What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme run by Erin L Funk and Jaime Morrow and is a great way for readers and writers to catch up! :)
What I'm reading:
I've been reading lots of great fantasy books over the past week. I recently finished Throne of Glass and Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas, which were amazing (reviews are on the way soon!), and I'm now reading The Night Itself, a fabulous Japanese-inspired urban fantasy by Zoe Marriot. I now have two new writers to add to my favourites list!
What I'm writing:
I'm hard at work on the Darkworld series! I finished the first draft of Book 4 on Monday and I'm now trying to think of a title (titles are my pet peeve: I'm good at thinking of them, but bad at actually matching them to books...)! Now I've just started drafting Book 5 - the final book! *eek!* It's very emotionally draining, so I'm on a constant high-low cycle right now, but it's coming together. If I've done this right, I might break a few hearts... (*evil laugh*)
Meanwhile, I'm dipping in and out of editing Darkness Watching for the 97,000th time, awaiting feedback from my editor! It's only two months to publication, guys! *runs around manically*
Also, I'm taking part in the #WIPMarathon- read my previous post! :)
What Else I've Been Up To:
I've been doing a work placement at Scholastic in London! The placement itself has been amazing. The commute from Birmingham, not so much. I'm pretty sure I've experienced the worst of the British public over the past week, and that's not even counting the train nearly getting hit by lightning during a crazy storm...
Other than that, I've signed up for an online proofreading course with SfEP (Society for Editors and Proofreaders), because it's something I'd really like to do alongside my writing! I've been having to make those big scary Life Decisions about careers lately, which is a bit difficult when you're in my position! On the one hand, I'm one of a hundred thousand recent graduates struggling to navigate the desolate wilderness of the current job market; on the other, I'm an author with one book published and another coming soon, but am nowhere near in a position to make a living as a writer... I also have a LOT of drafting and editing to do to make deadlines, and I can't afford to spend every waking moment writing CV's and job applications! I also find myself skint through no fault of my own (fraudsters hacked my bank account) so I'm stuck at home for the time being, and can't even afford to travel to job interviews. All of this would be very frustrating if it wasn't for my writing, and online opportunities such as my internship with Entangled! And I've applied for some more awesome opportunities, so my fingers are crossed!
What Inspires Me Right Now:
I've been listening to a lot of soundtracks lately, due to a need to drown out annoying background noise when I'm writing! My problem is that I can't usually listen to music with lyrics when I'm writing as it distracts me (I realise I'm a rarity here, because every other author blog I read seems to include in-depth playlists for every book they write...but I just don't do that!)...so I turned to soundtracks, and the kind of tracks that work as background to writing epic scenes. I'm currently playing through playlists of epic music on YouTube such as this awesome one here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAsRnFa4NlY
Hope everyone else is having a great week!
Eeek, sorry about the hacking. That stinks. I don't listen to music when I write. Other than occasionally when my son won't nap and I have the TV on to entertain him while I finish.
ReplyDeleteI'm horrible at titles. I can't come up with them and when I do they are definitely not cool.
I don't listen to music with lyrics, but there's a lot of distracting background noise in my room (especially now it's summer and everyone's outside!). Titles are difficult, and I can go through pages of them without finding one that fits!
DeleteThe train getting hit by lightning? Eek!
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, everyone was fine - there were lightning strikes on the line so I was delayed for ages, but it didn't actually hit the track. :P It was just scary because I was ON the train at the time!
DeleteI hope you get the bank/money situation sorted soon. The placement sounds like it was fantastic. We missed out on all the storms, we just ended up with a lot of drizzly mist. I was looking forward to some thunder and lightening, although my dog probably wasn't.
ReplyDeleteLol, we only had a couple of days of it, but it was like a tropical storm, completely mental for Britain!
DeleteI'm bad a titles, too. Sometimes they come easily, other times I have no clue. I haven't written in ages, though. I miss it. I have so many works-in-progress that I want to finish and share with the world, but I can't seem to find the time/motivation to get anything done.
ReplyDelete