~ Written by Danielle N. Bilski ~

Today I realised I had received a Twitter comment from a fellow writer; someone I both strongly admire and had the pleasure of working with on various projects during the professional writing & editing course we both completed a few years ago.

I really appreciate all the support and encouragement that I have received and any feedback is a helpful and important element in this process. The original reason behind the creation of this website and its main focus being the documenting of a specific writing project as it is lived, was to inspire and inform readers and keep me motivated and aware of my own writing style.

In the particular comment I received, I was asked what a chapter plan is and whether it is necessary to have one for their own writing. This was my first evidence that a) someone is actually reading my posts and b) is being inspired or at least contemplative about the ideas that I have been putting forward.

Therefore, I first would like to personally thank that person, who will know who he is, for his constant acknowledgment of MTWY and genuine interest in the project. Its effect is immeasurable. Second, I thought it was necessary to add a disclaimer to this website that states that the process I am following is extremely subjective and has been developing as you read about it. It is loosely based on things that I have learned over the years, but is in no way a direct representation of any previous plans. The chapter plan is something I created for my own personal use and while it has proven to be an invaluable tool to help me get my thoughts in order, I realise and stress that every writer has their own way of working that is as you unique as you and I. I, in no way intend to force ideas on nor take responsibility for anyone’s use of the process that I am applying and documenting on mytimewithyou.com.au . Having said that, if readers find anything useful that they think they can customise and may find helpful to their own writing, that’s great!

My Time with You has always been a project that I have wanted to produce and maintain full control and ownership over. Obviously suggestions and again, feedback, is of course welcomed. However, ultimately it is a personal, subjective journey that I have embarked upon and one that, aided by this online medium will be interpreted by others in a way that makes sense to them.

I do not claim to be an authority when it comes to how to write a novel. However I hope that this exclusive access to the way I am writing My Time with You has a positive influence in the way you think about your own life and/or creative endeavours. If you have any questions, I am happy to answer them to the best of my ability.

I have realised that while I find that I work more effectively when I am orgainsed and I am somewhat of a perfectionist, I also need the space and flexibility to work in a way that I am comfortable with, that allows me to change my mind, be accountable for my decisions and fulfill my need to explore and develop at my own pace. My star sign is Sagittarius after all.

May you all find the answers that you are looking for and generate more questions on the journey to a deeper understanding. Work out what works for you and follow it through.

Thank you again for my time with you and I wish you more awareness of your own time too.

Immersed in introspection,

My Time with You ©2010 Danielle N. Bilski

~ Written by Danielle N. Bilski ~

Last week I took a very significant step forward with My Time with You. In my last two posts, I wrote about creating a chapter plan, that I have affectionately named OOMM or ‘Organisation of my mind’ and the important role the poems that I have placed at the beginning of each chapter of MTWY now play in the story’s development. Since then, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the location/setting and tense that the story is told from and about.

I have decided that it is set in present tense and narrated as our main character experiences it. I also wanted to use a historical event as a landmark for readers to identify with and also add to the authenticity that I have been very mindful of maintaining and exploring from the very beginning when the original idea from MTWY was conceived. Therefore, I have chosen a recent event that has had a significant effect on many people’s past, present and future existence. Unfortunately, you will have to wait and see what that event is and what relevance it has in MTWY.

From this decision I started thinking about the specific character or characters that our main character/narrator spends time with. I touched on this process a few weeks ago, but in retrospect I needed to get my chapter plan, poems, tense, perspective and setting/s in place for the right characters to grow within.

Symbolism is also an important subject to explore when creating a piece of fiction to understand and be aware of why you are including something and how it may be and how you intend for it to be interpreted. Building on this idea, I created another document last week that now contains relevant objects and their significance in the narrative. This refers to another theme that I chose to subtly integrate into the narrative.

Things are beginning to fall into place and as they say ‘one thing leads to another.’ I am constantly thinking about potential ideas and inspired by things around me that I hear, see and learn. I watched ‘The Lake House’ starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves a few weeks ago and I love the way it plays around with and pushes the limits and parallels of time as we know it.

I was also shown by someone close to me, some online documentaries about physical cosmology, the birth of the universe and the life-cycles of stars and planets. This made me think a lot about the fact that we are lucky to be here and how much so many of us take our planet, its natural resources and our time with others and ourselves for granted. This is another dimension of MTWY that I was already aware of, but found interesting to build on at a scientific level. I intend on learning a lot more about this both for MTWY and for my own personal interest. The small amount I have already seen I found extremely intriguing.

