Summer (for traveling), fall (for writing)

[starfishstar]

I spent all summer traveling – to Germany, briefly to Belgium, to Iceland. Now that I'm looking back on it, I realize even more how unbelievably, stunningly lucky I feel to have been able to do that. (I mean, I was able to do it because I work at a school and have the summer off, so it's not that weird. But still!) I'll try to share a few pictures, whenever I finally find time to organize allll of a summer's worth of photos.

Okay, actually, here's one to start with... I walked past this view every day for three weeks, up in the West Fjords of Iceland:




The only unfortunate thing about this whole amazing, beautiful, stunning summer? I barely wrote at all. I'm still between writing projects, and it still feels deeply weird. (I posted the final chapter of "Raise Your Lantern High" just days before I left the US in June, and haven't posted anything but a tiny fic translation since then.)

I did manage to get about halfway through the first draft of a small follow-up story to "Lantern" early in the summer, but I keep trying to pick that back up now and finish it, and I just can't seem to get inspired. Even the process of writing feels unfamiliar – I've fallen out of the habit of it, while focusing so hard on other things (language course, music, etc.)

So:

• Does anyone who's in HP fandom feel like bouncing around ideas with me? Specifically about an 11-year-old soon-to-be-Hogwarts-student's first experience of Diagon Alley, a la Harry's first visit there in the first book, but with a very different backstory.

• Anyone have a go-to place for getting prompts and inspiration? (I do have a few pages bookmarked, I should browse through them.) I basically need to remember how to write anything at all, and a short fic off a prompt (not a daunting story that I've been working on forever and feel a lot of pressure to get right) might be just the thing.

• Or I should sign up for a fest or two. Maybe I'll do Holmestice again? Or dare to join Yuletide for the first time? (There's also maybe maybe maybe going to be a revival of hp_holidaygen, which is very exciting!!)


I've also been thinking.... I want to do NaNoWriMo this year.

Every year, there's some reason why that's not a good year for it. (Like, you know, the year I was packing up eight years' worth of life and moving internationally...) This year, too, is probably not quite the right one, given that I've earmarked this fall for "figuring out what I'm doing with my life professionally, and whether I'm applying to grad schools, and if so, applying to them." But there's never going to be a perfect year with nothing else going on. And I'm in a stable work/apartment/etc. situation for once, and I even have a local friend who wants to do NaNo too. So......?

Comments

[nerakrose]

i'm glad it's helpful :D

yeah, and i think another thing about nano worth thinking about is WHY you are doing it. what do you hope to achieve by participating? is it to finish a draft? outline six novels? write one short story per day?
if you're doing nano just to do it, then what is the point?
and if you're doing nano because "everyone else is" or because "that's what real writers do", well, then what's the point?
just make sure that you're doing nano for the right reasons, or honestly it won't be a good experience. i've been doing it for long enough now that i know the difference between trying to live up to an arbitrary ideal that isn't even my own and between wanting to write a story of my own and using nano as the motivational tool). breaking it down into smaller bits helps too, looking at 50k/month can be as impassable as a mountain, but 500 words/day are as easily done as taking just a few steps towards the mountain.

:D i try not to use the nano website too much tbh, as i'm too easily prone to procrastination and the forums on there can be real time suckers. but that said, i'll friend anyone who's also doing nano, because i like seeing the word count bars change from day to day :D

[starfishstar]

Ergggh, yeah, all the questions you ask here are really good questions! And I've been thinking about this a bunch, actually, even though I hadn't had a chance to respond here yet.

Your comment coupled with my own previous experiences reminds me that I will definitely crash and burn (or at least run out of steam) if I don't go into this with a clear outline. (Goal is no problem, I always have a goal – but a *plan*, now that's another thing entirely!)

Precisely for this reason, I sat down yesterday with a friend to talk through some possible ideas for stories we want to write, and I'm feeling hopeful for the first time! I still have a lot of brainstorming and outlining to do, but I finally feel like I might have some maybe actual worth-pursuing ideas, and that's what I need in order to start – like you said, a specific story I want to tell and the opportunity to use NaNo towards that, not just as an arbitrary assignment to write 50k words just because I "should."

Anyway, thank you for this comment, which highlighted some things I know already, but needed to think about harder. :-)

[nerakrose]

haha, that's my counselling training at work XD a big part of that job is to ask the provocative questions to make the other person really think about the issue they came to me with. :) i'm glad it helped! :D

[starfishstar]

That's really cool – you're clearly good at asking the right questions!