Abstract art and the subconscious

For the first time in months I have done art.

Yesterday, late afternoon to early evening I spent time doing art and I did it in a rebellious kind of way.

So tired of never having access to my art table I did a very childish thing and sat crossed-leg on my bed and risked ink stains on the bed covers to do it.

I did get a green splodge on my duvet, which looks black against the red polka dots that were originally on it.

But it wasn’t as messy as I thought it would be.  Paul moaned, of course he did – ink splodge on the bed covers, but he didn’t say as much as he usually does because he knows in a way, it was his fault this happened.  My art table has been taken over by the whole household, except me.

I made abstract conceptual art of a beauty boutique with inks, coloured pencils, biro and sharpies. 

I also made a lady and cut her out as part of a big collage I intend to do as part of a free course I signed up a week ago to – thing is, I haven’t done the project yet, because I couldn’t find a wooden palette big enough to continue.  I have everything else though – but the palette is meant to be the canvas!

I also learned today when experimenting with different music on Alexa that I’ve been a big fan of The Kinks my whole life and never knew.  Every song of theirs I was like… ooh this is my most favourite song of all time, I was like that with around ten of their songs I listened to.  But I’ve told you all before, I have the memory of a sieve.

I probably knew once, that I liked them.

As stupid as it sounds I thought quite a lot of their songs were from The Beatles, The Beach Boys or The Monkees to be honest.

So yeah, I learned I like The Kinks, typical really upon reflection.

A new short story series has entered my mind today, which I was also practising art for.  I wanted to make the art of a Goth girl, as the main character is Goth – I want to write three short stories before I do my plan.  The plan is, to post them here on my blog as a weekly thing. 

I probably won’t, but who knows.

It’s a black comedy comic strip.

Still intend to write the other projects, but my heart isn’t in something since I found out someone wanted to steal it, I am tired of idea thieves.  It really is disheartening.

So, that’s what I am up to lately.

To me, that’s huge progress.

I’ve been in a huge depression slump since September; this is my first creative foray since then.  Well on a major scale that lasted longer than thirty minutes in any case and wasn’t poetry either!

I’ve been eager to get heavily into art actually; particularly conceptual abstract in mixed media format and collages.

I’ve been trying to learn off and on for about a year now, what abstract art actually means – to try and develop respect for it, because to be honest with you, up until recently I had a very naïve and uneducated idea about abstract.

You know… anyone and their dog can do it.  Ouch.

Actually there is a lot of thought and feeling that goes into abstract work, a lot more than you realise.

You realise that in the first few minutes of abstract the artist genuinely doesn’t know what they are doing, they are just adding colour and shapes to the canvas to fill it up – then they layer it and cover up a lot of what they’ve done in order to make something special to them.

You see the thing is, abstract really is suggestive.  The artist sees something that you and I won’t, then give it a name based on what they see.

I remember an art class I did once in the last school I’ve ever been to – where I was at the frustrated sweaty end of a ranting art teacher, because he felt I was disrespecting the craft because I couldn’t grasp what abstract or even surrealism was at the time.  He wanted an abstract painting or sculpture of a musical instrument and I couldn’t do it for the life of me.

He forced me to read loads of books for that whole lesson and I realised what I was doing wrong.  I was attempting realism, because I thought that’s what he wanted from me.

I thought abstract at the time meant bold unusual colours with blocky patterns in it. 

When I finally grasped what he wanted, he was so happy he was bouncing off the walls for weeks and from being the most hated pupil he ever had, I became his biggest success in his words!

I realised what he wanted me to do was to create a musical instrument of my choice, but make sure it doesn’t look normal – that it looks contorted, sort of trapped between realities and maybe make it in a way in which if you squint and put your head in a certain position it will actually look like the guitar you meant for it to be.  Weird, but then again – it’s all thinking outside of the box.  We can all look at a picture, but do we really see it?

How deeply do we look at it, do we see details?  Do we try to see beyond splodges and shapes or do we take it for granted?

That’s the thing with abstract, a lot of people do take it for granted and pooh, pooh it.

