Author: jongraylang

Nanowrimo is write… err um… right around the corner and I will be diving with both feet.  My fingers are crossed that I will complete my first draft of book 4 in The Matilda series.  This will be my 6^th attempt at it and even if I don’t get it done during Nanowrimo, the story will be written.

I promise you it is so!

Anyway, I thought I’d share some tips on the process that seem to work for me.

• Number 1, have fun! I have beaten myself up on previous Nanos because I didn’t get as much done as I planned.  That’s just silly as this is supposed to fun.  Stressful, sure but still fun.
• Number 2, have an outline for the story. Now, maybe don’t follow it but have one on hand.  It really helps with those writer block moments.
• Number 3, if the characters want to do something besides what’s on your outline, let them have at it! The moments that the characters are telling me their story and not the one I planned are the writing experiences I have enjoyed the most.
• Number 4, hit some of those write-ins if they’re available in our area. You get a chance to talk with other writers who are going through the same experience as you.  You can root them on when they hit a tough spot and you’re still flying along and vice versa.  My most wordy days were when I went to these.  Bonus, you get out of the house.
• Number 5, I can’t recommend those 10-minute writing exercises first thing in the day enough. If you leave yourself at a strange stopping point the day before, these exercises can free up your brain by poking at something else. I plan to write a poem every day for my exercise.
• Number 6, don’t finish that action scene, that conversation or chapter when you finish for the day. Your brain will keep poking at it and you’ll be able to dive right in the next day.
• Number 7, don’t worry about low word count days. Sometimes you’ll blast through a ton of words and other days you’ll be lucky to get 100 down.
• Number 8 is the most important one besides Number 1. Completing that first draft is the best thing you can do.  You may get discouraged and think its garbage but you know what? You got it done.  You wrote a book.   That is amazing all by itself.

Now, these are mostly for a preexisting project.  Maybe I’ll write another of these for new projects.

It could happen…

Drawing!

To be honest, not something I’ve done much of in the past decade or so.  Might be longer, might be shorter, time and I don’t always see eye to eye.  I used to love it.  I’ve spent hours scratching images onto paper and I missed the laser focus.

Last year, some of my friends hopped on the Inktober train and rode it to its conclusion.  And it piqued my interest.  People were drawing on… paper?  I thought this was old hat.

I stopped drawing once the more digital forms became the norm.  I tried using computers to do my art and it just never clicked.  I had looked into the Wacom style tablets when they came out but couldn’t rationalize the cost for a hobby at best.

On top of that, I had gone through Lasik and my ability to see up close required glasses.  I had it done so I could see far away and didn’t really grasp the idea that I would lose my up-close vision so much.  So drawing was more difficult and therefore, less fun.

And maybe that’s why the idea really appealed to me now.  My friends were having fun and I was enjoying their works.  I promised myself that I would give the next one a shot.  So here we are in 2019 at the end of October.  I loaded up my last drawing on social media platforms and I feel accomplished.

Some of the days were tough because the prompts just didn’t grab me or time was an issue.  Other days were a blast and my joy in drawing was renewed.  In a way, it was a blessing as my writing/editing had become a labor.  A labor of love, mind you, but still labor.  Getting to create a completed project in a different format in a day was like a breath of fresh air.  My editing and writing became more fun as well.

What were the big take-aways for me?  I liked having daily prompts. It gave me something to think about and poke at in different ways.  I enjoyed the freedom of just drawing it out in ink, errors and all.  I am a bit of perfectionist and flaws in my works drive me crazy.  Having the freedom to make mistakes was liberating.  I actually enjoyed having trouble seeing my work up close because I literally couldn’t focus on it.  It gave everything a sort of whimsy.

But the best part for me was the return of that laser focus.  I find it in my writing but not for most of 2019.  It felt so good to tune out everything around me and be in the moment, the void where time doesn’t pass.  Those moments are magic to me.

Will I do it again in 2020?  Maybe…

 

Hey everyone!  I just wanted to let you know that the next season in the Matilda series, Twistin’ Matilda is available for pre-order at $.99 on Amazon!

She’ll be fully released into ‘other space’ on November 5^th at $1.99.  Get in on the first ship before it leaves the gate!

It’s done!

I can hardly believe that it is no longer staring me in the face like the boulder of Sisyphus.  It feels good to be free of it and on top of that, I am much happier with it.  I had some scotch to celebrate.  Woo!

Well, mostly done…

While the rewrite is technically done, it is now in the hands of one of my beta readers.  She is on the lookout for continuity errors (she already found one), boring spots and random grammatical errors.  I swear to you, grammatical errors just happen. Or maybe it’s my sausage-like fingers.  Only Tom truly knows.

Twistin’ Matilda will be released soon!

Just a teeny bit of tidying up on those minor corrections that my awesome beta reader will catch and then she’s off to the digital printers!  I can barely wait!

This took quite a bit longer than I expected or wanted but I feel pretty damn good about it.  Book 2 was the fastest first draft I’ve ever written in only 20 days.  It seems fitting that the editing process was the longest yet.  Here’s to hoping the rewrite on book 3 is easier.

I think I need more coffee….

Whew!  This one is a bit long.

