Editor's Endeavour: Lazy-itis

Our editor, Annabelle Carvell, has embarked on a new journey in her own writing. Be part of this journey with her, and follow her updates on the Synaesthesia Blog! @AnnabelleCsyn

#3 Lazy-itis

So. Well done you, Annabelle.

You've got yourself your arc. You've preached about where to start and what to do every day and what do you do? Not follow your own advice in the slightest.

Lazy-itis is a serious illness. It creeps up on you unawares and seeps into your pores. It's what keeps you sat on the couch watching Emmerdale, or glued to Facebook hoping for that little red '1' to pop up after you've updated a mindless status. It's fast (which is pretty ironic given its symptoms), and it'll catch any writer in its sticky claws.

How do we overcome it? 

Motivation. For everything we do in life we need motivation. And for motivation, we often need to set ourselves goals, because goals = growth. Whether this is for bigger life goals such as getting a new job, buying a house, saving for a new car, or our smaller personal goals such as sending a story into online literary magazines or competitions, or trying to eat more healthily, goals allow us to grow in some way or another.

I think what I need to get over this lazy-itis is a date. This doesn't work for everyone though, I understand that. I know some people feel put off by the pressure of having to have something done by a certain date, but for me, that's what keeps me focused. A date means a goal, and a goal means novella growth - how could this go wrong?

What we need to be careful of is the easy possibility of guilt tripping yourself - it's very easy to feel guilt ridden after you have missed a personal deadline. Here, I'd suggest a little trick - give yourself small deadlines, multiple deadlines, preliminary deadlines and final deadlines.

e.g:

This is my new timeline which takes me up to my goal for next year. It means that if I miss my first deadline, it's not the end of the world; if I miss my preliminary deadline, it's not great but I can still get a big bulk done; and my final deadline, if I don't hit that then I will probably wish I'd have stuck to my deadlines in the first place.

It's giving yourself a couple of chances before you're sent to the headteacher's office. But it's important to have goals in writing, else we have no growth. There comes a time for everyone I think where lazy-itis really can get the better of you, and it's so easy to suddenly not have written in months. But with the help of deadline dates, and motivation, we can beat this epidemic! 

Editor's Endeavour: The early stages

Our editor, Annabelle Carvell has embarked on a new journey in her own writing. Be part of this journey with her, and follow her updates on the Synaesthesia Blog! @AnnabelleCsyn

#2 The early stages

Discipline has not been my forte when it comes to writing. As I have mentioned previously, I have a very rigid writing style, and normally, if the time isn't right then it's not time to write.

Writing the novella has been a little different though. I've discovered that if I don't keep up my momentum, I could easily start to lose the direction of my story. 

I've found that recently to be honest - up until starting these blog posts, in fact. I had a good, strong stint of writing frequently, where I was making time to write, and was committed to my story. But, as we all know too well, life can get in the way - or so we tell ourselves... Often, I find that that is just my own excuse for being scared to be committed to my story. Before I knew it, my novella hadn't been updated in over a month. 

Writing the novella has been very different from writing a short story for me. With the short story, I have the whole nutshell encapsulated in my mind before I even have chance to blink, so when it comes to writing it, I can keep momentum. 

The novella is different. It isn't over in the space of a blink of an eye. It's drawn out. It teases memories out of the air as slowly as threading a needle. It takes time, and patience.

What helps is to exercise your mind weekly if you can - not necessarily on your novella itself - but by writing something every week, you'll find you'll stimulate your story and leave work desperate for the commute to hurry and pass so that you can get back at your keyboard.

Take a look at this nifty little inspirational diagram below:

There are some really important points to take on board here - these are what I am now trying to do daily:

• Write on your commute to work. Describe the people you see; the morning you've had; the breakfast you ate; the dream that woke you up; the mistake you made at work yesterday
• Record your memories. Write down your childhood memories. Memories are a goldmine. Writing what you know really does make your story more authentic. 
• Learn about something new. Wallpaper making; Aristotle; the history of the tudors. Learning not only stimulates your mind, but also really helps to add depth to your characters' interests, to places - little details that make your story so much more convincing. 

The main tip I'd stress is to write every week. It doesn't need to be everyday - sometimes life really does get in the way (I swear!) but keep your momentum. 

