In 2015 I've had many ideas, and only a few that became something more. From December 2014 I've been working on three pieces, and finished one about a month or two ago. At one point I was working on all of them at the same time, two alternating during the week and one at the weekend. It was hectic and something I don't really like doing because I struggle juggling that many characters in completely different stories, worried about accidental overlap.
One I began in February is now coming to an end, and that's where the difficulty begins. By the halfway point of a novel I usually have an ending, at least an outline, but with this one I kept writing, having a vague idea, hoping inspiration would slot into place as the words kept flowing. Not quite as much luck as that. Now I'm on the final chapters and have an ending...one that I don't really like.
I have writer's block on how to change it. When you read articles online about "how to write an ending", guides which, as you know from reading this blog, I have a staunch opposition to, or read another author's blog you hear about the ending conundrum. I'm proud to say I've never been there. It's been a charmed writing life.
I began writing this evening, the final chapter, and I hesitated. My fingers were positioned over the keys, my mind trying to form an introductory sentence, a brief outline of the direction of the words. I got about 400 words in and looked at pinterest, a tactic either due to boredom with a story, or being stuck. The latter is the case now.
I loved writing this story, I can't remember a time when I was so engrossed in a tale that I wrote from start to finish. Is it pressure? My pride and love of this writing is stifling me from fitting an ending onto it? Am I being too picky with my decision? There is something bland about the ending, even to me, and I'm the Queen of Vanilla. Some advice may be to take a step back, take a break, work on another idea and then come back with a fresh mind. Advice I'm in the process of doing.
Onto another new experience. A sewing machine. As some may know due to my other posts, I hand sew everything I put on here because I don't have a sewing machine. That all changed before I left Leicester. Unfortunately due to laziness, and more of being lazy, I've not had a chance to use it...until this weekend! I feel as though my eyes have been opened, Fate has enlightened me, reached out its hand and pulled me from the darkness. It's so quick, I have no words to describe how fast it is compared to hand sewing, I did half of a mock-up of my latest corset in less than an hour! it would have taken me at least 2 days to do that by hand. Was this what Victorian women felt like when it was first introduced? I share their feelings whole-heartedly.
It did take a bit of getting used to, and at the time I thought it was more complicated than I had ever thought, but after using it a few times I'm in love.
The third and final new experience. Someone out there in the world read one of my novels. Since publishing on Amazon kindle I've stopped checking the reports about book sales, because there has never been any. Then they introduced the sharing library, and it gives another report. I had an influx of blog views over the weekend (Thank you, Russia) and one of the pages was one of my first posts about the publication date of my novels. Out of curiosity I logged in and looked a the reports, expecting to find nothing changed, the line remaining depressingly at 0.
One of the graphs spiked. I blinked, full of disbelief. It wasn't a purchase, it was a number of pages read using the Kindle lending library. Someone had read my book....all the way through, or at least that's what I assume since the page count on the plot encompassed the length of my novel. I was amazed. It'll be a year in September since I unleashed both into the world, and I've reached 1 person. Sounds pathetic, but it made me very happy.
That's all for this weekend's life update, hopefully more soon.
