Draft continues

This morning I felt good and dreamy. My good mood is in part a result of all the good things ahead of me, that I keep thinking about. I'll go to Moscow in three weeks to meet with my friends, and then two weeks after that me and my beloved friend will go to Kiev together for 5 days, and two weeks after that we'll meet again in Moscow and watch new Star Trek movie. I really hope all of this works out. It keeps me smiling for the last few days. Anyway, I felt good, and I used the mood to finally get back to my writing. :-)

Now my draft is 5209 words long or almost ten standard google docs pages. Again, it isn't much, but it is better than nothing. I am currently writing the chapter where Richard and James meet for the first time. It was really hard to start. I didn't know what any of them should say, but the thing is: they wouldn't know it either if they were real. That's why my clumsy writing seems appropriate to me. Richard is confused and he is afraid to screw up. So am I. But we are also both determined to get through to James, and I think, we are starting to succeed.

I'll use Richard's thoughts here:
"James seemed to be amused with all the geek references at this point. He probably thought his father was just a big baby. But at least they were having a conversation. And James was interested in getting to know him. That was a start."

These chapters are introductory ones. Main plot would take place after Tamara's death. And still, I feel that it wouldn't be right for me to go there until I draft the meeting properly. This is such an important period for both James and Richard, it determines their relationship in the future. Also, my guilty pleasure seems to be calling the boy Jimmy. I blame captain Kirk and his awesomeness. And Bones and his awesomeness.

New words and new writing

Another week, another non-written part of my draft... my writing course started yesterday, and in a week a course in quantum mechanics starts. So now I have 5 of them simultaneously. I fight very mild panic attacks when I think about it, it feels like a huge pressure is applied to me by all these courses since I try to attend to all of them. This weekend I was supposed to finish the last programming assignment for my Algorithms course, but I procrastinated. And yesterday I felt so sick I didn't even go to work, and I didn't study either. :-(

But I did wrote first assignment for the writing class. It's an introduction essay. I think I did pretty good, and it's also delightful to see how many people are there in the course who are enthusiastic writers just like me.

I am a writer of my life

First time I felt like a writer was in elementary school. Our music teacher gave us a task to write a poem about feelings we had while listening to Vivaldi's "Seasons". I wrote a short poem about spring. That was my first. It felt amazing, it felt natural, and I liked it so much it never wear off to this day. I'm twenty six now.

I enjoy writing. It helps me to think, and it helps me to express myself in the most precise way possible since I'm not that good in talking or touching. Writing gives me freedom and strength to be who I am. Through the years I did all kinds of writing: school papers, university projects, technical documentation, love poems, fairy tales, letters, reviews, co-writing games, fanfiction... I also have a daily updating blog since 2003. Lately I became interested in writing in English. It's my second language, so I don't feel confident with it yet, and I take every opportunity to learn. English is beautiful, and I love it almost as much as I love Russian, though it is completely different in rhythm and in spirit. I believe that writing is to some degree independent of the language itself, though I am ready to be proved wrong.

Sometimes I feel that I not as much live my life, as I write a story of it, picking dialogs and laughing at irony, assessing my troubles for dramatic effect rather than full heartedly suffering through them. Whether this is healthy or not, I am forever grateful to have such gifts as a language and a written word.
***

New words for today:

discomfited

confounding

cumbersome

incredulity

infinitesimally

Wondrous

Also, the words

debilitation

to sweep

surreptitiously

hootenanny

mesmerizing

Oops?

Oh, wow, so I haven't written a thing for more than two weeks. That's me. I do this. Well, it's not like I didn't see it coming - that is why I am not gonna cry "I ruined all of it! It's a point of no return!", and instead I'll just update this blog, and then try to return to writing.

Below are not excuses (maybe, a little bit excuses), but factors that I think are in the way of my writing.
1) Sleep habits. I am still sleep deprived, though I sleep 8-9 hours a day, and I go to sleep around 2 or 3 a.m. even if I try to do it earlier. Which results in getting up around 11 and going to work late, and coming from work late, and that's a devil's circle. No time or energy to write in the morning.
2) Coursera. Lately I've been doing a lot of studing via coursera.org and science related podcasts. Mostly coursera. It takes a lot of my time and energy, and it isn't like I spend them to watch tv shows all day, so I feel it's justified. But it also means I have less time to write.
3) ...nope, that's it. If only I could normalize my sleep pattern and stop trying to do many things at once (not happenning), I would be able to create a rithual where I write a little every morning. At least, I think so now.

Of course, I spend time to tv shows and reading fanfiction, but that's my leisure time, I need it to function. I cannot be productive 24/7 all of a sudden, that's just not me, who's been a lazy ass since forever.

