Posts Tagged With: wattpad

Reviving Old Hobbies

After not only surviving but also winning NaNoWriMo 2023, I kept up my writing momentum throughout most of December. Something I’d call impressive considering I worked extra hours, caught a nasty cold, and travelled during the busy holiday season to spend time with family. After Christmas the momentum of my writing died down a bit, and I ended up reviving an old hobby–visual storytelling. Well, sort of. Way back in the grand old days of Adobe Premier 6 (I realize that’s dating myself a bit) I used to love video editing and making fan music videos. You know, where you take anime or video game footage and put it to music?

Well, I’ve had this Mac for over a year, and I guess it just took 1) the realization that I had iMovie (and it didn’t suck as free software anymore) and 2) A show with the right song that I was simultaneously obsessed with. And then all those video ideas I’d had over the last while where I’d hear a song and think, “Wow, that would go so well with [this] show” all kind of clicked into place, and I found myself making fan music videos again, and reviving my really old YouTube channel in the process.

In the world of AuDHD level hyper focuses, and hobby hopping to keep it all interesting, I’ve found myself taking a full break from writing. Which I feel has been good in a way. It’s allowed me to percolate on ideas I’d been stuck on, and let that writing itch come back. You know the one that tickles your senses when you’re busy doing something else? “I should write a bit later.” So, as I’ve slowly been coming out of my video editing fever haze, I’ve been thinking more about writing again. About that story without an ending on Wattpad, and ultimately about book 3 (and the editor I haven’t heard back from in 10 months).

Anyways, for the sake of keeping me from rambling, I’ll end this post here. But 2024 is looking bright from this seat, because the freedom and ability to be creative brings me joy. I hope you have also been able to start 2024 with joy, despite hardships that might arise.

~Kat

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NaNoWriMo??

The only consistent thing in my life as an AuDHD-er is how inconsistent I am… And the irony isn’t lost on me. I’ve thought about writing a blog post for a while now, but every time I sat down I couldn’t think of anything to write… so I didn’t. There hasn’t really been much going on (I say that, but tons is going on). I’m still on pause waiting to hear back from my editor about the first book in my trilogy. All five of my WIP’s are still WIP’s. And I’m struggling with, what I believe is, the last scene (or two) of the novella I’ve been posting to Wattpad (11 parts posted thus far, though, so go me!).

Book 2 is on pause for at least 3-4 months, which seems to be the unwritten consensus on how long to wait before looking at a draft again with “fresh eyes.” So the only thing left to do is move on, I guess? I’ve been tossing around the idea of joining NaNoWriMo this year for a while (Since Spring, when I finally wrote the last scenes of book 2). I haven’t participated since 2018, and haven’t won since 2015. So I figured, what the heck, why not use NaNo as an excuse to get me started on book 3, the final book in my trilogy, and literally 10 years in the making, haha.

Since I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, I’ve had a lot of time to prepare, both mentally and writerly. I haven’t decided if I want to try and win, although it always feels like a nice accomplishment. What I’m really hoping is that it will motivate me to consistently write for the entire month, even if it’s just 100 words a day. I did that in 2018, and managed to write 33,000 words that month. Impressive to me at the time, considering I was in the middle of my creative burnout.

I’ve officially signed up, and I have a rough timeline of events. I just need to figure out the first scene to write, and whose POV it’ll be from. I’ve got a little under 2 weeks to figure it out. And at the very least, if there’s one thing NaNoWriMo is good at, it’s giving myself permission to write poorly. And what I mean by that is, not get caught up in having the first rendition be a more polished rendition. Instead of freezing at how to perfectly phrase everything from the get go, and never getting the scene out, I can categorically choose to just write poorly for the word count, and then at least my scene is on the page. And once a scene is on the page, it can be edited.

To quote Shannon Hale, “I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”

~ Kat

P.S. If you are also doing NaNoWriMo and want to add me, my handle is Amara262.

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