A bunch of misfit kids were doing a Saturday detention.
Category Inspiration
Time Out
“How can I find time to write?” You may have found yourself asking the internet.
“Write every day!” The internet replies. “Make time before work, after work, late at night, weekends. If you want to be a writer you have to write every day! Do a John Grisham and get up at 4 am and write for two hours. If you don’t find time to write every day you clearly don’t really want to be a writer, do you? You have no passion and no motivation, and if you can’t help yourself then I can’t help you.”
Urgh! I had such a crazy week last week I didn’t even wash my hair for 3 days. But according to the writer’s theory of the internet this means I have no motivation to pursue my dreams, no passion for what I’m doing and I should probably just go back to the couch and continue watching the box set of Misfits on 4OD – the only thing I’ve really done this past week, apart from either be at work or be freaking out about work.
I get up at about 5 am every morning. Not to write, but to go to my day job. Where I stay all day. When I come home I quite often write for a couple of hours, but I also do other things. Like cook my dinner, put on laundry, or even spend time with actual humans! I do not write every day. There, I said it. Now you all know. I’m a failure at being an aspiring novelist!
My advice is this; totally write as much as you can! But on those days when you just need to veg out, hang out with your bf/gf or bff, finally finish reading a book, go to the pub or whatever else you do in your life – just go do it and don’t beat yourself up! Don’t let Pinterest quotes or other random writing advice sites make you feel like you aren’t passionate or good enough to write just because you don’t do it every day. Giving up the entirety of your minuscule moments of spare time and missing social occasions and ignoring your girlfriend so you can stay home and write your Zombie Apocalypse novel won’t make you the next Isaac Marion. Probably. Maybe it will. I don’t know.
All I can do is drag myself out of bed and go to work all day and then hope that listening to a Whitesnake playlist really loud on the 65 minute commute home keeps me energized enough to write when I get there. Because I do want to write. I want to write so bad. I want to write more than anything! I just also really like having food on the table and right now those two things don’t go together. But I will get there and I will finish my first readable draft by Easter weekend! I just might not do it by writing every single day, because some days I just want to sit on the couch with a pizza and a couple of beers.
Life lessons brought to you today by Bryan Adams
It’s been an exciting week in the world of Time Traveller’s Scrunchie! In case you missed it all over Facebook and Twitter…
The real actual Bryan Adams replied to my tweet!
Do you think I could even hold my phone when I saw I had a notification from BRYAN ADAMS?! I was fangirling all over the house!
But it very nearly didn’t happen because I almost deleted the blog post I wrote about Bryan Adams being Buddy Holly in a past life.
When I told people about the Buddy Holly reincarnation theory, they mostly looked at me like I was totally quackers!
But I wrote the post anyway because it was just too exciting not to! I thought that people would be just as excited about it as I was!
But it turns out I was a bit wrong, because the next day I checked my stats and I’d had about 3 views. One person on Facebook liked it; my sister.
I felt pretty stupid. I almost just took it right down. I don’t want to look stupid on the internet! The whole point of this blog is to share what I’m doing and find people who like what I’m writing about so that they might want to read my book when it’s published. The idea here is not to look too crazy right?! This is my future career I’m playing with!
But I left it up, even though when I checked my stats again that night nothing much had changed.
So why did I suddenly decide it was a good idea to tweet Bryan Adams and ask him if he was a reincarnation of Buddy Holly? Urgh! I don’t even know! It was one of those moments where you just do the thing and then later wonder if perhaps it was just a bit too loopy. Oh well, Bryan Adams doesn’t know me, who cares if he thinks I’m loopy? He’s not exactly in the demographic for my YA novel about time travelling to 1983, although he is mentioned in chapter 6. And my male lead kind of looks like him a bit. I describe him as a cross between James Dean and a 1980’s Sting with a dash of Bryan Adams. Heeeheeehahahaha!
So anyway, when Bryan Adams replied to my tweet the next day suddenly everyone was interested in what I was saying. That post has now had 79 views! Awesome!
If I had deleted my post like I’d thought about and run away and hid under the doona (or duvet) of self deprecation Bryan Adams would still not know I exist.
I’ve spent a lot of time throughout my 33 years on this beautiful and bizarre planet worrying about what people think of me. I’ve spent a lot of time not doing things and not saying things because I’m worried about people thinking I’m weird. I’ve spent a lot of time putting multicoloured 80’s jumpers in my ebay cart and then taking them out because people might think I look silly in them.
But now I’ve now decided to give myself permission to be myself. Because even if a lot of people think you are weird, or stupid, or mental one person might like what you’re doing. And that person might just be Bryan Adams.
