Welp.

In my last post, three whole months ago, I talked about how hard distractions can be on a project.

I don't really think it's necessary to point out how true that is in my own situation, hmm?

Anyway.

The last three months have been really hard. Just as I was starting to save a reasonable amount of money for an apartment, my car gave up. So I've been hitching rides to work and feeling rather put-out.

My job is not as great as I optimistically believed. In fact, I make approximately $6,000/yr. and can't progress in the company because I'm female. But I'm still working 35-40 hours a week, so I don't have a lot of time on my hands.

Despite all this, there is a beacon of hope for my writing. NaNoWriMo starts in just over a week. This will be my seventh year participating and every year, without fail, it manages to give me a level of discipline I'm not able to recreate on my own. I was worried, initially, because I had absolutely no idea what I was going to write about, but after a bit of consideration, and one abandoned idea, I've decided. Since life has been so rough lately, and all I've really thought about is buying a one-way bus ticket outta here, that's what I'm going to write about, a la On The Road. It's a bit different than anything I've done in the past, so we'll see whether or not it was a good decision.

For any writers out there struggling with the discipline of writing every day, I earnestly suggest NaNoWriMo. You'd be amazed how much the community of it all helps.

Follow me here.

Distractions

Distractions are pretty much inevitable, in every aspect of life. They happen to everyone, and they don't discriminate race, religion, or job description.

Sometimes these distractions are really bad. Car problems, money issues, death in the family, and so on. Other times, they aren't so bad. Sometimes it's a new job, or a vacation, or an unexpected windfall. But that still pulls you away from what you're supposed to be focusing on.

For me, right now, there are so many things distracting me from my writing. I just got a job, one where, if I work hard enough, and long enough, I'll be promoted through the company in no time. And I really need the money. I'm looking for an apartment, currently living out of boxes and suitcases. I'm praying that my car will survive for a few month longer.

And that's kind of how life goes. But it's so frustrating sometimes. Especially right now, when I'm feeling inspired and encouraged to write--but I don't have the time. And when I do have the time, I distract myself with television marathons, trips to the library--even writing blog posts like this one. I feel kind of like I'm sabotaging myself--if life doesn't get in the way, I'll find a way to procrastinate.

So I've decided to start setting some goals. I need to spend x amount of time writing this week, and y amount of time editing. I think that'll help a lot. I'll post my goals as soon as I have them all worked out and hopefully that will save me from at least some of the distraction.

Picking the Proper Project

I've spent the last couple of days looking through the novels-in-progress that I have saved on my computer. Some are old NaNoWriMo projects that got abandoned after November. Some are novels I started at other times, with random bursts of inspiration. I even found some documents that are only one or two lines about an idea for a novel that never got off the ground.

Basically, the purpose of this exercise is to figure out which has the most potential. I'm going to be completely honest: some of this writing should never see the light of day. If it weren't for my obsessive need to archive, I would probably delete at least three different documents out of shame.

On the other hand, there is some stuff that seems worthwhile. A dystopian sci-fi that was just starting to take shape, a historical fiction that got set aside when the research started taking up too much study time, a YA coming-of-age novel.

But the one that caught my attention and held it was the novel I started during NaNoWriMo last November. I didn't meet the 50,000 word deadline--19 credit hours and two shows made sure of that--but the concept seems pretty solid.

Basically, it's the story of an art heist gone wrong. There's a fairly large cast of characters, but I actually took the time to flesh them out before I started writing, so I think they'll hold up under scrutiny. Furthermore, this is one of the rare occasions where I actually bothered to outline the whole story, beginning to end. That's got to be a good sign.

All of that considered, the decision was easy. The art heist story is going to be my project this summer. It's still without a title, but maybe you guys can help me with that?

A New Beginning...

As any one who has found themselves on this page should have noticed, I've decided to start a new blog. I already have one here, but it's primarily for freewriting and inspiring myself.

This blog is going to serve a different purpose.

I've just graduated university and while I'm looking for a job, I find myself with excessive free time on my hands. Since getting one of my novels published is one of my dearest ambitions, I thought that I would take a page from Jez (All Writers are Lunatics) and start a blog to track my writing progress.

I don't know how effective this will be, but it's worth a shot, isn't it?

So to those of you who have stumbled across my little piece of internet space, welcome! I hope you enjoy what I have to say and feel free to offer up anything you want to say in return!