The best way I’ve found in understanding abstract art, is to get used to looking at shapes in many forms.  Silhouettes are a good start.  Splodges on paper, but don’t just look at the splodges – look at them as silhouettes, what could they be the silhouettes of?

If you squint your eyes or tilt your head slightly or a lot does the silhouette look different?

That’s the understanding behind abstract art I’ve found.

Sometimes, yes, it’s just random stuff people throw on a canvas, but a large amount of abstract artists really do over think how they make things appear.

Another way in learning about abstract art that helped me was the idea of junk journaling and collage.  You take scrapbooking papers and you cut them into shapes and you paste them onto a paper, you have a square and a triangle, put them together and it is a house, but they are random colour and patterns the shapes – all of this helped me understand better.

So abstract is both the worlds of random paint throwing and thinking deeply about what you’re doing – this is something I’ve learned from almost every abstract artist.

They really do start off, just piling paint onto a canvas for ages until they squint in a certain way or tilt their head or just simply see beyond what they are doing – this is why they pause and focus on the picture regularly – they are trying to see what their subconscious has just made and it does give people a huge insight to the state of the artists mind.

It’s all subconscious, it’s not meant to be 3D realism. 

Today, I was concentrating on my abstract picture, without a hope in Hell knowing what I was doing, I just went back to being five years old and threw different shapes and colours and textures onto my canvas until I saw what looked to me to be a mess of clothes, boots and shoes all over a carnival style boutique, I outlined some things and I did some random scratches and texts and to me it works.

I didn’t intend to make it some flamboyant carnival style clothing boutique, I just wanted to paint and play.

But it is funny how my subconscious did that, because I haven’t had a shopping trip for six years, not where I can impulse buy more than £10 and in the past few days I’ve really missed my old haunts in London and the ability to go out for a shopping spree of £300 without battering an eye lid like I used to!

So by throwing myself into abstract art, I’ve found I am learning a lot about myself and my deep desires.

I really do miss London and I did notice along the flanks of the painting, it looked like some foggy scenes of a London high-street!

I missed doing art and todays lifted my spirits slightly.

Thanks for reading!

Woah what have I done?

I have been keeping very quiet about a certain little underground problem; I say it’s underground because it hasn’t actually directly been aimed at me exactly, only through hearsay.

I have the hearsay of online acquaintances that a certain vlogger has been doing her utmost to try and tarnish my reputation behind the scenes by friending anyone connected to me to get any details about me and to basically, lie about me in parts.  These online acquaintances have warned me she is doing this because of jealousy – I don’t know why, because I have never had a book published whilst she has!

I am embarrassed that this is going on behind my back, because I dislike drama llamas and I don’t engage with gossip and things like that generally, unless it gets too out of hand and it is getting out of hand because I am actually becoming concerned of the reputation of the person doing this. They don’t realise it, but they are killing their reputation with their venomous behaviour and though they are being nasty about me, I am concerned for them!

Their YouTube is slowly experiencing a death, because they prefer the quickness of Tik Tok, but they are using Tik Tok wrong.  In fact dangerously so, because they are spouting discrimination and hatefulness at every turn at a quick fire pace without realising of the consequences that this could have on their own personal lives.

Nobody wants to work with someone who is a poisonous, backstabbing, bully – to put it mildly.  I know these are strong words, but I am saying it how people would see it, if they are watching what she is doing.

She doesn’t realise that this is not a reflection of how professional she claims to be in comparison to other people who seem to be less so – it’s a reflection of her as a person and so far she is not projecting a nice persona that endears people to her – basically shooting herself in the foot in the process, when she desires the opposite effect.

She is struggling to maintain her career as far as I can see, yet, she is doing everything that is counterproductive to try and reclaim it.

This is the danger of fast paced vlogging – people can do quick-fire posts about heated discussions, defame, delete, discriminate, delete, as and when they please and they think they can do this without observers, seeing!

An example of this would be, my son, after hearing the rumors about this person decided he will go and see who she is and what she is saying.  He was horrified when she called me a C— and then deleted that comment twenty minutes later.  Why she has singled me out in particular I have no idea.