Thanks for the lesson Bry. x
Robocop 2
Can you imagine my surprise after so thoroughly enjoying Robocop, to find out there was a Robocop 2 AND a Robocop 3?! If you want a nice condensed version of Robocop 2 watch the trailer. If you don’t like spoilers just download the whole movie.
If you love the 80’s (although this was 1990 it doesn’t look like it!), love stupid movies, think Robocop was awesome and want to see him shinier and more cheerful than ever, spend your Saturday night with a beer, chicken wings, popcorn and a pizza and Robocop 2!
Bryan Adams is Buddy Holly reincarnated
I was driving home from my day job today listening to a podcast about past lives. It’s a long drive and you can only listen to Journey’s greatest hits so many times a day, so I’m always listening to stuff that I find interesting, like how to stop procrastinating (iProcrastinate), paranormal investigations, UFO stuff, Angels and the afterlife, just the normal 9-5 grind stuff right?!
Anyway, today I’m listening to Andrew Brewer, AKA the Rock and Roll Psychic, talking about past lives. He starts talking about how in the early 80’s every time he heard this song he’d see Buddy Holly like standing in his living room. The song stops getting so much airplay and Andrew forgets about it. But sometime later, he hears another song and there’s Buddy Holly again, clear as day! So he goes to research a bit about this artist who turns out to be BRYAN ADAMS and checks the two birthdays against each other. 9 months and 2 days between Buddy Holly’s death and Bryan Adams’ birth. I mean seriously?! Andrew was like – come on, you died at 22 at the height of your music career, the first thing you wanna do is get back to what you’re doing. Oh yeah, and like Bryan Adams had his first hit single at the age of 22.
WOWZERS!
So then I came home and did a little of my own research which pulled up that the song ‘There will never be another tonight’ had the original title of ‘Buddy Holly idea’ because it reminded everyone of ‘Peggy Sue’. So OMG you guys.
Bryan Adams is totally Buddy Holly reincarnated!
Check out the pictures and videos below for the pictorial evidence!
You guys seeing it now?!
How about now? When I matched up these two pictures I was like – yep. This is total proof!
BUT THEN! I watched these two videos like at the same time, the first one for a bit, the the second one for a bit, like just a few seconds each. YOU WILL TOTALLY SEE IT!
I’m 100% convinced this is real you guys. If I wasn’t already so far into my time travel to 1983 YA novel I’d write this story instead.
In other reincarnation news, Miley Cyrus says she was Lil Kim in a past life.
UPDATE******* This blog post disappeared yesterday (11.3.14) from the internet. CONSPIRACY MUCH?! So I asked Bry what the deal was and here it is, confirmed for y’all! BOOM! x
Random Writing Tip #2 – Paper
I don’t really like writing tips. I find them to be mostly the same regurgitated crap all over the internet. But after being stuck in a total editing rut for weeks I decided to take action and put into practice some of the editing tips I’ve heard about, but completely ignored previously.
And I feel a bit stupid because one of them actually really helped.
I have no idea where this gif is from but I love this girl’s style.
OK, so what’s the tip? It’s freaking PAPER you guys! I know right? It’s just paper.
I printed out my first nine chapters…
Then went to bed with all the bits of paper, a cup of tea, some tea light candles, my iPhone speakers which are awesome and in the shape of a cat, and a metallic purple pen. I like this one from Paperchase. And I sat there, in bed. And I read the first four chapters in one sitting, purple penning as I went.
And most of it wasn’t so bad. I didn’t hate it nearly as much as I thought I was going to!
Everything looks different on paper. It looks real. It looks like a real manuscript. Real words on real paper. It’s almost like it’s parts of a book!
If you don’t do this already, get yourself some printed pages and get to bed immediately! x
Nerd Factor: Pretty in Pink – The Duckie Look
Pretty in Pink, one of my all time favourite 80’s movies. I’m loving this post teaching all you boys how to dress properly. Awesome. x
Singing cats & 80’s tracks
Did you ever feel like someone crawled inside your head and pulled out a TV ad?!
Writer’s funk
I’m in a total writer’s funk. Everything I write is crap. Everything I’ve already written is crap. Everything I edit is crap. Everything I have ever written in my whole entire life – crap. It’s not even writer’s block. Writer’s block is like you have nothing, writer’s funk is like you have SO MUCH but it’s all trash. I could sit here and type for days but nothing good is going to come out.
So I’ve written this whole YA novel, like a second draft. It’s totally rough as guts and most of it doesn’t make sense (time travel is HARD!). I got to the point where I couldn’t do it on my own any more, and because I’m not super rich or anything I recruited a couple of friends to help out, you know, just reading what I have and giving me some first impressions, what works for them, what doesn’t, you know the deal.
