character development

Bootcamp Bubble July 2020

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It’s been some time since I’ve posted. I have no excuses, not real ones. I could blame the virus, but then it’s here to stay for some time and we’ve been on lockdown since March so I can’t use that.

So instead I’m going to become one of my female characters who needs to get herself into training to slaughter the monster of procrastination and prioritisation. It’s not a matter of time, I’ve always hated the excuse of ‘I’m so busy’. It’s such a lame lament. We all have the same number of hours in the day, it’s how we choose to use them and what we consider as important.

For far too long, I’ve put my writing at the bottom of the list. Well this month things are going to change and I’m going to fight and destroy the creature that has pinned me down, eaten my muse and trampled over my confidence. If I don’t. It’s time to hand in the towel. And I have fight left within me, so fight I will.

This month in my little Boot-camp Bubble I shall be committing to the following:

  • Time out from my online group, Writers Abroad. We are currently in the midst of celebrating our 10 year anniversary and there is a lot going on but it takes a lot of my energy. They will all be there when I return, as lovely and as supportive as ever, but this is a fight I have to do on my own.

 

  • Musing every day, for 31 days. Every. Single. Day. I will write to a creative writing prompt. I generally do this every week day morning but I also plan to turn at least one of these musings a week into a short story or a scene.

 

  • Journaling I’ve been doing ‘Morning Pages’ almost every day since 2015. It had purpose way back then when I was struggling with so many things. But it’s not challenging me any more, it’s a daily diary, of my daily, rather mundane life. So I’ve purchased the Journaling Compendium by Amie McNee and shall be using her daily prompts to explore myself as a writer, if she’s willing to stick around.

 

  • World Building My writing project priority is the Moon series. I published the first novella back in early March just when we went into lockdown and I’ve not done a thing. So I shall be pulling the publication and exploring and revisiting the world I created to define the next in the series and perhaps a third. Who knows?

So, I hope to be sharing my progress on a short weekly post and I hope to pop out of my bubble at the end of the month. That’s if the monster doesn’t eat me first.

“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself, the challenge is to silence the mind.”

– Caroline Myss

 

Ciao for Now . . .

 

Writing Tool Box

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It’s almost the end of the month and the start of Autumn, my favourite season. I love to snuggle down on the sofa with a good book, or film with the fire blazing – when the temperatures drop that is! Although it’s gone down by a good ten degrees or more, it’s still not quite cold enough to get the wood burner going. These are a few things I’ve put in my toolbox this month…

A Tool – The Enneagram Test is a really useful method to put more flesh on your characters. I have used Myers Briggs in the past as I used to be a practitioner in another life. This tool helps to define their flaws in a more defined way and something I tend to struggle with sometimes. Test it out on yourself, it can be very enlightening!

A Writing Challenge – National Write a Novel in a Month starts in November so there is still time to get planning your time if you are planning to have a go. This will be my 6th or is it 7th year to participate and I find the challenge so motivating that I’ve produced a guided journal (see last weeks post) for getting your first draft down, any time of the year 🙂

A Newsletter – I love writing prompts and quotes, so much so I post examples every week on my Instagram feed. The Writers Write newsletter, not only provides daily quotes and prompts, but also a post about writing, a daily comic, a daily word and writers born on this day. It only takes a second to read through which is also a great bonus.

A Programme – The Free Online Editor  – I’ve just come across this little beauty this last few days. I’ve been working hard on my Instagram account and for that you need quality images . If you blog you also need to be able to produces images that attract an already distracted audience. Being able to manipulate them in a professional way is key and this particular programme is free and online so you don’t have to download anything!

 

Writing Tool Box

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Here are some of the tools, articles, snippets I’ve come across this month which credit a mention, in my book at any rate…

A Cheat Sheet – do you struggle to describe body language, defaulting to the same old same old? Well this handy cheat sheet has to have a space in your resource file…

A Book – if you want even more help with describing emotions and how they affect your characters, The Emotional Thesaurus is a must for your book shelf. I’ve been using this a lot during the 2nd edit of Wolf Moon.

A List – of ideas for Facebook and Instagram Stories for Authors… apparently this is the way to go and this is a great checklist of things you can talk about for these short term posts.

A Tool– this article ‘How to Mind Map Your Novel‘ includes useful apps and software to achieve this but essentially all you need are pens and paper. I used this method to revise for exams, many years ago but hadn’t thought about using it for writing purposes!

Feeding My Muse

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Last month I wrote about the Social Media platforms I use, today I’m sharing a few ‘pins’ from My Pinterest board. You’ll learn a lot fromwhat goes on in my head from these pictures. For those of you who are not familiar with Pinterest it’s a place to save, organise and store images. You can follow other ‘Pinners’ with similar interests, create boards and save individual ‘pins’ (just another name for images).  A word of warning though, you can spend ages lost in the world of Pinterest and before you know it the hours have just slipped by. Very pleasurable time out though.

 

Pinterest is my absolute favourite because it is so visual, as you can see. I do need to do a bit of housekeeping. Like my home, it tends to get a bit untidy and grubby. 😉

You can follow me and my boards here and if you do, let me know and I’ll follow you back.

Writing Tool Box: April Favourites

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Every month I share some of the things that I shove into my toolbox, it could be a useful blog post, a book I’ve read, a website or article… here are my favourites for April:

A Writing Community – Writers Abroad, okay I own up I have a vested interest in this community as one of it’s members 8-). It’s been running now for over 10 years and is targeted at writers who live abroad (or have lived abroad) and don’t have access to traditional writing groups. We are currently open to new members.

A Blog – I’ve not been following the  Caffeine and Writing Dreams Blog for long but I’ve enjoyed reading the articles so far. They are very varied, clearly produced and very relevant. They are also not preachy, they provide a mixture of suggestions of how to solve a problem, letting you discover what works best for you…

An App – I first used the Aeon Timeline when I was writing historical fiction under the pseudonym of Louise Charles. I needed something that would keep all the ducks in a row for those with an eagle eye for historical fact. It was really useful. And I’m having so much fun using it in my fantasy writing, making up new timelines for the worlds that I create.

Online Resource – I use lots of different resources to flesh out my characters and make them more three dimensional. I came across this Character Personality Generator just recently which gave me lots of new ideas and ways of developing even the most minor of characters so that they still stand off the page.

What have you discovered this month that helps you in your writing?