Category: writing

Self-taught work and making our way through this life

self-taught

We learn to write in school. Most of us did, anyway.

There we learned the basics, did the work to acquire what was on the school program, and become functional in this area of knowledge.

We read the required works and, if we are lucky, we find some books that hook us into reading outside school… and if we are really lucky, we start to enjoy all the written papers we are assigned to do, and all chances to try new things out in this domain.

This was how I started to like poetry. By myself and having the opportunity to use it on school papers.

But when school is over, and college options were not our heart’s choices, we get to real life and start realising that if we want to know more about one particular subject, we have to go find the information by ourselves…

There will be no more holding hands to help us cross the street.

At the time most of us didn’t know we should have chosen other path more aligned with our personal tastes. And surely didn’t know that we should learn for and by ourselves.

Corporate life gives us a good once over on fitting in, not on being our best and standing out. And during the first decade of it we still had dreams. We worked in a kind of well paid, for the current standards, corporate job and took every hit in the head, believing that it was what we were supposed to do.

All that we learn, serves us. Nobody can open our heads in half and stuck information there for us to use later.

Maybe we have more inclination to learn certain things, or find more pleasure in knowing more about this, and not so much about that. And this is okay. We should choose to learn primarily things that we like.

But we also have a fair amount of will to accept that learning some things require a little more effort on our part.

And this may not be easy but it is essential to get to where we want to be. We have to go through a lot of new experiences to find out the right moment and the process that works for us.

For me, it happened with blogs and social media, and now it evolved to other kinds of platforms with different ways, but the same purposes.

I like to think of myself as a self-taught person in many ways. An autodidact in my arts and life. After all, I do not have any special training in writing, mixed media drawings, crafting, photography, filming, or any of the other things I love to do and keep learning about.

I just had a need, and the will to pursue its basics, in order to learn what I thought I needed at the time.

Hell, sometimes I find myself quite innocently in most worldly subjects and have no other choice but to learn by force. But this is another subject altogether.

We can only see what we see. There are no fast track to encompass all learnings and become wise.

And it’s these things that I incline myself towards that are the most enjoyable to learn, even if they’re not the easiest ones.

I have taught myself how to write all my life. Through books, practicing my craft, online courses, other writers, writing and researching about writing.

I have taught myself how to create and maintain a blog. Even a bit of code, when needed. I have taught myself to grow through all my blogs.

I have taught myself to use design tools and to curate my own content.

I have taught myself how to take photographs for specific purposes. Finding what serves the things I’m interested about, in a non-commercial kind of way. All my content is an expression on myself as an individual.

I have taught myself how to make, and edit videos, how to use different software to support the blog and online presence, social media need-to-knows, and I keep investigating other things.

I find that my writing requires more than just a half a dozen novels, a pile of short-stories or some poetry available in print.

And I am always trying to incorporate value through these other parts of my craft that I came to see as parts of my writing.

Is it perfect? Hell, no! But I show up everyday, determined to learn and to do my best.

This text right here is one more piece of this enormous puzzle. I have been in love with the English language since I learned to read and write. I practiced both Portuguese, through school, and English, by my own will.

I read tons in English and sometimes have trouble in known how to translate words from EN to PT, which usually gets me the evil eye from people around me…

Sometimes I find myself wishing I could write more in my second, that sometimes feels like my first, language. But my blog is mainly in Portuguese safe for a few English articles that I managed to squeeze in now and then.

And I haven’t been able to muster the courage to devote myself to a new blog. One that would have fewer traction and a worldly competition.

And I finally Have sent all those thoughts to hell.

So here I am, in a writer.sarafarinha.com virtual space, hoping to share some of my writing boggles, achievements and challenges and truly hoping to hear some of yours.

And here I am, finishing my first english written book (with 77600 words for now), the first of what I intend to be a trilogy.

Self-taught is the way!

