pie – Nicole Bross – Author and Editor

Balance

On February 22, 2013

In My Failings As A Proper Novelist, Revision, Things That Are Hard

I feel like I’m being pulled in all different directions at once. I want to keep writing my work in progress! I want to go back and edit my completed novel! I want to work on the outline for my next novel! I want to eat all the pie!

Well the last one I can do while I’m working on any of the above. Pie goes with everything.

But seriously, I don’t know how to manage my time when I have so many different things I want to be doing. I’m the sort of person who eats all of one thing on my plate before moving on to the next, which I also consume in full, before starting in on the third, and it’s a bit the same with writing. Right now doing anything that isn’t adding to my work in progress feels like sliding backwards, but I also need to get moving on finishing up some edits on my first book so I can start querying. For some reason it doesn’t feel like a good idea to have two books of the series completed before I start sending it out. I’m just so in love with writing right now, and while editing never feels like work to me, it is harder.

So. Decision time. I think I know what I have to do – take a short break from writing to focus on editing. I can keep putting it off, waiting for time to be “just right” according to various imagined criteria that will never be met, but only one should really matter – whether I’m ready to do the work.

It’s Not Even Funny Anymore

By Nicole Bross

On July 5, 2012

In My Failings As A Proper Novelist, Things That Are Hard, Writer's Low

Uh-oh. Guess which one mine is.

I cannot believe how indifferent I am to writing these days. I have free time most evenings, but I’m not using it at all. I have ideas, I know what I want to write, I just.don’t.feel.like.it. And I feel guilty about it, because I’ve already taken so much time, time that I could have chosen to spend with my family or friends or doing other, productive things, but I didn’t because I felt like this all needed to get out of my head. Now that I’m halfway my momentum has completely stalled and I feel like if I’m not going to continue, then all that time could have been put to better use. Yesterday I had every intention of writing – I had almost three hours set aside – but I kept putting it off, putting it off. Even the threat of having my pie taken away if I didn’t write something wasn’t enough to get me going. I just went pieless. Now I’m sitting here again, in my writing spot, with my writing blanket and my writing laptop perched on my writing legs (okay I don’t have special legs just for writing) I’m procrastinating. First I had bills to pay, then I had some very important facebook things to look at, and now I’m blogging about my failure to progress, despite the fact that everything is in order for me to ACTUALLY WRITE except my brain. My brain wants to check today’s Wimbledon scores and read DYAC. What’s going on, brain? Why haven’t you wanted to write for the past two weeks? Don’t you want pie? Is this a normal thing everyone goes through sometimes, or should I start getting worried? I want to finish. I WANT TO FINISH. Just… not now.

I’m going to open my doc and stare at it until it shames me into writing something, even if it’s only 200 words. Maybe a tiny nudge will get the ball rolling again.