Leaving Things To The Last Minute

I will freely admit that when it comes to this, I am your number one culprit, and so, in fact, would be most people. Nobody likes to do things a month in advance when they could be doing so many other things. So, they let the work sit, and they wait for when they really have to do it.

So, in the past I would have thought about work, decided I have ages to do it, and then end up doing most of it within a week or a few days of the due date. Granted, this isn't as bad as leaving things until midnight the night before, or other things one might do, but it's not ideal. The reason why is simple.

The more time you leave yourself to do something, the more time there is to address any problems. So, in this, my second ever semester of Uni, I have decided to get things done as soon as possible.

When you think about it, two or three weeks is really not that long, and if you leave something alone, you might not have a clear idea of what you have to do in the last week. This applies in terms of exam study especially, when staying up the night before might actually be detrimental rather than beneficial.

However, the number one area of application to this problem for me recently has been writing. In my recent blogs I keep telling whoever reads this that I will write something, and get away from the other things I like to do in my spare time, like youtube, gaming, crafting, and so on. But, as much as I tell myself that, I end up doing nothing. This is a problem, because as it happens today is the last day of Camp NaNoWriMo. My saving grace is the fact that I did an average of about 3k words a day for the first half of the month, making my life for the last part easy.

Having less to do, however, doesn't mean I should have left it. I could have done much more than 50k words this month, and that would mean more of my novel would have been done. The point is, I'm lazy and I feel bad about it.

So, I'm off to write now. And you who reads this, go off and do what you've been putting off.

Byee!

Writing: Breaking the Genre

This post is for all budding writers out there. I have been participating in Camp NaNoWriMo, and after seeing that other participants like me had been given the opportunity to write pep talks, I thought about what I had to contribute. The result is this post.

This Camp, my goal is a standard 50,000 word goal, which is well on track, although I haven't done any today yet... anyway, the point is I have a large amount of a novel. This novel is about a female elf whose home gets attacked by centaurs, after which she decides to fight them and eventually take back her home.

You may be wondering at this point, what this disjointed introduction had even slightly to do with a pep talk. But, what I realised when thinking about pep talks and my own novel, was how steeped it was- and still is- in the genre of fantasy.

Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this. My point of difference in this was the fact that my novel is in the point of view of the elf, which was something I'd never seen before. Now, yours may be similar, or different, or maybe you might even have a bog standard thriller. I will add that if you want to write a bog standard thriller, it's up to you. What i want to encourage now is stepping into the grey areas of genre.

When deciding on what my current novel would be, I thought it would be nice to try out a different genre. I thought I've done fantasy, I want to do something completely different. But in the end, I wrote another fantasy anyway. It was because I didn't know how to do a completely separate genre.

There is a simple solution to this, however. What I want you to think about it taking your favourite genre, and editing it. What i mean is, take an element of thriller or sci-fi and throw it in. Add in a character that is a one-eyed talking bat, or create an eccentric inventor who solves murder mysteries.

I blog this in all seriousness. Because if one day you deliver me a book where the protagonist is a six-eyed giant demon or one where the main characters are dragons who use sci-fi-esque technology, you will be my hero.