What's Up Wednesday

Posted by Raven M on 6:30 PM in goals, inspiration, music, reading, ready. set. write!, shadow & bone, unfair, update, what's up wednesday, writing,

 
What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme started by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk where writers post about what's up by answering four questions. If you want to participate go here.



WHAT I'M READING

I bought Shadow & Bone a really long time ago but haven't gotten around to it until now. I'm looking forward to reading it because I've heard so many great things about it. I love how dark/mysterious the cover is.

It makes me wish I had the actual book instead of an e-copy because it's SO GORGEOUS. I have only read the prologue so far so I don't know how I feel about the book just yet. I'm hoping it's as good as everyone says it is.


WHAT I'M WRITING

In the post I wrote on Monday I talked about how hard it's been getting back into the groove of writing. I have been writing a lot lately so the actual getting words out isn't the problem. If I make myself not think about what I'm writing, I can write pretty fast and churn out a lot of words. But the key word is if. I just feel really unsure about my writing at the moment so I find myself reading over it as I go along, rewriting it to try to make it better, and then getting rid of it when it just doesn't work. I know this isn't a good thing to do but...I can't help it.  I NEED to learn to help it though if I want to have some kind of draft to work with at the end of the summer.

Hopefully all of these feelings will pass soon. If not, then I am still going to push through.

As for what I'm working on right now? Well Starfall isn't cooperating at the moment. I think it has to do with the fact that I don't know the characters. Though the whole story is outlined, and I know what happens, I don't know what kind of people these characters are. I want to spend a few days figuring that out, and then maybe writing it won't feel so detached.

I mentioned that I would also be working on a side project to keep me writing whenever I wasn't working on Starfall. The side project has now taken the front seat, and I hope it goes somewhere. It's a darker retelling of Snow White, which I'm really excited about writing because I love fairy-tales. If you're curious to know how it differs from the original story you can read about it here.

Goals for the week (and the rest of the summer)

I am still going to follow up on my original goals. These new goals are just more personal, something that I think is important to work on in order to stay motivated about writing.

• Don't give up
• Be more confident about writing
• Read A LOT
• Try not to read over what I write
• Don't edit as I go along
• Learn to trust myself as a storyteller

I have been feeling down about my writing lately and I've decided that part of the reason why is because I feel detached and I don't trust myself as a writer or as a storyteller. The only solution to that, I think, is to keep writing which is why I'm not going to give up. This summer is about learning as well as finishing something. So I'm going learn and grow from this experience and be proud of whatever I do accomplish once the summer ends.

WHAT INSPIRES ME RIGHT NOW

There has been a lot of things inspiring me lately. For instance the soundtrack to Snow White & the Huntman has been on repeat these past few days. It's so beautiful and every song tells a story even though they're instrumentals. Every time I listen to it I think "Ooh I can write a sword-fighting scene to this" or "This could be the scene where THAT THING happens".

If you've never listened to it before, here you go:



Other music that is inspiring me right now is Florence + the Machine but I can't listen to it while writing because then I start singing along and nothing gets done.

My Pinterest board for Unfair is also inspiring me a lot. Pinterest is an amazing thing and I love finding pictures that work with the story and then writing down why that particular picture works. As I've mentioned before, I am a visual person so all of the pictures on the board are scenes that will take place in the story.

I ran across a link to a post by Libba Bray on Twitter that I really resonated with me because it's exactly the way I've been feeling right now. It's inspirational to me because it reminds me that all writers struggle. Some might have different struggles, others might have the same. And that struggle doesn't go away once you've written one book or twenty. It doesn't go away if you have an agent or a book deal or even if you make the NYT Bestseller list. The important thing to get out of all of that is...writing is possible, completing something is possible. You just have to put one word in front of the other and it might not be easier than it sounds but writing is hard. Remembering that you're not alone...well that's the easy part.

Hearing about other people's successes has really been a huge inspiration to me this week. All of the people participating in Ready. Set. Write! (and writers in general) are amazing and I'm glad that I get to write with you guys this summer.


WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN UP TO

I'm celebrating my birthday tomorrow since my mom has to work on Friday. I never had a birthday party and it's always been a tradition of ours to spend the day together so we're just going to do it a day early so that tradition isn't messed up. I don't think I'm going to get to see Monsters University on Friday because I hate going to the movies by myself and all of my friends live in different states so I'm going to have a Lord of the Rings marathon, read, and more importantly eat cake. It might not be a glamorous way to spend the day but there isn't a right (or wrong) way to celebrate your birthday.


I hope you guys have had a great week so far.

Thanks for reading!