What am I celebrating this week?
It's the weekend!
The website for young adult author Kate Larkindale. A place for her musings on writing, publishing and a day job in the film business.
Not a lot of change to my goals this week from what they have been the last couple of weeks. Try and get a few more queries sent out for Guide Us and try to find a few safe minutes to write something. Anything. Flash fiction, poetry, short story...
Not sure how I'll get on with any of that, but we'll give it a shot. If I don't get the extra job, then I'll have some time over the four-day weekend for writing work, But if I do get the gig, then I'll have to do that instead. As much as I hate to say it, at this point, a paying gig is more important than my own writing which earns me about enough for a cup of coffee each quarter.
What are your goals this week?
I had a rather frustrating weekend in which I didn't manage to get anything much done, and almost all my plans went out the window after our power suddenly went out on Saturday night. And can you get hold of anyone at the power company, the lines company or any electricians on a Saturday night? No...
So after spending a Saturday night in the dark, all my Sunday plans went out the window while I tried to get the power back on. It is now, but it took all day and the bill is enough to give anyone a heart attack.
Long story short, I didn't get any writing work done over the weekend. Again.
So my goal this week is to get back to querying Guide Us, and making a bit of a plan for what I'm going to work on next. I have a 4-day weekend coming up, and that would be the perfect time to kickstart something new.
What are your goals this week?
It's the first Wednesday of the month, so it's time for the Insecure Writers Support Group
Now that I have a computer again, it's time to get back into querying Guide Us. And I think it's time for a query letter tweak. So I will be trying to find some people to critique my query and make suggestions where it could be better. Then I'll send a few queries out with the new one and see if anything changes.
It may be that it isn't my query. Maybe no one is interested in teenage lesbians struggling with faith...
So that's my goal for this week. To get a new query written and sent out.
What are your goals this week?
The Festival finished last night with a spectacular aerial dance show that used light and haze and music to create something truly amazing. I absolutely loved it.
But now it's time to try and claw back some semblance of real life again. And to catch up on some of the sleep I haven't had. I don't think you can ever really catch up on lost sleep, but it's nice to try. I have two days off during the week to start to recover, and I am very much looking forward to that.
So this week my goals are to get my life in order again and to try and get back into a good routine. The house needs a good clean and I have booked a haircut which is very needed. I need to try and catch up on some of the movies that have been released since the Festival started too. Not to mention I need to do some work on my query letter - another rejection over the weekend.
I entered my query into a contest in the hope I might get some good feedback I can use to improve it. So fingers crossed...
What are your goals this week?
It's the final week of the Festival this week so I'm just beginning to peek at life on the other side of it.
I had another query rejection yesterday, so I'm starting to wonder if I might need to tweak the query a bit. It's clearly not landing the way it should. I'm not going to have time to work on it this week, but the following week might be a good time to do some radical surgery on it and see if I can make it more compelling.
In the meantime, I will send out a couple more queries and keep my fingers crossed that someone is interested in my beautiful, tortured, Catholic lesbians...
What are your goals this week?
It's the first Wednesday in March so it's time for the Insecure Writers Support Group!
The awesome co-hosts for the March 6 posting of the IWSG are Kristina Kelly, Miffie Seideman, Jean Davis, and Liza @ Middle Passages!
This month's question is very topical...
Have you "played" with AI to write those nasty synopses, or do you refuse to go that route? How do you feel about AI's impact on creative writing?
I have to admit that I have played around a bit with ChatGPT. Out of curiosity more than anything else. Not to write a synopsis, but I did feed a synopsis to the AI to see what kind of a query letter it might make of it.
The answer? Not a very good one. It gave some weird comp titles that I didn't think matched my book at all, and focused the query on a sub-plot rather than the meat of the story. Perhaps my synopsis wasn't good enough? Or AI isn't as smart as it is cracked up to be. I certainly would never use what Chat GPT spat out in any real-life scenario.
Maybe if I'd persevered and given the bot more guidance, I would have got something better out of it. But frankly, doing that defeats the time-saving purpose of using the bot to begin with. It took me far less time to write a more compelling query by hand than it would have to keep engaging with the AI to get something useable.
I don't think AI can ever replace real writers. Even if you ask the bot to write something in the "style of Writer X", it's never going to capture the nuance of that writer's voice which comes from their experiences and emotional responses to situations. Yes, maybe the bot can find words the author is partial to and use those in whatever text it spits out, but it still won't feel or read the same as something actually written by that author.