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

Another writing update on ‘The Shapeshifters’ and NaNoWriMo

writing update

Only five days to the end of November. Only five days to the end of NaNoWriMo. But ‘The Shapeshifters’ is a long way from finished.

I started planing this story, with all my usual twists and turns, but you can read more about it on ‘Hello NaNoWriMo and lots of Shapeshifters‘.

I made plans and then I made a plan for the plans… now I have a new plan. But about the planning stage of this story you can read more in ‘Setting up my NaNo Project and Prepping all the must have’s‘.

If you’ve been following me on social media you already know that I managed to write my 50K for NaNoWriMo on the 13th of November.

I was a few scenes away from the mid point, when I hit the 50K, and I over estimated how much it would take to write this story. I figured I could aim towards 100 000 words, so that I would have a bit of a wiggle room for cutting during editing processes.

Well, this didn’t happened!

I’m very conscious of what I put in when I’m writing fiction. I tend to write in a way that gives just enough details for the reader to imagine the rest, and allow them to make the bigger connections between the information if they want to.

I don’t employ many words in creative descriptions. Purple prose doesn’t captivate me when I’m writing fiction. And I didn’t want to fill it with unnecessary junk just to make the word count. So, no 100K for ‘The Shapeshifters’#1.

On day 23 of November, I already knew I wouldn’t be writing much more than the 77K. Even if I know I have a few more things to add, even entire scenes. But this will not represent 30K of writing. It really isn’t possible to accomplish on the remaining days of this NaNoWriMo… and I’ll tell you why in a moment.

I started getting a bit fretful about this, it’s been a freaky gut turner, but I figured I wanted to study my options first.

Option #1. I could go ahead and start revising the draft.

But this is usually a more slow paced activity and it would not produce the 1667 words per day I needed to put in.

Option #2. Or, I could move on to ‘The Shapeshifters’#2.

But this meant starting another rough-rough draft without having done my due diligences.

And… I’m not emotionally prepared for this!

Another detail, that might seem stupid to you, but it’s important to me, I really wanted to earn all the badges on NaNoWriMo website.

I can now tell you that this will not happen.

First badge: I will not hit my daily count every single day of November, because I already achieved the 50k and I’m not going for 100K anymore.

Second badge: I don’t know if I’ll be able to update the daily count every day, because editing is different from writing.

On the 23rd of November I tried to start editing the draft.

I know it needs a lot of work, but editing is different from fully writing, so I did some editing… 278 words worth of editing.

And on the 24th of November I went back to the drawing board.

I’m starting my edits now and there are some details that need to go in, and some considerations to be done now, if I want to write this trilogy properly.

And I do want to write this trilogy properly!

So, I’m all in my drawing board mood.

drawing board

For now, I’m trying to hold on to my win here. I wrote 77k on a draft in twenty two days. That’s a win.

I did it at a faster pace than I imagined possible.

I had great fun writing and rereading this story.

I identified some must have’s and need to do’s and I’m focusing on doing those.

I’ll be talking a bit about this on this week’s YouTube vídeo. Please, don’t forget to subscribe to VLook and hear all about it.

Hope you’re doing well and participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo. If so, how’s your project going?

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

Using writing challenges to achieve my goals

challenges

Why is it easier to do something like NaNoWriMo in order to define my writing goals?

It might seem stupid, or not too professional to use these kinds of challenges to get one motivated to write. But the truth is, we lack structure for this dream we have, and that we want to see accomplished.

And the writing craft isn’t just throwing things on a page. 

Using someone else’s structure for our writing time, which is what these challenges provide us with, help us discover our own way of doing things. And pushes us to show up, every day, for the work we want to see done.

Let’s be honest, if you are anything like me, you’re mostly alone in the pursue of this dream.

Talking from personal experience, I have been doing regular writing efforts for more than fifteen years and the truth is, I can count from the fingers of one hand how many people were truly there, even if just to talk about all of this writing business… Maybe having someone to talk to about writing is the hardest part.

