The first question (and a I agree that it's a good one) is: what is conversational process fatigue? Or, to paraphrase that thing that one or another wonderful fictional character or historic personage said--or should have, if there is any justice in the universe: what the hell am I talking about?
This, of course, is a specious line of questioning, since I am not actually talking, but rather am writing. And yes, specious means what I think it means. I just checked, thankyouverymuch. I will answer the question anyway, since otherwise this blog is going to be rather short.
Conversational process fatigue is the condition I am currently suffering from, whereby I am sick to death of hearing other writers yammer on about their writing process, and not too keen on continuing to discuss my own. Which--according to my pageview stats--the Internet isn't keen on me continuing to discuss, either.
Yammer on is probably a far too negative choice of phrasing. Those other writers, whose podcasts' novelty is wearing out, are very nice, trying to help, and often holding forth in an enlightened and illuminating manner. It's just that I've heard almost everything they have to say a bajillion times now. It turns out that most of the basics of writing are pretty similar for most writers.
It's not that I think I know it all, or that I don't think I have more to learn. It's just that none of what I'm hearing anymore is really helping. It's the same old stuff. If I haven't grasped it by now, I'm not going to. (I make no claims either way, in terms of application.)
So. What then? How now, bored cow?
I've been listening to more audiobooks lately. A lot more. One or two a week. Mostly fiction, some non- (see media breakdown, below.) I am finding myself dropping more and more of the podcasts I used to look forward to in favor of these audiobooks (for those of you who don't know: I drive a van for a living, so I have about 30 hrs a week of usable listening time.)
I am learning so much more by listening to the fiction of of writers I admire than I ever did from podcasts. At least as far as writing goes. When I add to that my own writing, a cycle whereby I hear (read) what some author has done, go write a story in which I try to do something similar, then compare and contrast/get critiques/submit or whatever, I'm picking up tons.
And steadily losing interest in hearing or talking about "process."
Which brings up one problem: I mostly blog about my writing, and that is mostly about my own process. If I'm boring myself, and presumably my readers--no bueno. So what do I blog about?
The short answer: I have no clue. I got nuttin'. I can do media, throw in the occasional gadget blurb, I guess. I can kvetch about... you know, stuff. I can... I can...
I guess I'll have to think about this one. Or I may just forget all about this next week. It's certainly happened before.
Two things, though: writers learn by reading, and writers learn by writing.
Media Breakdown: I finished Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. It was really good. Unfortunately, assuming I understood everything correctly, it was also really depressing.
Gladwell is a nurture over nature guy, and the basic argument of the book is that really successful people (outliers) are the ones who get enough early advantages (being smart and talented helps, but the most important determinant is early lucky breaks.) He makes a good case, provides plenty of in depth examples, and I think he's right. The bad thing about that is that if he's right, my chances of success (say as a writer), are pretty much outside of my control.
I can work hard, and hard work is a necessary component of success. But so is luck, apparently. Thanks for breaking my stride, Mr Gladwell, he said sarcastically.
There is a lot more to the book than my flip comments above. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in, er, the story of success.
That's all I got for this week, see you next time.
Welcome to the Journey is Silver Bowen's blog on writing, self-epubbing, growth, and gadgets. All as experienced by a growing writer. Learn with me.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
It's Not a Stream, It's a Flood
I am going to try something totally new for today's blog post: I am not stopping for anything. The local time is now 11:35 AM. Let's see how long it takes me to put up a post, shall we.
Thought the first: I couldn't touch-type less than a year ago. I did take a typing class in high-school, so the problem wasn't lack of knowledge but of practical experience. I can now touch-type with a fairly average degree of speed and accuracy, nothing amazing but at least functional. I still have problems watching the screen Vs watching my hands and still make plenty of mistakes, but so far so good.
Learning to touch-type has been a huge factor in increasing my writerly production. If you are hunting and pecking, using anything less than all ten digits, it will be well worth your time to learn to touch-type. Unless you plan on dying in the next year or so.
Thought the second: Learning how to turn off your internal editor is crucial. The genius of Kerouac was that he got all of his ideas on paper, filterless and without restraint. The tragedy was that he didn't go back and rewrite afterwards (grin). I find that my best ideas often grow out of my worst ideas: ideas that wouldn't have made it on the page and thus been up for further processing if I hadn't let myself write whatever drivel I durn well wanted too.
