I'm back... and I'm sorry!

So ... I failed at my blog for a while. I  fact I think it was as long ago as August when I last dropped by. I could make all sorts of excuses - I ran out of things to natter on about, the time zone thing was tricky for group blogging and life just got in the way.  All are valid excuses, and are true but that's no excuse. I really just dropped the ball. I'm sorry. But I'm back! Possibly not as frequently as I used to be, three times a week takes up a lot of my WIP writing time, but I'm definitely back.

There's a lot that's been happening in my life lately I'm not quite sure where to start! Over the New Zealand summer I worked at an amazing theatre company in Christchurch called The Court Theatre. I loved that job and lived everything about that place. I was so sad to leave but the reason I left was because I took off to the other side of the world and spent 6 weeks trekking through Africa on the most incredible trip of my life. We went through South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya then up to Egypt. It was life changing and I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. I was going to write an entire post about that adventure but then remembered this is my writing blog and you may not be particularly interested in that little part of my life! If you do want to know let me know... I'm one of those annoying travellers all too willing to talk about my travels!

The incredible sand dunes in Namibia

Making friends with a Cheetah, Namibia

Falling in love with these beautiful two lion cubs, Zimbabwe

Lions in Serengeti, Tanzania

After Africa I spent some time in Turkey, Greece, France and The Netherlands before moving to London. The last two months have been a little bit like being in limbo, looking for a job and a place to live but it's a fun city!

The city of love? Paris, France!

King's Day in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Giza, Egypt

In the heart of Athens, Greece

Kalkan on the Turkish Coast where we spent our days lying in the sun by the pool reading for an entire week :D

London! My new home!

Being unemployed has its benefits in that I have had a lot if time to work on my book.

When I last posted, I was still plugging away at my WIP. Well over the new year I finally finished that puppy. Then I let it sit. I mulled it over and thought about my characters then gave it to a good friend who gave me some excellent feedback. When I was in Africa I had a lot of ideas of ways I could alter my WIP for the better in the second draft.

A month after I arrived in London my computer finally arrived and I was reunited with my WIP. I knew it needed a lot of work and felt there was really something integral to the story that wasn't working. I spent a few weeks looking at my characters, looking at what makes them who they are and act the way they do... then I looked at the world my story is set in and the plot I had developed. Eventually I found the problem. It only took me a day of brainstorming before I figured out what the solution was. Typically it involved completely gutting my entire WIP. I sat there telling myself over and over that it was completely normal to rip to shreds your first draft and it was 100% necessary but it was still sad.

So now I'm starting again, but this time I know my characters and my world much more intricately. I know them inside out, the way I always should have. It's a nice feeling actually and I'm confident this story will be much stronger for the changes.

So, what did I miss around here?!

Images that inspire

When I was 14 I had to have surgery. I had another at 15, another at 17, two at 18 (one was for appendicitis), another at 20 and then countless other procedures in between (I was such a healthy teenager, ha!). The recovery times for each of these surgeries varied significantly, but for the most part they always involved some form of lying in bed for at least a couple of days. After my first surgery, my parents got me a bunch of DVDs and brought one of the TVs into my bedroom during my recovery. The only problem was, after the anesthetic I was too sleepy to be able to focus on anything other than music and staring at the ceiling.

For my next surgery, my parents bought me a bunch of CD's and before I went into the hospital I printed out a selection of images and arranged them on my bedroom wall so I would easily be able to see them from my bed. 

These pictures would be of places I wanted to go around the world, vibrant cities, European villages, tropical beaches, the Northern Lights, rainforests ... they'd be pictures of places where in my mind I could escape to and pretend I was there instead of lying in bed trying not to pull the stitches in my stomach.

These pictures would inspire me, I would create a world around me which could be completely different than the world I was living. As I started traveling around the world, I would buy postcards in each town, village, city or country I would visit. I stuck them all over my bedroom until I had each wall filled with pictures of places all over the world. Some could think I was obsessed with traveling. This is partly true, but primarily these pictures gave me inspiration.

I could stare at these images and write an entire novel in my head (let's face it, I had plenty of time up my sleeve!). It was a really good way to exercise my brain and to stretch my creativity beyond what I thought I was capable. Many of those ideas have never seen the light of day, however the WIP I'm currently working on is a product of one little idea that came to me during one of those recovery periods. The story was never formulated in my head, but I had this image of a girl, and her surroundings were so curious and interesting... and she looked slightly different than most people I know. I think only one scene played out in my head, but that scene stuck with me, and all these years later I am finally telling her story.

Now, whenever I go to write I think of those images, or I ask Google to give me some more inspiration, and those images will help create my story.

What images inspire your writing? Here's a few of mine....

Photo by Dirk van der Made

Photo by Makemake

 

The stunning Niagara Falls! Photo is my own :)

Rarotonga, one of my favourite places on earth! Photo is also my own