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Pam Baddeley, Writer

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Squidoo does take up time, doesn’t it?

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on 29 January 2013 by Pam4 April 2022

The last few days have been spent battling with Squidoo.  I enjoy the creation of words but all the palaver with html to get pictures positioned and captioned, not to mention resolving copyright issues.  Lots of extra tasks are piling up such as sorting out affiliations, researching tools to let me put on links to the UK Amazon site … a bit dispiriting.  I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth the bother.

Due to all this, I’ve had no time to work on my WIP.  And that is annoying.

A Round of Words in 80 Days Badge

Anyway, here’s the rest of the ROW80 participants.

Posted in Work In Progress, Writing Challenges | Tagged article writing, progress, ROW80

Sidetracked Again Though in a Good Way

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on 25 January 2013 by Pam12 March 2014

That’ll teach me to be more disciplined – I’ve been meaning to do some writing on Squidoo for a while.  Finally started this week which means that again I’ve got nothing done on the WIP!  This should have been an official goal so here are my revised goals:

  1. Get my characters to the Rocks and Water scene that I wrote some years ago.
  2. Get together a submission package for a publisher who still accepts unagented submissions.
  3. Finish and publish a Squidoo lens

The Squidoo involves research and learning how to use the lens creation interface so has been quite time consuming this week though I’ve enjoyed doing it. 

OK, here are the other ROW80 participants this time:

 

Posted in Work In Progress, Writing Challenges

Where Did the Time Go?

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on 22 January 2013 by Pam12 March 2014

Darn, it’s time for another progress post to ROW80 and I haven’t managed to make any progress on my WIP.  In my defence, maybe working flat out on the Amazon submission produced a mini burnout.

I have added a goal to my original one of getting my characters to the Rocks and Water scene that I wrote some years ago.

I want to get a submission package together for a publisher that I discovered about a month ago still accepts unagented submissions.  I have meant to do this for a while, but hadn’t made it an official goal.  This is something I can work on when I can’t seem to motivate myself to work on the first one.

Below are links to other ROW80 participants’ updates for Week 2:

 

Posted in Work In Progress, Writing Challenges

Sidetracked by Amazon

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on 19 January 2013 by Pam12 March 2014

The last few days I’ve been working on a submission to the Amazon Breakthrough Award novel competition.  The format of the competition has changed this year, with publication by Amazon Publishing instead of Penguin, and five categories including Romance, Mystery/Thriller, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror, as well as the original General Fiction and Young Adult categories.

Given the minimum/maximum word counts, only two of my novels were eligible and after an initial attempt at writing a 300 word pitch for ‘Green Magic’, I decided instead to submit ‘The Underway’ and to submit under the YA category, instead of SF etc., though it also falls under that, because the tone and scope is YA/Crossover.

So I needed to do another final polish and a pitch.  Because of that I’ve made no progress at all on my ROW80 goal.  Well, that’s the ROW80 philosophy – life changes things.  I hope to get back on track now I’ve finally submitted the novel tonight.

Posted in Work In Progress

Great to Make Some Progress

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on 11 January 2013 by Pam12 March 2014

Thanks to the technique of ‘cafe writing’ which I’ve posted separately about on this blog, I have managed to make a small amount of progress on the WIP.  I can now see a new character more clearly – one that suddenly appeared in the previous session – and realise what a real pain she is going to be to my main character.  Excellent!  At least I now have something to post in the next ROW80 check-in.

Posted in Work In Progress, Writing Challenges

Cafe Writing

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on 11 January 2013 by Pam12 March 2014

I’m sure everyone knows the story of how J K Rowling spent hours in a cafe, writing the first Harry Potter book. Well, you don’t need to go to a cafe necessarily, but the technique of popping into a cafe for a cup of tea and a short writing session can be really useful, even if the ‘cafe’ is actually your own front room.

I’m referring to a useful technnique I’ve found if a bit ‘blocked’ on something.  Print out the last couple of pages of the WIP, get some blank paper or a notebook, and a pen.  Plus cup of tea or whatever you prefer (non alcoholic).  Then sit down and just scribble, without putting any pressure on yourself to ‘get it right’.

Writing by hand can really free up the mind.  It could have something to do with the various theories of human evolution and language development – that using the hand produced feedback mechanisms that developed the brain in parallel – but whatever the reason, I find scribbling away in a situation of ‘no pressure’ can get through a block, bringing insights into a scene or character that has been giving problems.

Posted in Thoughts on Writing, Tips

Not Started Yet

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on 8 January 2013 by Pam12 March 2014

Well, this will be the first check-in post for ROW80.  Trouble is, I haven’t yet written anything on the WIP.  I did do a short tips post on this blog a couple of days ago, and have been posting on forums, but nothing on the WIP.

I also spent some time reading how to do some layout things that I want to try on the website, although I will prototype that on a new site I am going to create for Purple Dragon Press, as I don’t want to mess up this one.

I also updated the Kitsune Press site to Kitsune Press UK to avoid any confusion with another imprint on the Internet with a similar name, although that imprint does not have a kitsunepress domain name.  So most of my activities this week have been related to web development.

Below is a blog hop to the ROW80 blogs so you don’t need to go to that site if you want to look at a few other participants’ updates.

Posted in Website Development, Writing Challenges

Small chunks work best

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on 6 January 2013 by Pam12 March 2014

When setting writing goals it’s best to set yourself small, manageable chunks. Otherwise, you can be setting yourself up to “fail” if you don’t manage to achieve them, and this will become demotivating, leading to a vicious circle.

What is manageable for you will also vary according to your health, experience, life challenges, workload and so on.  For one person, 1000 words a day may be ‘easy’, whereas another person can only manage a weekend session every couple of weeks and struggles to get 250 words onto paper/screen.  Or someone might say they are going to write 50,000 words in 3 months whereas another person would be lucky to get a single chapter done.  The important thing is to work out what is achievable for you.

Once you can achieve your small scale goal, then consider whether you could stretch it a bit, say, by adding another 250 words into that sporadic session, or making it two chapters.  Every word got down on screen or paper is something to work with and is an achievement in itself, especially if you have a lot of odds stacked against you that get in the way of writing.

Posted in Thoughts on Writing, Tips

A New Year and a New Challenge

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on 3 January 2013 by Pam4 April 2022

Well, back again after a gap – sorry about that, was hit by a seasonal virus.

A Round of Words in 80 Days BadgeDespite that, managed a bit of writing on a tricky part of the WIP. Am now ready and raring to go on the ROW80 Round 1.

So the goal for this round is to get my main character to the ‘Rocks and Water’ segment I wrote about 4 years ago as part of an online creative writing course.  Still a fair way off at present.

Posted in Work In Progress, Writing Challenges

That Was NaNo

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on 3 December 2012 by Pam4 April 2022

NaNoWriMo 2012 particpant badgeWell, it’s over.  My first NaNoWriMo.  Only managed just over 20,500 words, but that’s a lot more than I would have got done this month otherwise and showed it was possible to write more regularly.  Need to go back over what was done to add bits in as there was a tendency to just forget or overlook some minor plot or character points.  The going would have been quicker if this hadn’t been such a difficult part of the book, but still feel pleased to have made progress.

Posted in Work In Progress, Writing Challenges

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