I used to revise as I wrote, doing what Dean Wesley Smith calls "cycling": put up a paragraph or page or several, run out of steam, cycle back to the beginning or earlier of the new material and get a running start again. While this method does produce cleaner copy, I feel that it is inferior (for me, of course, you can figure out for yourself what works best for you) to just dumping the whole durn story and then figuring out what to fix.
I save time this way. Sometimes the story isn't worth fixing, and the sooner I move on, the better. Sometimes the structure is flawed, or characters need reworking, or events need rethinking. Once I have a solid structure, time spent polishing is much less likely to be tossed out later on. Also, as noted above, often the warts turn out to be the most interesting parts of the piece, suggesting new avenues that I would have just plain missed if I had cleaned them up beforehand. This is possibly more important than the mere conservation of effort.
Part the third: The realization of growth. I take it as a good sign that much of my earliest work is--to put it kindly--not done in the same manner as I would do it now. I have grown tremendously as a writer, to the point that the only way I would touch some of my earlier stories, if at all, would be to completely rewrite them from scratch. This is another variation of the no-cycling or editing practice from above, seen through a much larger lens: months, instead of days, hours, or minutes.
At a certain point, a point that I am realizing is arrived at far quicker than I might have suspected, rewriting, polishing, fixing old stories in general: all are worthless. I can tell a new story, from scratch, far better than I can tell the old stories. I can do it in less time, with less effort, than it would take to revamp an existing work. Easier to tear down the building and start fresh than crawl amongst the decrepit ruins and rot and shore things up, so to speak.
Onward and Upward. That's the way it goes, right? Not Fix It and Fix It Some More. Also, Less Is More.
And my favorite: Do It Right the First Time.
Media Breakdown - I just finished Leviathan Wakes by James S A Corey. It was well-written and enjoyable, but I had several hang-ups. The story is basically a cross between military SF and cop/detective drama. I liked the former and didn't care much for the latter (just my tastes.) The novel is a great synthesis of previous ideas, but didn't offer much in the way of anything new or fresh, SF idea-wise. The narrative moved incredibly slowly, with a heavy focus on internal tension and angst (the aforementioned cop drama). Worst of all, the central mystery of the book, and thus the key plot point, (which I'm not revealing for fear of spoilers) wasn't resolved at all. The ending was more of a stopping point than an ending and was a huge let-down for me.
To be fair, this is the first book in a series. I expect series books to stand well on their own, however, and this one doesn't. I might be inclined to keep up with the series anyway, and/or read it when all the books are done and out, but... that glacial pacing is a huge stumbling block. So I won't be reading further when the remaining volumes come out. Verdict: well-written, but slow and thus not compelling, unsatisfying ending (as a stand-alone book.)
Final Thought - The time is now 11:56, making this a twenty minute blog post. What say you? Should I have gone back and tweaked and reworked, or is it fine the way it is?
See you next week.
Thought the first: I couldn't touch-type less than a year ago. I did take a typing class in high-school, so the problem wasn't lack of knowledge but of practical experience. I can now touch-type with a fairly average degree of speed and accuracy, nothing amazing but at least functional. I still have problems watching the screen Vs watching my hands and still make plenty of mistakes, but so far so good.
Learning to touch-type has been a huge factor in increasing my writerly production. If you are hunting and pecking, using anything less than all ten digits, it will be well worth your time to learn to touch-type. Unless you plan on dying in the next year or so.
Thought the second: Learning how to turn off your internal editor is crucial. The genius of Kerouac was that he got all of his ideas on paper, filterless and without restraint. The tragedy was that he didn't go back and rewrite afterwards (grin). I find that my best ideas often grow out of my worst ideas: ideas that wouldn't have made it on the page and thus been up for further processing if I hadn't let myself write whatever drivel I durn well wanted too.
I used to revise as I wrote, doing what Dean Wesley Smith calls "cycling": put up a paragraph or page or several, run out of steam, cycle back to the beginning or earlier of the new material and get a running start again. While this method does produce cleaner copy, I feel that it is inferior (for me, of course, you can figure out for yourself what works best for you) to just dumping the whole durn story and then figuring out what to fix.
