Reading, Writing, Editing and Planning, Oh My!

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I finished Hope’s story on Thursday, much to my relief. Because coming up to Christmas things will start to get really busy, even if I’m not working.

I’m hoping to start Grace’s story in January, because when I write, I like to keep the flow going by writing every day, and with Christmas, then New Years, there would be too many disruptions for me to keep the continuation of the story. And as I explained last week, Grace’s story is actually going to be the second story, even though I’ve written it last. There is an overarching story over all three stories, and threads of that will need to be woven in with Grace’s story and then continued on when I edit Hope’s story. This is the story of their dad, who left the girls when they were young, after their mother died. I also plan on writing a prequel novella and sequel novella to wrap up the story.

And talking of stories, I’ve headed back into Finding Sam Healey and reworked my first chapter or two. The first part of the book are letters, so that part has been edited. And now I’m into the diaries part. I’m enjoying what I’m reading and sometimes surprise myself with how much I like what I’ve written.

I’m toying with my next few stories and starting to think about my plan for next year. There will be at least two books published, possibly three, but we’ll see how we go. Planning the next twelve months will be fun.

Winning at Writing

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November was National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I took part, and won. I finished writing 50,000 words on 27th November. But I haven’t finished writing the story yet, there is about 5k left to go.

I wrote Hope’s story, Hope is the eldest sister out of Faith, Grace and Hope. She got together with Thor (Thorndon is his real name, but he hates it), and their romance was instantaneous. Then it imploded, and imploded again.

When I write a story, I like to have a general outline of how I want the story to go. This story deviated so far off that general outline, that to be honest, I’ve probably been pantsing most of it, or discovery writing is the new term for it.

Hope and Thor have an interesting relationship, and its grown. I kind of had in mind that Hope would be devastated after a fellow racer is injured and that Thor helps her to find her way. But characters sometimes have a way of hijacking your story. But I have to say, I like where the story is going.

My next mission is to write Grace’s story, and hers is a Second Chance romance. This one will be interesting, because I have already written about Lachlan being involved in her life in this story (because originally Grace was the eldest), and that means that they are already back together. Oh yeah, Spoiler Alert!

I’m taking a break over the Holiday period, because a) I need to find a job and b) I need to work out how I want Grace’s story to go. Hopefully it will come to me, otherwise…eep!

Visual Writer

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When writing, we often talk about pantsing or plotting, and now it’s starting to be recognised as a continuum, rather than one or the other. Which is kind of nice, because I don’t really fit in either camp. I do plot, yes, but I also only briefly outline my story, and allow the story to take me where it wants to go.

Which brought me to another interesting fact. Some people are visual thinkers and others are verbal. What I mean by that, is some people think with words, others think with pictures. It is just one of those things that makes us all different.

When I’m writing, the story will play out like a movie in my head. For an example, in my recent story, with Hope Hart and Thor, Thor was having an argument with another person (spoiler alert averted), and I could see them bickering back and forth, and my fingers honestly couldn’t keep up with the words that they were saying to each other. I felt like I was Hope, standing on the sidelines watching this bickering unfold before me.

I also dream in colour. I remember because the colours are so vivid, and I have woken up a couple of times with a deep red dress or gold ring on my mind. I also dream every night, although my psychologist told me that trying to remember and interpret my dreams was a form of overthinking – which is a negative thing. While I don’t try to interpret them anymore, sometimes a dream will disturb me enough to impact me through the day.

So, technically, I’m a plotting pantser, who see’s movies in her head when writing, and dreams in technicolour glory! Lol.

Enough Mucking Around, Time to Get Serious.

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It’s nearly two weeks since I quit my job, so now I have to sort it out.

I’ve been writing, gardening, studying, spring cleaning my house, now I need to get back out there and find a job. The thing is, I don’t know what I want to do, and whether I want to be fulltime or part time.

Fulltime work would give me the money to be able to continue my writing and cards until the money from those keep coming in, but I’m also trying to get my proofreading business off the ground, and my cards, and my writing, so would part time suit that better?

I’d love to be able to not work at all, and just focus on my cards and writing, unfortunately I have had less than stellar sales in my books, and I haven’t sold any cards yet, so it really isn’t such a good idea to just try and exist on thin air.

I have a partner and a son. We share the costs of living between the three of us. And if I’m not paying, then unfortunately, there would be a few bills that didn’t get paid.

Now, if I could get something that paid mega bucks for few hours, that would be fantastic, but the chances of that are relatively slim. I’m no executive or manager, so I’m not even going to apply for those sorts of jobs. Fortunately I live in an area full of orchards, and now is a good time to find a job. There’s apple thinning, then pruning, then picking, then packing. That will last through until May. If I put aside enough money, I might not have to work over winter, which would be more than ideal, however I don’t see that working out.

Oh well, one day at a time, one step at a time. I’ll get there. I’ll work out what I need to do for the next part of my life journey.

Multiple Beginnings

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So, I did a thing this week. It was rather an epic thing. If not the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

I love my job, I really do, but there is one aspect of it I don’t like, and we’ve had to be doing it since the end of last year. And that is mowing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind mowing, but when you’re mowing a rest home. No, let me rephrase that, Push mowing a rest home lawn.

