Friday I finished the first draft of a science fiction novel. Many woops were called and many dances danced before I returned from my writing holiday yesterday.
Now I *just* have to edit it, which I plan to do in the last part of September and the first part of October. Until then, I’ll write as many small texts as possible to get the novel out of my head, before I have to look at it again and actually make it good.
I’ll begin with four small writing exercises, the first of which I’ll post just after this update. After that, I don’t know, but I hope it’ll be interesting.
I’m sorry I’ve been so bad at updating lately. Wednesday I couldn’t write anything and was worried that I might have the dreaded writer’s block. Now, I’m writing like crazy, just not anything that will be posted on the blog.
Why? You might ask. Because I’m writing on a novel. A science fiction novel, to be precise, and I’ve gone on a writing holiday where I hope, no, I’m counting on finishing the first draft.
Yesterday I wrote 8130 words on it and if I just write 6000 words every day the rest of the week, I’ll make it.
So there probably won’t be an update Wednesday either, but perhaps I’ll be ready to write a bit flash fiction Sunday.
I hope you are all still having a wonderful summer.
If I had to choose a soundtrack for Iceland, it would be Valravn‘s “Koder på snor”
It is difficult to recreate the feeling with just pictures and music, but I’ll try anyway.
I went for a hike the first four days and every day I saw at least three different types of landscapes.
To get up to the first hut, I took a bus and on the way we drove through what was almost a desert.
Very sandy and very little vegetation
Then when I arrived at the hut, there was a hot spring and a rather swamp-like grassy area right up to the hut on one side
and what can only be described as troll-country on the other.
Looking down on the hut from troll-country. Some of the grassy-swamp can be seen to the left of the hut.
The next day I saw the first real Icelandic holes in the ground.
Small chimneys all over
The fourth day after hiking through emerald sand (yes, green sand) and over orange rocks, I reached the last hut and met these two:
Arctic fox cubs. They’re just that cute 🙂
They spent most of the time fighting and just ignored everything else.
Fighting and biting
Then I went on to more traditional sightseeing.
Gullfoss
A hole in the ground with bubbling water. Also known as Geysir.
A hole in the ground with bubbling mud
A hole in the ground with rocks. There’s also water down the bottom.
A steaming hole in the ground (very noisy).
Most of the holes in the ground were rather smelly because of the sulphur, but they were all amazing 🙂
I saw plenty of other things for example seals and whales, but if you want to see them, you have to take a trip to Iceland yourself, because I don’t have any pictures of them.
All in all, it was a wonderful experience, and I hope to go back there in the not too distant future.
The front cover of the first Elfquest comic. Elfquest is copyright Wendy and Richard Pini.
I used to collect Elfquest. At some point I forgot about collecting them and just reread the ones I had once in a while.
Recently, I found out that the entire series can be read online at http://www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics3.html so I’ve been reading a lot of Elfquest these last two weeks. The story is just as good as I remembered it to be, so I can highly recommend reading it.
It might be because of Elfquest that I suddenly felt like sketching wolves again.
And if I just throw in a couple of extra sketches,
you might forget to ask yourself why I haven’t published a story today.
The answer to that is that I haven’t finished anything new this week. And since I’m going to Iceland this weekend A bolg? will be going on holiday as well. Updates will return at random during August and be back to normal in September.
Here I am again staring at the screen. Willing new and interesting words to appear, but where are they? They say the only way to leave writer’s block behind is to write oneself out of it. So here I am. Trying.
If I have a muse, she must have gone on vacation somewhere close to my first exam, and even though I am done, she has not returned. How does one entice a muse to come back to work? Flowers? Chocolate? I am sure some chocolate would help. I had better eat some (says the chocoholic).
mmmm… Lovely. Now where did that muse get to? Perhaps she got lost in the mess on my desk? I suppose I could tidy it up just a little bit…
Done, but there was no muse hiding in the debris. Or wait. What is this? An old scrap of paper with a few scribbled words. It sounds like something from a dream. Or something I wrote in the middle of the night which is basically the same. Hmm… If I have a muse, I think she just gave me a hint.
What do you do when your muse goes away on holiday?
A Bolg? 