoWriMo is the way to go (and it's fun!)
ReplyDeleteI've given up trying to understand Blogger. The only thing that I understand (and like) less is Wordpress. You could just upload your photos, I suppose, and not use links? Or not...
NaNo is meant to be fun! Not full-on stressful. But I know it can be stressful sometimes. :)
ReplyDeleteI know it's easier said than done, me saying, "Hey, just have fun with it!" Writers all work in different ways to get their projects kick-started. I tend to just spew out a bunch of notes and ideas for the plot come to me. Then I will start writing and remove the plot notes I've already covered as I progress. I don't really go into the whole in-depth character profiles and so on.
But then, I seem to do something different every time I get around to starting a new novel. Like, one of the novels I wrote last year (well, haven't finished it yet, but I wrote 50k of it) was plotted out by each day that passed in the novel (it spanned 9 days). Then one other novel I didn't plan at all, just sat down and wrote.
I guess you could say I'm a bit "all over the place" in my own way.