What good in all this? Is there any good? Yes! Yes, there is!
1) all my courses and podcasts are in English;
2) one of my current courses requires writing essays in English, so I am doing this - I do write in English, just in essay form;
3) I got myself into two different courses for writing in English. They'll start later, and I hope to learn a lot about language structure, about common stylistic errors and about construction of a story structure.

I am not a totally lost case. Which is why I am back (muahaha!). I won't start writing today or tomorrow, probably, I have a lot planned for this weekend (need to do last two weeks and final exam for one of the courses and few smaller things for other 2 courses), but I am back. And I will resume my writing. Next thing to write is James' first meeting with Richard.

What did I say about procrastination?

Today I continued to write my story. Spent an hour, wrote approximately 1400 words. Which isn't much, but it is 1400 words more, than I had yesterday!

And that would be it for today.
And then I went and wrote another 1000 words. Now the draft is 4343 words long according to google docs stats. Go me!

Procrastination is clingy

So... I've done absolutely nothing for my writing in five days. :-( And I'm not going to do it today, either. But at least today I made up my courage to admit the problem. It's always like this with me and problems: whenever I meet one, I just lay low and hope it'll go away, and no one will ever notice. I know it doesn't work like this... but that knowledge doesn't change the strategy. I'm pathetic like that.

I can at least post new words I managed to write down:
famished
hollered
evade
woolgathering
embellish
galling
smidgen
surreptitiously
disdainfully
fretting
conniption
disconcerting

And wow, I doesn't remember what any of these words means, except for a vague understanding of "disconcerning". I'm so bad at this. :-(

But I promised not to give up, so I won't. I'll try to get up in time tomorrow and to have my half an hour of uninterrupted writing. Good luck to me.

Documents sent, draft continued

Today I overslept, so I didn't get time to write in the morning. But I did get the time after work. In fact, today was a pretty full day: I sent immigration documents to London, then I worked, then I got home early (because I'll go to work tomorrow, on Saturday, so why not finish earlier today?) and made sushi (I still have plenty of rice left, because silly me didn't get the right fish), then I watched new episodes of Glee (yay for Klaine!) and Person of Interest, and then I sat down and wrote for forty minutes.

I drafted chapter two as a result. The draft is now 1560 words, which is not so little for me (my biggest text to this day is a bit more than 13000 words), but still the chapters are so small! The first one is a page long, and the second one is a page and a half. Also, chapter two is almost completely a dialog. I'll need to add some juice into it later, to show Richard's normal day before Tamara called him. But that is for future still unknown. As for today, I am glad I was able to did my "30 minutes on writing".

And I am really glad the documents are finally on their way to London. I hope my application will be processed soon enough, and I also hope my immigration officer doesn't hate me. She sounded a bit pissed off. But that may just be my imagination. Oh, well... whatever.

The Draft is started

I just got my block of time of uninterrupted writing (around an hour), and that resulted in a draft of chapter 1. The whole chapter is one page long, and the text is in no way good, but I promised myself to just go with it and keep drafting the story leaving the text quality to an editing stage.

I am a bit thrilled, and if I didn't need to go to work, I would probably stay and write further at least for an hour more. Still, this is a milestone.

No luck with notary

This morning I got to notary just to hear that no, she isn't capable of verifying the simple fact that I signed a paper in her presence, unless that paper is in Russian. Arrgh... that is frustrating, really. One little thing, and they can't even do it! So, I'll try different approach tomorrow. I translated my Statuary Declaration into Russian, and I am going to verify my signature there. Then I'll go to translator's office and ask to use my translation to make a verified translation of the Russian version. I really hope to accomplish that tomorrow.

As for my writing, I just got home from work, and it's already near 10 p.m., and I'm sleepy. So I'm in no condition to write today. Though I'm going to try anyway a bit later. Who knows? I am currently on a "create visual tag for each character" step, and I only created tags for Richard. I think that I need to invent these tags at least for Richard and James (and probably Tamara and Kevin) since they are in a story a lot from the very start. Other characters may stay tagless for now, and get their descriptions lined out in the second draft or along the way of creating the first draft.

To create some free time for my writing and for doing other stuff I've been trying for months to do regularly and failing I need to get up earlier. Usually I'm up around 9:30 a.m. but that is really no good. I've tried to set alarm for 8 a.m., but is clearly not working since I always just shut it down and go back to sleep. So starting tomorrow I'll try to set alarm for 6:50 a.m.. The idea here is to use my natural biorythms flow: I have a window of clearyness from 6 to 7, and then I am sleepy again. I hope it will work. Good luck to me.

