Tag / #weekendcoffeeshare

by Carol J Forrester

Right, Time To Get Things Moving Around Here #WeekendCoffeeShare

So it’s been a while since I wrote a chatty, update post. So long in fact that the original ‘If We Were Having Coffee’ seems to have fizzled into non-existence. But anyway, what have I been up to since August.

Well I’m still working on Shadow Dawn. The draft is now past the 70,000 words mark and I’ve had to go back to the start as I feel like I’ve completely lost track of what I intended to do with the book when I started writing it. On the plus side, I reread a chapter from about half way through and didn’t hate it so there might be hope for this story yet. IMG_0966

For the past week I’ve managed to churn out more poetry than I have done over the last three months. If you follow the site you’ve probably noticed the upturn in the activity and I’m trying to keep things that way. I’ve started posting more flash fiction based on writing prompts from Story Shack and I’m trying to put up something for most, if not all of the Daily Prompts. Part of this is to do with trying to get into a routine of sitting down and writing each evening when I get home. If it becomes habit then I have no excuse for not finishing Shadow Dawn or for leaving this blog untouched for three/four months at a time.

Speaking of poetry, NaPoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo are just around the corner. In 2016 I managed to complete NaPoWriMo, but last year I didn’t even manage to complete the first day. For 2018 I’m hoping to not only finish NaPoWriMo but to also hit a few other poetry goals. So far I’ve not been doing too bad. In January I entered my first Poetry Slam, I didn’t get past the first round but I had a lot of fun and got some fantastic feedback from the other poets competing. In February I entered The International Book and Pamphlet Competition hosted by The Poetry Business. This will be the first of the six competitions I’ve challenged myself to submit to this year. I don’t know if I’ll manage to get anywhere with any of them but I won’t know if I don’t try.

As I’m now re-working Shadow Dawn more than writing from scratch, I also want to get back to my Headquarters series, and more specifically the Safe Haven branch that I started writing a couple of years ago. Since I’m also studying for my Level 3 AAT accountancy qualification my target is one update a month for the series. That might become two for March as the first update will be the redraft of part one.

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Unfortunately I’m not looking to have any Guest Posts this year. I’ve done them in the past and while they are a great way of getting to know fellow bloggers, they take a huge amount of organizing. Finding willing participants is also difficult and time consuming. I am going to try a link-up series in April for fellow NaPoWriMo participants but that will be once a week and be incorporated into a weekly update post about how the challenge is going.

However, I am looking for fellow bloggers who are willing to share their poems and thought this Thursday as part of International Women’s Day. A week or so ago I posted a piece called Legs Eleven about the pressures of people judging you based on how you dress. This Thursday I want to put up a post for anyone to comment on and link to that looks at the biggest challenge they feel they have had to face as a woman, either in life or in the last year. If this is something you’d like to get involved with then you can email me at caroljforrester@hotmail.com.

Finally, I’ve also started experimenting with audio recordings of my poems. I added one to today’s poem When The Words Fall Out and I’ve also done one for my piece Legs Eleven which is included below. Let me know what you think in the comments below. I’ve tried recording videos of poems before but never liked watching myself very much so this seemed like a nice in between. Do you think they work or is it better to leave to poems as they are and let the readers just read them.

by Carol J Forrester

Finding Focus – #WeekendCoffeeShare

If we were having coffee, well first of all I’d have to offer an apology, this weekend seems to have gotten away from me. Sunday evening has crept up and before I really understood what was happening, the weekend is pretty much over. However, I feel like I’m ending on a positive note.

On Saturday I ordered a copy of Stephen King’s book The Gunslinger and today it arrived. I was surprised by how thin it was, curiosity led me to google, and I went in search of the exact word count of the book. Turns out that it only just breeches the 60,000 word mark.

Now, for the past six months I’ve been worry about the length of my book. The bulk of the fantasy novels that I own stretch into the 200,000 to 300,000 word mark and I was concerned that Shadow Dawn wouldn’t be a long enough book. However, it’s already longer than ‘The Gunslinger’ and I think I might be putting too much focus on word counts and chapter lengths. I already know that Shadow Dawn will be book one in a series, so instead of trying to cram in all the plot points I’ve listed down for this draft, I think I’m going to go back and narrow down the list. This will shift the focus of the book but in the end I think it will make it a better read and tighten up the plot.

