Category: Writer’s block

Sorry historians, it’s aliens or nothing

Before our entire country was (quite rightfully) sent to our room, I was already seeing a bunch of messages from historians in writers’ forums asking people to write about the pandemic.

It was a moment in history we were living through and we should be documenting it, they said. I thought about it, I really did. I write non-fiction, I write about mental health and I write about people. It really is right in my wheelhouse.

But it turned out I just couldn’t. While I was living through it and trying to process it and wondering what was going to happen next, I just couldn’t write about it.

Ghosts, sea monsters and cats, oh my!

Instead I found myself gravitating towards something that had absolutely nothing to do with the giant ‘thing’ that was affecting the entire globe. I turned to a series of stories I started during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) last year. It’s a challenge that gives you a month to write a 50,000 word novel or, as I discovered, a bunch of short stories. I didn’t make the 50,000 mark in time, but I did get a decent collection of stories together, which I was quite pleased about.

It was my first crack at fiction – a sort of odd combination of sci-fi, horror and humour and I found the whole process a huge amount of fun.

At the time we were being asked to write about Covid-19, I jokingly tweeted about it:

I’m hearing a lot from historians asking writers to journal/blog about life during the pandemic. Historians I love you, but that’s the last thing I want to do rn. All ppl are getting from me is sea monsters, aliens, witches and Mittens the cat #escapist #soznotsoz

Giving through escapism

My cunning plan was to finish the last of the stories once we went into lockdown, find myself a local editor and cover designer and turn the stories into an e-book.

I can’t do much to fix this mess we’re in, but I can use my powers to provide a silly distraction and support some local creatives in the process. That’s why I want to design and edit locally and why I want to self-publish and make the collection as cheap as the e-platforms will let me.

Lockdown writer’s block

The thing was, once NZ went into lockdown proper, I couldn’t make myself do even that. I had around 600 words left of the last story, and do you think I could finish the damned thing?

I’ve been working from home (and I am not complaining about that because I know I am privileged to be working at all) but it has been really hard to switch from work brain to writing brain when I’m in the same location. I just had a massive block about it.

Finished!

So on Friday I took at day’s leave, in my house/now workplace and finished the damned thing.

It was the most amazing feeling of accomplishment and relief. Sort of the way I felt when I had Starboard ready to send out to publishers. It’s probably the best I’ve felt since we all got grounded I think.

I’ve now got myself an editor and am working on finding someone local to help me with a cover and I will self-publish it as an e-book. So sorry, no deep insight about Virus McVirusface or mental health during lockdown. I probably could write a whole book on that, but not now, not while I’m living it.

Instead you get aliens in Cuba Mall, piranhas in Oriental Bay, haunted nautical artefacts and true agenda of Mittens, Wellington’s celebrity cat.

At present that collection is titled Ghost Bus – tales from Wellington’s dark side, and I will let you all know as soon as it’s available.   

The face (and gin) of finished

When normal becomes the fantasy

One of the strange and sad things that happened when I was re-reading the first stories I wrote was that all of a sudden it wasn’t the ghosts and the aliens that stood out. It was the things happening in the background – browsing in a bookstore, stumbling down Courtney Place in search of a kebab, being squished together on a crowded bus.

The stories are now about a world that, at the moment, doesn’t exist. Now I look out the window and see our bus, still doing its run for essential workers, basically empty on each loop. It makes me sad but I also have hope. I am super proud of how our little country has stuck together and protected each other and one day I am sure those bits will stop being fantasy.

Don’t worry non-fiction readers and sailors

If you are one of my non-fiction readers, don’t despair, I won’t be stopping that any time soon, it’s my natural writing home, and I have a couple of projects tucked away.

For the sailors, I’m not quitting that either, even if it does take a while before I’m out on a boat again.

And if you like a little bit of both, there’s a nautically themed YA novella in the works too.

Our lockdown in pictures

Finally, to make up for the fact that I’m not writing about lockdown, here are some photos of ours instead.

From our bubble to yours, stay safe, wash your hands and be kind xx

My home office
My supervisor
Office clothes
Our take on the ‘We’re not scared – great NZ bear hunt’
Disturbing my bubble buddies!
Chef Paddy making lockdown stew
Paddy’s lockdown birthday cake
Cutting the lockdown birthday cake – yikes!
Colouring therapy
‘Help’ with the colouring therapy
Easter in lockdown
Not impressed with our contribution to the Great NZ Egg Hunt
Like seriously not impressed!
Driveway Anzac service with our amazing neighbours
Anzac day 2020
Bubble walks have reminded us how beautiful our neighbourhood really is
Yep, that’s right down the street!
Bubble walk view

My brain is a basket of mismatched socks

Last weekend I lost it over a pile of socks.

