Untitled

1.

Heading off home.

God I'm tired. Definitely won't be doing any writing on this flight.

2.

To be honest, I'm a little stuck.

But I am pretty sure I have a key called guilt.

Posted via email from The Eternity Project

1.

I hate getting ahead of myself, I really do.

Now I have to go back and stitch things back up together.

I can't believe I forgot such a major plotline. Bah.

2.

This will probably jinx me but I have not forgotten to refer to myself as Emily rather than anything else for awhile.

3.

I hate writing action scenes.

I really really do.

I told @redrobinreader I'd attempt some fancy paper art with sharp objects and paper silk. I may make a model and people cut-outs and see where that takes me. But anyway, I've skipped the rest of the action scenes, and will write the pivotal scene so I can continue on.

That should take me past 30k!

1.

Thinking of getting this blog done up right. Talking to Parajunkee Designs. If you have any other suggestions, please do let me know.

Incidentally, I am now at Posterous.

There will be different content over there for the foreseeable future.

2.

I'm writing about 2 pages -- about 500 words a day. Since the start of May, which means a nice 7k or so.

The next few days will be slow. I'm writing a rousing declaration of war. Note to self: Bush II must have made some speeches about the War on Terror, and I must study them to see what he did right/wrong at some point. Probably should consider Churchill and a few others too.

3.

I'm playing EchoBazaar. Possibly the greatest waste of time on Earth, but I need to sorta disappear from a few places online and therefore I need a new obsession.

1.

I am still on the wrong continent.

2.

Hurricane Forever is also still on the wrong continent. I thought my sooperwoman would already be in her new home by now. Bah.

3.

I started Northern Expression's Celtic Leaves. Such a lovely piece.

But I desperately need to either stop talking about my needlework on this blog, or to somehow reconcile this identity with my other online identity.

The latter would be preferable, but I am also certain that it is a problem to which there is no solution.

4.

I think my Monday posts are going on temporary hiatus until I get my act together to start blogging again. It makes me feel very lazy, but hey, I am very lazy.

1.

I rather think I've been neglecting this blog for too long.

But I did try to return to the UK, got stuck in Dubai and decided to return to Singapore, so I do sort of have an excuse.

2.

Dubai is an inspiration.

It is what I imagine a charter city that's run out of money would look like.

Certainly, it does not meet the definition of a charter city. But the point of a charter city is that build it, and they will come.

They came, they saw, they left.

3.

I ran into a stop for most of the last week.

But it's kick-started again.

The first time in my life that my synopsis has actually helped me.

Introversion

1.

I think that a writer complaining about having to promote oneself despite being an introvert is a cop out.

2.

I’m not surprised that most writers are introverted. It is a job where one spends a great deal of time alone. In the long-run, it’s probably a benefit.

3.

But I see being a people-person as being more of a facet of one’s personality. It’s almost like a  muscle. It must be stretched and worked and then you’ll end up with something more.

4.

My greatest achievement in my three years of university isn’t learning to live on my own, much less my degree – such as things stand at the moment.

It’s strengthening my people-person muscle to the point where most of the people I know think I’m pretty extroverted.

After all, I’m always out and about, and the first to accept an invitation to head out with people.

Sometimes, I over-extend myself. In which case, I grit my teeth and get on with it if I have to, and cancel if I can. 

5.

I wasn’t going to post this today. I had something else in mind.

Then I came across this post on Jay Lake’s blog, which sent me to this post by Jessica Reisman.

I think Reisman has a point. I think on average, it’s better to be an extrovert than an introvert if you want to achieve something that requires a great deal of public (defined as other than friends & family) approval.

At least, it just might be easier.

Focus

1.

Some people call it in the zone. Writers like Justine Lee Musk call it ‘writing deep.’

In one of my favourite books, S.L. Viehl’s Blade Dancer, a trainer at the assassin school the protagonists are studying at comments that Sajora (I don’t have the book with me, so it might be Jakol instead) has found the ‘sword within herself’ (again, the book’s not with me, so this is most probably a paraphrase.

For me, it boils down to this: Don’t Think, Just Do.

2.

This latest exam period, I discovered just how difficult some people find it to reach that state of mind, and how much more difficult many people find it to stay there.

3.

You need to push.

For some people, it’s all rather Zen.

I think of it as The Push – I suspect this I stole from Lilith Saintcrow’s The Society series, because one of the protagonists is able to ‘push’ people into doing stuff.

Having said all that, I tend to think of life as a war rather than a path, etc.

4.

You can learn how to Push yourself.

Successful creative people aren’t just creative people. They do things that help support what they create.

For a writer, this might include PR, web design, networking and bookkeeping.

I think something that successful people often are able to do, but is rarely talked about, is the ability to direct creative energy outside their preferred outlet of expression.

5.

You can do wonders if you just have the energy and the willpower to get it done.

And if you can commit that much for writing, you can do the same for the rest of your life.

1.

I may have done something really silly today. But it will make me read more fiction and right now, that’s a really good thing.

And god, please don’t let me accidentally send an email from the wrong account.

2.

Night 1-2-3 pages are definitely better for me. Infinitely better.

I still don’t make the full half an hour, but I think I could get there someday.

3.

I settled for the solution I already had. I figure that since I didn’t yet have another solution, if there was one, it still needed to cook and I might as well ‘practise’ some more.

I think it’ll work out though. My sooperwoman wears her new sooperpower more comfortably than the previous, fuzzy one.

I’m keeping to a one page a day or so minimum too. Some days are easier than others, but none of them painful.

4.

I like that. I think from now on, I shall call my female protagonists sooperwomen and male ones soopermen. It sounds much better than the heroines and heroes of romance, and not nearly as clunky as XX/XY protagonist.

Main character is more inclusive, but it doesn’t really touch on the fact that most – okay, all – my work so far tends to revolve around a love story.

Blogging

1.

This isn’t the first blog I’ve had. Not even close. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three previous ones.

Two I kept for a good long while, with regular updates. One must have had over a thousand posts over its several-year lifespan. Maybe even two thousand. I suspect that I can check because I don’t think my attempts to delete them were successful.

But some things are best left dead in the water and hopefully decomposing into nothingness

2.

For most of my blogging life, I have had more than one blog a time. Sometimes because I contributed elsewhere, but mostly because I wished to keep my book blog and my writing blog separate.

To be honest, I don’t know why I wanted the separation. I did think it was better for my audience, such as it were.

But it was hard, especially towards the end.

I am a writer first, and a reader second. The fact that I am a writer too has changed the way I read.

3.

Which brings me to this: consolidation.

I don’t have the time for more than one blog. But at the same time, I do want a blog.

I like that I have a platform to say whatever it is I want to say, and I am arrogant enough to think that what I have to say is worth reading. It is, naturally, your prerogative to disagree – in which case, I do have to ask, why are you reading this?

4.

Especially since this blog is more about and for me than any of the previous ones I have had in the past. Which isn’t to say that I don’t welcome comments, because I do, but simply to say that this blog is focused on me.

As I told a sooper-dooper writing pal in an email today, this blog is my mental space for Emily Cardinal*, and Emily Cardinal is this person who’s writing this novel without a title** about reincarnation, obsession, and how the world will/could/should/might/should not change in allegory.

*In case you did not realise, I am not Emily Cardinal in my day-to-day life.

**I am waiting for inspiration to strike so that I can change the tag from TLOL to something else. And no, it does not stand for The LOL. Well, it does, but not in the Laugh Out Loud kind of way.