For weeks, I’ve been stressed about mowing and weed-eating the lawns. I struggle with weed-eating, because it hurts. I have tennis elbow which started about the same time we started mowing the lawns. Anyway, I know what stress looks like in my body, and my eyebrow was starting to twitch. I also noticed that my multivitamins weren’t working quite like they used to, so I brought more vitamin b to help me with my stress.

But it all came to a head on Tuesday, when we were supposed to mow. I hadn’t had a lot of sleep the night before, and to be honest, I was looking for a fight. So, I started one, with my boss.

And then I quit. I told her where she could stick the job, and I told my boss in Auckland as well.

To start with, I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, and after talking with my immediate boss (who is an absolute sweetie to be honest,) she made me promise that I would think it over before I made a final decision. After an epic walk home, I had a sleep. I literally slept on it.

That night, I wrote a formal letter of resignation to my bosses. If there was a chance of not mowing, I probably would have stuck around, however, that wouldn’t have happened anytime soon.

While I’m sad to be leaving my job, I’m looking at this as an opportunity to move forward, find something new to do, and look at doing part time work so I have more time for my writing and other business ideas that I have.

And while I’m nervous, because I don’t have anything lined up, I’m also confident that something will come up that will make me as enthusiastic as I was about gardening.

And talking about new beginnings, I also started writing Hope’s story, the next character in my Racing Harts story, and I’m already 18k in. I’m taking part in NaNoWriMo, and so far, I’ve clocked in over the daily limit to get the story done by 30th November. I’m quite excited about this story, and even though it is the second story in the trilogy, I have a feeling that it will eventually become the third story, so I am kind of aiming it that way as well.

I hope you all have a good week out there. Think of me, and if you know of any part time work, let me know.

Back to Writing

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After two weeks of not writing, I am now back into it. I was trying to decide whether to try and write and finish a book before the end of the year, and decided, why not.

I started writing Hope and Thor’s story, the next in my Racing Harts series. Hope is currently the middle sister, and she races Sprint cars. However, I have decided that after writing the third story, Grace (the eldest) and Hope might swop ages, and Grace will become the middle child, only because Grace, who races Rally Cars, will fit between, race and time wise, between Faith and Hope. The motorbikes race over the summer, then the rally cars over the winter, then sprint cars during the speedway season. But that’s a problem for future Karen.

And to make things more interesting, I’m doing NaNoWriMo. That stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s because November is a quiet month in the United States, where this idea came from. I’ve participated in SoCNoC which is Southern Hemisphere version when KiwiWriters was a thing.

What does NaNoWriMo actually mean? Well, it means that you write 50,000 words over the 30 days of November. Some people will cringe at that and think it must be hard. Some will wonder why I would put so much pressure on myself. I, myself am wondering why I wanted to do this, but then I look at Hope and Thor, and I know how much I enjoyed writing Faith and Cole’s story, that I wanted to continue. And if I finish before December, it means that I wrote three novels this year. Which is pretty darned cool and might mean that I have more than two novels to publish next year.

Of course, to overcommit myself further, I’ve signed up for the New Zealand Certificate in Business – a Level 4 study of setting up a small business in New Zealand. I thought that since I want to get serious with my writing, cardmaking, and proofreading, that I really should get some understanding behind me to start the business. I’m scared that I’m pushing myself too much, but if I can just get Hope and Thor’s story written before December, then I can have most of December and January off before pushing into new writing projects.

But we’ll have to see if I get NanoWriMo first.

Imposter Syndrome

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When I first got my Insurance Assessing Certificate, I felt like I could get called out at any time for being a fraud. When I first started writing, I wondered if anyone would tell me that I couldn’t write stories. I felt like a fake, that I wasn’t actually capable of doing my job.

It’s called imposter syndrome, and surprisingly, a lot of people get it. And the best part – if you get it, chances are you are probably capable. It’s a feeling of inadequacy in your skills.

So, why do you get that feeling? Mostly, it’s because you feel insecure, either in yourself, your abilities or your environment. It is a form of anxiety that affects most of us at some stage in our life.

Funnily enough, I’m qualified in gardening and organic gardening, and yet don’t get imposter syndrome about my work. I think this is because I am confident in my abilities, I know what I am doing, and I know the environment that I’m working in.

And slowly, I’m feeling less like a fraud when I’m writing, because with each story I publish, the more I learn about my skills and craft.

And I’m about to embark on starting a new business doing something that I once had a lot of imposter syndrome around, proofreading. I studied it a few years ago, as an opportunity to read some great stories, but I was worried that people would think I wasn’t good enough. The fact is, I’m not perfect, and admitting this has really helped to realise that I can actually proofread and provide the feedback needed, so I’m starting up a side business to proofread, I’m still working out the nuts and bolts, but it will all come together. When, I don’t know, but hopefully soon.

And the Edits Start

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Last year I wrote Finding Sam’s Family, which I changed the name to Finding Sam Healey, to reflect the Finding Yourself series which started with Finding Amy Archer. I thought having the surname worked better than ‘family’. While I’m editing, I refer to my book by the initials, in this case, FSH. FAA was Finding Amy Archer. It’s just something I do.

