Monday 20 December 2010

HEAD SPACE

I woke up this morning with a head full of thought traffic all trying to find a place to park! This led me to reach for my notebook and pen till the engines quietened to a low rumble and the noise eventually died down. Sometimes you find yourself with way too much going on in your head and the last thing you can think about is writing. My thoughts this morning ranged from the dream I had about my blog (I kid you not) having a Child free Christmas (he's sunning it up with his Aunt) and whether it will snow again, all to the background music of 'Check it Out'. Now trust me I am no fan of the Pink Barbie (I find her music to be autotuned to death and her image slightly contrived) but it just goes to show how the brain like a radio can pick up so much useless static. My solution to unstick the unwanted is to keep a notebook by my bed and as soon as a I wake up I write all of the nonsense dancing around my head (usually to its own theme tune) until its exhausted and staggers out of 'Club Naomi J'. I write anything that comes to mind and when I am finished I take a deep breath feel a wave of calm wash over me and know I am ready to step into the zone with a blissfully blank brain. I have twisted the dial of my mind searched through the random thoughts, fine tuned my brain to a station playing 'The Writers Hour' and here Is where I find THE HEAD SPACE a place in my head to let the creative flow and write it all down. I love this space, I find peace in this space, its my own writers paradise and there's not a Mattel toy in sight!

Friday 17 December 2010

UNDER THE DUVET

I recently received an email from the publishers and although I am not going to reveal the contents of this email (loose lips sink ships my Mama always said) I want to confess ever since reading this mail I have been acting strange. Let me explain, well as all writers know it is important if you want to get a book written and be consistence you must have some form of routine. Working from home provides positives and negatives in equal amount but to save yourself from procrastination and indulging in too much daytime t.v you must have 1. A list of goals or deadlines for chapters. re-writes etc. 2. A piece of clothing you write in (a uniform of sorts but you can be excused if its that old comfy fisherman jumper you haven't washed in aeon's and smells like cat and coffee) and most importantly 3. Somewhere to write. Mine is (usually) a big beautiful teal blue chair with matching foot stool next to my window, where I can look out to blue skies and monster evergreens towering over a large park. However since the email, I have found the best place for me to write is in my bed?! under my duvet (me not the laptop) and well at first I fought it and made all attempts to sit in my chair, but in Goldilocks-esque dissatisfaction I have found myself gravitating back towards my bed. My blog today is to state that I give in! give in to the lure of the 24 tog and concede defeat to the duck down life of a writer under the duvet. It being winter and very cold in the rest of this house is my excuse and I'm sticking to it, but hey I'm getting a considerable amount of work done here and when I think of those sat in an office wishing they were where I am right now, I can do nothing but smile and feel like the luckiest gal in the cosmos. Am thinking I'll emerge some time around spring!

Monday 7 June 2010

Share what you love

I write in complete isolation. I have a media fast, no books, no magazines, no television, no internet and I switch off my phones and hang the 'do not disturb' sign on the door. Telling stories is what I do and I love what I do. However, I have just read that the more something is shared the more overall wealth it produces and sometime In my isolation I forget that although I am doing what I love, it encourages escapism and selfishness. Sharing what I love on the other hand engenders greater awareness and selfless service to others and my mission is to share what I love through my art. People have always said do what you love and the money will follow, but I think it should be share what you love and the money will follow as it is through the sharing of what you love that value is brought into the world -the doing is only a fraction of the process. This brings me to the original purpose of this blog which I think may have got lost along the literary path I walk down. To share my work, to share my story I Woke Up In The Future. If anything I have treated this blog as more of an observational diary of my life as a writer rather than actually sharing my writing per se. This will change and as of next week I will post excerpts from different chapters of the book. To quote Garret Loporto 'your opportunity as an artist is to create what you love to behold . For through that creation you are making more of what you love and sharing it with the world'

Friday 14 May 2010

Journalists and Interviews

I was in the middle of re-writing a very difficult chapter when I received a phone call from someone who shall remain anonymous that a journalist/writer was very interested in interviewing me about my story for their publication. When the conversation was over, I sat and looked at the chapter I was in the middle of and laughed its called 'Looking Through The Darkness" its the most serious, shocking, most uncomfortable to read part of the book and I have been through the 'truth telling vs sensationalism' mill so many times only to reach the same conclusion. The universe has a wry sense of humour. Whenever I am faced with the fear of the impact my words will have on those who read it, particularly on those who are in the book, a journalist calls and wants to hear my story. Let me tell you about Journalists which most who have been interviewed by a few will know. JOURNALISTS WRITE WHAT THEY WANT. and there is not a damn thing you can do about it. Creative control! what's that? you have none, you are at the mercy of their mood, their editor and their word max and what usually ends in print only vaguely resembles what you originally said.They re-write to fit in with their own world view. When I am faced with this reality I am reminded that I do have control over what I write, I have control what I put in my story and my truth is my truth, regardless of how it is interpreted by others. I have a friend to thank for this blog today, she allowed me to read something very personal that she wrote and published recently and I can say I admired her transparency and honesty and her unapologetic narrative. The truth is the truth and inspired by her bravery I will tell it no matter who wants to read it or not. So bring on the journalists and the interviews. My sword is double edged.

