Category Archives: Writing

Writing, General, Life

Writing Log: Day 5 – Month 2

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

It’s been a busy month so far. It’s kind of funny how busy things can get even when you don’t have a regular nine to five. I was tempted to skip my writing again today because I’m pretty wiped, but I’m glad I did it. I just wrapped up Chapter 3 so I’ll be starting on the next tomorrow. It’s still a daily struggle making myself sit down and put in the time. A big part of that is I’m not alone anymore. Certainly not a bad thing, but still an adjustment. I need to make a more concerted effort to set aside time for my writing. Can’t be a professional writer if I don’t write after all.

 

Writing Log – Day 5 Month 2

Transformation (Second Shroud Novel) – 16,742 words to date (1469 today)

Other Fiction – 0

Blog Entries – 147

Emails – 0

Total Fiction This Month: 5,692

Total Words This Month: 6,568

Writing

Writing Log: Day 4 – Month 2

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

So I’ve realized that I need to adjust my writing habits now that I don’t have a regular job. Before, I’d generally do my writing just before bed. That worked out fine most days since I only had a couple of hours to get stuff done on weeknights and it wasn’t easy to get too distracted. Now though, I find myself getting wrapped up in all kinds of things in the evening and late at night. It’ll suddenly be 3AM and I’m too exhausted to even think about writing. Basically I’ve decided that I need to get most or all of my 1k word minimum done early in the day, preferably no later than right after lunch. That’s what I did today and we’ll see how it goes on down the road. Gotta stick to this on a daily basis if I want to make any real progress!

 

Writing Log – Day 4 Month 2

Transformation (Second Shroud Novel) – 15,273 words to date (1101 today)

Other Fiction – 0

Blog Entries – 178

Emails – 0

Total Fiction This Month: 4,223

Total Words This Month: 4,889

Insomnia, Writing

Writing Log: Day 3 – Month 2

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

It’s been a couple of days since I’ve had a chance to get any writing done. Saturday was not the awesome opportunity to get work done that I’d hoped it would be. No matter, I’m back at it now. Not much to say except that I’m now on Chapter 3. I was struggling a little how to move on from where I was in the story but thankfully a good idea hit me in the shower. 🙂

 

Writing Log – Day 3 Month 2

Transformation (Second Shroud Novel) –  14,172 words to date (1048 today)

Other Fiction – 0

Blog Entries – 105

Emails – 0

Total Fiction This Month: 3,122

Total Words This Month: 3,610

Writing

Writing Log: Day 2 – Month 2

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

Another busy couple of days. There hasn’t been much time to write but tomorrow will be a golden opportunity to really make some progress. I did manage to finish Chapter 2. I’m happy to be moving on from the more introductory bits of the story. I’m considering upping my daily writing goal soon. The 1k words a day was a good goal to start with but it makes writing a novel a very fragmented process. It’s pretty hard to really get back into the mindset of a particular scene after a day or two without writing. I might also try and make Monday through Thursday burst writing days were I just set a certain amount of time to only writing and see just how much I can get done.

 

Writing Log – Day 2 Month 2

Transformation (Second Shroud Novel) –  13,124 words to date (700 today)

Other Fiction – 0

Blog Entries – 147

Emails – 0

Total Fiction This Month: 2,074

Total Words This Month: 2,457

General, Life, Writing

Writing Log – Day 1 – Month 2

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

It’s a new month and I’m pretty excited to see just how much I can get done in the next 30 days. I’m feeling fairly ambitious at the moment so I think it would not be completely unreasonable to have a tentative goal of finishing either all or 90% of my book this month. My official deadline is still June 15th, so the reality is I have plenty of time to wrap this up if I need it. Still, I find I am very impatient to have more books and stories completed. All of my research indicates that it is important not only to keep writing as much as possible, but to have a sizable body of works out there available. So I am eager to build up a library of things that I’ve written. It’s an incredibly motivating thought really: imagining the list of works I’ve completed, knowing that I have two or more whole series of stories to my name. I also have a lot of ideas that I want to try out. I don’t plan on limiting myself to any particular genre excepting that anything I write, I have to enjoy doing it. That leaves a whole mess of options open. Very exciting times indeed. 🙂

 

