Category Archives: Career

Career, General, Life, Writing, Changes

Still Sinking In

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

As of right now, I am officially a published author. My book is up and running on Smashwords. My publishing work isn’t finished of course, there are several other sites I need to publish to as well. Still, the book is out there. I spent a huge part of this day formatting my book to the Smashwords specification. I know that bit will get quicker the more items I publish. I just don’t know what to feel right now. I’m happy of course, but this is still scary to me. Success with my writing would be such a huge, life changing event that I can’t help hoping against hope for this to mean writing full time. Maybe a good night’s sleep will bring the reality of this step home.

 

For those interested, my book can be found here:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/399672

 

Inspiration, Career, Writing

Ending a Novel

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

I finished up chapter 20 today, which wrapped up the climax shown in the prologue. That meant it was time for a big decision: do I end the book here? My first inclination was that yes, I should end it here. After all, the climax itself was resolved in a very thorough manner. It would be a bit of a cliffhanger, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I am certainly eager to be done with this story as well. Impatient really as I can’t wait to get to the whole editing and publishing part. So when I finished chapter 20, I was ready to throw in the towel. Write a little epilogue so I didn’t leave readers hanging completely and call it done. It was the reaction from my girlfriend, who has been reading this story as I wrote it chapter by chapter, that changed my mind and got me to thinking. I was super excited to be done. She was very much not excited. I’ve asked her not to give me any feedback until I do my first edit since I have a list of things I’m going to add/change anyway. She’s done a great job sticking to my request too. It was her tone that gave it away though. She was very disappointed.

So I’ve been thinking about it all day now and even tried to put myself in the readers’ shoes. The story is really for them after all. Then I realized ending the story right here might just piss people off. I spent a lot of time and effort tiptoeing around a lot of secrets and subtext because my main character is completely in the dark about all of this and all of the others are actively keeping things that way. The climax is the breaking point, not just of the action, but of the information. I realized that if I didn’t keep going, I wasn’t going to give the readers the payoff they deserve for being in the dark along with the main character. This is why I’m two pages into chapter 21 and actually pretty glad I’m still going. I still plan to finish the book this weekend, it just means I’ll be doing more writing than I thought.

All of the writers that I’ve researched have said pretty much the same thing about writing a novel, or anything really: make it as long as it needs to be and no more. I have been keeping a close watch on my page and word counts because it gives me a feeling of accomplishment to look back every week or two and see just how far I’ve come. This being my first novel, the process has felt pretty long and drawn out. This has been discouraging at times so I always write down my page and word total when I finish a chapter. In the beginning, I was also worried that this story would be far too short. I grew up reader authors like Robert Jordan, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others. When I was that age I also thought that writing stories that long was what it took to be an author. Thankfully I am content these days to compare myself only to myself. For the most part. I’m doing this for me, because it’s fun and it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. So I am happy with how long my book has turned out to be, and amused that I was worried it would be too short. Character development takes awhile after all, or at least it does for me. Either way, I’m still crazy excited to be almost done!

Insomnia, Life, Unemployment, Writing, Inspiration, Career, General

Crisis of Confidence

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

Wow, almost two months since my last post here. Didn’t think it had been that long ago. Well, as the title suggests I went through a bit of a crisis of confidence where my writing was concerned. I took what was supposed to be a short break at the beginning of October. That turned into almost three weeks of little or no writing on my book. It coincided with the whole government shutdown and furlough thing. You’d think being stuck at home would inspire me to write non-stop, but I couldn’t stop worrying about when we’d get to go back to work and how I was going to pay my bills if we didn’t get back soon. So instead of writing I played Terraria, which conveniently enough had a content release the same day the shutdown started. Go figure.

It wasn’t until I’d been back at work for a week or two that I really started thinking about my writing a lot. It had been there the whole time in the back of my mind, but I didn’t feel good about how my story was turning out. I was also stuck. I didn’t know how to get where I needed to with the story. So all of this was on my mind most days at work. In the end though, I think my job was what convinced me to try to get back to writing. I know, through and through, that I can’t handle doing the 9 to 5 for the rest of my life. The daily commute and traffic, parking nightmares, tedious work, and soul sucking monotony just aren’t conducive to having a happy life. That ultimately got me to sit down one night and try to pick up where I’d left off.

It was a new chapter, so I had an empty page just staring at me as I tried to think of how I wanted the story to go. Then I remembered Stephen King’s advice from his book On Writing: just write. Do it. Doesn’t matter if it’s good, bad, amazing, or the worst bit of drivel the world has ever seen. Write. Don’t worry about it. Silence the inner critic and worrier. Just write. And that’s what I did. I looked at where the last chapter left off, then thought about what the main character would likely be doing at that point. Didn’t worry if it was mundane or not, I just started back up. It wasn’t as easy as before I’d taken the break. It took me a couple of nights to really get back into the flow of the story. I did hit my word count minimum each night though, and once I was past the rough spot in the story I was excited to be writing again.