I wouldn’t have posted this if it weren’t for one major thing – the personal attack on my mixed ancestry and suggesting it’s fake and that everything about me is fake. Also ageist comments; Personal attacks like this is discrimination – it’s illegal! Don’t claim to know things via presumptions when you don’t know someone, as it will come back to bite you some day! If this continues, I will be forced to take legal action.

But because I am a person who doesn’t like to engage in drama and I like to mind my own business and wish the world luck and love – I am not going to mention their name here… why?  Because they’ve contacted enough people who know me, that the people who have been contacted by her, can already guess who the blazes I am on about.

There is only one mega bully online that is making herself famous by her vitriol of many people, not just me.

I do not like to react quickly to things like this and I have said before, that my blog posts are usually written in first draft only.  But because I don’t want to take the bait, I have edited this post six times over the course of ten days!

No doubt she will shoot herself in the foot again by posting multiple tik tok videos screeching about it whilst also having a certain grace in not naming me directly too.

Why she has decided to single me out is beyond me as we have never engaged in a conversation and we are poles apart in the genres of which we write, she is mostly a sci-fi, thriller author, whereas I am mostly a fantasy, steampunk and horror writer.

Because I am concerned for her career and her reputation, I believe it is time for me to broadcast that what she is doing is not only ruining her own future with what she is doing, but she is also engaging in illegal activity whilst doing so.  Ageism and all forms of discrimination is a crime and she can be taken to court for it, just thought she should know.

People, especially this day and age find all forms of hate grotesque and she is emulating so much venom with every post she is doing, that she is going into very dangerous territory on a personal level.

I fell into the trap of people pleasing because some things she was spreading about me was getting to me; I felt the need to try and prove everything I am doing all the time and I felt that my way of writing was wrong – but there is no right or wrong way to write.

I am not going to prove anything to anyone, because I don’t have the time and the energy to do so – whether they believe I am a writer or not, I don’t care, because I know I am one and I write profusely every day, even if I often forget to update what I am doing online to the world. 

I have a son to take care of, a house, myself, my partner, my pets, my garden, generally having a life as well as reading and writing.  Not sitting back like some young lonely sad creature who wants to bully the world because things aren’t going her way.

It is sad when some people feel that the only way to become famous is to become some kind of motor mouth of poison, of hatred, of shocks and taboo!  It’s really sad that there are people out there who have no pride in themselves that they can do this.

I bring nothing but love to people, because this world is a harsh one.  I love everybody, I wear my heart on my sleeve and I will fight for anybody who needs it; however, I am easily hurt and once I am hurt, I don’t forget, but I do tend to forgive eventually. 

I have so much love to give, it’s a shame she didn’t want to try and contact me to make friends and that she chose this route to reach out to me.

People who know me offline have always said I am a very motherly person who would adopt the world if she could; this has been something that has been said to me, even back in high school – which is why I was once nicknamed “The mother raven” I was a goth, but I loved everyone and tried my best to help the world.

The writing community is a lovely one to be a part of, when things aren’t so vicious. It’s a shame there are people out there who wants to spread evil in the world and damage communities as well as personal confidences.

That is all I am going to say now.  For me, this should end things, though I am sure in some way it may have fuelled the fire in her – but I am not responsible for how she chooses to react to the world and what I say.

However, I am responsible for my own words and actions and I take full responsibility of those words and actions and I wish to no longer engage in this vitriol – because I am not going to become one of these writers who have some stupid historical rival with anybody!

For me, I wish that anyone who engages with this person to remain silent about any more things she has to say about me.  I don’t wish to know.

Thank you for reading!

Things you shouldn’t say to a vampire!

I like you, up to a point!

You’re a bloody nuisance!

Fancy a steak?

Bite me!

Fangs for the memories

You need to go out and catch some sun!

You’ve got bats in the belfry!

Have you seen yourself lately?

Whatchya fancy to eat?

Once bitten twice shy!

Stick it to the man!

I want a shish kebab

I think I’m bleeding!

Bloody Hell!

Fancy a bloody Mary?

I’m cross with you!

Have you ever been baptised?

You’re my wing man!

Occasionally I find you a bit loopy!

You look like death warmed up!

You’re cold hearted!

Amorte!  “to death in Italian”

Should I open the curtains and get a bit of sun in here?

Do you fancy a nibble?