The pieces at the heart of the My Time with You puzzle are fitting together and now we can begin to work our way out to the farthest corners. That is assuming that the puzzle has corners. The shape is still undetermined. That’s what makes this so interesting and exciting. Watching as the picture on the puzzle slowly begins to appear and appreciating each piece that is as valuable as all the others in its own unique way.

By the way, the ISBN or International Standard Book Number has arrived for ‘My Time with You’ and I couldn’t be more excited. MTWY is growing before my very eyes and every day I am more and more sure that this is something that I am supposed to be doing. MTWY comes from the values, ideas and beliefs that are at the deepest part of me and I have spent my life learning and becoming more aware of as my time goes on. That is not to say that I am so absorbed by the idea of MTWY that I am not able to remove myself from it and look at it objectively. As I said in another post, it is about finding the balance between subjectivity and objectivity when completing a task. Having said that, I believe the most meaningful pieces of work have one thing in common. They have heart.

Count the beats,

My Time with You ©2010 Danielle N. Bilski

~ Written by Danielle N. Bilski ~

Yesterday was a great day for MTWY. After completing and posting my latest entry on mytimewithyou.com.au I went back to the chapter plan and began writing questions for each chapter full of new found energy. I find that when I start asking questions and organise my mind it begins to react in a more positive way. Some people don’t like being interrogated or find it difficult to question themselves in an objective, nonjudgmental way. I love contemplating the variables of a situation and coming to a possible conclusion, always with the optimism that another possibility is only a thought and perspective away.

Fiction and I have always had an interesting relationship. I have no trouble writing non-fiction pieces and researching the subject thoroughly. I feel confident working with facts and seeking truths. With fiction, however, I have always found it difficult to imagine stories too dramatic and seemingly unbelievable. I have never been good at acting or drama, because it has always seemed fake or forced when I try to portray the personality or mannerisms of someone that I am not.

Therefore, every piece of fiction that I have written has been based on what I know and emotions that I have experienced and can associate with. The main challenge for me about My Time with You being a long-term fiction project is that I have so much space to move and because I have control of creating and manipulating what happens and who it happens to (rather than recounting what has already happened), I have to work purposefully from the broad themes down to the smallest details to tell an authentic, original story that people are going to want to read.

Last night I had  breakthrough when I started looking more closely at the poems that I placed at the beginning of every chapter. They were originally poems that I wrote over the years, that I recently realised each had relevance to the tone and overall meaning of MTWY. Now, they play an even more important role in the story than simply abstract prose preceeding each chapter. They have helped me take a different look at who our narrator is and consider the possibility that there may be multiple narrators.

This probably seems a little general and basic to mytimewithyou.com.au readers, having not had access to the current Prologue draft and specific story development, but the main thing is that the direction, questions and possibilities that the poems have provided to MTWY is the serious step that I have been preparing myself to take, however until now has felt a little wobbly.

Since I completed just over 1100 words of the Prologue, I have wanted to extend it and for it to lead more strongly into the rest of the story, but I haven’t been sure how. Now I have been armed with the three act plan, plot points, a believable, poignant, timeless story that more readers should be able to relate to on a number of levels and a more stable base to draw questions and informed possibilities from.

The OOMM aka Organisation of my mind (Chapter plan) has been such a defining process in more ways than I can explain. The words all over the table are starting to have a positive effect on the entire MTWY project and a personal effect on me and my fiction writing ability.

The only way for MTWY word count is up.

Thank you so much for your support of My Time with You. Stay tuned for changes to the site to take effect in the next few weeks, making it more interactive for you.

Follow MTWYcomau on Twitter for daily updates and more exclusive access to the inner workings of a creative, newly organised mind. http://www.twitter.com/mtwycomau

I’d love to hear what you think about MTWY and Mytimewithyou.com.au.

Excited as ever,

My Time with You ©2010 Danielle N. Bilski

~ Written by Danielle N. Bilski ~

Procrastinate is a word that I love to hate. To me it has always had negative connotations. These include laziness, succumbing to distraction, being unfocused and unmotivated. So last year, I decided to redefine it for myself from a more positive, optimistic perspective. This is not to take away from the original meaning, instead to make it more inspiring and intending to make me feel less judgmental on myself (and others who choose to partake in the action).

My new definition for procrastination as a noun is:

“The planning stages with the intention to achieve.”

Wikipedia.org defines procrastination as follows:

“Procrastination refers to the counterproductive deferment of actions or tasks to a later time. Psychologists often cite such behavior as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. There are three criteria for a behavior to be classified as procrastination: it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrastination, accessed 17th May 2010)

I love to plan. I truly believe that being prepared, assertive, knowledgeable and taking control 0f a situation in order to get the best possible outcome from it is very important. However, the planning stage of any project often involves a lot of thinking, accessing, talking to other people, gathering ideas, reflecting on choices you have made and making changes where you feel it is necessary to ensure completeness and consistency. To the naked eye, unless something is visually available as evidence of work that has been done, it can seem like a lot of ‘procrastinating’ has occurred, in a negative sense. It may seem like you have been wasting your time and in turn, the time of the observer who has nothing to ‘see’.

