Tag Archives: discipline

Publishing, School, Writing

New Semester, New Beginnings

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

Gotta love coming back after a summer of not blogging only to discover your site has stopped working thanks to a random WordPress update while you were away. Serves me right for being away so long. The good news is everything is almost back to normal. I just have to reinstall two plugins that I had to FTP in and remove just to be able to login. Then WordPress wouldn’t update to the latest and greatest and in fact couldn’t find the update page. After some intensive Google searching though I managed to find someone else who’d had the same problem. Turns out one little line added to a config file magically fixed the issue. Woot!

Now that I’m through an exceptionally lazy summer (where writing is concerned anyway) and I also have my main computer back up and running, it’s time to head back to college. This semester started strangely schedule-wise with classes starting the Wednesday before Labor Day. This meant my first week excluded ALL of my writing classes and included only my required English Literature class. Then Labor Day came along and I still haven’t been to my Create Writing Poetry workshop. Ah well, next week. Next week.

I was actually pretty upset about the whole scheduling thing until today when one of my teachers happened to mention that this semester is extra long and ends on a Tuesday. Clearly they’re making up for their own scheduling stupidity. Would it really have been to hard to start classes on Monday even though it would have been August 31st? Apparently.

The classes themselves have been good so far, though it’s really hard to say at this point how they’ll really pan out. The first sessions are all syllabus readings and constant introductions. Today I had both my non-fiction and fiction workshops. Pretty sure I’m going to like both but man am I going to be busy with three workshops and my lit class. Then there’s my own writing and publishing that I have to find time for.

Speaking of my writing, I just got Avatars & Identity from a copy editor I found on a site called Fiverr (it’s like the eBay of personal services without any actual bidding). Started going through his edits and discovered that at some point in my life I completely ignored what I’d learned about commas. Apparently I’m allergic. (Not really, I just think the so-called rules call for so many commas that they break up the flow of narrative.) Still, I’m accepting most of the changes since I want my book to be on its best behavior when I submit it to the Kindle Scout program.

For those who haven’t heard of this yet, and I’m sure there are many who haven’t, Amazon is becoming a full-on publisher with their Kindle Scout program. The way it works is you submit a fully completed and copy edited novel of at least 50k words with an awesome cover, blurb, and one-liner. They’ll shop it around to a select group of readers. If the readers and Amazon’s own people approve you’ll get to sign a contract. This contract in fact. After reading and hearing about all of the horror stories regarding contracts with the big publishers I was very happy to work through Amazon’s very simple and straightforward contract in fifteen minutes flat. It’s for worldwide e-book and digital audio rights for a 5-year term that renews barring poor sales or voluntarily on the author’s part. There’s even built-in guarantees that if you don’t earn enough through royalties you will get all of your rights back. From a new author standpoint I have to say this contract is a better deal than what you’d get from almost anyone else. I’m super excited to get Avatars submitted and see what happens.

 

Whelp, that’s enough for now. Homework beckons.

General, Life, Publishing, Stuck in my Head, Writing, Balance, Live Writing, Method, Gaming

Brainstorming for Summer

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

With just two finals left this semester will be done before I know it. This has been making me anxious. Mostly because it means that my schedule next week and going forward will be up to me and it would be nice if I could manage to not waste this free time. After all how many 30 something’s get a real summer break? I know I never thought it would be possible once I was neck deep in the soul sucking 9 to 5 grind. To that end I’ve been thinking that it’s time to brainstorm and come up with a list of goals for this summer. So without further ado (and in no particular order), here is the list:

  1. Write book 3 of Stephen’s trilogy
  2. Do my own Let’s Play series with the Terraria 1.3 patch
  3. Do video readings for some of my short fiction
  4. Finish re-edits for Transformation & Induction
  5. Edit and publish Avatars & Identity
  6. Complete at least one Let’s Play + VG Writing Series (Fuzzy Adventures)
  7. Compile, edit, and publish the class fiction and poetry book
  8. Find and check out local writing meetup and social groups
  9. Design BFG Publishing website
  10. Shampoo the carpet
  11. Move my desk
  12. Re-organize this blog
  13. Write more short fiction & poetry (At least 1 poem & 1 short story/flash fiction per week)
  14. Send stuff to magazines/publishers every week
  15. Continue the Live Writing series or combine with some of the above

 

Whew. Looking at this list I realize that I have my work cut out for me this summer. This to-do list is in addition to the usual goofing around and just having fun that will be required to stay sane. I’m also going to have to prioritize if I want to get even half of this done. The Fuzzy Adventures series is something I’ve been thinking about most of this semester. I love video games and I love writing & reading. I wanted to combine those somehow. That’s when I struck on the idea for re-visiting some of the games that I loved so much as a kid and doing a combination let’s play with an episodic writing series. The basic idea is that I’ll play a game in sections and write a story to go along with it, also in sections. Basically I’d have a separate area of this blog devoted to these series with each game getting it’s own sub-section. Each blog entry would be an episode of the story and video both. I’ve got a short list of games I’m considering, but I’ll probably start with something short like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night instead of an epic length game like Final Fantasy 6.

I’m thinking the other thing I’ll need to help keep me on track is some kind of daily schedule. I’m not very good at sticking to schedules that I come up with on my own but I might need to give it a shot. Anyway, glad I finally got all of these thoughts down. The list reminded me that I’m missing a couple of key pieces of hardware that I’ll need for a number of these ideas. Amazon ho!

School, Writing, Inspiration, Live Writing, Method

Changing Schedules

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This entry is part [part not set] of 5 in the series Live Writing

It’s always a bit tough to change schedules once you’re used to your old one. Yet sometimes it is necessary. This is the case with my Live Writing events. I was doing them most Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1:30 PM CST but this ended up being a really bad time for me. In the past two months I’ve had to push back the time more often than I was able to stick with it. I originally picked that time and those days because of my class schedule. It gave me plenty of time to get home from my only morning class and then get down to some writing. Unfortunately these times also turned out to be best for very important things like appointments with my doctor or business that can’t wait until later in the day.

To that end I ran a short survey here on my blog asking when I should move these events to and 8 PM was the time voted for. This actually conflicts with a few things during this month but will work fine in May. So next week, barring any problems, I will be moving my live writing event temporarily to 6 PM. When May rolls around I’ll need to reassess my times anyway since classes are done in early May. I’m thinking of increasing Live Writing to anywhere from three to five days a week. If I do that though I’m thinking I need to make themes for the various episodes. Not just novel writing but maybe something like super fast short story writing. I’ve got a lot of ideas and I’m looking forward to playing with my Live Writing format to see what works best and is the most fun.

School, Writing, Exams

Thinking Ahead

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

Even though this is my first semester at UW Madison I transferred in so many credits that I have senior status. Which is funny to me because I’ll still be here another three semesters at least meeting the requirements for my degree. The upside is that I’ll be one of the first undergraduates to sign up for classes. So go me, I guess. The flip-side of that little perk is that I have to figure out my classes for next semester NOW. There’s only a couple of school days left to get advice and learn about just what the possible courses I might take next semester will entail. I need to maintain full-time student status, but I’m out of the easier gen-ed courses at the end of this semester. That means a full four advanced English courses. I could easily screw myself over by taking a far too large workload on. There’s also NaNoWriMo in November that I’d really like to do, and win, this year.

Not huge problems when compared to all of the truly serious issues in the world but definitely something I’ve been pondering.

Update: After talking with the always helpful folks in the Creative Writing department I’ve settled on taking three creative writing workshops and one required literature class. Not sure how heavy the workload is going to be, especially when NaNoWriMo rolls back around, but I’m going to give it my best shot.

General, Life, Writing

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

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