Tag: fiction

5-year writing goal: first draft nearly done!

Five Year Writing Goal

do you have goalsI’m taking part in Misha and Beth’s Five Year Project and my five-year goal is to write a novel and get it published.

First step: write the first draft.

This is my monthly recap on how I’m doing. Continue reading “5-year writing goal: first draft nearly done!”

Writers: using the right and left sides of your brain

The Creative Zone is a magical place – but when we deliberately set out to get back into The Zone – guess what? We can’t find our way back. And the more we try, the harder it seems. If only we knew where it was… Does The Zone really exist as an anatomical entity in our brains? Where is it?

The Creative Zone

For writers, the Creative Zone is a wonderful place to be. The Zone is where everything seems possible, our thoughts fly free and words just flow onto the page without any struggle or effort.  Although the work we produce in The Zone will need to be shaped and edited at a later date, it is in The Zone – this magical place – that we weave and spin the raw material that forms the basis of our finished writing. Continue reading “Writers: using the right and left sides of your brain”

Learning from mistakes: writing my new novel

My old novel had been a monster that had threatened to eat me alive. The new novel was going to be different. I was going to tame the beast before it got the better of me.

spacer - Ruth Livingstone - writer

Giving up is hard

Notebook with red crossA couple of months ago I gave up on a novel I had been trying to write for a few years. I analysed what had gone wrong and listed some of the problems in a blog post: Why I Abandoned My Novel .

Giving up was a difficult decision to make and I spent some time convincing myself I was doing the right thing. In writing – as in anything in life – making mistakes is OK. This is how we learn. To stay cheerful, I found a great collection of quotes on learning from mistakes and many of these quotes come from some very good writers. Continue reading “Learning from mistakes: writing my new novel”

5 year writing project: get a novel published

I started writing during NaNoWriMo in November 2011. The words just flew onto the page. 50,000 in a month. Easy! But come December, I had lost my steam.

Should you ever abandon a novel?

editing novel - Ruth LivingstoneI have been writing a novel for 3 years. It is a great story. I know the characters well. The finished product is clear in my mind.

I started writing during NaNoWriMo in November 2011. The words just flew onto the page. 50,000 in a month. Easy!

But come December, I had lost my steam. I started going back and fiddling. Now some of the early chapters looked pretty good. But I lost my forward momentum. And I got finally bogged down about two-thirds of the way through. I guess I hit what is often known as the “soggy middle”.

Now, all the standard advice goes like this: just finish it. It doesn’t matter what sort of mess you have written, you can knock it into shape during the editing stage. Continue reading “5 year writing project: get a novel published”