Writing Log – Day 1 Month 2

Transformation (Second Shroud Novel) –  12,424 words to date (1,374 today)

Other Fiction – 0

Blog Entries – 236

Emails – 0

Total Fiction This Month: 1,374

Total Words This Month: 1,610

Publishing, Writing, Inspiration

Writing Log: Day 5 – Month 1

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

Only five real days of solid writing for this month. Not what I really hoped to make, but not bad either as I ease back into the swing of the writing process. Today was dominated by publishing concerns. I’m finally working on the print format for my first book. I’m looking forward to getting that done since my first book won’t be finished until the print and audio versions are done. Well, print is done and audio is in the works. For the print version I’m giving CreateSpace a shot. I’m also learning InDesign CS6. I went with a so-called “legacy” copy instead of the stupid subscription model so many companies are pushing now. It costs more up front but after the first year I’ll have saved a good chunk of change. At this point I’m just learning the ropes as far as formatting goes.

One thing that became evident immediately was that I should have worked out the print cover before doing the electronic. In the future I’ll simply clip the front print cover to be used for the electronic. Makes things much easier. As it is the electronic cover of my book will be changing a little to match the print version. It’s not really a big deal though since changing the electronic cover is as easy as uploading the new file. Welcome to the brave “new” world of self-publishing! This is definitely one of those things that has become infinitely more accessible thanks to technological advances. While a part of me wishes I’d been writing non-stop since high school (since I’d probably be sitting on a veritable mountain of stuff that I could now publish), I might have been horribly discouraged by the publishing system of yore.

I’m planning on putting a full guide together capturing all of my experiences with self publishing along with a quick reference guide. There are a lot of good sources of information out there, but they’re pretty widespread. Also, the specifics (like how to estimate your page count for print purposes) are buried in a mountain of more general information. A quick reference or cheat sheet would be incredibly helpful until I really get used to this. Once it’s all old hat I shouldn’t need the hours I’ve sunk into the publishing side so far for future books and projects. Still, I don’t begrudge the time. The journey itself is definitely worth the effort.

Well, today wraps up the month of March. I may have only put in 5 real days of work on my book, but I’m pretty pleased with the results. Today was particularly productive. I think I’ve found my flow again for the story which is very heartening. I’m looking forward to seeing just how much I can get done in April!

 

Writing Log – Day 5 Month 1 (Monthly Wrap-up)

Transformation (Second Shroud Novel) –  11,050 words to date (2,269 today)

Other Fiction – 0

Blog Entries – 495

Emails – 0

Total Fiction This Month: 12,144

Total Words This Month: 14,920

Insomnia, Life, Writing, General

Writing Log: Day 4 – Month 1

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

As I started this log towards the end of the month, there will only be 7 days for month 1 of my log. It seems a little silly, but at least the numbers for next month will make it look like I’ve started working like I’m possessed. 🙂

Just a small amount of work done on the book today. It was a pretty busy day. Still, one of the things I learned writing my first book was to not be too hard on myself when I missed a day of writing or couldn’t quite hit my goal. It’s going to happen sometimes and beating myself up over it will only make it harder to keep this up.

Writing Log – Day 4 Month 1

Transformation (Second Shroud Novel) –  8,781 words to date (535 today)

Other Fiction – 0

Blog Entries – 144

Emails – 0

Total Fiction This Month: 9,875

Total Words This Month: 12,155

General, Writing

Writing Log: Day 3 – Month 1

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

Day three of my new writing log and I’m getting more excited about the whole process. Again. This was definitely one of my goals but I am constantly surprised just how much I enjoy all of this. The writing itself is fairly hard work. Mentally anyway. The whole idea of writing an entire book is also still incredibly intimidating to me. I have an unfortunate habit of looking at the entirety of the work and thinking about just what it will take to finish. The “one day at a time” mantra was never so apt in my life as now. It’s also a huge divergence from the world we live in today. The world with everything coming fast and faster. Movies stream as fast as you can turn on your TV and find what you want to watch. Electronic books are instantly available wherever you happen to be. Even physical stuff can be ordered online one day and show up either next day or the day after. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of the online shopping experience. Dealing with people in stores drives me a little nuts every time I have to go. But it does mean that this writing thing is very alien to my other daily experiences.