It was a pile of socks I had been staring at for more than a year before finally trying, and failing, to do something with.

I used to have a system. When an odd sock came out of the wash I would put it in a basket in the corner of my room. Periodically I would upend the basket and paw through it, reuniting them with their mates.

I don’t know when the basket became a monster.

One day the multicoloured mess became insurmountable. I had so many socks I couldn’t close my sock draw and the unmatched pile had become a semi-dormant cotton volcano threatening to erupt.

Some of the culprits
Some of the culprits

The odd sock basket came with me when we moved to our new house – and sat there for a year.

It would glare at me malevolently, reminding me that we had been in our new home for 365 days and I still didn’t have my shit sorted.

The sock pile embarrassed me. I would shove it in a corner and forget about it for a while – then another odd sock would turn up.  I would promise myself I would take the basket upstairs, sit in front of the telly and sort the damned thing out – but then I’d be too tired from work, I’d have to cook dinner, there were cat videos on the internet that needed watching…

Yes I realise I was projecting onto the basket. My socky nemesis became a representation of all the things in my life I had been putting off doing. If I could conquer the pile of socks, then everything else would follow.

So that was what I was going to do last weekend. I was finally going to slay the sock monster.

I had a plan. I was going to watch Guardians of the Galaxy in preparation for seeing the second film before it finished in the theatres, dump Mount Socksuvius on the floor and sort it out while watching something that made me smile.

It all fell to pieces when I couldn’t make that happen. I missed the film being on television and was annoyed with myself for that, but that was okay because it was on Netflix -I’d checked the night before. Only it wasn’t,  it was only on Netflix US not NZ. I tried TV on demand, nope. Lightbox, nope. It was a 2014 film for chrissakes, it should’t be so hard!

This upset me much, much, more that it should have.

The problem with being a functioning nutbar is that you often have no idea what silly little thing will make that functioning stop.

OCD is like that for me. Most of the time I’m pretty flexible. If situations change on me I can go with the flow and find a way to make things work. Other times I plan things meticulously in my head and if things don’t conform 100% to that plan I get really upset – irrationally so. The worst part of it is, I know it’s irrational. That’s why it’s so frustrating. I know it doesn’t make sense to feel so upset, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to stomp my feet and pull my hair out.

There doesn’t always have to be a reason, but this time I think there was. I was a bit stressed, my circadian rhythms were only just starting to sort themselves out after returning from my first (non-sailing related) OE, I was trying to start a new writing project (more detail on that, and the OE, in the next blog) and it seemed my house and garden were falling down around my ears. I was trying to do all of things and achieving none of the things and now I couldn’t even watch my movie and organise my damned socks.

Chucking them out and starting again wasn’t an option. I have issues letting go. I like my socks – they’re interesting. They have cats and boats and skull and crossbones, stripes and spots and so many shades of orange.

Of course you can match cats and boats or spots and stripes, I do that all the time – and I have done that with as many as I can, but some are different sizes or different types. Some are gym socks, some are socks to wear with boots. It doesn’t always work.

Sock3

One of the upsides of having OCD is that, usually, this sort of thing is fun. I love organising books, sorting out nuts and bolts on the the boat, colour coding buttons – but for this one I have a massive block.

And what did I do with the ones that didn’t match? I didn’t want to put them in the landfill, I don’t think socks are recyclable and odd socks are a pretty stink thing to donate to an op shop.

Paddy, who had been stoically coping with my irrational anger and looming tears, came to the rescue with that one. Car enthusiasts use a lot of scrap material as cleaning rags when they are tinkering around with their automobiles. I could put the ones I wasn’t going to keep in a rag bag and chuck that in the clothing bin. No sock left behind!

As I sat there contemplating the pile in the middle of the floor and I had a sock-related epiphany.

The sockpocalypse (asockalypse?) I was staring at was a perfect metaphor for my own brain. It’s exactly what I imagine it looks like in there – an unruly pile of colours and textures that don’t always always do what they’re told.

A bright, beautiful pile of crazy that’s sometimes impossible to keep under control.

I love it and I hate it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The best socks I have ever owned have all been bought for me by my Mum. They come in packs of three and either all of them match or none of them do. They’re interchangeable so it doesn’t matter if you lose one and I think they’re the answer for me.

The socks, like my brain, are a little bit different and help me do things in my own way.

Don't pair? Don't care!
Don’t pair? Don’t care!

I went out yesterday and bought  Guardians of the Galaxy on DVD so I can watch it any damned time I please.

The giant pile of socks is still there, it’s in the middle of the lounge so I can’t miss it.  I know it’s silly, but I feel like if I can get that under control I’ll be able to handle everything else.

I’ll get the house and garden sorted, I’ll start exercising again and I’ll write – a lot. Watch this space!