They keep looking at me as if I’m delusional…

And doing stuff all alone is hard, specially if we don’t know what we are doing, and need to find our own bearings first. I had had a messy direction in life, and only started to listen to my heart’s calling not so long ago. And I’m still trying to figure things out.

How to understand our Goals?

To know in our hearts what we want to do, and to put in the work we need to put in, when we don’t know how to do it, and where to turn to, and how to shut up all those little inside voices… and not just the inside one’s… It’s confusing.

And this is how I started to search the web looking for knowledge, and buying books that could serve as my mentors, and writing about this journey, and how all of these resources can help others like myself.

Finding my working processes, and defining my goals, are things in constant appreciation.

Hey! I have just started this blog for my english writing output, and I know I had been stalling for years.

I always had the goal of writing in English, but it took me too much time to show up for it. Why? I guess I was young and dumb… and scared shitless.

How can NaNoWriMo help?

First, it helps because it’s a fast drafting mode that doesn’t allow us to spend too much time doubting ourselves.

Second, because the goal is already set for us. We have a daily word count and to succeed at achieving it we have to produce the 1667 daily words. And no way we will able to skip a few days and accumulate. No. We have to show up everyday or it will go the wrong way.

Third, because it involves one of two things:

  • or you have already prepared your materials, you have a plan, a story, characters and scenes, and whatever more you need to plan this story, and you just show up to write it (which has been my case this current year);
  • or you have an idea and want to produce a fast draft for it, allowing it to contain all the usual mistakes that a first draft requires. Kind of like a very long session of brainstorming, where you have to produce 50K in order to be successful.

Everything else, is setting us up to fail.

Having an outward challenge can gives us commitment and serve as an accountability strategy. 

We know we have to schedule our time in order to fit our two, three, four hours of writing. Without that commitment we just keep pushing it forward until our days run out of that space to write.

Not just NaNoWriMo…

A few years ago I came across a challenge called The 100 Day Project. It was a version of a teaching strategy used by Michael Bierut in his Graphic Design classes on the Yale School of Art.

When a student, Bierut challenged himself to draw one image per day, every day, during 100 days, based on a photograph from the New York Times. This was his own particular strategy to show up everyday to his creative work… and just draw.

When he started teaching, he brought that particular strategy to his classes with major success. 

inspiration

You can read more about this on the article Five Years of 100 Days on the Design Observer.

Then Elle Luna brought this exercise to the web and it got huge.

I have been aware of this challenge for almost six years and had entered it on three of those years.

First, I started testing it for my arts and crafts projects. On my first try, it didn’t go so well and I didn’t manage to do more than a few days of it. Second time around, I still was trying it out for arts and crafts, and this time I managed to do 100 tag adaptations.

On the third go (started on January of 2021) I decided to do a writing challenge. It went beyond the 100 days and I managed to write everyday, one hour a day, based on a quote that served as a writing prompt. 

This got me my first rough draft of my currently work in progress, which I called ‘The Shapeshifters’.

On the following months, it got me working on all the characters, and plot, and subplots, and twists, and turns. Getting to November, I had a rough draft ready for a second draft.

And now I’m working on the third draft, on 2022 NaNoWriMo. I find that these challenges give me structure for my writing efforts.

And now?

In November, I now know I’ll be writing, which means that the months before I am plotting and structuring. Which means that at the beginning of each year I plan to be creating and imagining some new story… if all goes according to plan.

Is it easier?

It is easier to do something like NaNoWriMo, or The 100 Day Project, in order to define my writing goals. We are powered by a sense of community, while doing our work. And even if we stand alone in all of this writing business, we can lean on a well tested strategy to get us working on our goals.

Hope you’re doing well and participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo. If so, how’s your project going?

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

***

References ✍🏼

Onwards with all of my Writing Projects

onwards

This week I have been working on a few projects. A few, very important, Writing Projects.