At this point I also went back to Dean Wesley Smith’s website to check out some of the other sections about writing and publishing that I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet. The section called Think Like a Publisher was incredibly informative. It’s all about self-publishing, put into simple terms. He laid out just how easy it is to publish your own work, and that’s made me more pumped about writing than ever. Last weekend I decided to try and make a big push on my book and managed to write over twice as much as I usually do. When I stopped to check my progress the other day, I realized I’m nearly done. It’s hard to describe how it feels to have come this far and to see the finish line ahead. With a longer weekend coming up my goal is to have it all finished by next Monday. I am incredibly excited to get this finished, but I’m also more hopeful than ever about my future in writing.

Mr. Smith basically provides a step-by-step guide to the process of publishing as well as how to succeed as an Indie publisher. I know this first book is just the beginning for me, and I can’t wait to get started on my next project.

Oh, interestingly enough this month is National Novel Writing Month. It’s an annual challenge where writers sign up on http://nanowrimo.org/ and try to write a novel within the month. I’ve thought about trying it myself, but I just don’t have the time to write a second novel while I’m still finishing my first and working the exhausting 9 to 5 still. Of course, the novel only has to be 50k words. Not too difficult to get done in 30 days. That’s only about 1666 words a day. My current minimum is 1k. If I get my current book done by next Monday, that will leave me with 19 days of the month. That’s a little over 2600 words a days to hit the 50k mark by November 30th. I’ll think about it. If I don’t do it this year, I definitely want to try next year. Maybe by then I’ll be writing full time!

 

If you’d like to check out Dean Wesley Smith’s site, it’s right here:

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=3736

Writing, Changes, Career, Gaming, General

Side effects

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

So I’ve been noticing some side effects from the whole writing project thing. The first and most noticeable was that having something meaningful to do, something I’m doing for myself and not just to pay bills or just as a distraction, pulled me out of my funk. Between re-locating for a job, getting divorced, and a general lack of direction with my life I was definitely pretty down in the dumps. What has fascinated me about starting, and keeping with, my writing project is how this one positive has lead to others. I suppose it shouldn’t be too surprising that positive habits can reinforce more positive habits, but it has definitely been a fun experience for me so far.

Anyway, on to more nerdy topics! Sometimes when you’re sitting around on your computer with nothing in particular to do, you suddenly find yourself heading out on an Internet Adventure! It was on one such Adventure that I discovered an amazing web series called ‘There She Is!!’  Now, I actually discovered this quite some time ago while I was stuck on a deployment and incredibly bored. The Internet connection was slow and very unreliable so Flash videos were much easier to watch within a reasonable amount of time. The series is made up of five short music videos with no dialogue and a different song for each video. It follows the story of Nabi and Doki, a cat and rabbit person respectively. In their world, it is completely taboo, even forbidden, for cats and rabbits to be cross-species couples. Over the course of just these five amazing videos there is an amazing amount of story, character development, humor, and more genuine feeling than you can shake a stick at. The series was completed in 2008, but has never (to my knowledge) garnered much attention outside of its native Korea. This is unfortunate because I really can’t say enough about these videos. They are both incredibly moving and inspirational with a very definitive message.

Link to all five videos (the site is in Korean, but the Play movie links are in English and will launch each video in a pop-up window. You’ll need Adobe’s Flash Player to watch them. Or you could watch them on Youtube.)

http://sambakza.net/works_tsi/tsi_main.html

 

PS: If these videos do not tug on your heartstrings, you are a soulless automaton and should go back to watching “reality” TV.

 

PPS: So I just discovered that the whole series was posted to www.newgrounds.com as well as their Korean site. It looks like all five videos won trophies for top video when they were posted, and the last video has an amazing 1,662 pages of comments from users!

Writing, Inspiration, Career

Week 2 – Getting Very Excited

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

I’m now in to my second week of my serious writing project and I find that I’m really enjoying it. I frequently don’t feel the awesome inspiration that started this project several years ago, but I’m learning in a way that seems to be sticking that I don’t need to have that feeling to write. It is fascinating to me just how much of what I feel about writing seems to depend on just how I look at the task. When I think of a finished book and just the sheer number of pages, characters, scenes, and plot that make up that book it is incredibly intimidating. Always has been. That intimidation leads to fear of failure. Well, it does for me anyway. I don’t know about anyone else, but I really don’t like failing at anything. I know it is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean I like it. So that fear and intimidation give my inner critic a hard to ignore voice. “Oh, I’m tired today. Anything I write won’t be good.” or “I don’t know how to really get in to that inspired mood so that I can just practically will my book in to existence.” Very sill stuff when you take a step back and look at the objections of your inner critic more rationally. Still, not all of his observations are silly. “Am I really good enough to do this? I have to eat after all.” That one has stopped me more than once.

