Getting My Life Together
Hello everyone, happy October! It’s now officially spooky season!
This past month has been interesting for me, both life-wise and writing-wise, and I’m excited to share what I’ve been doing.
Returning to an old interest
Back in August, somewhat out of the blue, I decided I wanted nothing more than to get back into performing in musicals and other plays. I think this was partly brought on by the fact I’ve been taking dance classes for nearly a whole year now. I’m starting to feel more confident with dance and am looking for an avenue to apply what I’ve learned. But also, I just felt ready to try it out again. It’s been at least ten years since I’ve done a show!
I took a look on social media and saw that a community theatre group near me was holding auditions at the end of September. It felt like a sign! Since then, I’ve been preparing for an audition that happened recently at the end of this month. I enjoyed practicing the audition songs and monologue so much, and it gave me something productive to do after work instead of just moving from one computer to the next after finishing my work day.
What surprised me the most was how much my voice had changed. I haven’t been singing as much over the years, but once I got going on my vocal warm-ups and testing out some songs, I was surprised by how much better I sounded. This could be either because I’m less critical of myself now than I was in the past, or my voice just matured with age and I “grew into it.” Either way, it was a very exciting realization!
It’s something I’ve also noticed with my oboe playing. I haven’t taken lessons since 2015 when I graduated with a Bachelor of Music, but I think the techniques I learned finally started to sink in these past few years. Who can say why! Again, maybe I’m less critical of myself now, or maybe even just more relaxed. Either way, I’m happy with how my playing sounds now, and I really enjoy performing with a local group.
Novel progress
Preparing for the audition gave me an idea. I was finding after practicing my songs and monologue for about 30 minutes after work, I felt a lot more energized afterwards. Usually, after a full day of work, I feel pretty tired and ready to just curl up and relax. Even when I tried to work on my novel after my work day, I’d usually end up doing something else with the Word document open in the background.
This frustrated me for a long time, because I used to be able to jump right into my novel after a long work day. I couldn’t understand what had changed or what I should do differently. So, for a while, I decided to stop trying to force it and do what I wanted to do, which was rest.
But after practicing for my audition after my work day, I felt motivated to sit down at work on my novel! This was usually a task I relegated to the weekend, but with weekends often being used for social gatherings and chores, it wasn’t always easy to find time to work on my writing (or to even want to).
So, during the month of September, I began to try and do an activity after work instead of heading straight for my regular laptop and opening my Word document. I practiced for the audition, or read a book, or doodled a little. After doing so, I’ve managed to work on revisions for about an hour every time! And things have been flowing well!
I’m still about halfway through the document, according to my page and word count. It seems that whatever I delete, I write more to make up for it, but I’m making slow progress through the last part of the book, and have finally tackled some major scenes.
This part I’m working on now is was what I felt the least happy with when I drafted the novel. I think in part it was because I added too many “events” that really didn’t need to happen. They felt contrived and out of place. I’m trying to pare down those scenes and focus more on the emotion, instead of giving the characters new problems on purpose. Before, I think I was concerned with word count and ensuring it was a similar length to my other novels—so I created more conflict than necessary. Now, I’m not as afraid about writing something shorter. It seems like it might end up being a similar length anyway, even if less “happens” plot-wise.
Thinking ahead
I’ve also been making progress on deciding my next steps once Be True is finished. I’ve dusted off an old outline I wrote, and I began to work on the first chapter. The idea is an old one I’ve had for some time, since I was about fourteen or fifteen. But back then, I didn’t have the tools to execute it well or even write an ending. The characters have always stuck with me, however, and I finally feel like it’s their time.
I’m not going to work on it much until I finish my revisions, but I’m already getting excited.
Bye for now!
This was quite a long update! But as the title of this post states, I feel like I’m finally getting my life together. Everything is starting to fall back into place. I guess these things usually happen all at once, at the time you’re finally ready.