First and, I daresay, the most important is ‘The Shapeshifters’ #1. This is a third draft and has brought me a lot of challenges in itself. But you can read all about it on the article Hello NaNoWriMo and lots of ‘Shapeshifters’

thI have been writing for it during this year’s NaNoWriMo and I had already passed the 50K mark. YAY!!! Good for me!

It just seemed wrong for me to share my last achievement in all of my other social platforms and not here. After all this is my ‘Let’s talk about writing’ special place!

So this is the short video I made of the moment when I managed to write the 50K words.

It has been a source of great joy, even if it’s been quietly celebrated.

But I am aiming at 100k for this project, so that I have lots of wiggle room to edit later 😃

Blog Writing

Another of my writing projects are my two blogs. The present one and my Portuguese counterpart.

I have been writing about writing, about books, about productivity and about writer’s resources over there, and it has been fifteen years of research and content creation, that have helped me a lot on my writing efforts.

I still believe a blog is a wonderful way to share our writing. After all, we want to write and this is a mean that demands for it.

Here, on this virtual space, I have narrowed the scope a bit more. The resources I want to bring you are:

  • help you define and achieve your writing goals;
  • Inspire you to focus on your writing projects;
  • creating the space to talk about writing;
  • and  sharing my writing journey.

Vídeo Scripts Writing

Launching VLook, my YouTube channel, has been transformative for me in so many ways.

And I just got my channel’s handle, @vlooksarafarinha and I am happy to put my name on it.

But back to the transformative parts of having my own YouTube channel…

First, I get to write for it, and compose what I want to say. Second, I am able to practice my English in a more inventive way. Third, it had worked wonders on my introversion and general shyness (call it traumas! It was what they were!). Four, I have been learning so much about filming, and editing, and writing for it, that it has blown my mind.

Even if I’m trying to discover what I enjoy doing, and how to do it, this process is helping me grow in so many ways it astonishes me.

So, these have been my major writing projects for this week and I did enjoy working on all of them.

But, tell me…

Are you entering NaNoWriMo?

Have you got some special question about writing, blogging or vídeo making, that you think I could help you with?

And, please let me know how’s your project going. 

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

A Writing Update about my First Week at NaNoWriMo

writing first week

This is a writing update on my current writing project.

This Monday I managed to pass the 25 000 mark, of my 50 000 goal, for NaNoWriMo.

I’ll confess, I had set up my goal to the 100 000, but I hadn’t had the courage to make it public, or official, in the NaNoWriMo website.

So instead of 1 667 daily words needed, I’ve been aiming at 3 333,3 and managing to do it… to much of my astonishment.

Why am I astonished? After all, I’ve prepped a lot for this project… It’s just a me thing. I’m always expecting the worse.

But this means I can be happy in the meanwhile, while putting in the work to achieve my 3 333,3 words, and giving it all during those hours.

As you may know, if read any of my older posts, I’m writing a novel, a young adult, romance, urban fantasy novel. I named it, for project identification purposes only, ‘The Shapeshifters’.

I have been working on it for almost two years now and I’, writing the first English draft of what I planned to be a trilogy, on the same Fantasy Universe.

First week of NaNo was great!

I had my banner up, my reminders, my scene cards, my character’s cards, my plan of scenes rolled up in one perfect tube, my laptop and a schedule to work on this project. 

I know this challenge can cause me some unwelcome stress, specially if a project isn’t ready to be drafted, or if I’m working on a first, or second, drafts. But this is not the situation.

2022 project is kind of a third draft, and I have been prepping for it for a while now, even if I changed the language I was writing it, I’m treating it like a third draft project… and I like it.

I hope this will continue to progress smoothly and that I keep managing to hit my goals without much fuss.

But will be checking in with you later about how this is going.

Hope you’re doing well and participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo. If so, how’s your project going?

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

***

References ✍🏼

Hello NaNoWriMo and lots of ‘Shapeshifters’

Hello NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo is here!!!!

Let’s make a resume of this project during all of it’s existence.

A few years ago, I plotted, planned, and wrote a book in a Universe I called ‘The Shapeshifters’. It was 2012 and it was entitled ‘The Pariah’.

