Well, writing hasn’t been going that well lately. Mine, at least. Although my other blog has been going incredibly well, as I’ve sunk myself into living a second life.
But as for my real life….
Having experienced a huge loss in falling out of the adoption process in August, my mind and body just doesn’t seem to be co-operating very well. The first few weeks were difficult and intense. One day I would be okay, and the next I would wake up – physically sick, and mentally worse off.
But still, I had to force myself to go off to work (with kids, now that was incredibly difficult) and smile and act like nothing much was wrong. People didn’t understand – there was no missing child, just missing hope. So even my hairdresser went all quiet when dealing with unexpected tears over the hair washing basin.
Things have lessoned now, in time for me to put some effort into the Muse Online Writers Conference which starts – tomorrow!
So I’ll give the workshops I did register in my best shot, and see how that goes. I’m registered on ones for world building, and others for some psychological sides – making monsters in fact.
My problems in writing are ones similar to those experienced when I was simply introducing myself on the workshop forums for Muse just now. I suggested I currently had two different novels planned – and that’s the crux of the matter.
One is the Steampunk Fantasy Adventure – a true by-the-book hero’s journey. The other is the psychological thriller I initially planned out earlier this year. Triller versus Fantasy – I still haven’t even steadied myself on my writing genre.
Before the adoption issues, I was all about the Fantasy – a week before and you would have found me having already devised most of the main plot, built (in my mind at least) most of the world, and many of the characters.
After the adoption issues, with my emotions and mental tiredness overriding much of my life, and I leapt back to the Thriller. That novel is based on the angry emotions of a domestic surburban wife. I could understand her point, now. I’d re-found her, within myself.
Understanding that I need to live through this mourning process, I crossed out my normal writing plans of joining in with NaNoWriMo this year. Although I think I could still do it, I don’t feel I’ll benefit from doing so. This whole process, which somehow includes my writing work intermingled through it, seems to need a more natural pattern to it. Putting myself into a stress-induced writing environment won’t do me well this year, as there’s still enough of it around in my every day world.
So, back to the Muse Conference – my first real writers conference. Registrations for this year’s Muse are now closed, but will be opening up again in November for the 2010 Conference. I’ll give some of the workshops my best shot, and see how it helps in getting back my writing mojo.
In the meantime, just by reading through some of the forum introductory posts, I’m finding that there are a lot of interesting writers out there that I can learn from.
For those who missed the news, Holly Lisle has closed off her How to Think Sideways course to any new participants – from last Friday I think. Anyone who is currently in the course, or has graduated from the course, still has access – and mentoring – into the class forums. Just no new registrations. Holly is using the time to move onto working on her new course on revision.
For those of you who joined up on my recommendation (and I got a little money as an affiliate) I would like to thank you. I hope you are getting the best out of Holly’s first big writing course, and would suggest to you that you will probably be seeing me around the Revision course when she goes live with it, if I can afford it.
Now, I’m off to have a think about what my favourite monster is, and what his motivation for his tasks is, and I also have some homework on creating an idea for a new world – which shouldn’t be too difficult, I hope.
These posts may also be of interest:
Sun, Oct 11, 2009
Personal Writing Journey, Writing Features