Tuesday 20 April 2010

The Need To Back Up

I have not blogged for some time as I have been exceptionally busy, I have three deadlines to make and little time to make them in so I have been writing furiously and procrastinating the rest of the time. Factor in a sick child with a cough like a Walrus (or is that a Seal) and I have had little time for anything else, notably the laundry, the dishes, the housecleaning etc. By last weeks end I came to the conclusion I need back up, I have finally got someone in to tackle the jungle at the front and back of the house and turn it back into a semi-decent excuse for a garden, Kind Andrew is charging me a reasonable rate to hide the fact that sometimes life as a writer takes precedence over all else including the rose bushes (much to the chagrin of the neighbours and there prizewinning rhododendron filled gardens) and this writer just wants to sit in a beautiful garden and pen her thoughts but not have anything to do with the way it looks, this goes for the house also. This takes me to the point of the blog, the need to back up. Its something I almost always forget to do and when stuff happens like the computers adaptor not working and I cant get to my work and freak out at the Hewlett Packard man in Mumbai over the phone. I realise while purveying the mess around me that in ALL aspects of my life there is a need to backup, not just from a computers hard drive. So the only answer is for me to be paid a lot of money so I can call on the cook and the cleaner and the nanny and I can write (or procrastinate) to my hearts content while they do the freaking out, life would then I imagine be one rose filled garden! (ahem) I will let you know (smile)

Monday 29 March 2010

Procastination and Battlestar Galactica

pro·cras·ti·natev.intr.
To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.
v.tr.
To postpone or delay needlessly.

What is it about a writers undeniable need to procrastinate? I have a deadline 30th June, I know the last rewrite must be finished by then and yet here I sit playing mind numbing games on social networking sites and contemplating opening my Battlestar Galactica box set and pretending I am Starbucks happily kicking Cylon ass while smoking large Cigars and saying Frakk in every sentence (for those who have never seen it I do apologise as what I have just written will make no sense to you what so ever). Even while blogging this I am convincing myself I am working and not just inadvertently putting off the inevitable! The definition I have put above says I am careless or lazy and postponing or delaying needlessly! Careless? I disagree I care very much about the Publishers wanting to print the words I write and pay me handsomely for it, Lazy? I have moved around today, well only to drive, shop and cook, but its still moving and defies the very definition of laziness! but the postponing and delaying needlessly i have no argument for....ok..... My name is Naomi Jacobs and I am postponing and delaying the rewriting of the 6th chapter of my book without good reason! there i've admitted it and now I have shamed myself enough into continuing on with the rewrite with a little FTL speed (another Battlestar G reference!) Faster Than Light.................

Monday 22 March 2010

Friends

Today I had planned to blog about what actually happened when I lost my memory and how the amnesia was diagnosed. However, I have just got in from my daily walk (a must when sat on your bottom for several hours a day) and felt compelled to write about friendships and what happens when you forget them. What sparked the necessity to blog about friends was an encounter I have just had with an old friend I haven't seen since the memory loss. She was driving towards me, I recognised her from the private license plate on her large car, she drove past, we looked at each other lips pursed in a sort of weird semi-smile, and continued on in our opposite directions as. This perturbed me slightly, we were once so close and had shared some of our deepest feelings connecting through life and love and loss and yet here we were, strangers. On reflection I wondered what we would have possibly talked about if she had stopped? the answer? absolutely nothing, my life is so far removed from what it was back then that she would have found a complete stranger. Seeing her reminded me how much my life has changed since the memory loss notably the friendships that are no longer. Although tinged with a little sadness this is not necessarily a bad thing, during the memory loss I felt I had to cull the relationships that I viewed as unhealthy and a hindrance to my dreams of being a successful author. Since then I have learnt it is very important as a writer to have as many supportive, encouraging, loving positive people in your life who believe in what you write and who you are as an artist because for those singular moments in time when you forget, they remind you. This is a friend.

Sunday 21 March 2010

Self Promotion

Yay! I have two followers (thanks guys) and although they are both friends, am feeling positively chuffed with the fact that they are here reading my blogs and encouraging me to do this! As most writers will know, one thing we find quite difficult is self promotion. Give me a chapter to complete or a scene to re-write and I'll do it with aplomb. Ask me to endlessly talk about my self and sell my work, well unless I'm telling a story then I tend to shy away from such blatant ego driven advertisement. This I realise is not particularly helpful when writing a memoir, there has to be an ego driven self-determined almost delusional quality to ones self-grandiosity, 'What I have to say is very important and everyone will want to hear it' this you must be convinced of if you are to Self-Promote. Strangely with I Woke Up In The Future I have tried to do the exact opposite. I initially sent the first story to 4 magazines, 3 out of 4 paid me for it and to my great surprise I Woke Up In The Future became a small seed of self planted in the vast garden of promotion and has since been watered, fed, sometimes neglected but never forgotten. Now it is a small sapling which insists on growing and my only option is to tend to it, nurture it and protect it until its full maturation. This blog is my journal of this tree, which started out as a small insignificant seed of thought has taken form and developed into a 21 Chapter book. I am the inexperienced forester at the start of my training and this blog is my journal of observation.

Saturday 20 March 2010

Future Girl

This blog has been started for one reason only. I Woke Up In The Future, a true story, my story. A profoundly life changing experience that reverberates still throughout every facet of my life and has taken me on a roller coaster journey during the past two years as a writer. I deem it best to start then and work my way towards now and and I am hoping that maybe seeing it all in black and white in front of me will help me understand why the feature film script of the same title is now with a very important film producer and why I am should stick with the re-write of the book. As all writers know we must find reason almost everyday, to sit at our desks, switch on our computers, drink many cups of coffee and continue on down the road of dreams for a bestseller or a Original screenplay Oscar (both in my case) against the terror that you can't write you'll never make it and you should give up and go back to school and teach. This isn't the life I'm going to settle for, and I will blog about this internal rebellion for all things 'normal' as much as possible! If I do conform and listen to the naysayers then I Woke Up In The Future was for absolutely nothing and I may as well stop here. But if (as I so love to believe) that everything happens for a reason then losing my memory created Future Girl and its time for her to save the world!