Category: Blog

(photo by Sergio Rola on lifeofpix.com)

NanoWrimo was a bust for me this year.  I didn’t even hit the low number from my first attempt.

On the one hand, my coffee making skills have reached a new level.  I mean I’m roasting my own beans now.  And with that came a whole new gamut of understanding as to what it is about coffee that I actually like.

Whoa… Off topic much?  Well, this month, yes.

The ending of the story has always been known to me.  I didn’t know where things started or where it went, but I knew how it finished.  So this should be easy then, right? Apparently not.

The amount of information a person needs to remember to keep the continuity going becomes staggering.  I thought I had all my little ducks in a row, but I found out within the first week that I needed more rows.  And more ducks were involved than I had initially remembered.

My writing slowed down. But then I was taken with this random idea and wrote heavily that day.  I either had two ideas or one that would merge together into something completely different than the initial ones.  Aah the freedom of a new idea(s).

I ended up fleshing out other story ideas that had popped up in my head during my trip.  Writing was fun!  But this book sat there like an accusing finger, waiting for me to get back to it.  So I muddled through it some more.

In a fit of a need for word count, I blasted through the ending and even finished an epilogue.  I knew I needed more of a structure than I had needed previously.  I went all out and wrote down every idea I had concerning the story and created an outline for how the beginning gets to the ending.  The holes in it were huge and I knew I needed to go through the previous books to figure out what was missing, but now was not the time to read.  I wandered back to where I had stopped and muddled through.  My word count dried up, but still I wrote every day.

Well… until the weekend of my birthday.  I became more distracted.  Other requirements piled up and book four slid back a little further each day.  I made some headway this week, but I finally decided I would need to start over.

Kind of heart breaking, but that is what’s needed to complete this one out.  Most likely I will use what I have written just not where it’s currently at.

I will complete it and rewrite it until it is done.  A story needs a finish as much as it needs a beginning.

Perseverance is the key… as always.

It’s time!

I may be quiet for the next few weeks as I struggle through the first draft on the fourth and final book of my little series.  My current journey has an end! I am both excited and trepidatious.

Can you believe it?  Because I barely can.

Am I ready? I can say with the utmost confidence, not enough.  But I shall Nanowrimo on!

But is it happening? The answer is yes!

For those wanting to know, I finished Nun With A Gun.  That story will play out while I work on book numero four.  I won’t be posting much else as I mash my face into the grindstone.  But yay for getting her adventure completed!

See you on the other side, my friends.

Every time I think I know what I’m doing, I find out that I don’t.

Well, not to the fullest, anyway.  As a case in point, I recently took a class on Self-Publishing from Alex Delia.  This was to finalize my thoughts on how I would handle this whole thing.

You see, I went in with a plan that had a solid beginning and then with a couple different plotted courses.  As the class went on, I realized that I would have to chuck a large portion of that solid beginning because I hadn’t really included a few things.

And by a few things I really mean many.  Not to mention that I also had the wrong idea on how to handle a few steps in the process.  On the good side, though, I now have a full plan that includes a release calendar.

On the less than good side, I have to push back my calendar more than I want to.  I also have to find the time to read what looks like a ton of information to fully lock this plan down.

What’s the old saying, one step forward, and two steps back?

I sent this one on to my beta readers (Thanks guys!) and waited in anticipation for their news, comments, et al.  Of course there were problems but they were of the grammatical type, missing words or duplicated words.  But huge plus on what’s come back so far!  It’s an easy read and it flows right along with the other two.

Another plus is that I have gotten better at asking my reviewers more direct questions about plot points in the story versus an overall review.  I mean, the overall is incredibly important, that’s how I was told the characters were wrong in book #2.  But my direct questions have helped me with the realization that some plot points didn’t quite have enough information.  They just needed a little more.  This has been rectified and it definitely feels like a fuller story to me.

But talk about making lemonade out of lemons.  This rewrite went by pretty fast while the first draft most assuredly did not.

Strange how that all works out, isn’t it?

(image courtesy of Ryan McGuire of http://www.gratisography.com/)

My sudden yet inevitable hiatus has ended!

I’d been saving my time off to go somewhere and go somewhere I did.  I ended up driving around Scotland, Wales and England.  It was wonderful, informative and I was able to fill in some possible gaps in the family histories.

I also went and visited areas that are somewhat known for their fairy activity.  Sadly, I wasn’t snatched away and forced to dance until I grew too old to continue.  Or maybe I should say, fortunately?  Hmm…

I didn’t find any elves during my stopover in Iceland either.  Well… that I am aware of anyway.  The fae folk are supposed to be quite sneaky though.  Also, who knew that mashed fish would be so good?

I came back refreshed and full of new ideas and characters.

Of course, now I’m jetlagged but I’m back!

That light has gotten much larger but the tunnel itself has extended.

Regular life is finally evening out, but there is upheaval coming in the near future. More of the projects on my list have hit some closure while others are finally at a good resting place.

What does this mean?  I have a moment to breathe.

I got to work on some music stuff which I was asked to help on and it felt good to play.  It was exactly what I needed.  I’ve missed playing and having the opportunity to help someone else out made it more of a priority. So, yay!

I’ve gotten to get some reading done.  Not enough, mind you, but some is better than the big none of most of this year. So, double yay!