I save time this way. Sometimes the story isn't worth fixing, and the sooner I move on, the better. Sometimes the structure is flawed, or characters need reworking, or events need rethinking. Once I have a solid structure, time spent polishing is much less likely to be tossed out later on. Also, as noted above, often the warts turn out to be the most interesting parts of the piece, suggesting new avenues that I would have just plain missed if I had cleaned them up beforehand. This is possibly more important than the mere conservation of effort.
Part the third: The realization of growth. I take it as a good sign that much of my earliest work is--to put it kindly--not done in the same manner as I would do it now. I have grown tremendously as a writer, to the point that the only way I would touch some of my earlier stories, if at all, would be to completely rewrite them from scratch. This is another variation of the no-cycling or editing practice from above, seen through a much larger lens: months, instead of days, hours, or minutes.
At a certain point, a point that I am realizing is arrived at far quicker than I might have suspected, rewriting, polishing, fixing old stories in general: all are worthless. I can tell a new story, from scratch, far better than I can tell the old stories. I can do it in less time, with less effort, than it would take to revamp an existing work. Easier to tear down the building and start fresh than crawl amongst the decrepit ruins and rot and shore things up, so to speak.
Onward and Upward. That's the way it goes, right? Not Fix It and Fix It Some More. Also, Less Is More.
And my favorite: Do It Right the First Time.
Media Breakdown - I just finished Leviathan Wakes by James S A Corey. It was well-written and enjoyable, but I had several hang-ups. The story is basically a cross between military SF and cop/detective drama. I liked the former and didn't care much for the latter (just my tastes.) The novel is a great synthesis of previous ideas, but didn't offer much in the way of anything new or fresh, SF idea-wise. The narrative moved incredibly slowly, with a heavy focus on internal tension and angst (the aforementioned cop drama). Worst of all, the central mystery of the book, and thus the key plot point, (which I'm not revealing for fear of spoilers) wasn't resolved at all. The ending was more of a stopping point than an ending and was a huge let-down for me.
To be fair, this is the first book in a series. I expect series books to stand well on their own, however, and this one doesn't. I might be inclined to keep up with the series anyway, and/or read it when all the books are done and out, but... that glacial pacing is a huge stumbling block. So I won't be reading further when the remaining volumes come out. Verdict: well-written, but slow and thus not compelling, unsatisfying ending (as a stand-alone book.)
Final Thought - The time is now 11:56, making this a twenty minute blog post. What say you? Should I have gone back and tweaked and reworked, or is it fine the way it is?
See you next week.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Turning Up the Tension
Turning Up the Tension
It's not obvious, but the title for today's blog is a sort-of twofer. I want to talk about adding tension to your stories (or mine, for that matter); this is the main meaning of the title. Also, I am coming up on my one-year anniversary as a writer, and I'm both excited and more than a little discombobulated. I'm not quite ready to do an official one-year-milestone type post, but I do want to talk about (you guessed it) How I Feel. Or rather--Some of the Things It's (Hopefully) Normal to Feel as a New Writer After a Year or so of Chasing Serious Success. Phew.
But first, the actual craft-related part of the blog.
I've been reading/critiquing a lot of stories lately where the worldbuilding, characterization, and so on are really good, but the stories themselves are only so-so. Mostly this relates to a lack of tension in the story, a lack of any reason for me to cheer for the protagonist. The writer has been so focused on describing what happens that they forget to fully explain why. And it's the why that is truly important.
This is actually easy to do; I've done it many times myself. I think it's one of the drawbacks of discovery writing (vs outlining). I rarely have anything more than a vague idea what's going to happen next in my stories. Which is fine, as far as getting the basic story and ideas down. And I rarely feel like my characters are lacking in emotional depth or expression. All of the descriptions are there. But sometimes the other crucial bit isn't, the bit that makes the reader give a damn.
A definition: Story -- a story is an event or series of events in which one or more characters change.
The key thing here is that the characters have to change. Not the situation. It isn't enough for the hero to save the world, or get eaten by the monster, or discover the real murderer. The hero has to grow as a person, to not just be affected by events, not just have their agency change the course of events, but have their agency be a direct result of their own inner realizations, revelations, and adjustments.
A story is not stuff that happens, is not stuff that happens to a sympathetic character, is not stuff that a sympathetic character does. It's stuff that changes a character while a character simultaneously changes it. Tension arises because we sympathize with the character, we know the character is facing an obstacle they cannot overcome, and we know that if they could just (learn to) X they might have a chance. Even if X costs them Y.