You suck!

Lap it up!

You’re very hypnotic

Blood is thicker than water!

You’re my battle companion! 

It’s of a grave concern

Tomb it may concern! 

I love you to death!

I’m going to break your heart!

Neck and neck!

You’re pulling on my heartstrings!

I’m bored to death!

Upon reflection isn’t a sigh of relief for you to know that my vampire stories aren’t comedies!  My vampires are part of my dark fantasy and horror works, they were not meant to be humorous, but me being me, I can’t help but think of fun things regarding my vampires from time to time – but this stuff doesn’t really belong too much in my personal vampire series. 

I have thought about having a separate comedy vampire series I’d like to write, but I really am unsure of taking that plunge due to the amount jokes already in the genre – many I have used above!

Thanks for reading!

Do you show yourself up?

I have started my writer’s journal yesterday (6^th June 2022) and I was finding it insightful rethinking how my projects developed over the years and how I have grown as a writer.

Because I get so wrapped up in my projects I often forget to post on my blog, so I often do blog posts around two weeks in advance, just to help maintain activity here – because if I don’t, the blog goes quiet for three months at a time and I don’t like to do that!

Anyway, going back to my first paragraph of this post, I discovered that certain projects were bland when I originally started them – but over time, they fleshed out really well and morphed into something completely different, even character names changed to suit the new situations that ensued.

For example, I had a young child protagonist who was originally seven years old, she then became twelve and now the character is going to be fifteen.  Simply because of how the story developed into something much different and my goals are very different today than they were back then!

I also only had around five characters that were friends of the hero and helped her on her journey; this grew to become nine solid friends and a small number of fly by helpful friends.

I decided the villain dies in the end and that so does the heroine too, but this changed, I leave no spoilers as to my current decision or you’d be looking for it in any book that sounds alike, when it gets published.

But what threw me was the fact that the book developed when I developed – I don’t mean creatively developed, I mean, its subjects developed with what was going on in my life at the time of writing…

The heroine was a runaway –then she was not.

I was a runaway at the same time this story originated in my mind, the characters plot of running away changed, when I no longer felt the need to run away in my real life. 

This is a development I didn’t notice until I revisited the writing process to add to my current projects journal – it is interesting.  I used to pooh-pooh the idea about creative people subconsciously putting their lives into print and that people psychoanalysed everything that wasn’t really there, but, you know… I think there is something about all of that!

If you write a certain theme, it’s because you think or feel or have experienced it in the past or at the present and it is coming out in your writing. 

So be careful at what you are writing out there, I know a lot of real life bitches who tend to write a lot of romantic dramas where there are mega bitches and they just think, their work is set apart from themselves… but… hey… what will literary psychoanalysts say about you in the future, what will they see in you through your work?

It does reveal a lot – I have a writer friend who writes a lot of childish roles in her stories that are not entirely based around children and she struggles a lot with her inner child, she is trying to be mature, but she just can’t hack it and she doesn’t mind I am writing this, I asked her!  But she found it amusing about how accurate this seems to be even with her!

I know another writer who always wanted to be a rock star or a Goth, but was always nervous to do so because of societal stigma, particularly within the Jewish community – so, they write those kinds of characters.  Sorry I didn’t ask them about this, but being that they aren’t named… do they really mind?  I hope not!

You don’t know it until you see it!

But you write yourself in everything!

Since learning this, it has kind of made me paranoid about what people will think about me… but then again… I am happy with who I have become and I am happy I am not who I used to be anymore, so I won’t stress too much!

I just don’t want the analysts to harp on about my mental illness all the time and look back on me with pity!  I don’t like that.

The journal has been a revelation.

What is included in the journal is my journey and thought processes about what is happening in the book – any movies or books that influenced those pivotal scenes, are my characters actually a mock-up of say, my favourite movie characters?  Yes, actually, I can see that a lot in my work!  But it is unique enough to not come across as a total rip off!  That’s very important!

I have even included lyrics which also helped me think of scenes, with references to the singer and the song name. 

Why am I doing this?