Letting go

So this lunchtime I did something quite terrifying – I finally let go. I took a year’s worth of agonising, second guessing, swearing and maniacal cackling, stuffed it in an envelope and threw it in a post box.

Fly my pretties! - manuscripts ready to hit the postbox
Fly my pretties! – manuscripts ready to hit the mail

My regular (and infinitely patient) readers will know exactly what I am talking about, but for those of you just poking your noses in – I am writing a book based on this blog. A book I have been writing for what feels like forever.

It’s not the writing that’s hard, that’s what I do – it’s as simple as breathing. I’m not saying that I am spectacularly good at it, just that it comes easy. Other things, not so much. Like marketing and sales-pitches and trying to work out what kind of book people actually want to read.

I could have churned this book out in a month if I’d had the time and the space, but it would have just been a gratuitous travelogue – and while those certainly have their place, I wanted to do something different. And also, let’s be realistic here, I wanted to write something that people would buy.

Once I thought I’d achieved that I then found myself in the position of having to convince other people that they wanted to publish it – and that was where I fell down. Basically I am a rubbish salesperson. I’m short and I’m loud and I’m stroppy but I’m really crap at talking myself up. What right did I have to assume that publishers would want to take a punt on me? What if all the people who have given me feedback on my blog were just humoring me? What if I really actually suck at this?

So I agonised. I did a tonne of research into what publishers wanted – how to present it, how not to present it, how to write chapter summaries and covering letters, and discovered of course that everyone wanted something different. I hit a complete brain-block. Things that should have taken me an afternoon took me weeks and there was no real reason why.

But finally –  with a lot of patience and support from family, friends and of course the Skipper – I got there, Today.

The goods - Part 1, chapter summaries, salespitch and sample pics
The goods – Part 1, chapter summaries, sales pitch and sample pics

Saying it was like printing my hopes and dreams out onto A4 and dropping them in a letter box is probably a little too melodramatic. It was more like ripping off a Band-Aid that has been there so long it has kind of fused into your skin. It hurt, but it was also enormously liberating. There is still more to write, but as I said before, that’s the easy part.

It’s out there now, for better or for worse, and if it isn’t what the publishers want then so be it. I’ve had enough interest that I am quite happy to have a crack at self-publishing, but the book-snob in me wants to try traditional route first.

So wish me luck!

Letting go

So this lunchtime I did something quite terrifying – I finally let go. I took a year’s worth of agonising, second guessing, swearing and maniacal cackling, stuffed it in an envelope and threw it in a post box.

Fly my pretties! - manuscripts ready to hit the postbox
Fly my pretties! – manuscripts ready to hit the mail

My regular (and infinitely patient) readers will know exactly what I am talking about, but for those of you just poking your noses in – I am writing a book based on this blog. A book I have been writing for what feels like forever.

It’s not the writing that’s hard, that’s what I do – it’s as simple as breathing. I’m not saying that I am spectacularly good at it, just that it comes easy. Other things, not so much. Like marketing and sales-pitches and trying to work out what kind of book people actually want to read.

I could have churned this book out in a month if I’d had the time and the space, but it would have just been a gratuitous travelogue – and while those certainly have their place, I wanted to do something different. And also, let’s be realistic here, I wanted to write something that people would buy.

Once I thought I’d achieved that I then found myself in the position of having to convince other people that they wanted to publish it – and that was where I fell down. Basically I am a rubbish salesperson. I’m short and I’m loud and I’m stroppy but I’m really crap at talking myself up. What right did I have to assume that publishers would want to take a punt on me? What if all the people who have given me feedback on my blog were just humoring me? What if I really actually suck at this?

So I agonised. I did a tonne of research into what publishers wanted – how to present it, how not to present it, how to write chapter summaries and covering letters, and discovered of course that everyone wanted something different. I hit a complete brain-block. Things that should have taken me an afternoon took me weeks and there was no real reason why.

But finally –  with a lot of patience and support from family, friends and of course the Skipper – I got there, Today.

The goods - Part 1, chapter summaries, salespitch and sample pics
The goods – Part 1, chapter summaries, sales pitch and sample pics

Saying it was like printing my hopes and dreams out onto A4 and dropping them in a letter box is probably a little too melodramatic. It was more like ripping off a Band-Aid that has been there so long it has kind of fused into your skin. It hurt, but it was also enormously liberating. There is still more to write, but as I said before, that’s the easy part.

It’s out there now, for better or for worse, and if it isn’t what the publishers want then so be it. I’ve had enough interest that I am quite happy to have a crack at self-publishing, but the book-snob in me wants to try traditional route first.

So wish me luck!

So how’s the book going?