It's not enough for them to get lucky, or win through cleverness or toughness or any other quality they possessed at the outset of the story. The person they are at the beginning of the story cannot be capable of winning as-is. It's not enough for them to take losses. They must take losses deliberately, choosing them. Agency + Growth + Sacrifice = A Victory About Which the Reader Gives a Damn.
One of the things I am doing now (have learned how to do via participation in critique groups) is going back over my completed stories and trying to isolate all these things. Who is the protag (usually an easy question)? Who is the antagonist? What is the conflict? How does the protag change? What do they lose? What do they gain? When does the real story begin and end? (More on this last one in another column, maybe.)
On the other side of the things, the How I Feel side, I am both impressed and annoyed with myself. Less than a year ago, I had no clue how to write a story, period. As in, I couldn't even come up with a few characters and a plot. I had no ideas. Nothing. I've come a long way since then. I have ideas coming out my wazoo. I have no shortage of interesting characters and events to write about. And, if I daresay, I have at least a basic grasp of grammar and style.
But, looking back on what I've written so far, it so often comes up woefully short in that most crucial of areas--being interesting to anyone but me, ie storytelling skill. I am convinced it's not enough to be an excellent writer (although that is still a goal worth striving for), but that I have to become an excellent storyteller as well. And the more I learn, the more I realize just how much there is to learn, and how far I have to go. Even worse: the more I try to accomplish with my stories, the more I put into them, the more difficult they are to write.
Isn't this stuff supposed to get easier as I go along? What a gyp. And yet, I've come to far to quit now. Not only is all the effort I've expended so far on the line (a not inconsiderable amount of skull-sweat), I've seen the potential in myself to be so much more than I am. My future is at stake, the me that I wish to be. And the only thing holding me back is my own inertia (read--laziness).
In other words: If I continue to work at it (agency) and I improve as a storyteller (growth) and I let go of all those other things--often so much more entertaining--that I want to do with my time (sacrifice) = I just might win. And maybe you, or maybe the me that watches me, the inner me that both judges and condones, might be moved enough by my story to cheer me on. To give a damn.
Maybe?
Media breakdown - I watched Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close last night. It was an absolute tear-jerker from start to finish. I really liked it, and I highly recommend watching it (preferably with your support group in place.) It was over-the-top emotionally in all sorts of ways (only about 50% on Rotten Tomatoes), so be forewarned. I didn't like that it was based around 9/11, because I hate the "9/11 changed everything" political meme that has destroyed our country, but the film was only political by omission (no mention of the 9/11 truth movement or any other dissent, for starters). Still very much worth watching.
And that's all I've got for today. See you guys next week.
It's not obvious, but the title for today's blog is a sort-of twofer. I want to talk about adding tension to your stories (or mine, for that matter); this is the main meaning of the title. Also, I am coming up on my one-year anniversary as a writer, and I'm both excited and more than a little discombobulated. I'm not quite ready to do an official one-year-milestone type post, but I do want to talk about (you guessed it) How I Feel. Or rather--Some of the Things It's (Hopefully) Normal to Feel as a New Writer After a Year or so of Chasing Serious Success. Phew.
But first, the actual craft-related part of the blog.
I've been reading/critiquing a lot of stories lately where the worldbuilding, characterization, and so on are really good, but the stories themselves are only so-so. Mostly this relates to a lack of tension in the story, a lack of any reason for me to cheer for the protagonist. The writer has been so focused on describing what happens that they forget to fully explain why. And it's the why that is truly important.
This is actually easy to do; I've done it many times myself. I think it's one of the drawbacks of discovery writing (vs outlining). I rarely have anything more than a vague idea what's going to happen next in my stories. Which is fine, as far as getting the basic story and ideas down. And I rarely feel like my characters are lacking in emotional depth or expression. All of the descriptions are there. But sometimes the other crucial bit isn't, the bit that makes the reader give a damn.
A definition: Story -- a story is an event or series of events in which one or more characters change.
The key thing here is that the characters have to change. Not the situation. It isn't enough for the hero to save the world, or get eaten by the monster, or discover the real murderer. The hero has to grow as a person, to not just be affected by events, not just have their agency change the course of events, but have their agency be a direct result of their own inner realizations, revelations, and adjustments.