Because these journals are on a work by work basis, when I get a piece of work published I have this goal that if I sell ten thousand books, I will send out to publish these snippets from my writers journal to show my readers how I got it done and what influenced me, because I don’t know about you – but I am a very nosy reader!  When I read an author’s book, I want to know more about them as a person, what they think and what they like so I can see who influenced them!  Because I love evolution!

Being a creative, whether you are a writer, song writer, musician, artist etc; you are going through an evolution which will influence and inspire other creatives in the future.  This is exciting and I love this sort of thing!  I am obsessed with evolution, particularly the evolution of the mind, culture and society!

At this point in time, there are hundreds of works by other people who have influenced all seventy nine of my nearly finished works, yes, seventy nine!  There have been many things which have influenced me several times over in most of my works and those are;

Nox Arcana music, art and lyrics

Neil Gaiman’s works, particularly his prose and comics

Colleen Doran’s Raphaelite style artworks

Various wrestling shows with their gimmicks and storylines

Aurora Aksnes lyrics and music videos

Anne Rice vampires

Vampire movies in general

Modern gothic art, particularly by Anne Stokes

Tim Burton’s movies and artworks

Ancient myth and legends worldwide

Roald Dahl’s works and movie adaptions

Lady Gaga’s music videos and lyrics

Stephen King’s works and movie adaptions

Brian Froud and the Froud families’ artworks and puppet movies

The Mad Max series and franchise

Mafia movies and history

Max Brooks works and movie adaptions

Children’s classic bedtime fairy-tales

Marilyn Manson music videos

Queen music and music videos and adaptions

The Rocky horror picture show and its adaptions

Suzanne Collins works and adaptions

The Animals of Farthing wood

Watership down and its adaptions

Wind in the willows and its adaptions

Monty Python TV shows and movies

Terry Pratchett’s works and adaptions

Johnny Depp’s characters

Robert Downy Jr’s characters

Gabriel Byrne’s characters

Al Pacino’s characters

Bette Midler characters

Kathleen Turner characters

Pam Ferris characters

James Earl Jones characters

Bon Jovi lyrics

To name but a few, I know it’s really a lot, but its few in the real number of influences I have had over the years!

So you see – you are what you are and you can’t hide it!

Happy reading everybody!

Flying Vampire

I spread my wings and fly into the night

I soar past the moon and in my delight I dive

I dive, long and low, down, down towards the street

Brushing past strangers, I hear their hearts beat

I fly on up and up again

I wish this night will never end

I fly on until I reach a place

That brings the worst in me

For I hunger for fresh warm blood

It’s the only thing that sustains me

I reach out in the dead of night

I grab a person for a bite

I drink their blood and they can see

That I am nothing more than me

A vampire that lives dark and true

A vampire and killer through and through

Let’s hope someday I won’t kill you

The solitary vampire

I look young but I am centuries old

I look meek but I am very bold

I look sweet but I am made to kill

I look precious, yet I will kill you still

No matter how you beg and plead

No matter how much you love me

I need fresh blood and I will drink you now

I will kill you to death, which is my solemn vow

I won’t make you like little old me

Just because you worship me

I will kill you to get you out of the way

I will not have another near me; it’s always been this way

You sought a vampire, well you got me

If you had common sense you would run and flee

But I see that you don’t, so I will do what I do

I will drain the life right from you

Remorseless vampire

I am standing in the dark, drenched in blood from head to toe

I have killed him, the man on the floor

Tomorrow his family and friends will be filled with woe

Am I remorseful?  No I am not

As far as I am concerned, there he will lay and there he will rot

I have no heart within old me

I have drunk his blood, can’t you see?

Why should I care when he is many?

I need food as good as any

Be it him or be it you, I need blood, to me that is nothing new

Tomorrow I will feast again and the next day until I don’t know when

But I am a vampire, it is plain to see

So it is best if you kept your distance from me

Worrying about probably nonsense!

Other than the time back in 2003 I have never approached a publisher or an author’s agent, nor have I ever entered any kind of creative competition, whether it be for art or writing; I have never joined a writers circle either.  I have never had any real formal education on writing and not much schooling throughout my childhood.  Everything about me and my creativity is 100% self-taught and badly taught too in my opinion!

