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Renewing the Self

August 18th 2010 12:32
I'm sure you're all aware that I live in a city, a 'great urban center' known as Toronto, Ontario. I do love my city dearly, but I tire of it after a while. I get tired of the daily rush, of the TTC, of the people all around me. I get tired of the big buildings and the poisoned lake. I get tired of the drama, and I get tired of the drunks and drug addicts covering the streets with their trouble.

We all get tired of our daily lives from time to time. We fall into ruts, we let life carry us away, and sometimes the stress builds until we're sick not just in mind but in body as well. And we never slow down to help ourselves, to sort through our mental stresses, to enjoy the simple beauty of the world all around us.

Tomorrow I am leaving this great urban center in favor of a small town with a big river and nothing to do. I'll be gone until Sunday afternoon, so there won't be any posts until Monday.

How do I intend to renew myself on this journey?

I'm going to take a walk through the trees Thursday night and meditate with my feet in the river Friday morning. I'll wander through the town until I'm hopelessly lost and then text my friend for directions back. I'll sit for a few hours and write with nobody around and nothing but the forest and its life to keep me company.

What am I going to write?

I'm going to be working on back story for my current Story of Choice (SoC?), the tale of the kingdom of Llyr. I'll probably do a brief write up of the history of Llyr and brief write ups of a couple important characters. I'm also going to do one last paper edit of Good Bye, and I'm hoping to get some work done on my newsletter and my workshop for next month.

But most of all, I'm just looking forward to having my phone off and not hearing a word from the city for a couple of days.

How do you renew yourself?
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Looking in the Mirror

August 10th 2010 12:30
Mirror
Looking in the Mirror


For the first time today when I looked in the mirror I liked what I saw. She's strong and I like the fire behind her blue eyes. She's got smooth flowing red hair that's slowly turning blonde, bleached by the sun's rays. She's got long well muscled legs that someday would be great in a martial art. You can tell by her grin that she's a little bit evil, but it's easy enough to look innocent. She could sit there all day and make cute faces; she'd have the whole world kneeling before her by the time she was done. Or maybe not, who knows?

Marla

When I look in the mirror now I question everything. I question my heritage, my faith, my parents but most of all I question my queen. I question the woman who raised me, who sent me to a thousand lessons and bought me a thousand pretty dresses. I question the long pretty curls that she insisted I keep even when I wanted to cut my hair in half. I question the dresses she bought me and her pretty necklace, the emerald I lost in the river. I question if all these gifts were just her trying to keep me distracted from the truth. I suppose she didn't realize that the greatest gift of all was the secret in my bedroom; but then again picking locks wasn't part of my lessons.

All those pretty curls are gone; my hair wasn't really curly anyway. It sits at my shoulders now when it's down but most of the time I keep it in a bun. Hair gets in the way when you're out in the woods hunting rabbits or deer or even men. I don't have any really pretty dresses here-the one I was wearing when I jumped into the river got wrecked, of course-but I like the plain ones at least as much. At least I know the people who gave me these ones actually care.

Sometimes when I get ready to go hunting I put on all my gear and pick up my sword, then I stop to look in the mirror. With my hair in a bun and my hunting clothes on, I barely look like the princess I am. With sword in hand and quiver on my back, I look like a huntress out for blood. But my blue eyes look dull and lifeless, and I don't quite look right without Logan by my side. It seems that I have no friends when I look at my lonely self, even though everyone in the village cares for me. But none of them mean half as much to me as Logan always did.

Maybe in ten years when I look in the mirror there will be a handsome man behind me and a baby in my belly, but first I have to find my best friend and my purpose. When I looked in the mirror at home I saw a girl destined to a long life of misery in the court system, married to the ugly man the queen chose for me. Now I look in the mirror and see a lost girl looking for her purpose. Someday I hope to look in the mirror and see a woman raising a happy family, living in a kingdom where everyone is judged and treated fairly.

I have to make the future I want to see in the mirror. And for now I will have to look at a girl that barely seems to be me.

(The first paragraph was written by me about me; the rest is from Marla's point of view, a character important to my latest novel-length project.)

Your turn.
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Renewing Your Commitment to Writing

July 29th 2010 12:14
Every writer has times-days, weeks, sometimes even months or at worst years-where they fall far short of their writing goals. Every writer gets caught up in something called life once in a while and time passes them by. And I'm sure every writer has at least once looked at a clock and gone 'it's that time already? I have to leave now and I didn't get any writing done'.