One of the things that is really helping me kick that inner critic to the curb is the daily writing routine Stephen King recommends in his On Writing book. I’ve already proven to myself that 1,000 words a day is a very doable, even easy, target for me to hit. There have been a few days where I checked my word count several times before I actually hit my daily minimum. Then there was last Sunday when I managed to put down 2,300 or so words and nearly finished an entire chapter in one sitting. I think this, as much as anything else, is helping me to overcome my inner critic and build up my confidence. I am proving to myself every day, in a way that can’t be dismissed, that I can do this. That in fact, I am doing it! Every time I think and/or re-realize that, I can’t help but get excited about what I’m doing. I also feel like I’m really taking control of a life that I’ve let drift for years. I have no illusions that I have much control over my life, but at least this is something I’m doing for myself. Proving this to myself. It’s a good feeling.

Oh, I also stumbled across a pretty amazing resource for any aspiring writers out there. I’ve only scratched the surface of the great information here, but it’s getting me even more excited about my writing and my prospects for some day making a living off of my writing:

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=9358

Tons of good information there. It’s made me realized that I need to treat writing much like I do my interest in computers. I need to read up on it a bit every day to stay up to date with where the industry is, what successful writers are doing, what new tech or trends are changing things up, etc. I should know at least as much about writing as I do about the HD 7970 3GB graphics card powering the visuals on my computer. I’ve got a lot to learn, and I’m excited to get to it.

Inspiration, Career, Writing

On Writing

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

As part of my more serious effort to really get in to writing, I ended up buying Stephen King’s book On Writing – A Memoir of the Craft. I have to say it was an inspiring read. The first half is devoted to Stephen King’s life in an effort to explain how he came to be a writer. I was pretty surprised to find out about his various addictions and battles with such. I’ve never been a big reader of horror novels and so far I’ve only read one (now two) of Mr. King’s books. Still, that first half was a page turner. The second half was where he really got down to his thoughts on the process of writing. He pointed out that many people who try to break in to the industry look for some trick or “magic bullet”. He quickly debunked the idea though. Funny enough, this actually made me realize that part of me had believed, or at least hoped, that such a trick did exist. After all, how much easier would it be if someone could serve up the Secret to Writing Success on a silver platter? I don’t know why any part of me still believed something so silly, but “hearing” the truth from Mr. King was actually pretty liberating. His tips on writing are very common sense, and one in particular I remind myself of every day: in order to get good at writing one must read and write constantly. There is no magic bullet to suddenly grant a prospective writer unending glorious inspiration. It takes daily perseverance to bring out our inner creativity. I found this gem of insight to be particularly inspiring. This, coupled with his advice to ignore our inner critic as best we can, has actually helped me tremendously.

Previously, my attempts at writing always started out high on expectations and grand ideas. A few times I even managed to get some serious amounts of words written in single sessions. The problem was always the next day. Inevitably, the mood of inspiration I had felt the day before was squashed by the various daily demands on my time: sleep, work, food, people, and my own entertaining distractions. It was just so much easier to come home after a long day, play some video games, eat dinner, and maybe watch a movie or read a book. Much easier than sitting down at my computer and ignoring my enormous Steam game library. Mr. King pointed out that it is only with daily writing that we can train our brains, including that stubborn creative muse, to become accustomed to the whole process. Really, it’s not rocket science and is incredibly obvious once it is pointed out. It makes me wonder why writers tend to seem mysterious and inscrutable to those of us who simply enjoy the fruits of their secretive labor. Back to the point though. He recommended that new writers start out writing 2,000 words a day. He noted that his personal minimum is 4,000 (!), a rather intimidating sum. For myself, I’ve decided on a starting daily requirement of just 1,000 words a day on my current project, not including any other sources of writing.  I have found this to be a very reasonable number to start with. This is only my first week trying, but I’ve already made more progress on my story in less than a week than I have in the past 10 years. So cheers and a huge thank you to Stephen King for deciding to write and then finish his memoir in spite of his brush with death and his painful recovery. This hopeful writer greatly appreciates your help.

