Friday Show and Tell (Volume Three)

It was pretty exciting to wake up this morning and see this in my inbox. Katie Allen from The Bookseller interviewed me last week and I'm delighted that she managed to shape my ramblings into this article. Thank you so much, Katie!


Click to embiggen, or go here to read it online.

I was going to press on with another chapter revision today, as I'm making such good progress. Instead, however, I have decided to stop, take a breather, and go over everything I have written so far. I am going to finish off one scene, but otherwise I think it's going to be more valuable to take stock of where I've been before I go roaring off into the sunset to finish revising the final quarter of the book. We'll see.

These words from Sara of Orchids in Buttonholes struck a chord with me this week:

"As my characters plod along, unaware of what’s next, I sort of envy them. Because I know what comes next for me and this novel of mine – revision, research, editing, rewriting a paragraph fifteen times, beating into submission a conversation between two characters, rethinking and reworking and tearing it all apart to build it back up again (and again).

I love that part of it – I really do – I just don’t want to think about it right now; I don’t want to get ahead of myself and imagine editing my words before they’re even written, or imagine the end of this month before I’m there. I do that often, with work and with life, and whenever I think about my “what nexts,” I remove myself from where I am right now.

And when that happens, I’m no longer entirely present for the scene and the sentence and the phrase I’m writing at the moment. I start to think about what I haven’t done yet, what I should have done, what I needed to do and will need to do. Instead of praising myself for getting this far, however far it is, I overwhelm myself. And I’m not even nearly there yet."

I'm guilty of this, too. I try to take my work day by day, without thinking too far ahead, to avoid that overwhelmed feeling - it reminds me of rock climbing, in that it's better to concentrate on reaching the next hold and solving the immediate problem rather than looking up at the full height of the rock face.

How are your Nanowrimo projects going? Are you happy with your progress?