This is what I have discovered to far when it comes to my writing process (these are the things that I have found to be most important to my process and may or may not work for anyone else’s):

– Discipline is very important: This, along with motivation, is one of the most difficult things maintaining on a daily basis. As I greatly enjoy a multitude of activities when I am at home it takes a decent amount of discipline for me to tear myself away from a video game (World of Warcraft or Diablo 3 recently) to sit down and write.

– Motivation is equally is not more important: This one factor has probably been the single biggest hurdle throughout my life. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post I have been going through as much of my old writing as I could find (easily find at this point). One of the things I came across was a journal that spans from halfway through 1997 through most of 1998. There aren’t very many entries despite this long time period. I wasn’t surprised though. Consistency has always been an issue with me because day to day, my personal motivation to do something like this waxes and wanes. Once I actually sit down and get into the writing mindset, motivation is no longer a problem 99% of the time. It’s getting myself to sit down and do it that is the trick. With my first book I used the task as a personal challenge to see if I could even finish a book. Now that I’ve done so, I’ve beaten that challenge. That meant that the doubts and inner critic came back in full force and have been plaguing me for some time now. This writing log is part of how I handle my doubts and annoying inner critic. It gives me visible proof of my daily progress, and that is something that greatly helps with my motivation.

– Simple goals: This was something I’ve learned through this whole process. It is so very important to keep your daily, weekly, and even monthly goals both simple and reasonable. This goes back to the short, medium, and long term goal planning we probably (hopefully) all learned in school at some point. This is very true with writing. My current daily goal for fiction writing is the same goal I had writing my first book: complete at least 1,000 new words each day while taking at most one day off each week from writing.

– Writing must be a habit: This ties in with everything else but is certainly worth mentioning. For myself, I have to make writing a daily habit. I need to be thinking about it during idle times, when I’m bored, when I’m in bed about to fall asleep, in the shower, wherever. If I’m not doing this, I lose the thread of the story I’m writing. I have to spend valuable time re-reading what I’ve written to get a clue as to what should happen next. This is both frustrating and boring. I’ve discovered that if I just stay on top of my writing, even if I don’t hit my writing goal for the day, the story stays fresh enough that the next day I can pick up where I left off without missing a beat. Plus, making writing a habit helps reinforce that whole discipline thing. Bonus!

That’s about it for now. If I can think of more I’ll add it to the list.

 

Writing Log – Day 3 Month 1

Transformation (Second Shroud Novel) –  8,246 words to date (1,497 today)

Other Fiction – 0

Blog Entries – 818

Emails – 0

Total Fiction This Month: 9,340

Total Words This Month: 11,476

Career, Writing

Writing Log: Day 2 – Month 1

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

Getting a real late start on the book this evening. Not too surprised by that though given how late I was up and how much I had to sleep in because of that. Of course my schedule isn’t particularly an issue seeing as I am not currently traditionally employed. I consider my writing to be my job and my career now, but it is certainly not paying the bills yet. I believe I’ve sold a whopping 10 copies of my first book so far. I’d had the vague hope that my first book would be some kind of amazing breakthrough. Vague because I didn’t hold much stock in that particular dream. I am very willing to put in the hard work and time it will take to start supporting myself with my writing.

Of course, I’ll be much happier when I’m done with the first chapter of this book. It feels like it’s been dragging on forever. I’m sure that fact that I’ve only been working on it in very small chunks until yesterday has seriously contributed to that feeling. I guess it’s time to get down to business. 🙂

A couple of hours later and I’ve made my 1k word minimum for the second Shroud novel. I took a break, intending to write a little more later but that’s not happening tonight. I went back to my main computer to finish converting and uploading the old stuff I wrote back in my high school and (first) college days that I plan on including in my Bits and Pieces book. When I went through the actual old archive folder I found a few more files that hadn’t made it into my current writing folder. They were in the old Corel WordPerfect format but thankfully Microsoft Office doesn’t have any trouble reading them. Unless they are password protected. It turns out two of the files I hadn’t copied were protected. (Likely why I never moved them over.) So a download of the trial version of WordPerfect and 30 minutes of password guessing later I managed to open both files. Thankfully my passwords back then were pathetically easy. One of the files was all of three sentences and a waste of time. The other though is an actual journal of mine that I started in the summer of 1997.