I devoted a lot of time thinking about this concept which, being far from a novelty, I wanted to work out in my particular way.

Fast forward a few years… in the beginning of 2021

Freshly out of writing a Vampire Story… I decided to enter The 100 Day Challenge. 

During the development of some short texts, which were my #the100daychallenge object, and with some twenty days in, I started to write this story in the Shapeshifters Universe.

I began in it’s middle and then, worked my way through until the end, and then wrote the beginning.

The idea to write about a particular scene, in ‘The Shapeshifters’ Universe had been there for a while. I had a vivid snippet of events that kept coming back, and didn’t stop until I got it on a page.

Finishing the #the100daychallenge I kept going, until the first rough draft was finished.

Then I gave it a rest.

On November of 2021

I got back to it, writing the Portuguese second draft during NaNoWriMo. With 50 412 words, just in time to accomplished the word count.

And then, it went into the back burner again. There was something about this story which seemed to be incomplete. It just felt pale in comparison to what I wanted to convey.

I’ve kept thinking about it, and spending a lot of time trying to work it all out in my mind, after all it’s a project into which I had put a lot of my faith into.

June 2022

With the approaching of June, entering in my first Camp NaNo ever, getting back to ‘The Shapeshifters’ seemed the right thing to do. So I started to rewrite a third draft, but…

Suddenly I noticed I had been reimagining a new first scene in another language. Going with it, I thought ‘I’ll change this later…’

Then it got me thinking again. Maybe this was my opportunity to strike another milestone on my path: to write a book in the English language.

Why? Quite frankly, because it seemed exciting, adding several more complex layers to this task.

I know, it isn’t some big deal but, to me, it was a strange and almost providential turn on this life’s project.

Now I had a new draft to rewrite, in a new language, in his full right of existing separately from the previous drafts.

Camp NaNo didn’t saw my expectations of advancing on a third draft fulfilled. Instead I added more layers to the complexity of this task.

But, at the same time, it got me thinking in all that I wanted to do with it; All the backstory I missed including; All the characters which were appearing shallow and unidimensional; The entirety of a Universe that palled in its previous versions.

In September…

I got really focused on polishing my notes for this project. From polishing notes to expand on the things I thought were missing, was a short step.

And then, with the proximity of this year’s NaNoWriMo event, it grew exponentially. I went from having a sketch of a story, to plotting a trilogy with all it’s flair.

On the 1st of November of 2022, I’ve started to write ‘The Shapeshifters #1’ which already has another title, but it will remain with this one until the trilogy is completed.

I am stoked by all of this process. I’m loving to bring to life the ideas I plotted for this story. I’m focusing on meeting my writing goals and in the task of building a good story… and trying to ‘never mind the rest’.

Are you entering NaNoWriMo? Let’s be buddies?

(I’m sara-farinha from Portugal)

And, please let me know how’s your project going. 

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

Setting up my NaNo Project and Prepping all the must have’s

nano prep

This week’s post is something a bit strange.

I have been in an all consuming mood regarding ‘The Shapeshifters‘, NaNoWriMo, and a few of other ongoing projects…

Like the upcoming 48 hours read-a-ton (you can know it all on VLook) and register to participate here…

While planning to write a draft during next month’s NaNoWriMo, I figured I should have things better planned out. Yes, I mean it like this. I should have planned the plan! Or maybe I’m just nervous with the whole thing.

It’s my first big English writing project; I’m kind of contemplating the thought of making it a trilogy; and wanting to put this story into paper, after so many years in my head. I guess I am a tad nervous about it!

At the same time, there’s a lot of ideas regarding NaNoWriMo, and things I want to do, before the first day of November arrives.

Things I want to do, in order to feel more at ease with working on this project, uninterruptedly for a month… and then some.

Let’s start by listing some thoughts and try to get my grip on what’s going on.