I’ve been pretty frazzled as of late and my writing output has suffered because of it.  I’ve been staring at Nun with a Gun for a few weeks and forced myself to continue writing her story, but I was hitting a point where I wasn’t sure where it was going and that made the struggle worse.  So thank goodness for that breather!  I now have the next few chapters relatively mapped out.  A loud triple yay!

I am looking forward to bringing her story (for now) to a close as the deadline for starting my fourth book looms large.  That and I have a bunch of story ideas rumbling around in my head that warrant a longer run than as a short story.

That might be more yays than a three fingered man could count!

(image courtesy of Ryan McGuire of http://www.gratisography.com/)

To quote a song… well you get the idea.

Labor Day weekend was pretty solid but the sickness for the next four days has really taken its toll.  Never mind the multiple daily changes on the life and work front, the extra work I’ve taken on to get some funding in place for this project all coming to a head in these next couple weeks.  On top of that, I have other projects running that I haven’t had a moment to even think about, let alone make any progress on.

And the deadline for starting book number four is fast approaching.

Luckily, other projects are caught up right now, so there is a glimmer of light at the end of the ole life tunnel.

Which is good, I could use some light right about now.

When I started this writing… uh habit… yeah that sounds about right, it was really just an exercise to see if I could do it.  I knew I was relatively creative and I had always wanted to write a book but the only thing stopping me was… well me.

Now, or then really, queue in my wife’s cousin, Amy.  She is one awesome lady by the way.  She had beaten the NanoWrimo for the second or third time and mentioned it offhandedly in one of those social media straights that we all swim in these days.  That was all the inspiration I needed.  With no real clue to what I was getting myself into, I dove in and got that first one done.

The experience was fun and different, but the story couldn’t be completed in one book.  So I wrote a second one in the series.  Then I wrote a third one.  Each one has been challenging and different in its own ways.  Well with three in various degrees of doneness, should I move onto the next step and actually make this a possible profession?

Why didn’t I ask myself this question earlier, you ask me?  Well I did but I decided to hold off.  I wanted to make sure that the story would have an end but I also wanted to make sure that I would keep writing it for a very simple reason.  There are a few books series that I love but the last book either never got written because the author died or the publisher released the author from the contract for that series and I never got to read the final vision…

I didn’t want to have my story end up that way.  And since the greatest hindrance to getting it done was me, well then I wanted to make sure before I did anything else that that would happen.  Now that I will be working on the final one in the series, I feel that I can move forward.

Progress?  Huzzah’s all around.

Whew.

Life might finally be getting forming into a semblance of normality.  Now maybe with a little bit of space between the cracks of trying to break even, I can move ahead.

It is amazing to me how much a simple schedule change for the day to day job can literally eat up more time than you or I ever thought possible.  Maybe it’s just me.  Anyway, that part has settled ‘somewhat’ though my day to day is completely different.  But what is life if not ever changing?

The best sign, to me, that I can still make all of this happen is that I am writing this.  I still can’t get over how driving ten to twenty miles per hour for two to three hours a day saps my very will to think.

Ha!  And this has now taken two days to write.  Did I speak too quickly?  Mayhap, but the heart of the situation still holds true.  I am still writing this.

Besides life and employment changes, what else is going on?  Well… I thought I had my business plan figured out but I was wrong.  I didn’t know enough.

“You know nothing, Jon…”

Shh, Ygritte, I know that I know nothing.

On the plus side, I now have an alternate plan and I think it might work even with knowing that I not nearly enough.  We shall see.

Another new thing is that I may be working on is a story collaboration with a friend of mine!  I am rather excited about this project since I haven’t done anything like it in book form.  I have done it in script form and it was always a lot of fun.

We are still working out the details of the world, the characters and all of the essential structure parts.  I am sure I’ll post about it or maybe even share it.

We shall see!

(image courtesy of Ryan McGuire of http://www.gratisography.com/)

I am finally narrowing down how I will plan on doing the whole business side of this writing addiction that I have.  Even with everything I have learned and actually having a plan now, I still have too many questions.  So now it’s the time to just dive in and get things rolling, right?

I mean that’s how I started writing in the first place.  What could go wrong?

Well I won’t know until it does to be honest but hey that’s part of life.  And life is throwing quite a few curveballs this summer.  What goes best with the various personal explosions we all have to deal with at times?  Why regular job type changes on top of that, of course.

When I started this blog, I had great hopes to write a short story at least three times a week while working on my book(s) and still attempt to live a life.  Silly me.

Now I do have a stack of ideas for stories but they don’t lend themselves well to the short story format.  The book(s) are definitely taking up way more of my writing time than I had expected, especially the editing and revisions.  On top of that, more time is spent in mapping out how the story will finish.

Seriously, my brain is constantly going through it and looking at everything and making sure the continuity is correct, that the important questions be answered.  While I’m awake it is going through it, while I’m asleep it keeps going through it.

When I started the Nun with a Gun, it was going to just be a word exercise to play with descriptive techniques.  It is now much larger than that and I am happy about it.

Now trying to divert my brain from the books to focus on it is becoming more difficult as life keeps throwing those curveballs… and I have to make a decision on the whole business side of this endeavor.

Yeesh.