Also, according to me and my friends' geek bro calendar tomorrow is Shakespear's appreciation day. Which is super cool. I loved Shakespear's plays when I was a kid! Read them all (or at least most of them) one by one at the age of 14. Sad thing is I haven't re-read them for a long time. Also, I read them in Russian. It may be the time for me to freshen up my memory and to do it in English. So, yay for Shakespear, the greatest of them all!

Hali is a lazy ass

Hali is me. I am Hali. And I am lazy. Nothing new here, really... today I got an email from my immigration officer, who asked if I sent him/her (I really don't know, and I find it rude to ask) documents I was to send in January. Well... I didn't. I've been trying to complete this task for the last two weeks! I'm really bad with documents, they are boring. The last document I need is a statuary declaration. I wrote and printed it today. I really hope to get to a notary tomorrow and convince him to verify my signature.

Theoretically there should be no problems, because all I need is for certified lawyer to confirm that I myself signed the paper, no matter what the paper says. But since the document is in English, I'm afraid to have problems like "oh, I don't know English, I'm not gonna verify that". =_=

This getting-documents-ready thing is so depressing, really. I am so much better in actions, than in getting government services and lawyers to give me the documents I need.

As for now, I decided that since I got an email 4 hours later than it was sent, I will answer the officer tomorrow, after I go to notary (and this I will do first thing in the morning). I like my officer. Hope I didn't give her/him any trouble by delaying the documents.

New words

Flabbergasted

Speechless

perennial

vindictive

seethes

cronies

scoffing

finagles

shrewd

cloyingly

scowl

linger

brooding

mesmerizing

cackles

succinctly

segueing

hinder

Also, spent 40 minutes on my writing today. Today's excercise was "archetypal characters".

Plot outline

Today I spent another hour on my writing! I continue to read articles on how-to-write-a-book-now.com and to do exercises, and so far it seems highly helpful. Today I wrote a brief plot outline for my story, based on plot details I wrote down yesterday. That's another 800 words, and while these are baby steps, at least I am moving. :-)

I think I'll finish the "How to Write a Novel" consequence before I start to really write the draft, because so far every article helped me to understand the structure of my story better, and I want to start a draft with a structure in my head. Currently I'm on "creating archetypal characters" stage, and I'll probably spend some more time today reading articles and and doing exercises.

Also, these are the new words I liked in my reading:

churlish

affable

blithely

Creating a plot

Today I did good with my writing, though I only spent about forty minutes doing things. Those things were productive! And I like how it started. :-)

I had an hour to kill, so I looked at my phone and discovered a task I planned to do: find and download/buy a book "How to write Sci fi". For some reason I googled "how to write book", and I discovered this site: how-to-write-a-book-now.com

I liked it instantly! It has a nice article on the main page, and the only other article I read - "Create a plot outline in 8 easy steps" - was really helpfull. I didn't just read it, I made an exercize step by step!

Before the exercize I've already had some ideas about what do I want to say with my story, and how the plot will be developing to highlight my ideas, but all those ideas were in my head, and they were vague. Now I not only have them written down, clear and detailed, but I also have some new ideas. And I have clarity. I even had a vision of my book's beginning!

I didn't write the story, but I wrote 828 words for the story. And I think I should start my draft soon. One of my problems in writing has always been the need to write good from the start. That always leads to the situation when I have a writer's block because I cannot find the perfect words or the perfect turn of events, or don't see the exact reaction of a character - and thus I stop writing until I find them. Which is often never. And maybe this is also the reason I only write short stories. Well, I'll try to change this starting now. I'm going to try and write in the draft for at least 30 uninterrupted minutes every day. This isn't much, but it's a start. And if I miss a day or two, I promise not to give up and to continue as if that never happend.

Richard is a geek

A little something about my writing: I decided to name my guy Richard. Also, I can almost see him now: a geek, shy and introvertic (even more so in his childhood), definitely not a tall-and-sporty one. Heterosexual. Calm and stubborn. Romantic in a way only geeks are. :-) Has a bizzare sense of humour and isn't very good in dealing with people, but able to communicate succesfully when necessary. Just your common IT guy/Sci-Fi geek. He also has action figures (not toys!) and few cosplay costumes. Good luck with your romantic life, Richard!

A little something about my immigration to New Zealand: today I got a paper I needed from work. Now I need to get to a notarius (that's a special kind of lawyer in Russia) and then to DHL to send my papers where they belong already! I'm a lazy ass, and I've been hanging the process since mid November which is sad.

I've also re-read all the words in my list and found out that I now recognise more of them than the last week. Which delights me. I am delighted.

Waylaid and more

These are the words for today.

incandescent

to sneer

flippant

solemnly

Ribbit

pandemic

to ogle

pudgy

prejudice

horrendous

jolt

jab

chafing

contrition

waylaid

Waylaid. I love how English works in words like this!