Tag: Commitment to writing

Update – One Thing at a Time

AJ.Dixon27 Comments

Hello, everyone.

It has been a while since my last post, and I realise that the frequency of my posts has dropped in recent months. There is a very clear and simple reason for this, and that is that I am taking on too many projects at once.

I am quite ambitious with my writing, and I like to keep myself busy with some project or another every day. However, I have come to realise that I am spreading myself too thin when I should be concentrating fully on each project as it deserves. Too often I am making myself anxious because I haven’t found the time to work on a new story for my blog, or wasting time being concerned that it must play second fiddle to my novel writing, or my writing course, or my competition hopefuls. My writing should be enjoyable, as it was when I began posting on this blog, and not the source of stress that it is rapidly becoming.

I have had a long think about all of this, and I have decided to cut myself some slack. It sounds daft and obvious, I know, but it has taken a while for me to realise that it is okay to do so. I want to keep this blog up and running, as it has helped me grow in confidence and ability since I first made the plunge, and I genuinely feel as if I am part of a vibrant, exciting online community. I have made some wonderful acquaintances on WordPress, and some of you I have had the great pleasure of meeting in the real, unedited world, too! I do not want to put and I end to that, but I need to let myself breathe and not worry too much. I will continue to write fiction for this blog, but it may not be very frequently, as I have other scintillating projects which will require my attention. This blog will remain my refuge, my sanctuary if, and when, I start to become buried again. I hope it will not happen too often.

Thank you to every single one of my followers and even to those who casually stumble across this blog. Your comments and feedback keep my feet on the ground whenever my head is in the clouds!

Have any of you had, or are having, similar problems to this? I’d love to hear from you, not least because it will prove that I am not alone! Until next time, thanks for reading!

NaNoWriMo Success!

AJ.Dixon27 Comments

Hello, WordPress!

As some of you may be aware, I took the plunge this year and took part in National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo hereafter), a challenge in which participants aim to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. Today I am ecstatic to report that I am one of those who succeeded, as this afternoon I validated my word count at 50,116 words! My novel isn’t finished but I am over the moon and filled with new confidence about my writing. I now know for certain that I can make time to write every single day regardless of what I have going on. It’s an eye-opening and exciting thing to realise!

However, putting in the effort has had some downsides. First of all, my poor blog has been neglected this month despite me promising myself to add and update or two. To be honest, everything got put on hold for Nanowrimo: WordPress, my social life, my various smaller projects and my music practice all had to be shelved for the duration of the challenge. I still managed to find time to read, though, as I can’t be doing without books! Nonetheless, I have no regrets over taking part as I have thoroughly enjoyed it and I have great pride in myself for seeing it through. I plan to right some of these wrongs starting today, and I’ll return to writing short stories to post on here shortly. I’ll also be kick-starting my ‘Fiction Fursday’ posts once again and doing my best to keep up with any writing competitions and challenges thrown my way. I’m planning on catching up with you wonderful people on the blogosphere, too, so that will be great fun!

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read, as always, and I’ll look forward to interacting with you soon! Well done to anyone else who took part in Nanowrimo this year. Win or lose, you’re all writers to me!

Fiction Fursday/Re-blog

AJ.Dixon11 Comments

I’m afraid to say that I have failed this week in my commitment to writing a new story. I’ve just started a new job and things are still up in the air from my recent move. These are terrible excuses and I am a hypocrite for citing them as they shouldn’t have stopped me from writing, so for that I apologise. I even had a great prompt from the lovely Esther Newton work with, but I still managed to slack off.

However, I still wanted to post something, so I have decided to give an older story a dusting off this week. Last year, I wrote a story which I was very pleased with called “Fair Emma“. Some of you may have read this story already, but those of you who are new to my blog may not have come across it. I enjoyed writing it immensely and got a positive response from those who read it. I will leave a link to the original post and the first two paragraphs below, if you are interested in reading it. I hope you enjoy if you do.

Again, apologies for the lack of fresh material. I will be back on form next Thursday, I promise!

 

Fair Emma

By Adam Dixon

The streets of Whitechapel were deathly quiet that night. The street lamps were sparse and their feeble glow barely penetrated the November mist. There were shadows on every corner, and in one of them lurked a solitary, patient woman. Jackie stood motionless, her eyes on the small lodgings across the street. Standing on street corners had become a familiar occupation of hers of late, but she was not there for her trade. A fellow night-worker was completing a transaction with a client, and they had entered the small house less than half an hour ago. She stood calmly, her gaze boring into the wooden door just yards in front of her.

Soon, a man staggered outside, cursing loudly as he caught his foot on the door frame. He almost tripped, but somehow managed to remain upright and wobbled off into the night, belching out a bawdy song and chuckling to himself. After a few minutes the street was silent once again, and Jackie slowly approached the house. It was in a state of disrepair, with the door a little off its hinges and one of the panes of glass broken in the window next to it. Raising a gloved hand, Jackie knocked softly on the door.

Here is the link to the original post. Thanks for reading!

P.S. I just realised that I wrote this story in order to be featured on Esther’s blog! What a strange coincidence!