For those of you wondering why I haven’t blogged for about a million years, it’s because I am working on Which Way is Starboard Again? the book – based on this blog and the journal I kept while sailing.

For those of you wondering where the book is – that’s why I’m writing this blog.

I figured this whole book thing would be a doddle. I love writing, I’ve got the material – how hard could it be? Answer: Harder than you think grasshopper.

Since I didn’t know the first thing about getting a book in print (I’ve been published in newspapers, magazines and online, but never in anything with more than 50 pages) I decided to consult the experts. I discovered, through author advisory groups both in NZ and overseas, that when writing non-fiction your best bet is to write a chunk of the book then provide chapter summaries of the rest so publishers can let you know what they are interested in hearing more of.

Well the first part was easy. I wrote a chunk of the book – the first third to be precise. (I am breaking it up into three sections; the craziness of getting ready to go, the trip itself, and attempting to reintegrate into society once we got back – which was a lot harder than either of us had anticipated.) 20,000 words, just like that. Done and dusted. Now all I needed to do was shoot off a few chapter summaries and I would be ready to start harassing publishers.

It was round about then that I discovered writing chapter summaries is not actually that easy. Essentially, when you are doing this, you are outlining your entire book. Which means you have to have a pretty clear idea of where you book is going to go. It is also rather difficult to précis an entire chapter of experiences and feelings in a couple of pithy paragraphs designed to make a publisher want to read the whole thing.

Then I hit another snag – outlining the entire book meant I needed to know exactly where the book was going and which events led to which. I was thrown into a bit of a chronological dilemma – which came first, the chicken or the volcano? I honestly wasn’t sure. I wrote in my journal frequently but haphazardly. I wrote about things when I thought of them or when I had the chance, I scribbled them down in all sorts of strange places – but I was pretty rubbish when it came to dates and locations. I had the main geographical areas sorted, but often had no idea of the exact name of the reef passage we were going through when some event or other happened.

I was about ready to give up in frustration when I had a brain flash. Through the awesome Winlink radio-email system (run by an amazing bunch of volunteers) we had emailed home regularly and Paddy had been much better than I in terms of names and dates and locations. So all I had to do was sift through our inbox and outbox and problem solved!

Going back through those emails a bit of an emotional experience actually – like going through the whole trip all over again, even the bits that I had probably deliberately blotted out a little.

The emails home during the start of our trip from NZ to Tonga were the hardest to read, knowing damn well that Paddy’s “Anna was a bit scared last night” was a much kinder way of saying “Anna is losing her mind right now”. Yes I still managed to do all my night watches and yes I did get better and better – but there were times at the start when things got pretty dark. I fully suspect there were questions over whether I would actually make it through the entire Pacific trip, and I am proud to say that I did. It was also great to read the later emails, particularly when it was just Paddy and I sailing on our own. The fear gremlins were at bay and, while I wasn’t going to win any sailor of the year awards, I was definitely getting there.

The emails were great and helped kick things back in to gear again – I just had to put the jigsaw together. The problem being, this was a lot more like work and a lot less like fun. I had to really think about what I was doing and a single paragraph would take me half an hour. So I started making excuses – the last thing I felt like doing after work was sitting in front of a computer screen at home, I had a bazillion other things to do in the weekends, I needed to keep up with the housework, hey look – there’s a picture of a cat on facebook….

I had to force myself to sit down and write the damned summaries and the more I looked at them and at what I had written the more I convinced myself it was unpublishable tripe. Every time somebody asked “so how’s the book going?” I felt a pang of guilt and wrote a bit more, but it really was an uphill battle.

The thing is I’m stubborn and I am determined to get this done. I am going to write a book. When I think about it, that’s all I have ever wanted to do – ever since I was a geeky child with my nose permanently buried in one of the things. And thanks to the support of my friends, family and Paddy of course, I am back on track again.

I’m going to try the conventional way (they say you aren’t a real writer until you have had your first rejection letter from a publisher!) and if that doesn’t work I’ll look at self-publishing or print-on-demand, either way it is going to happen in some form or another. I’m sure I’ll hit a few more speedbumps along the way, but there WILL be a book dammit! I will keep you all posted and you are more than welcome to kick my arse if I start procrastinating again!

Image
Writing on tour

Image
Writing at home

PS – I have also discovered this great website called AdviceToWriters which I have been following on Twitter. It provides writerly wisdom and tips for people who are stuck and gives brilliant quotes from a range of really awesome authors. Whenever I feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall it always makes me smile. Here are some of my favourites:

The first draft of anything is always shit – ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.  – NEIL GAIMAN

Writing is like sex: You should do it, not talk about it.-  HOWARD OGDEN

Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life. – LAWRENCE KASDAN

The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing.  – FRAN LEBOWITZ