Personally, I've spent most of the last month not writing. I've written quite a bit of poetry-almost half a book of poetry, actually-but very few blog posts and even fewer novel chapters. I looked at a calendar just the other day and went 'where did July go?'

So what does a writer do in such times? Renew their commitment to writing, of course. How does one do that? Well you start by looking at your routine. What do you do every day-or at least five days a week-without fail? This includes things like work, school, even your daily walk. After everything that's part of your routine, how much time do you have left in a day? Most people will probably have somewhere between three and seven hours of spare non-sleeping time. Some have less, some have more.

Now that you know how much time you have in a day that's not dedicated to routine things, figure out how much of that time you want to devote to enjoyable activities that aren't writing. Say you want to devote one hour to reading or one hour to video games. Or maybe you just want to make sure you have one hour of completely spare time every day during which you can just relax. Every person is different. I've got a lot of spare time because it's summer, and I'd like to keep it that way. Some people plan out every minute of their summer six months in advance. I think those people are crazy, but who am I to call anybody crazy?

After you've decided what else you want to do in your spare time, take a look at how much time you have left. You might not want to devote all of that time to your writing-if you've got a lot of spare time, spending it all on writing will probably burn you out sooner rather than later-and that's perfectly fine. But you want to make sure you're writing time is enough to get something worthwhile done every day. Everybody works at a different pace, so for some of us fifteen minutes is enough to get something done and for others it takes an hour to write a couple of pages. That's fine too.

You might also want to leave your weekends, or just one day of your weekends, completely open. This doesn't mean that you won't spend any time on your weekend writing, it just means that you don't have to. Though I don't have school or work, lots of my friends do, and parties are always on weekends; I won't be scheduling writing time into my weekends because that's my social time. Of course I'll still spend some time writing on my weekends, but if I don't get anything done, I have nothing to feel bad about.

When scheduling remember that it doesn't have to be a rigid schedule. You can make a commitment to spend at least one of the hours between six o'clock and ten o'clock writing, if that's your spare time and you're bad at schedules. So long as you get the writing done, it doesn't really matter what time of day you're doing it at. Writing is one of those things that can be done at any time of day or night, week or weekend. Some people work better with a rigid schedule and others work better with a minimal commitment.

So what does renewing my commitment to writing mean to me? It means that I've decided to spend two hours writing every day, five days a week, for the month of August. In September I'll cut back to one hour a day, five days a week.

What qualifies as writing during your writing time is a post of its own-and that post should be going up on Monday. In the meantime, I'd love to know what renewing the commitment to writing looks like for you.
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Prompt Of The Week

July 20th 2010 12:25
Today's prompt is:

Write 500 words about falling in love
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The Writing Olympics

June 22nd 2010 12:19
I've only just discovered the 2010 Writing Olympics over at YoungWritersOnline.net, which has just begun. I won't be participating but it sounds like a fantastic set of writing challenges. Follow the links to find out more:

~How It Works: A Brief Explanation for the Proceedings of the Olympics
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Short Writing Exercise

May 18th 2010 12:43
We are now halfway through the month, and thus halfway through our Dear Diary projects. While I have personally fallen behind, I'm hoping that most of you have succeeded in writing every day.

Today, I'd like to distract you from your Dear Diary project to do an unrelated writing exercise


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What Is the Dear Diary Workshop?

April 27th 2010 12:42
The Dear Diary workshop began with an idea on the Wriye forums. Someone said they were thinking about writing a diary for their character for one month, and titling it 'A Month in the Life Of __________'. I decided to write a diary for Astarael, Goddess of Death in the world of Tamraq at the time of the first two Jihad books.

It was a great experience. I got accustomed to writing in Astarael's voice, got to know her on a more personal level, and managed to write a thousand words every day, even though I didn't get around to posting all the Dear Diary entries I wrote. I chose to call it the 'Dear Diary Experiment' because I started each entry with 'Dear Diary'. (There will be links to some of these posts at the end of this one


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Prompt: Shadows

April 20th 2010 12:14
Today's prompt is to write about shadows. Let your imagination run wild. We've all got a thousand things we could say about shadows, and a thousand stories that could be born of the shadows.

My response


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Dreams...