When I’m editing, I do a quick read through, taking notes on post its before I sit down, with said post its and work through the story, and incorporating any of the changes I thought of. This might be as simple as ‘change the start of the story’ to ‘first person POV (point of view). Once I’ve worked my way through some of the edits, I will bundle up a bunch of them and send them to my critique partners for them to read and make sure that it makes sense, that they like the characters, and the storyline follows logic.

Once I get the critiques back, I work through them and make any changes that may be needed. Sometimes it can be hard to swallow some of what the partner’s say, but sometimes it is crucial to the story, so changes are made. If both say the same thing about the same part of the story, then I know that something needs to be worked on.

Once I’ve edited the next section, I send away to the critique partners and I get it back, and this continues until the story is edited thoroughly. I then put it through a spell / grammar check, and I listen to the story being read back to me. It’s surprising how many words are missing, or wrong words used until you hear it back.

Once that’s all done, I normally book it in with my editor, unless I have already done that. But a novel can take me a couple of months to get through, so even though I’ve started editing, it might not be finished until January, all depending on how I go.

At this stage, I’m looking at booking the editor for February, and hopefully release Finding Sam Healey May next year.

At this stage, I haven’t started writing anything new. I like to have a break, plus still trying to work out if I want to do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November. I’ve done it before, and I’ve done Camp NaNo, which I also won. I like to have a break to allow my creative juices to flow, and they are flowing. I have about five story ideas lurking in the depths of my brain.

Hope you all have a lovely week. Take care out there.

I’m Finished. Now What?

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I finally finished Faith’s story this week. Oh, how that woman tested me. I certainly was losing Faith, but I knew how I wanted the story to end. And dammit, I ended it my way.

So now that’ I’ve finished Faith’s story (one of three sisters who are into racing, hence Racing Harts being the series name), what do I do with the story.

Well, I let it sit. For a while. Some authors jump straight into editing, but to be honest, I kind of like to let mine sit for a bit longer, normally about six months. Then I will pull it out, do a quick read through, making note on sticky notes (which I LOVE), and then I work through and start editing, changing bits here, things there, adding in a dash of spice, a touch of pepper, stir and mix. Then I send it to my critique partners. The read through it, laugh out loud then confirm that it’s a bunch of bullsh!t and I feel terribly bad. No, seriously, by the time I’ve edited it the first time, I think it’s crap. My critique partners come back with thoughts, any comments about plot holes – (what happened to this guy in your story?), and generally their opinion about the story. These are actually very helpful, and after drinking plenty of whisky, I actually allow myself to sit down and read what they’ve said.

The final part of my editing process is going through the story AGAIN, and then listening to it being read on my computer. It really picks up lots of errors and missing words that others had missed, because we sometimes all know where the story is going.

Once I’m happy with the story, I send it to my lovely editor who reads it through and then comes back to me with edits that may be required. Mostly they’re grammatical errors, because for some reason writers write, they don’t talk or do grammar. (Writers don’t math well either.)

So, there you go, that it what happens to my story from start to finish, which generally takes a year from starting writing to publishing it.

Now, I’m not doing much writing, because I am in the process of formatting Compromising Positions and getting it put up for pre-order.

I hope you had a great week. Take care out there.

Catherine

Romancing Aotearoa and Beyond

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Why did I choose this tagline to go with, and who or what is Aotearoa? I live in New Zealand, and the Maori name is Aotearoa, which means Land of the Long White Cloud. And when you are flying around New Zealand, or at sea looking back, all you can see is a layer of cloud on the horizon.

I was born and bred here. I have only ever ventured overseas twice, once when I was fifteen, to Australia for three weeks, and again when I was 35 to Fiji for a long weekend. I never did my OE (Overseas Experience) and I have never regretted it. I’ve always loved the country that I live in and want to stay here.

So, Aotearoa, New Zealand, it is a beautiful green country. Green as in the colour. We have a lot of native bush that is various shades of green, with the occasional splash of yellow or red. We have lots of pasture, which are home to sheep, beef and various other animals.

But it is the native bush that has me. I love the bird song that comes with the native bush. We have some weird and wonderful birds, most of them pretty drab by overseas comparisons, but they are beautiful none-the-less. The Tūī (parson bird), bellbird (korimako), fantail (Pīwakawaka), Weka, Pukeho, Kākā, Kea, Kākāpō, shining cuckoo, morepork (owl), grey warbler (Riroriro); their dawn chorus birdsong is unique and beautiful, except at 4am when the bellbirds first haunting single note reverberates through the forest.

The smell of the forest after a rainstorm, the dampness of the leaflitter, the coolness of the breeze through the trees, the noise of the branches and leaves rustling, it’s a magical place that transports me to New Zealand when there were no inhabitants here, before the Maori, the Mori Ori.

New Zealand has a population of just over 5 million people, so we have a lot of space compared to many countries, and I guess that is part of my love for the country, the wide open spaces, the national parks where we can experience birds in their native environment.

I just love New Zealand. What more can I say? If you want to see for yourself, check out this video for Helicopter Lines