Creativity Workshop Post: Week 8/Week 9

Not much got done during Week 8. I believe I had a midterm and papers that week and couldn't get much done. Most of the other weeks have been like that too with summer school kicking my ass. That being said, I love my psychology classes, even if I'm not doing as well as I'd like. It's all about time management for me, which is something I'm normally fairly descent at. This time, I'm trying to write papers a few days in advance. After losing the first battle with time, I kicked up a few gears and finally got down to business (though it was a week too late, but oh well)

However, with Week 9 ending, I thought it was going to be more of the same, but I was pleasantly surprised M.C.A. Hogarth's guest post on Merrilee's blog about Turning Disappointment into Ideas has been stuck in my head for a few weeks. I tend to do this with all my stories. It's probably a little known secret that most of my stories are just mash-ups from different stories mixed with the things I would have liked to have seen . I'm currently reading Graceling by Kristin Cashore (review forthcoming), but I'm reading it as a writer, not as a reader. I'm enjoying this book because I like the writing and pretty much I'm trying to understand POV. But I'm not enjoying this book as much as I thought I would, which is not surprising because I hate reading fantasy as much as I love writing it. This book has reminded me why I hate fantasy, but also what I enjoy about it.

This jump started me to writing my WeSeWriMo thing early. I was going to start in August, but I couldn't wait that long. I picked up Infinite Alice again and started reworking the plot. It's a steampunk, which is something I am starting to get into after watching Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Cowboy Bebop, and remembering how much I loved Samurai Champloo. I decided not to take it seriously and it worked. I've gotten 3,000+ words in three hours and I'm loving every ridiculous word of it.

I can't focus on it too much. I have midterms to study for and assignments to do, but I'm hoping I can balance it between writing and reading because I'm really enjoying what I'm writing right now. I may have to put book reading on hold because I enjoy what I'm writing that much. This has been a first because there's no pretense. I'm just going with the flow. I'm doubly inspired by Malinda Lo's post on ignoring the inner critic and the inner editor partially because someone famous answered my question and they actually had a good answer about it.

I just have to be willing to be ridiculous with my writing. I know this is going to work for the other stories.