April 19th 2010 20:13
My grandmother said to me today that my uncle decided that he would have a full time job by the age of twenty-one. And he did. She also said that he wanted to be in a serious relationship, be a dad, and stop drinking by the age of thirty. And he did.

There's something to be said about making plans for your future. Plan to achieve your dreams. The path will be bumpy, and not everything will go according to plan, but someday, with enough butt-to-chair, you'll see your name in print. You might never be a J.K. Rowling or a Stephen King, but if just one book gets on those shelves, and you get just one email from a fan saying that you've inspired them to write-then perhaps you've reached your dream after all


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Promptage!

April 14th 2010 12:19
I've got a prompt for you today. It's similar to prompts that will be posted during the Dear Diary workshop next month, focusing on learning about yourself rather than creating fiction. I believe that only by truly knowing ourselves and being true to ourselves can we truly tap into who our characters are.

Today I'd like you to think about the following


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Prompt Time!

March 23rd 2010 12:58
Sorry I didn't post yesterday; let's just say the weekend was eventful, shall we?

If you're terribly behind, I am too, but rather than dwell on how behind you are, use this prompt to get the words flowing and then go on to start your editing for the day


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A Prompt To Distract Yourself

March 2nd 2010 12:39
Your goal for this month might be all about editing, but it's always good to keep the writing juices flowing. To help you keep writing, each week there will be a writing prompt. These are designed to be 500-1, 500 word writing exercises. They don't have to be full stories, as long as they sort of make sense.

This week, take a character from a different project than the one you're currently editing, someone who you are somewhat familiar with but who isn't quite a close friend yet. You will be writing from their point of view


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5 Great Websites/Blog Posts

February 5th 2010 12:22
I've decided that every Friday I'm going to blog a list of great blog posts, websites, and/or markets. This is part of an attempt to try to regulate my writing and my blogging.

Today's list consists of three interesting blog posts and two interesting websites, in no particular order as usual


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Making A Workshop List

February 3rd 2010 12:06
As some of you already know, this year I want to do a workshop that lasts at least one week on my blog. These are meant to be intense, short workshops. In January I did a workshop on Organizing Your Novel, and this month I'll be doing a workshop on characterization. These workshops are designed to help writers with a first draft figure out what they want their story to look like in the next draft, and to help them figure their characters out as well.

I've come up with a theoretical list of workshops for the next year. I'm hoping for some input on what you think would be most useful. Take a look at my list and let me know what you think. Suggestions are welcome


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A Story Idea For You

January 14th 2010 12:28
I'm just writing up a quick post for now because I'm rather tired. We had a computer scare here yesterday, but luckily my computer programming uncle fixed the computer for us really quickly. It made me think though.

My life depends on this computer. Not only do I need it to write my books, to work on my blog, and to network with other writers, but I need it for school. The idea that it could have been dead had me in tears, had me panicking. We can't afford a new computer. What would I do without it


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On Nanowrimo

November 1st 2009 12:12
Sorry I didn't post anything yesterday. It was hectic; a friend of mine ran into some trouble and I had to help her out.

I just want to say thank you to everyone for reading and thanks to all those who participated in the workshop. I would love to see your feedback, so if you have any comments-things you thought worked well, things you thought didn't, things you think it would be interesting if I tackled next year-let me know. My email is diannalgunn@gmail.com


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Role-Playing And Writing

October 5th 2009 01:18
This is just a short post inspired by a post on another blog, Holly Lisle's. You can find the post below:

Writers Who Roll-Play
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10 Things To Look Forward To On Fictional Worlds

August 14th 2009 00:11
This is a list of ten things you can look forward to here on this blog over the coming year. I've been planning quite a few workshops and things to do around here to make life more interesting. I've also been debating making a forum for these workshops. Anyone who would be willing to help me run it should contact me at diannalgunn@gmail.com about it.

Here are some things you can expect to see


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Dear Diary 21

July 21st 2009 17:33
Dear Diary,

Today we rose before the sun and ate our breakfast early. We packed up our tents and our bags and put them in our storage wagons-my group has two. I talked briefly with the other generals, who told us to travel along the Appollinian border towards Drakor territory, stopping to help if help was needed anywhere


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Developing Your Voice

July 8th 2009 23:20
I often see writers on various forums asking the same questions. Usually they're questions about things like chapter length, pacing, character building-all those important things. One of the most frequent questions asked isn't specifically about your story though-it's about developing your voice.

Writers ask 'How does one develop their voice


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