I don't think AI has any place in any creative field. Creativity is something uniquely human that is born from the particular experiences, emotions, values and sensitivities of individual people. A computer is never going to be able to replicate that in a way that feels wholly satisfying because it doesn't have those influences shaping its thought processes from birth. All it can do is replicate stuff that has already been created and spit it back at us after it has been through its electronic filter.
So I would never use AI as a tool in my writing work. I don't find it that helpful. Where I have found it useful is in creating things like NDA agreements or generic job description documents or form letters. Things that have been created many times before and can be tailored to fit your own needs. These things can take a long time to pull together from scratch, and using the AI created document as a framework for your own can save a significant amount of time.
I just wouldn't use it exactly as it is when it comes out of ChatGPT... There are always some weird phrases or terms that need some adjusting before they say what you truly want to say.
What are your feelings about AI? Would you use it in your creative practices?
It feels kind of unbelievable that the Festival has only been going for just over a week. So many shows have already been and gone. Yet there are still more to come. Another two weeks' worth. I don't think I'm ever going to catch up on sleep...
But it has been going well. Audiences have been good and everyone seems to be enjoying the events. We had a morning rave on Friday which was super fun. Over 350 people dancing at 6:30am... Who'd have thought something like that would be so popular?
So my goal this week, like it was last week, is to get though the next week of events without incident and to try and get as much sleep as possible.
What are your goals this week?
I made it through the opening weekend of the Festival.
It was busy and I did a lot of rushing around, but nothing major went wrong. Well, apart from having to cancel the rest of the season of a show because some of the cast got sick. But even that went pretty smoothly. I missed out on seeing the Akram Kahn dance company, but I did get to see Meow Meow which was an absolute hoot! My face ached after the first half from laughing so much.
So my main goal this week is to try and get some sleep and to recover from the weekend. The rest of the Festival is nothing like as crazy as that opening weekend that included the Writers festival - which I managed to see nothing of because of the timing of the events - so it should be very manageable. I hope.
What are your goals this week?
It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things...
What am I celebrating this week?
The Festival officially opened yesterday after a few days of early shows to test the waters, so to speak. It has gone well, despite a few glitches with things like ticketing systems and printers. But nothing that has affected the audience experience (yet).
I'm tired though. It's been a long time between days off and a long time since I slept through the night. I just need to get through the next couple of days of long hours and rushing about and then I'll get a day off. Although I think I may have to spend that day off clearing through my emails!
What are you celebrating this week?
This is the week it all starts. The Festival kicks off tomorrow with the first show, with the official opening on Friday. This weekend is going to be the biggest and most stressful part of the whole thing, with shows at every one of our venues plus the Writers programme taking over a three-screen movie theatre for three days.
So this week my goal is to get through this opening week and weekend without any major drama. There are two functions in the mix, alongside all the regular stuff that goes into running a Festival. I keep waking up at 2am and remembering things I haven't done yet and then thinking of more things I need to do. Hopefully I can get through all these today and tomorrow morning, before I have to go and set up at the first venue..
What are your goals this week?
It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things...
What am I celebrating this week?
It's the weekend! And we're almost through all the ticketing for the Festival! I'm hoping to bash out the last of it this afternoon, before I go to the movies, and then it will just be the last minute stuff that comes through during the Festival itself. Definitely not going to go into work on Sunday.
It all kicks off this week. First show opens on Tuesday with the actual festival opening on Friday. It's going to be a busy few weeks until it finishes on 17 March. I may miss a blog post here and there, so if I'm not posting on my regular day, that's why. It's going to be an amazing few weeks of art and culture.
What are you celebrating this week?
With this being the last week before we start actual production on the Festival, once again my goals are all largely work-related - as they will be until mid-March now. I'm going to be too busy for anything else.
This week I want to make sure all the ticketing is done, apart from any last-minute things that might come through, and I want to make sure we have everything set up and in place for the two functions we're hosting during the Festival. We're struggling a little with having enough staff over the opening weekend, so I may have to shuffle a few people around to make sure we have the right people in the right places at the times we need them. It would be very useful to have a clone or two at this point as there is one day I'm looking at working across three venues from 7am until 11pm.
Luckily, after the opening weekend, things are much calmer and easier to manage.
What are your goals this week?
It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things...
