Kirstiekins Blogs: Writing

Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts

Apologies for our unscheduled intermission

Thursday

So here's the thing. I started university again a few weeks ago and have found little to no time to do extra curricular fun things such as blogging and reading - this makes me really sad. However, that being said I am having so much fun doing my Masters Degree that I am not sure if I actually care about missing out of fun things. Don't get me wrong, I love blogging, but reading about literary theories and critiquing other people's work gives me a certain joy that you just don't get from blogging. I feel like my opinions towards these people's writing is making a difference, and that makes me happy, so yay. There are some negatives though - I don't know these people. Part of the reason why I loved my undergrad so much, was the fact that I loved the people in my classes, I didn;t know them, but I loved them, that one guy and his super loud and annoying laugh, the girl that scrunched up in her chair every lesson, the group of people that would wander in 10 minutes late - they all made that course and my university experience unique, and now they're gone. They have gone off to other universities, into jobs, into life, and I am sat here wishing I could trade all of these new people for my old people. I miss them.

I hate change, but change is supposed to do you good, right? Supposed to being the key statement in that statement.

Where was I? Oh yes. I am hoping to resume regular blogging next week, but I may keep it to one post a week until I can completely figure out my timetable.

Hope you're having a good autumn, and please recommend me some new books to read. My two-hour bus journey home is driving me crazy.

Peace, love and sausage rolls

Kirstie

PS. Who else is going to YA Shot at the end of the month?

Friday

I was recently asked by the wonderful people at Paperblanks, to share my journals, and talk about my love of them on their blog: Endpaper. I am not ashamed to admit that when it comes to notebooks, not only do insist on a good quality of paper, but I like them to look pretty too, and with Paperblanks I get both. The only other notebooks I use are the cheap WHSmith ones, which I use for uni, and even then I get the premium quality ones - god I must sound like a snob.

If you are interested in knowing more about my love affair with Paperblanks, then you can head on over to their site, and see what it is exactly I use them for, and how much I rely on them to help me with my daily activities. (CLICK HERE)

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Thursday

I'm a writer. Or I at least pretend to be anyway.

Don't expect to search for me online and have a Goodreads author page come up, a string of novels on Amazon, or articles on Huffington Post, because you wont find anything. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. But that doesn't mean I am not writer, it just means I am an unpublished writer. You could take this to mean that I am a bad writer, and that no one will publish my work, but in all honesty I am terrified of the thought of actually publishing my writing.

I had a chapter of a novel that I am working on included in an anthology, but I took me until ten minutes before the deadline to gain the confidence and hit send on the email. Although I was accepted, I stopped writing shortly after, due to the amount of uni work that I had, and even then I found that hard to do. If felt as if something in my brain had stopped working, as though a bunch of wires had been ripped out, or the drawer where I keep my writing abilities had welded itself shut. This went on for months. The more I tried to write, the more I hated myself. How could I call myself a writer if I couldn't write. Was it writers block? I don't know. I think it was more of a me block. I got stuck inside my head, and then my head got suck inside of me - wow, that didn't mean to sound as dirty as it come across. Get your head out of the gutter ;)

Anyway.

For months I would plan projects, even attempt to write them, but nothing would happen. My sentences wouldn't make sense, my plot wouldn't fit, and my characters were telling me to fuck off and do one. They didn't like me either. But here is the funny part. Not funny haha, actually it might be, or it might be a sign of madness. I went shopping last week, and I saw this girl/woman* and I was convinced that it was one of the characters in my novel. It was so weird, because I have been writing her to be this evil, heart crushing (literally) person, but here she was in the supermarket with some other woman, talking about bread. "I like the thick one, I can really get my teeth into it," to which her friend replied: "Oh, I bet you do!" And then they laughed and walked away. I stood there thinking, why are you shopping, you're supposed to be causing havoc and trying to destroy the lives of everyone you ever met, and then this led me to thinking more of her character, and primarily who she is. Causing havoc is what she does, but not who she is. It was at that point where I felt the office drawer ping open and have all these files spew all over the places, the wires had been replaces and whatever had stopped working, started again. I abandoned the rest of my shopping list, went home, and I have been writing ever since.

