Erecting the Tents,

No, like actual tents. Well, metaphorical...

It's 10 days until the second Camp of the year kicks off and this time, I definitely feel a lot more committed to it, which is probably because I actually have a project on for this one. 

Yesterday I mentioned having finished the first draft of the first volume of The Single Girls' Collective, and the plan for Camp NaNo is to carry on with this project and produce a solid 35K as a draft for the next volume. I'm referring to them as volumes because I don't know right at this moment if they will be novels (50k+) or novellas. I'm just trying to run with what they are at the moment and then the framework can come later.

With Camp looming, we've all been talking about cabins, and events and such, which has been wonderful. I'm helping to organise a London based cabin, and there should be some really fun goings on. Also, there are five weekends in Camp this year, which is beautiful, because it gives me more blog time (if I stick to just Sundays, which is obviously the commitment I made at the beginning of the year) and also because, for those of us who work office hours, it gives us more time for solid writing!! 

Now don't get me wrong - Camp is still going to be intense and my estimate of 35K is still a daunting thought because it is a lot of work. It still takes a lot to drag your butt home after a day of work and sit and work or to do it before work, or on your lunch time. After NaNo, I know that it's easy to fit in about a hundred of so words whilst you go for your pee break from noveling, but still, it's intense. 

So the rest of this month is probably going to be making playlists, stocking up on snacks and making sure I have enough coffee to hit the ground running with this.  

I will be staying up from midnight a week on Thursday to welcome this into my life, and hit the ground running. Feel free to join me, one and all.

Catch you later.

Testing Limits,

I woke up this morning after fifteen hours of sleep, which has become very unusual for me. 

I wasn't asleep for fifteen-ish hours because of depression or anything like that, which is obviously very nice, but because I have been really pushing myself to do things recently and something I really wanted to do was attend a lecture series at Birkbeck this week. Part of the reason that I wanted to do this was because I wanted to remind myself that I didn't enjoy university that much really, so I don't want to go back. It didn't work...

I'm not being naïve, I know that events like Law on Trial are there to sell Birkbeck as a school and to encourage people to study. They're a fantastic marketing campaign to prospective students, and I am now looking at courses more seriously than I was previously, though I'm thinking about the 2017 intake, because with the best will in the world, I know myself pretty well these days and I know that I will not be ready to do this in September of this year. I would rather prepare myself and be ready to do this than make an absolutely unholy mess of the whole bloody thing.

It's not just the possibility of going back to university though which has had me testing my limits. I've been trying to be a lot more socialable (because I sometimes suck at talking to people I do not know) and trying to spend more time doing constructive things than in my flat. 

This week I spent most of my evenings at Birkbeck. The lecturers were there to discuss the issues surrounding the upcoming referendum and I walked in there thinking I knew how I was voting and why. Right now, I feel like I have splinters in my bottom, because I am sat on the fence, leaning either way without really being sure how to swing. I don't get like this. I am very good at making deicisions about what I believe in and what I want to vote for, but right now, I am flumoxed. 

In all of this, as you can imagine, I have been getting less sleep than I am used to, and it has pushed my body to its edges. I have been very busy in the last few weeks generally anyway, so believe me, I needed my fiftteen hour catch up sleep. I was pretty exhausted by the end of it, but I did manage to finish writing the first draft of the first volume of The Single Girls' Collective, and for once I cannot wait to get to editing it, though that was on the backburner this week for obvious reasons. 

Before this post runs to a mile long, I'm going to wrap it up by saying watch this space. Catch you later. 

Annoyingly,

I was thinking about something on the tube home today, and I genuinely am struggling to put my finger on what it was, which is irritating, but I couldn't actually write it down because I was feeling really off. 

And, I remember! Cool, so:

Hype.

For a four letter, it's a big thing. Or it can be. Hype is one of these things that changes everything. It's a good thing for some and a bad thing for others.

Hype gets annoying when there are suddenly 60 kinds of adult colouring book in The Works and they're starting to cost something ridiculous. I know it's a fad and will end like they all do (I mean, what happened to Scoobies and Loom Bands and all of that stuff in the end) but I don't really understand this hype that surrounds them. I never really understand where it comes from. 

Maybe it's because my interests don't really change that frequently or in such a volatile fashion. Which is strange because I can have a really short attention span, which I have proved many, many times. Thankfully managing to commit to the current project though, which is more than can be said for my characters.

Oh I cannot wait for this to be done! 

Catch you later 

If Only It Were Simpler,

Sometimes I get flustered by everything that is going on in my life, and certain things have to drop. 

I dropped this yesterday because I was spending time with someone I haven't seen in over a year and will now not see for the next few months. This weekend, like the last few weeks in general really has been pretty mad. More than anything, I need to give myself some time to sleep. 

As always, my problem is balance and it's tricky. Naturally I love spending time with friends etc, but then again I also keep reminding myself that if I don't sleep I get sick, especially in the summer, as I'm very prone to heat exhaustion. 

Trying to find the perfect balance is something very difficult. I find that when I am really involved in a novel, that can be the biggest pull of all. 

I've always been very defensive about my drafts, particularly first drafts, however letting people near passages of what I'm currently writing has been productive, so it may not be too long before I put a sample of either that, or Yours, online and see what the response is.

Though for some reason, my friends are more likely to tell me their response verbally as opposed to actually writing on here...

Anyway, I'll catch you later.