First,

I want to start by confessing that I think I botched my NaNo projects page. It looks like this… [minus the ‘let’s be buddies!’ part]

nanowrimo projects

I had a Portuguese project, from last year. Then, I created the English project for Camp NaNoWriMo this July. And then I created a new project for upcoming November’s NaNoWriMo.

Maybe I should have created a new goal… but wouldn’t it be Camp NaNo, instead of November’s NaNo? I don’t know!

Question: Do you have some thoughts on the matter?

Second…

I have written, and added some scenes, contemplating the major plots, transversal to the three books in the trilogy. [Seeds are evolving here and turning into sprouts.]

Organising these scenes has been my main prep activity for some time. All of my nights for the last three weeks, minus a day, due to a medical appointment.

I wanted it to be easy and perfect, and to be able to fix all the things I had messed up in the Portuguese drafts. Instead it just feels like a big mess.

More of a mess than before because, now I also have my english to contend with.

I am planning for a three act structure more openly now. For this book and the trilogy. [Just got myself into a big, three parted mess, didn’t I?]

While trying to visualize it all I got a bit confused… I am a visual planner, and I need to have some sense to where I am going… even if it’s a three year’s long project. I need to plan!!!

Third…

I am planning to make a billboard out of my 3 act structure. There is no way I can see the story just with my cards. Even if I’m using A5 cards! I need to have a sense to where all of these bits and pieces fit in.

[Thank you, Universe! for I am a crafter, and have plenty of supplies, including a children’s roll of paper from IKEA!]

With a huge billboard in toe, I expect it will be a long, crowded November, in all of my writing corners of this small house. 

Fourth…

I am still hesitant in my working hours for this project.

I have been using during/after dinner time to write my scenes, but I don’t know if it’s the best fit for me. I prefer to write in the mornings. Usually I am more tired in the afternoon and in the beginning of the night, and less aware of idiotic writing (not exclusively) decisions.

But if I choose to block two hours, first thing in the morning, I’ll have to get up at 6… again. This means that by 9:30 pm I’ll be praying for rest and not getting any. I have a child. She doesn’t abide to my sleeping needs.

Scheduling two hours on a middle of the day would be complicated. Conflicting activities will always be a given.

And who says I can write 2000 in two hours? Every day? For a month? I write kind of slowly and usually cut too much of the fluffily prose that would serve a word count, but doesn’t make a decent writing product.

I am still mulling over this one… but it probably will affect my blogging consistency, and I’ll just end up writing during small increments of time, all day long.

Fifth…

I wanted to make a reminder for myself… but, this time, put it in front of me.

camp nano
Shouldn’t the reminder be in front of me?!

I thought maybe a banner. Why? You may ask…

To help me focus, and get in mood for this project, and to remind me of my most immediate goal, and to just feel some support of the objects-displayed variety.

At the same time, I hope it would serve as a reminder for other people, in the apartment, to accommodate my November’s writing needs. But that’s just wishful thinking.

Sixth…

Deciding on my writing spot.

I now have four possibilities… five, if I count the living room couch. I’ll be alternating between them, I guess.

These are: 1. The kitchen table. 2. My desk in my(shared) office. 3. My bedroom desk. 4. My child’s desk, in her bedroom.

Choosing a spot to write will be intimately connected with the day of the week, and at what time I’ll be working on this project. But I have choices and this is kind of a novelty for me. 

I have written entire books on my couch. I have revised books from my bed. I have layered story cards on the spare bedroom floor (before my child’s arrival).

And there were times I didn’t had a proper desk to write on, nor one suitable office chair to sit comfortably. Proofs are pains all over my back and legs. But, even though it wasn’t healthy, I still miss sitting cross legged, writing on my lap.

Now…

Now I have this list, and my thoughts a bit more organised. I have been taking notes, parallel to writing this article, because putting stuff into paper, even if virtual paper, always helps me make sense of my to-do’s.

Have you been planning for NaNoWriMo? Are you planning to write a novel soon? How is your prepping activities going?

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