It's such a shame that the paid words have to take a precedence over the enjoyable ones that, unfortunately, don't pay the bills.
I know, I know, I shouldn't moan about having work. This time six months ago I was doing the usual freelance whining about not having enough work and worrying about ever getting any more bookings. The thing is, it gave me time to work on the novel - pretty much finish it in fact - in those sparse couple of months when the paid jobs slowed right down. And now that I'm up to my neck in work that someone is actually going to pay me for (eventually in some cases - invoice chasing being one of my frequent pastimes) I'm moaning again. I'm just desperate to get on finish the edits of the novel so that I can give it someone to read and get some proper feedback.
I suppose if I stop procrastinating, stop surfing the Net, stop making cups of coffee, stop tweeting, stop blogging and stop doing loads of washing, I might actually be able to finish the paid work and have a bit of time for something else...
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Monday, 15 February 2010
Lazy Daisy
Forgive me reader for I have sinned, it has been months since my last blog post. So, what's been happening?
The days, weeks and months seem to have literally flown by but that's hardly an excuse for not putting fingers to keys for quite so long. Work went crazy just as I was planning to slow down for Christmas but being freelance, I was hardly in a position to turn anything down so I was writing like a nutter right up until the last minute. Of course, the bonus of that is that I didn't have to go anywhere near a shop and managed to make pretty much all my festive purchases online, in between completing copy for a comedy beard book and writing more serious words for a book about London restaurants.
As expected, the novel took a bit of a back seat over this time but I did manage to finally complete the first draft. The workload meant that there was a natural break in which to shut it in the proverbial drawer for some detachment time. I printed it off last month and a week of early nights and a nice cup of tea and printouts in bed meant that I read it through and started doing some edits.
I'm having real problems seeing the big picture so I need to back to square one I think and try and read it again with fresh eyes. I've managed to pick up a load of basic editorial changes, spotted some problems with dialogue etc but I just can't seem to get my head round any major character or plot problems. I know there are some, it's just pinpointing them and having the confidence to shuffle the book about like a pack of cards. Time for the stage that I'm dreading... asking someone else to read it. Of course, as only my husband knows that I'm actually writing a novel, this might come as a bit of a shock!
The days, weeks and months seem to have literally flown by but that's hardly an excuse for not putting fingers to keys for quite so long. Work went crazy just as I was planning to slow down for Christmas but being freelance, I was hardly in a position to turn anything down so I was writing like a nutter right up until the last minute. Of course, the bonus of that is that I didn't have to go anywhere near a shop and managed to make pretty much all my festive purchases online, in between completing copy for a comedy beard book and writing more serious words for a book about London restaurants.
As expected, the novel took a bit of a back seat over this time but I did manage to finally complete the first draft. The workload meant that there was a natural break in which to shut it in the proverbial drawer for some detachment time. I printed it off last month and a week of early nights and a nice cup of tea and printouts in bed meant that I read it through and started doing some edits.
I'm having real problems seeing the big picture so I need to back to square one I think and try and read it again with fresh eyes. I've managed to pick up a load of basic editorial changes, spotted some problems with dialogue etc but I just can't seem to get my head round any major character or plot problems. I know there are some, it's just pinpointing them and having the confidence to shuffle the book about like a pack of cards. Time for the stage that I'm dreading... asking someone else to read it. Of course, as only my husband knows that I'm actually writing a novel, this might come as a bit of a shock!
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