There are seventeen days left in August and my hope is that if I get my head down and focus, I can have a rough draft of the remaining chapters done by the first of October. Then it will be a matter of going through the first 60,000 words and trimming out the chaff. I was going to try and finished this draft by the end of August but I can’t see a way of doing that without literally sacrificing all my free time to it and at the moment I’m pretty happy with the blogging routine I seem to be getting into.

This week I managed to publish my second post in a series that I launched in anticipation of my seventh blogging anniversary in October. The first was Seven Top Tips of Blogging and the second is How To Create A Blogging Schedule [working off what has and, perhaps more significantly, wasn’t hasn’t worked for me in the past.] Next week I’m planning a piece on guest posts and hosting guest posts on your site. The series is a little different from what I normally do but I’m really enjoying writing it and I’m reminding myself of some pretty useful things as well.

This week I also published two other posts a little outside the norm for this blog. One of which was on gender stereotypes. I had hoped it would spark some conversation but it didn’t seem to have gain much traction. The other was a piece where I went over an old poem and tried to workshop it in a blog post. I’m not sure it worked but it was an interesting challenge for myself. I’ll leave a couple of links below for anyone who’s interested.

What Are Little Girls Are Made Of?: Breaking The Stereotypes In My Head 

Confusion: How To Rewrite An Old Poem #ThrowbackThursday

As with every week, I’d love to know how you’ve all been. Do let me know how the week has gone with you in the comments below. If I don’t see you there, then until next week, here’s wishing you all the best. Happy reading and writing.

by Carol J Forrester

I’ve Broken My Own Writing Rules. Again! #WeekendCoffeeShare

It’s Sunday morning afternoon, and I’m trying to keep a close eye on the weather outside because we’re meant to be having an afternoon of rain and there’s washing on the line. Actually, we’re meant to be having an entire August of rain here in the UK. According to the Independent (I only read the headline), this last week’s saturation of sudden, miserable downpours, is here to stay for the entire thirty-one days. I only mention this because writing this post might get interrupted by me blitzing outside like a made woman to yank in the majority of my wardrobe before it gets soaked.

Besides the weather turning against me this week, things have been going surprisingly well. I started a new job on the 17th August and it feels like I settling in okay, my writing has been on the upturn, and things around the house seem to be on an even keel. There’s just one thing bugging me, and that’s the fact I’m breaking my own rule when it comes to writing. I’ve been tweaking the novel.

Chapter Twenty-Four has been on my to-do list for the past four months and over the weekend I’ve only managed to get the first six hundred words written. The problem is that I keep wanting to redraft it. Those six hundred words are the third attempt at writing that chapter and I try to avoid doing that. If I’m drafting I want to get the whole draft completed before I go back and start tweaking things, otherwise I end up spending too much time dotting ‘i’s and cross ‘t’s. I get disheartened and I don’t finish the chapter. I don’t even know if this version is any better than the others and I’ve stalled again at the six-hundred word mark. This afternoon’s challenge will be to go back and try to get that chapter finished and filed away. If I can do that then I can get on with writing the rest of the book and worry about editing when it comes to it further down the line.

Blog wise, this week has been pretty successful and I’m really happy with the posts that I’ve been putting out. My poem Drawstrings keeps gathering views and it’s lovely to see so many people taking the time to comment. It’s quite a personal poem and it tackles anxiety so there’s always a bit of apprehension for putting up pieces like that, but I think it’s probably one of the best poems that I’ve written.

I’m also trying to set up a weekly writing prompt. On Friday I launched The Friday Fiction Linkup. The challenge for the first week is to take the opening of a story and carry it on in a post on your own blog. If you don’t want to write the full piece then you can comment a paragraph that carries the story on in the comments section below and leave it up to someone else to add the next bit. There don’t seem to have been any takers yet but I’m hoping we’ll get a few people having a go as we get closer to the deadline next Friday.

