Etiquette (week 1)

And so the writing continues. I have already 1k words more than I actually need for my new little story, which makes me really happy. Writing has been a nice little retreat to take every single day, as my anxiety keeps creeping up to new heights with the semester coming to an end. But I haven't really introduced my new story have I?

Well, I want to take a part in a competition I participated long time ago, because after NaNoWriMo, I kinda miss writing in Czech. (And I want to win that thing too.) The aspiring writer life haven't been exactly kind to me so far, but I have regained my motivation and I really want to create a short story or a novella I will be proud of, before I get back to work on my novel from this November (no, I haven't abandoned it, shush).

The deadline for the competition is in July and it's for fantasy stories of any length. And since I haven't really written a classic sword and sorcery story for a long time, I wanted to give it a try. With the exception that I'll have rapiers. Because I really loved the musketeers when I was a kid and http://mint-teatime.blogspot.cz/ was recently gushing to me about the new BBC show which has ignited the spark once again.

So this first week has been mostly outlining and researching the 17th century France, which was the original setting of the musketeer's books by Dumas, but now that I have looked into it, I think I will push it a bit further, to the reign of Louis XIV and XVI, so I can work with shady cardinals, crazy Versailles manners and some of my favourite women from this era: Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette. I think it will be really fun to twist the common tropes about fantasy knights and what not into French baroque. Or a fantasy imitation of it as it's not going to be a historical novel, after all.

Day 11: FaceTime an old friend.

(Everything is horrible and I want chocolate.)

Phone calls terrify me (ha, anyone surprised?) My face can sometimes terrify me too. And facing people in general tends to be a big no-no. But since I'm not (yet) a hermit writer living somewhere at the end of the world locked away in a creepy cabin, I have no choice but to buckle up and face the horrors.

But I am actually glad, that the nightmare from http://mint-teatime.blogspot.cz/ decided to call me via skype and show me her first book ever! Full of her amazing photographs from their family vacation in Cape Verde. And as a true friend, she was okay with me remaining in darkness and not switching on my webcam <3

We chatted for 46 minutes - which is easily the longest phone call I have ever endured. And I didn't get a panic attack. And we complained about everything and I saw her dog and got to see her silly face again. All of the things I missed.

And I can't believe that I am actually saying this about a living, breathing human, but - 

- I hope to see you soon in person.

Words & Swords

NaNoWriMo is over and it was a wild ride. In order to force myself to really push hard for the win, I wanted to do (at least) weekly updates about my writing process. As you can see, none of them actually happened. Ups. The good news is, however, that I won and I have 50,000 words for a story that I am really excited about. The even better thing is that I have found a couple of like-minded people when it comes to writing and it has been so much fun to gush about our stories. The thing I am really proud of, though, is the daily writing habit. I managed to update my word count every. single. day. Even if I had written one word only (that actually did happen once).

I admit, November has been super stressful month for me and December is not looking any better. And I can't even look at 2017 right now, that's how little I'm prepared for what's about to come next. I think we can pretty much all agree, that this year has been a bad one. But I survived, we survived, and to keep on surviving I need a creative outlet. I need to do something selfish and full of lies, that's mine and mine only and no one can take that away from me, because I am the one who made it. I am in full control. I've figured that I will always be stressed out and always be busy and always be rubbish at managing anything, so I might as well be procrastinating every day by something that will actually make me happy in the long run.

So I don't want to throw all my writing efforts out of the window for the sake of being a successful adult™. I decided to take it easy and downgrade to only 500 words a day, every day, by hand, to clear my head and colour the margins of my notebooks with pretty colours and think about swords and epic adventures while drinking my tea and eating breakfast and mentally preparing for the day that I will most surely hate.

And if I have to wake up in 4 am to make it happen, I'm gonna do it.

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What do you wake up for?