I Need To Get Out Of This Rut…

For the last month or so I have been churning out this book like nobody’s business; I’ve written over 30,000 words in 5 weeks. I’m pretty proud of that but ultimately the book isn’t finished yet, so I can’t slow down now…

A few days ago I took the day off to recharge my brain. I need to do this every so often to give myself time to reflect on the book and if I want to take it in a particular way, I can’t simply write bullshit and hope it looks good at the end, I need to have a vague idea of where I’m going with it in terms of structure and to connect one chapter to the next. However I struggled the next day to get anything worthwhile down. I wrote something, deemed it terrible and deleted it. Repeating this process 4 times before giving up and thinking that I should try again tomorrow.

Tomorrow came and went, but ultimately I ended up with the same result. I kept the majority of it this time but I feel that deep down I’m going to have to come back and change it because I was definitely not on my ‘A-Game’. After thinking about it for a while I finally concluded that the reason I didn’t have anything spilling out of my brain was because in the last month I kind of knew what I had to write but I hadn’t written it down yet, whereas this particular part was where I knew what I wanted at the end of the scene, but I was not 100% sure how I was going to get there. So I went to bed early and thought resting my brain for one more day would be a good thing. After that I could attack this scene and everything would be back to normal. After all, this is the only scene that’s holding me up…

Today I woke up in a depressed state thinking that I didn’t want to DO anything. I went for a bike ride wondering what I was going to do to get myself out of this rut, and then it hit me;

“I don’t want to DO anything…” is a line from my latest book. The next scene I was writing was an upsetting scene about a character who is feeling worthless. Recently I have been writing all positive scenes so I have been writing ample words on a daily basis, sometimes writing as much as 3500 words a day. Ultimately I am doing what every good author – and not just authors, actors as well – should do: I have become my characters. When the book was upbeat, I was happy and optimistic about everything. Now the book is taking a dark turn, so am I.

So no, I don’t want to get out of this rut anytime soon. I want to channel this energy into writing something beautiful. I’ve become my characters before (getting into a mind of a killer was genuinely scary and something I don’t want to do again anytime soon!) but never as powerfully as this. It’s exciting and interesting at the same time, and I’m looking forward to what comes out of my brain in the next few days…

Pampering Day!

Last Friday I woke up and did the usual checking of emails and scrolling through news websites to see what was going on in the world, and at around midday I got a hankering for some Mexican food. Usually I eat cheap Thai food in the afternoon and MAYBE splash out in the evening, since I don’t earn a lot of money (especially now since I quit my job and dedicated my time to writing on a full time basis…) this splashing out idea has become more and more sparse. So even though I was unsure whether I should spend money on a western lunch or not, I threw caution to the wind and followed my gut.

I was rewarded with two beasty tacos. I destroyed them slowly like a cat torturing a mouse and looked just as satisfied afterwards. I was trying to get in the mindset to be able to write something good for my latest book and decided to go to the tourist area where the dodgy prostitutes normally hang out and play some pool there….Honest! Pool is free in that area and after being here for four years I know the bars where they have good tables and no diseased ridden girls trying to grab your junk. At least that’s the story I’m sticking to…

I found a bar with a free table and said I wanted to play. They asked if I wanted to play by myself (since I was by myself) and I said yes, which was greeted with strange stares. I then proceeded to spend the next hour or so whacking in balls with numbers on them into pockets, and as it was an American table, I hardly ever missed due to their pockets being double the size of English ones…

When i left that bar I felt ultra relaxed, almost ready to have a nap. So I decided to get myself a massage, not worry about writing for the day and concentrate on spoiling myself. I found a massage place near where I live and got myself a massage. The woman was laughing because I was drifting in and out of consciousness after five minutes because I felt so chilled.

I left the place after the massage lady was forcefully trying to set me up with her 18 year old niece (the fact that I mentioned I was 10 years older than her didn’t deter her in any way!) and headed back home feeling like I was floating. I then got back on my computer to see what was going on in the world and proceeded to write 1700 words in my book instead. It was effortless, and looking back I wrote some pretty good stuff as well!

Unfortunately for me once i had finished my work i went to turn my fan on only to realize that it had died. Luckily for me a friend of mine called Cailee, who is also a blogger, turned out to be an absolute hero and let me borrow her spare fan until my one got fixed.

In conclusion I think I should do this pampering day thing more often. I haven’t really spoiled myself at all since moving here because I was so focused on saving money for travelling or for the future. So treating myself every so often is definitely a nice feeling, even more so since I do it less often than most people. However after how I felt on Friday I have a feeling this is going to become more of a common occurrence, and not just for me; my writing benefited from it as well!

