I wrote the first draft of my fifth novel in the first half of 2023 (which I’m very proud of, since it was a slog and I had to keep forcing myself to work on it, but I’m really pleased with the eventual result). I have useful comments from my wonderful editor, Amie, and […]
Tag: Habits
Social Media Adventures
As a writer in the modern world, I’ve often been told I need to have a ‘social media presence’. As someone born in the 1970s, I’ve always felt an aversion to social media in terms of not really understanding it and having no interest in engaging with it. Then, in June 2023, I […]
Slogging Along
I’m really not sure what’s going on with my current novel. I call it ‘novel number five’, but that’s not entirely accurate, because number four never got past 40k words, so it can’t really be called a novel, but hey…. Anyway, I first dreamed up (literally!) the idea for number five in April […]
Contrary Brain
I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for some time but haven’t got around to it until now. That’s partly because I’ve been very busy with editing work and my own writing, but also because my attitude to the planned subject matter is still shifting (so much so that I just changed the title […]
Changing Goal Types
The second half of 2022 was a struggle in terms of bolstering my creativity. I felt like I didn’t achieve that much and that I was always trying to force myself to work on my writing projects, and generally failing. Doing an objective review of what I achieved across the year showed me that […]
Motivational Misdirection
Brains are so weird… I’ve spent months trying to ‘get back into a proper routine’ and get my fifth novel back on my list to work on. I’ve made so many plans to go to the cafe and ‘really focus’, to alternate client and personal projects in my schedule, to keep working on stuff […]
Baby Steps
A couple of months ago, I edited a book for a client about being productive and achieving your goals if you struggle with ADHD. One of the items in the book was a list of habit tracking apps – I had a look through and was attracted by Habitica, which has an RPG theme. You […]
Struggling For Routine
The fact that I haven’t written a non-Weeknotes blog entry in nearly seven weeks perfectly encapsulates the theme of this one – struggling to get back into a routine. I don’t think I’ve managed what I would consider my ‘proper’ routine since before my last writing retreat at the start of June. I keep […]
Post-Covid Fatigue
When I went on retreat at the start of June, I was fresh from completing the latest draft of novel number three, and I had two fantastic new book ideas I was really looking forward to working on while I was away. That retreat week was phenomenal – I constructed a full chapter outline for […]
Back on Retreat
I first attended a residential retreat in Devon with Urban Writers’ Retreat in January 2017. Since then, up until January 2020, I went on retreat with Charlie two or three times a year. Then, of course, retreats weren’t possible for a couple of years – but now I’m back! This is day six of […]