An unexpected summer project… <em>Sometimes a curveball is exactly what you need</em>
Disruption is almost always framed as a bad thing and more often than not it is. But sometimes a curveball is exactly what you need as it forces you to look at things in a new way and can often lead to new ideas. This summer has been one of those rare occasions of the latter and the curveball in question has been the weather.
It has been a very hot summer here in the UK - once a rarity, but now not so. It feels like it’s been the hottest summer I’ve experienced so far - something I know I’ve said before. The temperature in our wee studio regularly hit 36°C during the day as it faces almost due south and gets the sun pretty much all day. While I worked away on The Vale of Araulen my beast of a computer sounded like it was about to require clearance for take off, such was the fan noise that emanated from it as the poor thing attempted to keep itself cool. I genuinely began to worry that the extreme heat would damage my very important and very expensive computer.
From experience I know what happens when you push a computer just a little bit too hard… they go bang, sometimes even with a proceeding firework show (thankfully, on both occasions this has happened to me they weren’t my own computers but ones belonging to the company I used to work for and there was only a small amount of fire!). Mindful of this I decided that it would be a good idea to work on something a little less graphically intensive until the studio cooled down a bit. Ah “the best laid plans of mice and men”.
Night sky fireworks = pretty, computer fireworks = expensive!
Like most creative types I have many (probably too many!) projects in various states of incubation at any given time. The one I chose to focus on over the summer was a novel I started a couple of years ago. A novel that I’ve done a frankly ridiculous amount of research for, some might say it’s procrastination and there is probably some truth in that but mostly it’s been amazing to have the opportunity to dive into eras of history that I’ve always been extremely curious about. The only thing I’m going to say now about the story is that it centres around a resistance movement in a deeply divided dystopian fantasy world. I have always been captivated by the stories of incredible bravery from people within resistance movements and holy moly have I read some amazing stories down my research rabbit holes.
At various points over the last couple of years I’ve sat down and tried to turn my many, many notebooks worth of research and ideas into an actual book (series?!), but I’ve really struggled to do so. I’m a bit of an organisation geek - I love things neatly organised and easily queryable. I’ve tried everything from pen and paper to Scrivener and Notion but I haven’t been able to find a tool / method of writing that allows me to organise all my research, plot ideas, character development notes, world building ideas etc that enables me to keep track of it all in the way I want to. There is so much information to manage that it has become quite overwhelming and as a result my progress has been very slow. This has given my imposter syndrome gremlin lots of material to annoy me with and has almost led me to abandon the project on several occasions. But time and time again I’ve been drawn back to it and the story I want to tell… so I knew I had to find a way to tell it. Which this summer led to a ridiculous thought, why don’t I build my own writing software?! And this dear reader is why sometimes a curveball is exactly what you need - it forces you to get out of a routine and think differently.
“Why don’t I build my own writing software?!”
In my previous life in tech alongside our actual job duties we were encouraged to develop apps to solve problems and improve efficiency and progress (which conveniently meant they didn’t have to pay software developers to do it). I am entirely self taught when it comes to coding, but I must admit I derive a geeky sense of a satisfaction from it. I think coding also appeals to my love of languages and problem solving so it’s something I actually enjoy doing as odd as that may sound. Although at times it can be immensely frustrating and infuriating when you can’t find the mistake or problem that’s causing the code to crash… but the flip side of this is that it’s really rewarding when you do!
The more I thought about the idea of creating a writing app, the more excited I got about it and the less ridiculous it seemed. So I set to it and within a couple of weeks - much to my own amazement - I had the beginnings of a functional app up and running and I’ve been using it to help me write my book. I’m very happy to be able to report that I’ve been able to make a lot of process with it! Which has been a great way to silence the doubt, proof that I was right, it was the fact that I didn’t have the right tools for the job rather than me being completely useless that was causing the lack of progress.
The app is long way from being complete at the moment, my plan is to use my book as the test case for writing and developing the app. Building into it all the tools and organisation I want and need as I go through each phase of the writing process. When I was initially researching different writing packages to help me write I came across a staggering statistic that around 86% of people have dreams of writing a book one day, but less than 3% actually do. I couldn’t help but wonder how many people have not written their stories for the same reasons I nearly abandoned mine. In light of this I’m going to release a beta version of the app as soon as it’s in a useful state which you will be able to download from our shop. My hope is that it will become a useful tool that I can grow and evolve with input from a little community of writers.
As the Autumn equinox approaches and now that the daytime temperatures have dropped significantly I’m going to return to the Vale of Araluen but only for part of the week. For the next wee while I’m planning to give myself a bit of variation by splitting my time between the app and the Vale. So watch this space for updates.
Thank you for reading,