My fellow bloggers, I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely truthful with you….

Indeed I did have professional platonic relations with my work that was inappropriate…

So yeah; I’m back at work. One of the receptionists called me and said that if I didn’t go back they would cancel my work permit, and since I am approximately 1-2 months away from completing my latest bad boy I reluctantly caved in to their demands.

On the plus side (depending on how you want to look at it…) I’ve had quite a few nights out recently. My liver has not thanked me, but at least I’m doing something other than staring at my computer all night every night at the moment.

On Friday I went out with my friends Keni and Jamie (the one’s that got married an couple of weeks ago) and got McPlastered. We began the afternoon doing various boring errands. Then we randomly went to a snooker hall and showed the people there why we don’t represent England on the professional circuit. After that we went to a bar in the tourist area and played some pool, since when you transition from a snooker table to a pool table playing pool seems embarrassingly simple. At 11 o clock we decided it was time to retire until just before we got back I happened to mention to Keni that one of the cute girls that lived in our apartment owned the bar we had just passed. Before you could say “I did, I did, I did see a pooty cat!” Keni spun the bike around and we had a few more drinks of the alcoholic variety there. We went to bed at roughly 2AM.

The next day was Sasha and Harrison’s last day in sunny old Chiang Mai, and we planned on bowling the night away like last time. Unfortunately someone rented out the entire bowling alley so we stared disapprovingly at them for half an hour before going to a bar in Nimman (the posh area) to say Ciao. And we did! We also played pool and talked about our best dance moves. The final goodbye was emotional, but at the same time I was happy for them because they were going on to do better things. I’m looking forward to seeing them in America when I do my world travel trip.

And finally Sunday was Liverpool Lee’s birthday, so he invited me out to dinner with him, his wife and a few of our friends. The food was orgasmic….I’m lying, it was OK. I was faking my climax… The night out was really good though. I enjoyed their company and i’m looking forward to the next one.

Oh and one final thing to end with; I’m now 80,000 words into my latest book. That’s almost double the amount of words I put in my previous books. I still have a lot more to put into this one as well. The feedback I have gotten from this one so far is positive, but of course I’m still a bit nervous to see what these people think when it’s finished.

Rainbow in Chiang Mai

I was on my computer doing…nothing special, and the power went out in my room. It was off for about a quarter of an hour altogether. After exhausting all my quick repetitive games on my phone I ventured outside onto my balcony to absorb the cool air as there was a nice breeze passing through. We’ve been in a heatwave since early May so it was a welcome surprise to have nice cool air passing by.

It was an even bigger surprise that whilst looking at the rainstorm, I was lucky enough to see this beauty coming out of the sky.

I guess the morale of the story is don’t spend so much time on your phones, on your computer or locked up in your room, since you never know what may pass you by. I would have missed it if it wasn’t for the power going out…

It’s all coming together…

I’m about 70% into my latest book. At least, I was until yesterday. Yesterday evening I came up with a plot twist that is unfortunately going to make me write an extra 30,000 words than planned (approximately 100 pages), but it will be worth it as it adds so much more depth to the already intriguing story line.

I sat down and mapped out how it’s going to go. I don’t have all the specific details about how I’m going to connect the dots, but the majority of the story is there now, and in order on how I want it to go. Now all i have to do is physically write it (which is a lot easier said than done)

This book has already surpassed 70,000 words (200+ pages) and I expected it to be close to hitting 100,000 once it was finished. Now i reckon it will easily be more than 300, possibly even 400 pages. Not bad for someone who normally writes novellas that are between 100 and 150 pages.

The good thing about this one is that I quit my job a couple of weeks ago, so I can focus my energy on writing this rather than countless hours stressing about making a student pass an exam that they are clearly not ready for. I’m learning that if I need a break, I go and kick the punchbag, do some push ups, play some snooker or pool, go for a jog, have a couple of drinks, whatever it is I need to unwind I do it. I’m no longer feeling guilty about enjoying my life even though i may not have reached my quota yet for the day. A clear mind means that I am ready to attack some more of this book. I’m averaging a thousand words a day now; double what I was a month or so ago, so that’s a bonus. I feel motivated to finish this one before September hits and I have to sort my life out (that’s when my visa ends in this country)

And then what? The plan is to send this one to publishers instead of simply self publishing it. Early on in my writing career I got told by various people that I was wasting my time trying to get published since most publishers wouldn’t even let me in the door if I didn’t have some sort of English degree. Naively I believed them and didn’t even try to get properly published. Now my confidence in my writing ability is growing i feel the time is right to show the world I can do this on a professional level, that I can turn this into a career, and most importantly, I can take people on a journey with my words.