Image: A Writer’s Best Friend ~ © CJ Levinson 2011
Been busy writing the last few weeks, so haven’t had much time for an update until now. The novel’s coming along quite well; I’ve had to rethink how to approach it a bit as some of it wasn’t working but on the whole I’m happy with how it’s progressing. Looking at having the first draft finished around late-June with a little luck.
The main development is that I’ve settled on a working title at last. At the moment I’m calling it The Forgotten Kingdom. Not sure if that will be the final title yet but it suits the story quite well. I’ll be posting a new video about the novel in a few days – the title will probably make more sense then.
Unfortunately I’ve been struggling with writer’s block and staying focused as well, so that’s made the writing go a bit more slowly than I had wanted. I was expecting to run into a few problems though as I haven’t written anything this long before, so I’m not too worried about it overall. Actually one of the good things is that it’s let me try out a new writing exercise that’s helped a lot and I’m very happy with.
The idea’s quite simple really: every time I find myself stuck, I stop and try to think of something new I’ve learnt that day. It can be anything – an interesting fact, a funny or personal observation, a joke, a unique thought – as long as it’s something I learnt or realised that day. Then I write about it; sometimes just a short description, other times a short story or a poem inspired by it. The length isn’t really important; it’s that it distracts me but still allows me to keep writing so I don’t lose the flow and when I come back, I feel much more focused and the writing seems easier.
I’m not sure how well it would work for other people but it’s worked very well for me so far. And as a bonus it’s given me a list of all the new things I’ve learnt each day as well, everything I’d normally just end up forgetting.
So as I haven’t posted in a while I thought it’d be fun to share some of them. I won’t post any of the writing samples as they’re too long but these are are some of the more random things I’ve learnt and thought about during the past month. Some are obvious, some are just fun or silly observations, some are things I’ve learnt about myself, and others are just interesting facts I’d never heard before.
I hope you enjoy the list. I might even turn this into a monthly feature. So what have you learnt this month? 😉