You might think that my funk is due to the feedback I’ve gotten and I’m all sad and crying because everyone thinks my novel is crap. But actually, the feedback has been really positive and helpful and I probably don’t deserve any of the nice things they have said because it’s SO BAD.
Every time I open a chapter to send it to someone as an email I’m re-reading it because it’s been a while since I looked at the first few chapters and everything I read is TERRIBLE!
I was reading a chapter this morning, the bit where my protagonist goes back in time, I mean that’s meant to be a big part of the story right? And as I read it I was like – OMG this is so boring. Nothing is interesting, my character sucks, my setting sucks and my story sucks.
MY WHOLE BOOK SUCKS!
But does it really suck? Or do I just think it sucks? Am I just having a bad day? Because sometimes I re-read chapters and I giggle to myself and I think – tee hee, that’s really good!
But not today.
Am I just in a funk or should I give up all my dreams of ever being a published YA author?
Of course I know I won’t give my dreams away. I know I’m just having a bad day but I also know I need to put in a hell of a lot more work. But is all this hard work worth it?!
I guess this is when you start asking yourself – why am I doing this?! Why do I put myself through weekends and evenings and sunny Fridays off work to sit at a laptop and want to throw it out the window because I can’t even make time travel exciting.
So why am I doing this? I could be spending my free time doing something else, like reading Insurgent, continuing my Tru Calling marathon from yesterday (OMG have you seen that show? I LOVE IT!), going outside, I mean the sun is out for the first time since October, or I could sleep, or clean, or I could do some knitting.
So why do I do it? Why do I have these super shitty days where I think I’m the worst writer on the face of the planet and it’s all for nothing and KEEP DOING IT?
*Shrugs*
Because I love it. Even when I hate it. I don’t really hate it. I hate that I don’t think I’m good enough, but I’ll just have to get good enough.
DNF and LOVE!
I just came across this blog post on Bookmarked Pages about DNFing this afternoon while taking a break from being obsessed with young Axl Rose, eating cheese popcorn and working on my sequel. And I got to thinking about how the whole DNF thing is basically exactly the same as LOVE.
What’s a DNF? In this context, it’s a book you Did Not Finish. As in, Outlander was so long and the sex scenes bugged me so I DNFed.
As I was reading this post I thought about my own reasons for doing a DNF. The main reason I DNF is if I’m just not enjoying myself that much, if there’s no spark, no connection. If the book isn’t making me want to pick it up and read it it’s looking like a DNF.
Do you know how many books there are in the world? I don’t. No one does! Now that we have self publishing on the internet pretty much every person on the planet is working a novel, which means that including all the books already written, there are a hell of a lot of them out there. So why are you reading a book you don’t love? Why are you reading anything less than a page turner?
Some reasons I’ve done a DNF:
1. The plot is going nowhere. Nothing has happened for about 100 pages.
2. The characters suck, you don’t care about any of them.
3. It just annoys the hell out of you for some reason – bad sex scenes (my bugbear!), unrealistic dialogue, things that don’t make sense, people dressing badly, annoying characters, etc. etc.
4. It’s really badly written – I actually don’t mind a badly written book if it’s got a good story, The Ghost and the Goth books are a good example of this, not great literature, but a fast paced cute story with a crushable protagonist.
5. It’s not your style, you don’t connect, you don’t know why, it’s just not working.
6. You have a pile of books about a mile high of other books to read, including a John Green book.
7. Your life is too short for this.
So why do you keep going when you should probably just DNF?
1. You think it’s going to get better. Hello, you’ve read more than half of this book, it’s had it’s chance to woo you!
2. You don’t want to seem like some kind of failure. Reading a whole book you don’t like is not a success people!
3. Everyone else read it and thought it was awesome. There must be something wrong with you. Don’t worry, I’m the only person I know who has liked The Ghost and the Goth books, who cares? You can DNF that book, I won’t change the way I think of you. If I did I would be a jerk. I also DNFed The Host even though I loved Twilight, so yeah. No judgement here.
4. You have nothing better to do. OMG, go to a book store or hit up Good Reads or Amazon or one of my fave sites, FYA and look at the book reports for inspiration because there are SO MANY GOOD BOOKS in the world. Or send me a message and I’ll send you some chapters of my current draft and you can give me some feedback. Or look at cats on the internet because that’s fun too.
So how does this relate to relationships? Argh, do I have to spell it out? This whole post has been a metaphor for your relationship!
I’m so lucky because my current relationship is like a John Green novel. But I’ve been there kids, I’ve been in a DNF, quite a few actually. And sometimes, you just have to put that book down, go out to Waterstones with a Starbucks in your hand and find the YA (or genre of your fancy) section and browse around a little because there are WAY too many good books out there to be reading something you don’t just love.
Magic Pizza Press 