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A Passionate Writer
I’m a Writer. I’m loud and proud about that and if I had my way I’d just openly pimp that 24/7 because it’s what I love, it’s not a chore for me, it’s not hard, it’s just what I love. I’ve also written about it over here about declaring that you’re a writer and how it’ll make you feel. I’m also fiery whenever the word Writer is mention and whenever I can actually bring it up. I love heated discussions with other Writers about plots and twists. Ask me about the nitty gritty of writing characters and point of view, even bring up different registers and character archetypes. I’ll fiercely challenge every…
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Spectacle by Rachel Vincent
Oh my, so in case you’re new around her, one of my favourite authors is Rachel Vincent. And I’ve followed her around (without being or sound at all stalkerish) for close to 13 years, since I picked up her debut novel by chance. If you don’t know what I’m talking about go and hunt down her Shifter series. You’ll thank me later. Anyway, I’m trying not to digress here because today I’m talking about Spectacle the stunning sequel to her novel Menagerie. And in case you’ve missed that one, check out this post to find out what I thought about that book. We pick up where we left off at…
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NaNo Diaries 2017 – Day 30
The last day of NaNoWriMo 2017 was pretty uneventful. I, unfortunately, had to work all day and it was pretty gross. But I did manage to get some words in which really nice, not really as much as I wanted and I have to admit that the story was finally getting a little easier. I feel like Travis and I were finally getting somewhere and I hope that I’ll be able to get back into it. I have a little more notes now and I’m fleshing out the story. While I’m going to be working predominately on a few other projects I will come back to this one. I’m not going…
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NaNo Diaries 2017 – Day 29
There was supposed to be more time today, but I did manage to get some words done, which is actually really nice, it wasn’t much, but it was enough to really get anywhere. Having stocktake at work today has made it really hard to want to write. I have been up since stupid o’clock and even though I got to leave earlier than what was said, I did spend most of the time pretty frustrated because my air conditioner isn’t quite working, the man came to fix it and cleaned the filter but it’s still leaking and that makes trying to focus hard. I love the heat but I don’t do…
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NaNo Diaries 2017 – Day 28
I’m starting to sound like a broken record here, I had plans to get so much writing done but I did a full day of work today and it was hectic. Some days when I work full days and spend the entire day talking to customers I just want to shrink away and not do much, Travis and I have had so many issues with this story, mostly because I don’t know what’s happening and Travis is being so stubborn. Mostly I like a challenge but this is getting ridiculous. Come on, Travis, work with me a little. Please! Words: 0
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The Emerald Serpent by K.S Nikakis
I am an avid fantasy reader. Give me magic, faeries, mythical beings and I’m a pretty happy lady, what’s even better? Having people I know write amazing fantasy in different sub-genres, it makes me beyond happy and I was pretty lucky to get a little bit of the behind the scenes action with this book. It was written by the former head of my undergrad degree and the best thing about this? I managed to make a non-editor out of a serial editor of words. It only took like a week and a half of me hounding Karen before she turned around and said to me: Mandi guess what I…
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Why I Love Rewrites Over Editing
You’ll see that I posted about how much I hate editing over here (sorry editing lovers, I really am) but today I want to talk about how much rewriting is the complete opposite and almost as hard. When I sit down to do creative writing that isn’t a blog post or a piece that is for publication that I can take my time with it, I have a completely different process here. Rewrites are completely different to edits. Or at least in my book and I’m actually glad they are, because they’re less painful and more conducive to my creative process but they’re just plainly more engaging and I like…
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The Artist’s Way – Week 11
This week was all about autonomy and I found this week’s essays to be ones that touched me on a different level. There was loads about creativity and it’s basis in the topics of acceptance, success, the zen of sports and building your artist’s altar, all of which are infinitely important. I took a moment to really delve into these and found that I wanted to actually write out every one of these small essays and tape them everywhere and anywhere I could put them. Morning Pages: Less consistent with them this week, but I definitely did crave them and found that it was easy to get to the page,…
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Making Time to Write
I get asked about how I make time to write a lot. In fact, let me list what I actually have going on in my life right now: I have two retail jobs (that’s 40+ hours a fortnight) I coach writers I edit I write stories I go to the gym I catch up with friends I sleep, eat, repeat I’m doing a masters degree Ok putting that out there doesn’t seem like much but when you factor in travel time, being an introvert who needs alone, while studying, reading for uni, writing for uni, writing for pleasure, editing for work, coaching for work, reading for pleasure, sleeping, having down…
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The Artist’s Way – Week 9
This week was all about finding a sense of compassion, which is probably the biggest and hardest week for me. Mostly because I am way too hard on myself and it bleeds into just about everything else I do. The topics that were covered this week were: fear, enthusiasm, creative u-turns, blasting through blocks. It’s probably a week of really digging in and trying to learn to be compassionate. I caught myself and found that I was most definitely harder on myself, more than I need to be. Morning Pages: I wasn’t actually consistent this time, because one of the tasks was to read morning pages. Hello freak out? It…