What am I celebrating this week?
I'm not sure I am celebrating this week. I've been so snowed under at work, I haven't had the chance to think much about anything else. I'm hoping to get a day off over the weekend, but I'm not sure that's going to be possible. We'll see how much I can get done on Saturday afternoon.
I've had a few more query rejections and am starting to wonder if maybe I need to do some work on the query to see if I can make it more compelling. I'm not quite at the number I usually advise people to start tweaking at, but it seems like things have changed a bit since I was last querying. But that's going to have to wait until after the Festival.
What are you celebrating this week?
It's the first Wednesday of the month, so it's time for the Insecure Writers Support Group!
The awesome co-hosts for the February 7 posting of the IWSG are Janet Alcorn, SE White, Victoria Marie Lees, and Cathrina Constantine!
This month's question is a good one...
What turns you off when visiting an author's website/blog? Lack of information? A drone of negativity? Little mention of author's books? Constant mention of books?This week my goals are all work related - and not my own work.
I want to get all the partnership tickets sent out this week because that will take a huge amount of pressure off me and will allow me to help my colleague with some of the other, smaller orders we have to get out. I went into work yesterday afternoon and got a bunch done, so I think if I go in tomorrow when no one else is there again, I can probably smash out the rest. It just means I don't get my day off... But I think that's a small sacrifice to make for getting more sleep.
I also want to make sure all the details of the functions are finalised this week. I have the rooms and tech booked, and the caterer is aware of them, but I need to actually pick menu items and lock everything in this week. And arrange with the suppliers when to pick up booze and stuff. Luckily we do have an extra person in the office at the moment to help with these things.
And if I get a chance, I'd like to send out a couple more queries, but if that doesn't happen, then it's not the end of the world. I think I still have 10 out there...
What are your goals this week?
It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things...
What am I celebrating this week?
It's the weekend!
It has been a crazy busy week and I am exhausted. I actually went to bed at 8pm last night! Admittedly, I had been to a gig the night before. And I haven't been sleeping well because there is so much to do and not enough hours in the day to do everything. I decided while tossing and turning and worrying about all the work I have to do in the next to weeks that I will just go into work on Sunday afternoon and on Tuesday (which is a public holiday) and try to smash out some of the stuff I need to get through while the office is empty and quiet. It's kind of the only way all these people who need tickets are going to get them.
I haven't received any more query rejections (although weirdly, I did just get a rejection from a publisher I'd sent Standing Too Close to in 2022) so that's good. I know it's probably because most of the agents haven't reached my query yet, but there's still a chance...
And that's about it for me. I'm too tired to celebrate much. If I could get more than 4 hours sleep a night I'd celebrate that, but that doesn't seem to be a thing right now.
What are you celebrating this week?
I'm not going to have a lot of time over the next few weeks to do anything writing related, so I'm going to keep my goals very small and simple. Until we finish the Festival on 17 March, work is going to have to be the priority. And this week, ticketing has to be my priority at work. There is a lot to do and each booking takes considerably longer than I anticipated.
So I will focus on getting another 10 queries out for Guide Us. Like ticketing, querying takes longer than I remembered, with researching the agents' wish lists, finding out if they're open, finding out if their agency is a "no from one of us is no from all of us" agency...
What are your goals this week?
It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things...
What am I celebrating this week?
It's the weekend!
With the Festival only 4 weeks away, things at work are BUSY! So I'm celebrating having a weekend. I won't be getting one for a few weeks while we're in the middle of things. My bestie is down from Auckland so I'm going to see her over the weekend which I'm looking forward to. I haven't seen her since July! She's playing a gig here which I'm going to. Looking forward to that.
Otherwise, I'm going to try and have a relaxing weekend. I feel like I need to sleep a bit.
I've sent out a few more queries for Guide Us and now have 4 rejections. All from very established agents who have big client lists already. I feel like maybe I need to focus more on newer agents who are still building their lists, but am trying to mix it up a bit. Will try and get a few more out over the weekend.
What are you celebrating this week?
Yes, yes... I know it's Wednesday, not Monday. Monday was a holiday here and we were up at my partner's property on the coast and somehow I just missed my usual Monday post. But better late than never, huh?
My goal this week is to start querying Guide Us. I actually sent off a few queries over the weekend, and have already racked up my first two rejections. Way to go, me! In case you're at all interested, here's the query. Give me any feedback you might have. ...