I have no idea where all these punctuation marks really should be, I have no idea about my grammar or where a paragraph should start and end, really it is all either dumb luck or a right mess, I don’t know which it is.

I don’t have much confidence in the idea of becoming a successful writer, I have said before and it is very true, I am scared that I will let people down a lot because of my health issues.  In my personal life, I let people down almost all the time.  I am afraid that I will have people wanting to publish my work but will have second thoughts about it because the writer will be a no show for at least 50% of the promotions, book signings and interviews.  In my personal life my health is so bad that a simple two hour shopping spree can set me physically back by three days.  I have more than one auto-immunity problem working against me.

I know in my heart of hearts it is unrealistic for me to have what many people would call a “real job”, writing is a real job if you get published isn’t it?  Despite publishers and agents alike stating they are working towards having more underrepresented writers, how ready are they for those who are bed bound for 10 – 16 weeks of the year?  How patient would they be in dealing with such a writer who is also deaf, too deaf to use a phone and relies heavily on face to face lip-reading, text messages or a representative to take telephone calls?

This is what holds me back in approaching publishers.  My own realism. 

I really don’t want to be told “you have a lot of talent but you are not working hard enough to promote yourself or take yourself seriously, it is a shame you are so sick, you could have gone far”.  This has happened before to me, not in the writing industry, but other forms of work, which is why I rely on benefits.

Is this something I should even put in my covering letter to an agent?  I mean, come on, if it really is like any other job, then who the blazes would ever look at my work twice if they knew that I am that sick most of the time?

Am I being too defeatist as well as a pragmatist, maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel – who knows?  Maybe there is an agent out there who can push someone like me into the limelight and support me in spite of the health problems?

I am writing this for two reasons today.  One is the fact that there has been quite a few people contacting me in the past five years in my email and on private messages on twitter and other social media, who support my work with all their heart and has asked me to send them some of the work and I have not done this.  Many have become active cheerleaders in trying to get me to write regularly and to state how my poetry amongst other things has helped them and other people through hard times in their lives.  The thing is I am too polite to verbally let people down and I don’t like dragging up my health as an excuse all the time, even though that is the primary thing.    So I let it all slide.  I don’t want to do this, I really don’t.  I really want my books out there, I really want people to enjoy my worlds, because I have put my heart and soul into my worlds for a very long time, in some of the series I have written, two decades of blood, sweat and tears have gone into them!  I need to see my characters come to life through actors and actresses on the television as this is the main motivation for me writing.  I have always written the things I have because I have always wanted to see them on TV.  They are things I want to watch.  I am a huge supporter for acting and have always wanted to get into theatre and television myself, as a writer/screenwriter and eventually producer and I know with my health problems that may never happen.  When I was younger I loved going to the drama classes during lunch break and playing with my friends various roles.  I love playing and I believe acting is the only way an adult can still play pretend with their peers and not be considered insane or childish.  The course I was doing back then was after I had a breakdown, my mother was really worried about me so signed me up for a general vocational skills course to boost what she thought was my confidence.  It wasn’t a confidence issue I had, it was severe depression due to something that had happened to me which was nasty and as usual swept under the carpet by her and never spoken about to the family.

When I went to those drama classes, my creativity ran riot.  I became a writer for short plays that we would do at the college together, I also wrote rap songs for my beat boxing friends and joined what was known as a rock choir with my gothic friends, I was a Goth back then too.

I find it really easy to write songs and poetry, it comes very quickly to me and this amazed my friends in the creative scene.  I would literally sit on the table with my legs up, write on my knees a song of any subject they chose and give it to them to sing within ten minutes max, never revised either.  I do this with all poetry even now.  It comes and in a few minutes it is posted or printed and ignored.

If I had someone tell me that I am now a full time poet, I would freak out about the ink and paper I would use daily, because I literally could throw out 5 to 10 poems an hour.

Similar things happening too since I took up my recorder practise; I can play by ear and I have composed several tunes since first starting out.  I can compose a new tune in around 90 minutes and lyrics to go with that within 10 minutes.  I am learning well in how to read and write the recorder music now.  It’s winter now and my chest is playing up, so it’s likely the recorder is going to be put away until April now, which is a shame.