In those nine months I could have finished it twice over and be well into the editing stage right now, but that isn't how it works. I am glad that my brain forced me to take some time away from it, because looking at my old drafts now, I can see where I may have made a few bad decisions, and did what I wanted to do, rather than what the characters wanted to do.

I find it hard to blog, and write fiction at the same time, which is a shame because I love doing them both so much, but it's not a bad thing, because I now have two writing spaces I can flick back and forth between. That being said, whilst I have my writing mojo back, I will be prioritising that, but I still will be posting as often as I can. A few weeks ago, I sent out somewhat of a questionnaire to bunch of other bloggers, all about their favourite books, which I have formed together into some pretty cool posts, and will be starting to post next week, so there is that to look forward too! I am also going to start trying to keep to a schedule, and posting at least one book review on a certain day every week, which is yet to be decided. I may also start sharing some of my writing/updates on my novel writing, if you guys don't mind.

This post has ended up being a lot longer that what I hoped for it to be.

So Until next time.

Kirstie

xoxo

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Sunday

Writing shouldn't be this hard. All it is, is choosing the right words to string together in order to make some kind of sense to anyone outside of your own mind. Plan, plot, write, thats usually the process, right? You think of something, you plan it, and then you go for it. But what if it doesn't work that way, what if you just can't?

Wednesday

I have been working on a novel for the past year or so, and although I have written thousands of things before, this is one of the first things I have actually been confident about finishing. I am not going to go into too much detail about it, I don't want to bore you or anything, but I just wanted to share a little part of it with you. When I say a little part, I mean a quote.

Due to the confidence I felt over the piece, I decided to enter one of the chapters into an anthology competition, where a team of people would read through all of the entries and decide on which ones that they wanted to publish. As the weeks went by I had let copious amounts of self doubt build up inside of me, so imagine shock when I received an email to say that they wanted to publish it. In fact, I almost deleted the email without even reading it, as I was sure it was going to be a rejection, lucky for me that I didn't.

Sunday

Whoops, I'm about four days too late, sorry about that, I've been a little busy with coursework and stuff; planning things for the new year. Speaking of which, Happy New Year!! I hope you had a wonderful New Years, I know I did. I originally planned on spending the evening alone watching, Netflix and drinking cider, but my friend came over, and we ordered Indian food, made lists of all the things we are going to do this year, and then watched Netflix with cider.

I also wrote, I wrote a lot. My friend fell asleep little after 2am, and I was itching to write something, my head was on fire with thousands of thoughts, I couldn't sleep. There was nothing I wanted more than to feel a pen between my fingers, and hear the sound of it scratching against the pages of my notebook. It's a soul healing activity, letting whatever is in your head flow through you and onto a page. Seeing your thoughts, the notions that float around your head, in front of you, rather than locked away, is therapeutic It's almost as if you are leaving a part of you on those pages, you are extending yourself beyond your own body. It's a wonderful feeling, being able to word vomit, and just empty your head, even for a few moments.

I urge you all to try it, writing without purpose; writing just because. I recently got back into doing that towards the end of last year, and the only way I can explain it, is soul restoring. I think it's one of those things that you don't really get, until you've experienced it. It's a great feeling.

I wrote about how in 2015 I was going to do manifest magic, how I was going to make a point of doing everything on my list of things I want to this year. I thought about 'changing' but can anyone really change? We can make changes, but we can't change into different people. And even if we want to change ourselves why should we wait till the new year? We should be able to change whenever we want to, not because of social conformity to want to edit ourselves on January 1st.

Maybe I'll type up my ramblings at some point, maybe I won't, but until then I ask you to think about your New Years resolutions, don't change yourself because of society and other people, do it for you. Resolutions don't have to be about changing, they can be about doing. Do something you want to do this year, and have fun whilst doing it!

If you want some inspiration for your lists, you can read mine here!