As well as poems and new link ups, I’ve tried my hand at putting together a post containing seven things I’ve learned in seven years of blogging. Why Am I Even Doing This? – Tips From Seven Years Of Blogging went up last night and stemmed from my own ponderings about whether or not I’ve actually managed to progress or learn anything since I started this blog. I’ve had some lovely comments on it and it would seem that some people have even found my seven tips somewhat useful.

Aside from blogging this week has been one for relaxing and going back to old joys. The pond in the garden is slowly taking shape. The rain is keeping all the plants in the garden lovely and green, and I’ve managed to fill my free time with books and writing rather than housework. I watched Neil Gaiman and Steven Fry’s talk from Hay Festival on Youtube last night and inspired by Chris Riddle’s live drawing even cracked out the paper and pencils to try my hand at a few doodles. Maybe not my best works but I enjoyed drawing them which was something.

Anyway, that’s enough about my week. The Weekend Coffee Share is about the conversation, so how are you all? Anything new going on or is it same old same old? Let me know in the comments below, you know I always love to hear from you. Have you perhaps kicked off something new on your blog? Are you going back to old favourites as well? Did you write something this week that you’re really proud of and want to share with the whole world? Whatever it is, feel free to tell me about it or even leave a link.

Until next week, all the best!

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by Carol J Forrester

It Took Me Four Long Months, But I Finally Did The Ironing! – How Not To Write A Novel – Weekend Coffee Share

Now I know what you’re probably thinking. What the heck does writing a novel have to do with not getting your ironing done? Well the answer is quite simple. I’ve been avoiding both tasks incredibly skilfully for a similar amount of time. Chapters have become akin to fitted sheets. I know they need doing, I know that once they are done I will bask in pride of having them tucked away all nice and neat, but facing that keyboard, I mean ironing board, has been beyond me. Even this post is two days late.

This weekend has been a clear up weekend for both my fiancée and myself. While most people Spring Clean, I like to have a blitz around this time of year in preparation for the colder months to come. Call it nesting, call it prepping, I like to think of it as ensuring everything is ready so that I can snuggling into a corner when the wind’s howling and not worrying about anything except my mug of hot chocolate and the book in front of me. This has meant that the pile of ironing-to-do which had taken up residence in my reading nook was first in my line of fire.

For the imaginary prize in this imaginary guessing game, guess where I am currently sitting? Yes! You’ve got it. My now ironing free reading [though in this case it’s a writing nook] nook. I’ve not even just hidden the ironing beneath it, I’ve actually ironed it all and packed it away in the respective drawers/wardrobe places that it belongs.

Now, you could say that by doing the ironing I was actually procrastinating from doing my writing, and you would be right once again. Housework has always been a go to for me when it comes to procrastination. It’s more productive than Netflix, and it requires more energy than napping, but it’s still a form of procrastination.

It’s also a form of motivation.

Have you ever had one of those days where everything seem to go your way and you get to tick off all this annoying little jobs that you’ve been meaning to get around to for the past six years? You’ve cleared out the junk in the spare room, sorted through the pile of post threatening to avalanche onto the dog every time it walks past the hallway table, finally eliminated the ecosystem growing at the back of the fridge! These are the days where I always feel like the world is my oyster and I can doing anything I damn well like. They are the days where I want to write.

Mess stresses me out. Clutter stresses me out. When I’m stressed I don’t want to sit down and write. I’m itching to get away from the thing that is stressing me and more often than not, that thing is in the room with me. Having a clear up day lets me purge through that annoyance and get to a headspace where I feel calmer, more focused, and let’s face it, more than a little smug about the lack of ironing cluttering the dinning room.

In between various household tasks I managed to find the time to clear off the whiteboard that had been languishing in my office for the past four months and set to writing up the chapter briefs for the next three chapters of my novel. I mapped out the key points for the plot and highlighted the problem area that I need to fix in order to finish my story. I set up a plan of attack for knocking the second half of Shadow Dawn up-side the head and into shape. I feel ready to get back to writing and getting myself sorted out around the house was an important part of getting back to that place.