It was incredibly interesting reading what was going through my mind back then. It definitely brought a lot of old memories back to the forefront. Most of it was pretty sad and depressing, not to mention embarrassing. Then again, journals aren’t meant to be read by anyone. I probably will still include it anyway as I can contrast how I’m doing now with how bad things seemed then quite nicely. I’ll just have to change a few names and fix some of the more glaring spelling and grammar issues. I’m also going to try and find as much of the hand-written stuff as I can. The really old writing is probably lost at this point unfortunately. Though I do still have two “love” letters from a girl I had a crush on in elementary school. Maybe I should try and contact her to see if she has the letters I wrote her? That would be a weird email/call to get.

Now that I think of it, there was another girl I used to write letters to. This was back in high school though so their contents would be far more interesting. I guess I’ll have to do some digging and see what I can turn up. It’s actually pretty exciting and a whole lot of fun to go back to all of this crap I’ve done over the years. I wonder if any of the stuff I wrote for my old website is still around? Definitely time to go through my giant pile of old CD-R’s!

 

Writing Log – Day 2, Month 1

Transformation (Second Shroud Novel) – 6,749 words to date (1,021 today)

Other Fiction – 0 (Converted the last of the files in the current archive folder)

Blog Entries – 679

Emails – 0

Total Fiction This Month: 7,843

Total Words This Month: 9,161

General, Insomnia, Life, Writing, Changes

Getting Back to Business

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

Now that I’ve had a chance to get settled into my new home as well as get many of the little but important tasks done that come with moving, I’ve decided that it’s time to get back to my writing in earnest. Since moving back to the Midwest I’ve only dabbled at writing the second book in Stephen’s trilogy. Until today I’ve only managed 4,675 words over upwards of 7 sessions. Definitely not as much as I was managing with my first book and I still had a full-time job. There were days I wanted to really sit down and write but there were too many other things that needed to get done.

One of those tasks was to apply to college. Yes indeed, I am once again going to attempt to finish my first degree. It was funny (definitely funny sad) when it came time to fill out my education history. It turns out that not counting this newest school, I’ve attended a total of 6 colleges between 1998 and now. By far my most successful attempt up to now was the first one. I finished a grand total of three semesters at SIU Carbondale. My major back then was Computer Science because I thought I’d loving programming or designing computers for a living. The first year went well, but I didn’t get to take any core classes. I loaded myself down with the general education crap the first year to get as much of that out of the way as I could. So when the second year rolled around, I was excited to finally be taking some classes related to my major. Unfortunately, once I was in those classes I ended up very much disliking them. My long-time dream of a career in computers was suddenly broken and I had no idea what I wanted to do.

After my third semester at SIU, with no real direction anymore, I decided it was better to just work until I could figure out what to do with my life. It was a reasonable enough idea at the time. So now, 5 more colleges, many, many jobs, and one tour in the Navy later I have finally found something that I think (hope) I can do: writing. To that end I am returning to school for an English degree with a focus on creative writing. (I don’t believe it is necessary for any writer to have an English degree or any derivative thereof, but I’m tired to shooting for degrees that I think will get me some high-paying salary. This time I’m going for something that I am truly interested in.) I’m pretty excited to be going back to school full-time too with no other distractions. This is only possible thanks to an amazing unicorn and my Richard. 😉

Still, school is a long ways off since I’m not starting until the fall. That being the case it is my goal to get the second Shroud novel done, and quite possibly the third one as well. To that end, I will be keeping a daily writing log here as a way for me to keep track of what I do each day and maybe how much time I spend working on writing and/or publishing. At the very least it will help me stay accountable (to myself anyway) as well as give me a sense of accomplishment. This is something I did very briefly for the first book, though I only recorded the word and page count for each chapter as I finished it rather than what I did every day. I will also be tracking what kind of writing I do each day since blog posts, emails, and homework all take time and energy.

 

Writing Log – Day 1, Month 1

Transformation (Second Shroud Novel) – 5,728 words to date (1,053 today)

Other Fiction – 1,094 (Yesterday for the Bits and Pieces book)

Blog Entries – 638