Career, General, Life, Unemployment, Changes

Switching it Up

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

Recently I have been giving a lot of thought to a serious attempt to change careers. This is a pretty big deal for me as I’ve mostly been going with the flow since I dropped out of college. I went in to IT contracting after giving up on school and eventually landed a steady job at a phone company for about 5 years. I stayed in the job because it was easy and the pay was okay. By the end of my time there, my day’s work only took me a couple of hours to finish. The rest of the time I spent reading news or playing games. In the time that I worked there, I moved out away from home and got my own apartment. Eventually picked up a house on the cheap that needed some work. Didn’t do much of the work except the necessities for the first couple of years there. Eventually though it was a nice little place to live. My sister moved in and suddenly my social life improved. My job though was clearly a dead end affair. Not much possibility of advancement.

Then the company was bought out by a much larger one and the layoffs began. We went from an office of well over 100 people to about 30 before they moved us to a smaller facility. The trimming continued. Seeing the writing on the wall, I was looking for work elsewhere. One of our managers landed a group of us positions at another telephone company. Not experienced enough to know this was a bad move for me, I left and went to the new company. In hindsight I should have stayed with my old company until they did lay me off so I could at least collect unemployment while looking for a job I might actually want to stay with. I quickly found myself in a high-stress customer service position with the new company and realized I couldn’t hack it. So again, with my lack of experience, I simply quit. I had confidence that I could find something better for me fairly quickly. This turned out to be a foolish belief though. My lack of a college degree severely hampered my ability to land a decent job.

After that, it was a slow and steady slide in to unemployment depression. Good jobs did not fall out of the sky. I spent most a year unemployed, and during that time I was forced to sell my house and move to an apartment. I lived off of my various sources of credit. Definitely a step back. In the end, I decided my life needed a drastic change. I could try to go back to college, get student loans, take on even more debt. Fun times right? Instead I decided to enlist in the military. It was a bit of a crazy idea. I know my family couldn’t have been more surprised as I’ve never been the gung-ho military type. Still, I figured it was worth a shot. Luckily for me, I did quite well on the placement tests and had my pick of jobs within the service. Six years later, I was married and divorced, lived in several states, and had a very marketable set of skills to go with my military experience. I was up for re-enlistment, however the job I really wanted, I wasn’t allowed to switch to. The service gave me an ultimatum: go back to training for more of the same work I’d done for the past several years, or get out. Easy choice. Now I do the same thing, only there’s no military hoopla to deal with on top of the job. The pay is better to. This, finally, gets back to my original point though: money can’t buy happiness.

Now what? This is the question I face every day. Some days it’s a bit easier to ignore than others. It’s a tough question because it leads to a follow-up: what do I want to do? That’s the real 65 million dollar question. What the heck to I want to do with my life? When I was a kid in elementary school, I thought I had that one down. I wanted to be a computer programmer. I certainly spent enough time writing little games. I’ve even used those skills to help with pretty much every job I’ve had from time to time. When I got to college, I arrived with the mistaken expectation that being there would change everything. That I was finally getting the chance to do what I really wanted. My freshman year I took a huge load of general education classes to get them out of the way, so they wouldn’t interfere with what I was really there to learn. So the next year, I get in to my first Computer Science classes. They sucked. Perhaps it was how they were delivered. After all, an auditorium lecture format is not ideal for teaching a programming language. I was hugely disappointed, and it showed in my grades. After the first semester, I dropped out to take a break. Figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Guess I’m still figuring.

So what is the answer? I don’t really know. I wouldn’t mind investing for a living, at least giving it a shot anyway, but I definitely don’t have the kind of money to really get that going unless I get lucky. I could try to break back in to the computer programming business, but it’s getting a bit late for that. I also do not relish spending the rest of my life in some cubicle, pounding away on some program I don’t really care about. There’s freelance programming of course. Indie game development and such. Now is certainly a good time for Indie games. Hell, I’ve got over 400 hours in Terraria. Every time I’m bored with everything else, it’s back to Terraria I go. Still, there is one thing I’ve always wanted to do, but never had the guts to try. It’s even something I can do, though with difficulty, while holding down my current job: writing. I have been an avid reader since the 3rd grade, and have dabbled from time to time in the fine art of writing. The trick though, is that it is extremely difficult to make a living with just writing. A very, very small percentage of writers in this country succeed to the point where writing is all they need to live comfortably. Indeed, many writers have said that money should not be one’s motivation. I can certainly believe that. I guess the question now is am I still willing to give it a shot? Do I invest the immense amount of time needed to polish my skills, write, write, and write some more? Can I handle the inevitable initial rejections? Can I handle the possibility of failure? A dream not pursued is still there to dream about. True failure would kill that dream. Then again, what happens to a dream deferred?