The second reason I posted this, is that I am considering entering a writing competition for the first time in my life.  The Writing Magazine (which I am subscribed to) has a competition which has sparked six story ideas in my head – however, I can only afford one entry.  The competitions requires an opening line which is this “They weren’t like me”, closing date February 15^th 2020.  It is a subscriber’s only competition. 

I am running short of money and I hope there is enough ink in the printer, as it is unlikely I can afford more ink before Christmas.  I know me, the story I will choose will be done and dusted within a weekend, then it will rest a week, then I will redo it and it will be sent a month in advance.

Thousands of people will be entering this contest so I know that my chances are slim, but though I am a pragmatist I am also an optimist and I have as good a chance as anyone.  But what I want to know is… is this the sort of thing I put into a writer’s CV when approaching an agent?  If I win, I mean?

Anyway, just some food for thought!

Merry Christmas everybody if I don’t post again beforehand!

Sunday word count 1

I will try to remember every Sunday to post up my weekly word count towards novels and short stories I am working on. 

This past week I have added words towards one short story and three novels. This is not including writing down ideas of new stories I have planned, nor is it including research notes, blog posts, poetry or anything else – just novels and short stories.  The word count is not spectacular, but I am working on improving it.

The grand total this week is….

5679 words

Disappointing huh? 

Well here comes the excuses; this is actually a slow week for me because I haven’t done much writing this week at all in comparison to my normal writing week.  Why?

My desktop computer monitor decided to die on me for two days.

I don’t cope well with the heat, prone to heat stroke and breathing problems.

My son is off from school for the next six weeks, so my writing count is usually cut by half on school holidays.

I have been reading and researching more.

I have been learning about make-up application and have been addicted to watching Nabela Noor and Jeffree Star on YouTube, I discovered them last week.  When I gave up being Goth around 15yrs ago I never really learned how to use make up and never wore make up since and I am getting to the point I need coverage, ha-ha.

So there are the excuses, I only watch an hour of YouTube a day this past week, so it’s not stealing that much from me in regards to writing time, considering I rarely watch TV, so TV is rarely a distraction for me – I tend to watch programs whilst writing, programs that doesn’t need me to look at the screen too much such as The Proms, radio channels, or the occasional glimpse at nature documentaries such as David Attenborough or the Spring Watch team.  I lose my hearing too much at random times, so I have learned not to make my life revolve (or is it evolve?) around TV, because I often have to use subtitles and get to hear virtually nothing a lot of the time anyway.  So I have learned to be a reader/writer/researcher, unless my eyes go on me, then I am going to be OK regarding entertainment.

It is because my hearing levels are so random from one day to the next, that I can no longer keep my secretarial and classroom assistant jobs that I used to have.  Hearing loss is a big bother because I can’t do much independently regarding going to a doctor and hearing them, I need someone with me who can interpret via lip syncing to tell me what the doctor has just said, it is even worse when dealing with things on a confidential front such as banking, particularly telephone banking when online banking goes wrong – you have no idea how many companies out there do not accept a speaker on a deaf persons behalf, I am only glad I am not a deaf mute, because then I would seriously have problems.  I often have to try and talk to someone I can’t hear on a phone, hoping my husband or someone else can interpret for me as long as I give them verbal permission over the phone, my goodness, I feel for the mutes.  Especially as three years ago I had a throat infection that lead into the ears that was so bad I had laryngitis for 4 months solid, so I have experienced temporary muteness and I did have a banking problem then, that I couldn’t solve until I could speak, 6 weeks to get a fraudulent act on my online payments sorted out, because I could not voice that I gave my husband permission to handle it over the phone for me!  For 6 weeks my account was blocked because I could not verify that I gave permission, I am only thankful that my account doesn’t pay any major bills.

Well anyway, going back onto my writing I could have written a lot more if it weren’t for the interruptions, I would say as much as 16k more words and I don’t expect my word count to be beyond 10k a week whilst the school holidays are here.  I do most of my writing in the living room on a desktop computer and my son rarely leaves the room and is often loudly shouting about his robots in the robot wars arena he has made on the carpet and his robot wars videos he watched on YouTube overtakes the music I put on to get me into the mood for writing fiction.  It is easier to write poetry and research and make research notes or further synopsis’s of new stories than it is to write towards novels or short stories for competitions during the day.  Most of my writing at the holidays happens between 11pm and 1am, but Henry is suffering from some emotional issues right now which mean that my days can be very challenging and tiring by the time night falls.