Those of us who have worked for a boss have had the responsibility of completing a number of tasks that have been given to us, in an efficient manner. Time and being able to prioritise is important and it often doesn’t matter as much what method is used to achieve the tasks, as long as they are completed in the time frame that has been allowed and they meet the specifications. It is a balance between being subjective and taking a more objective position in a relative situation. Of course method and processes are relevant to many tasks, but the point that I am trying to make is that in retrospect, we tend to focus on the product that has been produced or the service that has been provided and how well and not so much on the preparation that occurred within the time frame given.

Planning allows you to have more, as well as make more informed choices and also opens up the window of possibilities, which may even turn into a door, to somewhere you have never been.

I feel I must point out that I have not put an exact time frame on completing My Time with You (MTWY). Frankly, I am trying to savour every single word and moment of this experience. I guess that is really the theme of this post; by procrastinating enough I hope to make the actual writing experience more efficient yet as comprehensive and enjoyable as possible.

Have you been asked the question ‘How did you do that?’ lately? Intrigue and interest in something you have done, through another person’s admiration for you and the effort you have given has to be among the highest form of praise and appreciation for any artist. Looking ahead, I want to be prepared with a well procrastinated, sorry I mean planned answer if one day someone asks me that question about MTWY. Thinking outside the literary square which I am not at all claiming is anything new, I have been busy creating two documents; a chapter plan and a story board template for MTWY. Laying it all out on the table, so to speak, I will be able to easily update them, both as the story evolves (word count) and to help plan the story’s evolution.

For those of you taking notes, I will now give you an exclusive tip of the subheadings I am using in my chapter plan. For each chapter, the plan includes but is not limited to the following:

COLUMN ONE: Chapter/Title
including:

– The title eg. 1, One or Chapter Title
– I have placed a self-written poem at the beginning of every chapter, so I have copied the first few lines of the poem to help identify the chapter and to give it direction

COLUMN TWO: Plan
including:

– Current word count
– Target word count
– Narrator
– Character/s introduced
– Aim of chapter
– Main event/s
– Link to previous
– Location
– Time
– Questions to clarify
– Suggestions
– Ideas

COLUMN THREE: Total word count
including:

– Previous total word count + This chapter = Total word count
– Rewrite (including 1 – 6 and room for date completed)
– Edit (including 1 – 6 and room for date completed)
– Proofread (including 1 – 6 and room for date completed)

This chapter plan is otherwise known as ‘Organisation of my mind’.

Along this line, I have taken the planning stage one step further. The story boards should act as a visual aid for me and others to associate more closely with the story and ‘see’ what is happening.

Last week I also did a bit of Googling about fiction structure to remind myself of what I learned when I was doing my writing course five years ago. I came across an interesting site which detailed the idea of the three act plan; Beginning, Middle and End or Setup, Confrontation and Resolution, if you will. Even Shakespeare wrote to the 3 Act Plan.

Along with many other helpful hints, this site provided a useful flowchart which includes these three sections placed along it as a guide and also includes two main plot points that add even more texture or dimension to any story. It was a great reminder of the broad plan every piece of fiction fits to in its own linear or non-linear way.

I then re-read some chapters of one of my old media textbooks, focused on semiotics and media analysis which is helpful to know when accessing the strength of meaning and intention behind every word I write.

I hope that all of the planning that has gone into MTWY, especially over the past 18 months, has not been done in vain. Whether it is viewed by others or just by me, it continues to give me confidence and helps me to maintain my excitement in the project on days when I need reminding why I have chosen to spend so much time with words.

Ultimately, planning can be confused with procrastinating. However, sometimes I think we all need to let ourselves be distracted, lazy, unfocused and unmotivated to give us time to rejuvenate our spirit and get us ready and make us aware when the magical moments of inspiration do come along so we can appreciate them even more.

While a lot of work and my version of procrastination and planning is being done and thoroughly enjoyed behind the scenes, mytimewithyou.com.au is another vital element of this project that I hope provides you with some inspiration and a few minutes of procrastination to plan your next move in your life. Make it meaningful and I wish you the clarity to know why your are doing it.

Don’t forget to smile. While we can’t plan everything (and we probably wouldn’t want to; what fun would that be?), our attitude is something we can influence one moment at a time. Not to mention, inspiring to others too.

As always,

My Time with You ©2010 Danielle N. Bilski