The last rewrite on Book Two is moving along quite well.  Only a few more chapters to go and it’s ready for another beta read-thru.  In fact, I already have a beta reader going through what I ‘fixed’ to catch those random errors that can crop up.  So far, I am much happier with it and look forward to knocking those remaining chapters out.

But a trip that had been in the works for over a year cut the rewrite a bit short.  Where did we go?  Well, I guess I could talk about the trip a little bit.  Only if you want to, though I suppose you could stop reading here and I would never know.  Hmm… okay! Continue reading “Back from the Jungle, Baby. And I Didn’t Die There”

Well…

I completed the latest draft for book two.  I gave it a read through and… I was massively disappointed in it.

What seemed to have worked in the previous draft, rough as it was, was now gone.  There was no flow to it.  I felt like I was sifting gravel for the sake of more gravel instead of finding the diamonds I had expected.

The two parts I was most concerned about still weren’t working but now they were surrounded by a sea of flawed paragraphs.  I stared at it and it seemed going back to square one (or maybe two) was what was needed.

But then life exploded.  Massive changes were occurring almost daily on my regular job front.  Prior obligations took priority on what felt like a weekly basis.  Trips were planned and happening faster than I could write a word or three down.  On top of that, deaths on the friend and family side removed any sort of desire to struggle with the damn thing.

Mental and physical exhaustion followed by emotional turmoil. So what was left?  Just a little bit of time which I devoted to myself.  Time to remember that there is more to this world than just the responsibilities and duties that belong to me.  Time to enjoy the sound of the wind rustling its way through the forest.  Time to watch the sun sparkle on the ocean as it lapped against the shores.  Time to wander in the mountains and fall in love with nature’s bounty.  Time to actually read a book or two, something I have sorely missed.

And what did all this get me?  Strangely, a sense of clarity that had been missing for close to a year.  I feel rejuvenated and energized.  I no longer look at this draft as more trouble than I can handle in a hot second.

I see the promise in what it could be.  I just have to coax it out.

Getting the words down in the right order…

So, this rewrite has taken much longer than I had anticipated / expected.  My long battle with the first draft of book four has definitely taken its toll on my calendar of ‘getting things done’ and it has set me back.

Sadly, I thought this rewrite would be a quick one because the last edit made it seem close to done and the first draft flew out of my fingers in twenty days.  But, eh… not so much.  Many spots needed a bit of finessing while a few others needed a full retooling.  And, finally, this edit is almost done.

But there are two spots that are just vexing me.  One just feels weak as all get out while the other feels completely off.  I have to read the whole thing without thinking about corrections and see / figure out what would either make them flow better or just pull them out completely.

So, that’s what is going on right now.  Progress is happening but it is at a much slower pace than I thought would be the case.  Book two will be done but it will be a bit longer than I like.

All of this is for the better.  I promise you.

And then the pc crashes…

 

2019 has been a difficult year for me when it comes to my writing.  Everything else seems to be getting in the way and sapping my brain of any creativity.  So I just sit there and stare at a partially blank page and nothing happens.

After close to a month of this, I decided to try reading some of the books that have been stacking up in a pile that only grows in height… which is a good thing.  I finally did make a dent in that pile (there was much rejoicing), but it didn’t help with the original problem, aka writing.

In the meantime, I’ve met a bunch of other writers both in person and online and it has been an exhilarating experience. Getting to toss ideas back and forth for laughs and even a possible story or two has been fun.  I did get a bit of writing done but not on what I wanted to finish.

I dove into other activities to the point where free time was only a ghost and getting any words down at all was a rumor.  At the same time, I did make some progress on those other activities but the need to write only grew stronger.  I went back to that partially completed page and just stared at it.

And now my time was up.  I had given myself an end date to get that first draft done so that I could get the second book in the Matilda series out and it was now a couple weeks back.  I figured if I can’t write maybe I can edit.  The answer to that was… no.

Ugh, what a quandary.  My brain is screaming at me to get some words down but then offers nothing but doubts in myself to write.  It reads the words that I had written and comes up with a big fat zero as to how to make it better.  So, what do to right?

After struggling with all this nonsense for longer than I care to admit (almost three months), I went back to the source.  I have been rereading the first book, The Matilda, to get a sense of the characters and the universe they inhabit and I am enjoying them again.  I am catching little things I had either forgotten or never really noticed.  New ideas are filling spots that I was struggling with in book four of the series and I feel some of that excitement again.

On top of that, my wife found the only copy of the very first long story I ever wrote at the wondrous age of twelve.  I had thought it lost forever like the spy movie I made with a friend when I was fourteen.  But there it was in all its handwritten glory!  My dreams of being a writer in those pages and there were so many good memories trapped in them.

So, why do I bring up any of this?  I feel incredibly happy right now.  Here I am struggling with getting another word down and getting the next book out while feeling like neither is going to happen.  The future looks bleak.  When out of nowhere came the voice of a twelve year old boy to show me that I can do it, because I have done it.  That little voice reminding me that I should keep doing it because I always wanted to and the only thing in the way was me!

Who knew that a memory from the past would push me back into the future it had envisioned so long ago.  I sure didn’t.

And for that, I salute that little boy and his dreams that I will continue to make a reality.

Who knows, maybe I will share that silly story here some time.