It'll help you in the early stages. It'll help you to maintain faith in your story. 

Editor's Endeavour: Where do you even start?

Our editor, Annabelle Carvell has embarked on a new journey in her own writing. Be part of this journey with her, and follow her updates on the Synaesthesia Blog! @AnnabelleCsyn

#1 Where do you even start?

I was lucky that I had an idea for a story before I had the idea of writing it as a novella. My advice for where to start is this; find your idea (it needn't be a fully fledged idea) and then work out the arc of your story.

Right now, my novella has a shape. I know the beginning. I know the middle. I know the end.

I was sitting in a cafe in my home town with a friend from work fairly recently (she’s also a writer) for the first writing workshop I had done on my own writing in a very long time. I had sent her roughly three scenes of my story – these were the beginning, the middle, and a hint at the end... although, at this point, I didn’t know that this was the case.

We talked for hours (quite literally) about what I had written so far, and it was only through conversation with another writer that it clicked that I had the arc of my story right in front of me. It seems primitive, I know, to follow primary school teachings of how to write fiction, but really, finding your beginning, middle and end is what makes the process so much easier (at least it seems to be working for me so far).

I don’t want to get technical on you, but this diagram is literally how I envisaged my story once my friend and I had this revelation:

As soon as I realised I had a beginning, middle and end, my arc appeared instantly in my mind. Your arc will possibly look different from mine. Let me stress that this ‘middle’ is not the same as the climax for my arc. What is most interesting about this structure is that the ‘middle’ section instantly signified change. The rising action in my arc leads to the ‘middle’ where we reach the turning point, but not the climax. A diagram for climax in my tale would look much different, and probably not the smooth curve that you can see.

This arc shows me the pivotal moment where something changes in the tale to determine the direction of the rest of the story. For me, this is usually where the characters make a decision, or don’t make a decision – something that creates tension, that lets the reader know that something is going to happen, and has them tempted to flick through the pages to discover what that might be. My advice here would be to personalise the shape of your arc – it might be skewed to one side – but whatever it is, it has to make sense to you.

Most importantly, this arc signifies movement. That I have a story waiting to expand and develop. 

Editor's Endeavour: Writing the novella

Our editor, Annabelle Carvell has embarked on a new journey in her own writing. Be part of this journey with her, and follow her updates on the Synaesthesia Blog! @AnnabelleCsyn

I have taken on a new challenge: the novella. I'm not entirely sure whether or not it is one that I will conquer and complete, but for now I'm happy to see where it leads me.

The journey and evolving of my writing has been strange – I began as being more compelled to write poetry. In all honesty, I think it was partly through laziness and fear of writing anything longer than ten lines. I enjoyed the short space I was allowed on the page, and the crisp abstract images woven with hints of something bigger.

Throughout my degree, this slowly shifted – eventually I was ‘sold’ by the short story and how a world could be captivated in such a small space, with such little (but strikingly poignant) change. Whilst I was unemployed, all I could write (and wanted to write) were short stories – the odd poem popped up here and there, but my energy was fully thrust into a short story collection.

To explain a little about my rigid writing style, I very rarely write something that starts off as a poem or a short story, and then moulds itself into something different. Usually, if I set out to write a poem, it stays a poem. My focus doesn’t shift; my writer’s mind is fixated on that form and never wavers.

A while ago, I had begun to write another short story. A short story that burned with fiery marigolds and salty kisses. I had the whole story saved on my mind’s hard drive, but the space was the equivalent to the core of an apple. Its flesh was only just enough to encase the seeds, yet carried weighty backstory – exactly how I liked my short stories, scratching the surface just enough to reveal worlds beneath. 

However, something stalled me writing this particular short story. Generally, whenever I write in the short story form it flows freely; I tend to write short stories in either one go during the course of an intensive writing day, or in two or three chunks. Yet this particular story would not budge.

I don't know why, but it clicked that this tale needed more – the flesh around the seeds needed to grow into a full, ripe apple. So now, I have dedicated my time and efforts into something new, something daunting but incredibly exciting.

These blog posts, I hope, will help me to maintain my momentum, and shall follow my endeavours to write in an alien form; the novella.