Resolved…Not To Make New Year Resolutions

Makin’ a list! Checkin’ it tw- Wait, no, that’s Santa…

Okay. So I broke that resolution already. But it’s not all bad! I’m gonna keep the others on the list!

Er.

Well. I’m going to try.

So what’s going on for me in the new year? So, so much. In terms of resolutions, I’ve made a new daily wordcount goal: 2000 wpd instead of 1000 wpd. If NaNoWriMo showed me anything, it’s that I can write 2000 wpd when I’m not procrastinating.

I’ve also decided that I’m not going to be buying any clothes this year. I have too many already, and if I get the urge for new clothes, I have stacks upon stacks of fabric and patterns, and a perfectly good sewing machine that I actually like using. So if I want new clothes, I’ll make ’em.

In terms of writing, I have a few things that I’m planning to do in the new year.

Firstly, I’m excited to celebrate MASQUE’s 1st birthday for the month of January (it’s actually Feb 1st, which is when the sale/giveaway/celebration will last until). In pursuance of that, MASQUE is on Wattpad, and I’m currently in the exhausting throes of making a Podiobook of it. I’ll attempt to upload a chapter per week, but I’m still scrambling audio equipment together for the attempt and making dreadful, error-laden practise recordings. Still, the first chapter of MASQUE’s Podiobook should go live this month.

Secondly, I have a busy publication schedule for this year. I’m hoping to finish and publish the third novella in my SHARDS OF A BROKEN SWORD novella. There will also be the second book in my Two Monarchies Sequence, BLACKFOOT; and if I’m very good and very quick, there might even be the third book, THE STAFF AND THE CROWN. In between those two books I’m planning on a shorter companion novella for the SHARDS series, and the second book in my TIME-TRAVELLER’S BEST FRIEND series.

Well, that’s my plan for the new year. What’s yours?

Bring it on, 2016!

(Images from Practical Glamour and Etsy)

These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things: Writing Music!

 

Mostly I talk about books and movies, stuff that inspires, delights, and makes me think. But I’ve hitherto neglected to mention in this series the music that inspires and delights me. So today I’m concentrating on my writing music–aka, music I listen to as I write my books–which is why you guys get a video (or three).

I listen to a few different artists as I write, with the most frequently listened-to being Lindsay Stirling, The Piano Guys, and Evanescence. I also like to listen to Nightwish, Within Temptation, and a range of movie soundtracks with wonderful music. Lately, I’ve also purchased a CD of New Orleans music with a dixie/jazz type of sound to it. Listening to music as I write can improve my productivity by up to 100%: I’m far more likely to write 3-6k on a day that I play music as I write, than on a day where I write in silence or with the TV in the back ground. Mind you, The A-Team is great to write to as well, but I do get distracted by the flamin’ awesomeness of Murdock sometimes…

Well, NaNoWriMo is still going, and I still have words to write, so it’s ciao for now! What are you guys listening to as you read/write?

Writerly Things

I like to Google-Search stuff sometimes. Sometimes it’s writerly stuff that I need to know (for instance, when the screwdriver was first invented/mentioned) and sometimes it just weird stuff that occurs to me as I’m taking a break from writing (or procrastinating, as it’s otherwise known).

This afternoon I Google-Searched for images of writers. It came up with some interesting pictures. According to Google, writers are people who drink, smoke, love cats, tea and/or coffee, and live in cluttered, paper-strewn offices and studio apartments.

And my personal favourite?

<– This guy. He’s wondering what the heck he did to bring himself to this point in his life.

By and large, then, there seems to be a general idea of what a writer is/likes/does. Which is interesting, because it prompted me to think about the writers I know (other than myself, of course).

99% of the writers I know love and/or have cats. Myself, I feel about cats much the same way that I feel about spiders. Most of ’em are too big to squish without feeling sick and the ones that aren’t make you feel creepy-crawly up the back for ages after you do squish ’em. If you want to know more about my brief experiment with having a cat in my house, I refer you to The Saga Of Cat. TL;DR? It didn’t work out so well. I’m definitely a dog person.

Smoking and drinking? Don’t know many writers who smoke: we seem to (mostly) know better nowadays. Drinking appears to be more common, though from what I can tell it’s more of a celebratory/after work type thing. The days of artistically drunk writers who scrawl away under the influence seem to be largely gone. Though if you replace ‘whiskey’ with ‘bacon’, then I, too, frequently write while under the influence. Each to his own, eh?

Tea and coffee now, that’s where I become properly writerly. I love my cuppa tea. Several a day, in fact. Writers are divided between tea and coffee, but it’s always either one or the other. Can’t get through the day without at least one cup. Getting up when you’re stuck at a difficult part in the paragraph, savouring a moment of peace in the storm of words with your fingers wrapped around a warm cup and the scent of tea lingering in the steam. Pepping yourself up with the caffeine. We’ve all been there.

Now when it comes right down to littered houses, I’m slightly red-faced. My house isn’t in the best state at the moment. That, however, is not a constant state: if I have too much clutter around me, I can’t concentrate, and I can’t write. There are sometimes that I literally have to clean before I can settle to write. Procrastination? Writer’s Block? Maybe. But I prefer a clean house. The other writers I know waver between highs of spotlessly clean desk/house/nook/other, and troughs of the time in between, when everything slides slowly until it’s a huge mess again.

So what are your writerly things? What are some of the stereotypes you’ve seen? Are they some of the ones I’ve mentioned, or do you have your own weird writerly things that no one else seems to have?