Of course if anyone is offering to take all future ironing off my hands I would be more than happy to accept. If it sweetens the deal I’ll even share with you how to fold a fitted sheet neatly! *Gasp* 

The point of my ramble is this. Tomorrow is the start of a new month and the end of the year is already creeping towards us like some grumpy, giant toad already demanding to know what exactly we managed to achieve with those twelve months we were so generously gifted. It doesn’t matter that I hit a slump. It wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last one I find myself in. What matters is that each time I pick myself up and get on with things. I get back to being productive.

I get back to writing that bloody book!

weekendcoffeeshare

You can check out the leader of the Weekend Coffee Share and all its wonderful followers by click the icon above. It’s a great group of people who gang together once a week to share what’s been going on in their worlds and see what’s been going on in everyone else’s. Why not join the fun.

P.S

Anyone spot that I bought a new cup? It has a saucer and spots and it’s huge!!!!!

by Carol J Forrester

Lost, Found, and Rambling On About Nonsense – Just A Normal Day Then

It we were having coffee, well firstly, let me apologise for my absence. As you have probably realised, I’m not great at maintaining a regular blogging schedule so my attendance at the Weekend Coffee Shares has been somewhat spotty over the last few months. *Ahem* Let me change that to non-existent. I’ve decided to stop saying ‘but I’m back and this time it’s going to be different, I’m going to post on a schedule, build up a reserve of posts to use on the days where I don’t want to write.’ I’ve said it before and it’s never worked so instead I’m going to say this.

I’ve been relatively good this week. Let’s wait until Monday to see about next week.

Apart from my lacking of blogging I’ve had a productive start to 2017. Yesterday I got an email confirming that I’d passed my Accountant Technicians Diploma with distinction, Shadow Dawn is at 61,943 words and growing, and I’ve got some plans lined up for April that I’m feeling pretty excited about. What plans you ask?  Well let me tell you.

As some of you will already know, April is host to two massive writing events. NaPoWriMo [National Poetry Writing Month] and Camp NaNoWriMo [Sister to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month in November]. This year I’m going to do both.

logo-napowrimoCamp-2017-Participant-Twitter-HeaderYes that’s right. I’m insane enough to think I can write 30 poems in 30 days and do Camp NaNoWriMo.

As the plan stands at the moment, I’m hoping to finish the current draft of Shadow Dawn by the end of March so that I can switch my focus from that story to Solitary Creatures instead. The target is 40,000 words for April, spread over three or four separate stories that all take place around Edwin and Sammy. Doing NaPoWriMo at the same time means that I should also have a daily post for all of April without having to use my Solitary Creatures stuff. That will go up in May instead.

See! Planning. It will all go horribly wrong but the effort is there.

On the plus side, unlike NaNoWriMo, I have completed NaPoWriMo before. You can find all my poems from April 2016 right here on Writing and Works in the drop down beneath poetry. Or you can just click… here. The NaPoWriMo site provides a new prompt everyday and they’re a sign up page where you can find all the participating sites.

It’s a really fun project and a really fun month. If you like poetry then I would highly recommend it.

On another note, I’ve started to notice that when I go back through older posts on this site, (and my older I mean three-six months old), I’m finding bits of flash fiction I’d forgotten I’d wrote. I’m trying to work out a way of bringing some of the older stuff back up to the tip without having to re-blog it constantly. However, I think that might be a conundrum for another day.

On a more exciting turn of events, during the time while I was away from my blog, Writing and Works hit a couple of milestones. We hit 50,000 total views and 20,000 total visitors. I know it doesn’t sound like much compared to the bigger blogs, but it made me happy to see those numbers on my insights screen.

Anywho, enough about me. Let me know how your weeks, years have been going so far. Any plans for April or beyond? Let me know in the comments below. I always love hearing from the people reading my blog, which reminds me! Before I go. About June time I’m thinking about starting up another round of Guest Posts, these ones focusing on writing prompts and creative inspiration. If you think this might be something you’re interested in then give me a shout!

Hope you all enjoyed my little ramble, thanks for reading.

weekendcoffeeshare