When the holidays are over I write sparsely throughout the day because of my ADD and therefore I can often get 3k words done on some days.  Well anyways, the future will show and tell if I can remember about Sundays.  You will see patterns of no writing at all some weeks, because I get health problems which mean I can’t even read a book at times, such as a chest infection with a running nose, where I am busy literally every single second trying to keep myself together and alive without choking.  Sad but true, I have an immunity issue that is much better since having a radical diet change but I still get long illnesses. 

Anyway, I will update my weekly word count towards short stories and novels every Sunday. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

Nightmare of writer’s block or the stories argument!

Gargoyles, leprechauns and witches oh my, they sit and clog up in my head. No room for vampires they always say, aren’t vampires now nearly dead?
They always have been, I reply, that’s their charm and wonder and grace.
But the others they sit and they frown in despair as though I have slapped their face!
Stop this jealousy, I always cry, it’s the vampires turn not yours
But the leprechauns sit and they chastise me a lot for not allowing them to finish their wars.
Then the witches with their bleak little cackles threaten to curse me if I forget, to add to their stories a little more gory, about a curse they’ve beset.
The gargoyle just moans and groans and cries out words like ALAS! Get on with my story, do not ignore me or I will kick you up the ass!
Now that’s quite enough bad language from you, says I with a determined glare
If I want to sit and write something else, I shall and it’s the vampire’s lair!
Not him again, they all shout and cry once again for the umpteenth time, you have to finish us before you start another story, song or rhyme!
Oh for peace sake, I say in an irate moan, I’ll burn you to ashes if I please, if you annoy me just once more you’re out of the door, stop bringing me to my knees
It is vampires tonight, whether you want it or like, I need to get them down too, so I start on the story, it’s a little bit gory, so the vampire sits in the queue.
Why stop there in my elaborate lair? Asks the vampire looking at me
Oh don’t you start, I say to him, don’t become like the other three!
Just leave me alone whilst I sit and think and sip at my sweet black tea.
Now where was I? I say to myself, oh yes, the miserable banshee!

The poem above reflects on my exact thoughts as a writer.  My stories which are put on hold are literally lining up to nag me to think of them even now I intend to focus on just one or two.  I hope a lot of writers who have unfinished projects agree that they also go through the same thing as me, because if not, then perhaps I need a therapist, ha-ha!

I often struggle with which of my stories to concentrate on day to day; some ideas have been coming on and off the shelf for the last twenty six years, yes, twenty six years!  I have stories about leprechauns, gargoyles, witches, banshees, and zombies, girls cooped up in a mental asylum, demon animals, vampires and many more.  Back in 2009 I decided to make a list of all the stories I had started but never finished past the first draft and the list came to 76; I lost the list when moving house and I have since added to it, I also lost a lot of papers when moving house so a lot of the ideas I started are lost somewhere in time and space.

Due to the motivational archive I found on YouTube recently, I discovered that it’s not that I lacked momentum when I was writing for all these years; I lacked consistency with sticking with something to the end.  I didn’t prioritise which idea I wanted to finish the most and that is what I have been focusing on since mid-September, I have been trying to focus my ideas on just two books and I have set myself a goal, which the archives suggested would help me.  I am to finish the leprechaun novel by June 2019 but the vampire novel must be finished by the end of January. 

The vampire novel I am working on is part of NaNoWriMo, but I know in my hearts of heart that 50,000 words is just too short for the story I am writing, wrimo is merely giving me the boost that I need to press on with it, so I shan’t be stopping at the end of November.  I also found other sites where writers can set their own goals, I found it through http://writetrack.davidsgale.com and there is another one called http://nanocountdown.com/advanced.html  you can set your own schedules and daily word count, it helps keeps you focused.

There will be another, very short post later on today when I have finished writing for the day to update you on how much I’ve done on the monthly challenge and other writing projects.

Ciao for now.