This last month has been a rather tricky month for my writing due to working full time and I’m so eager to write it can be overwhelming, with what I have yet to accomplish. I have been in contact with some amazing authors for the last two months as well as completing writing challenges on my Instagram because it has been far too often that I get writers block!
Working with other authors, writers and creators helps me be accountable to others, and in turn they encourage me with my work. I would highly recommend to other writers, poets and artistic people that being in touch with others who share your passion is a really positive thing to do. A really useful tool to use has been NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month – which is a non-profit website with helpful tips, challenges and forums to inspire creators to voice their work as well as outline it out. It helps writers plot out a word goal to achieve in one month; for myself, I set the goal of 20k words to complete to help give me a boost in my work. I was really proud of my work, because in one month, I completed this goal which boosted my word count to 43k words! How amazing is that?!
The website also has some great activities to do such as quizzes to find out if you’re a ‘pants-er’ writer or a ‘plotter’ writer, I am a ‘pants-er’, which means I ‘fly by the seat of my pants’, I really struggle to plan things out! You might think that sounds odd, but I am forever reading through my work and re-writing things out, deleting sentences or placing them elsewhere. This would happen even if I were someone who plotted everything out, I know I would need to edit it over and over again. Doing this little quiz on the website was great, because once the site knew what my writing style was, it was able to generate a plan for me to help me stay motivated, keep writing each week and it really worked!
As of today I have managed to write 50k words, which means I am halfway through this manuscript. What began as a fun story that I thought I’d give a shot at finally doing has turned out to be a gripping, exciting process in not just the book itself, but the fact that I have written half a book! That’s just astounding to me.
For years, when I was a child, I would write short stories (which seemed to me at the time to be a HUGE novel) and I would get discouraged by people in my life, who felt that this was not the right path for me. But now I can say: “hey, I’m a big girl I can give this a go if I want to,” and I do, I have nearly done it! Each year in my life, for the last 5 years, has been a stepping stone. Whether it be getting a better paid job, or a more stable job, that motivation then moved onto getting another degree.
Now that my second degree is complete it’s clearly time to do something more dramatic… writing a book! So here we are, 50k words in and I finally have people around me who are supportive and encouraging, even if this goes nowhere, at least I tried.
That’s the most important thing that we need to go through: the process, no matter what you’re going through you have to try, and if it doesn’t work out then… no regrets. Because at least you tried. Once that is done you need to move on, if it doesn’t work the first time, then it won’t work. Use your talents on something else and keep yourself happy and healthy. That’s the end goal for everyone really, to know you’re content in life and to know you’ve explored life to the fullest, without hurting your body or your mind.
That’s my message for you all today, make sure you are at the fullest part in your life, and if you’re left wanting, try to look outside of yourself to see what you can change or manage.
The authors I have connected with are the fabulous Disa Dawn, Hannah Reed, Sharon Turner, Jethro Punter, Kate Sheeran Swed and Andrew Slinger. These authors have been such an inspiration to me so do go check them out, there’s a mix of middle grade, young adult and adult literature with these fantastic authors, all brilliant an inspiring in their own right.
Hannah Baller RSLM 
Leave a Reply