A story is not stuff that happens, is not stuff that happens to a sympathetic character, is not stuff that a sympathetic character does. It's stuff that changes a character while a character simultaneously changes it. Tension arises because we sympathize with the character, we know the character is facing an obstacle they cannot overcome, and we know that if they could just (learn to) X they might have a chance. Even if X costs them Y.
It's not enough for them to get lucky, or win through cleverness or toughness or any other quality they possessed at the outset of the story. The person they are at the beginning of the story cannot be capable of winning as-is. It's not enough for them to take losses. They must take losses deliberately, choosing them. Agency + Growth + Sacrifice = A Victory About Which the Reader Gives a Damn.
One of the things I am doing now (have learned how to do via participation in critique groups) is going back over my completed stories and trying to isolate all these things. Who is the protag (usually an easy question)? Who is the antagonist? What is the conflict? How does the protag change? What do they lose? What do they gain? When does the real story begin and end? (More on this last one in another column, maybe.)
On the other side of the things, the How I Feel side, I am both impressed and annoyed with myself. Less than a year ago, I had no clue how to write a story, period. As in, I couldn't even come up with a few characters and a plot. I had no ideas. Nothing. I've come a long way since then. I have ideas coming out my wazoo. I have no shortage of interesting characters and events to write about. And, if I daresay, I have at least a basic grasp of grammar and style.
But, looking back on what I've written so far, it so often comes up woefully short in that most crucial of areas--being interesting to anyone but me, ie storytelling skill. I am convinced it's not enough to be an excellent writer (although that is still a goal worth striving for), but that I have to become an excellent storyteller as well. And the more I learn, the more I realize just how much there is to learn, and how far I have to go. Even worse: the more I try to accomplish with my stories, the more I put into them, the more difficult they are to write.
Isn't this stuff supposed to get easier as I go along? What a gyp. And yet, I've come to far to quit now. Not only is all the effort I've expended so far on the line (a not inconsiderable amount of skull-sweat), I've seen the potential in myself to be so much more than I am. My future is at stake, the me that I wish to be. And the only thing holding me back is my own inertia (read--laziness).
In other words: If I continue to work at it (agency) and I improve as a storyteller (growth) and I let go of all those other things--often so much more entertaining--that I want to do with my time (sacrifice) = I just might win. And maybe you, or maybe the me that watches me, the inner me that both judges and condones, might be moved enough by my story to cheer me on. To give a damn.
Maybe?
Media breakdown - I watched Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close last night. It was an absolute tear-jerker from start to finish. I really liked it, and I highly recommend watching it (preferably with your support group in place.) It was over-the-top emotionally in all sorts of ways (only about 50% on Rotten Tomatoes), so be forewarned. I didn't like that it was based around 9/11, because I hate the "9/11 changed everything" political meme that has destroyed our country, but the film was only political by omission (no mention of the 9/11 truth movement or any other dissent, for starters). Still very much worth watching.
And that's all I've got for today. See you guys next week.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
On the Double, Half the Trouble
I skipped last week without even meaning to. Writing the blog on the tablet just seemed like a hassle, so I figured I would do it later (when I was out of bed.) Then this led to that, the other intruded, and poof (or ta-da, or kaboom, whatever sound onomatopoeia seems appropriate)-- no blog. It slipped my mind so successfully, in fact, that I didn't even realize I'd skipped a week until around Wednesday (cue sad trombones.)
Sorry about that, folks.
I haven't had a particularly busy last few weeks, anyway. I restarted Novel Number Two (very tentative title) at the beginning of the month and have been slogging away at it. I am again finding that the Nano model of 2k a day come Hell or high water just isn't working, the same as last month. I am persevering anyway, sometimes only getting a page or two, sometimes getting nothing. In the last two weeks I've managed to write four chapters (out of close to forty planned.) I have no idea why this novel is so much more difficult for me to get going on, but...
The ultimate answer here is--it doesn't matter. I want to write this novel; I'm going to write this novel; the end. If it takes me six months or a year or whatever, so be it. I really would love to figure out what's slowing me down and correct it, and I will continue to devote some mental energy to doing just that, but the most important thing is that I keep pushing forward until I hit the finish line, irregardless of whether I am doing so in the most efficient way possible.
When I first tarted writing fiction, lo these many months ago, my goal was simple: finish a story. I've always had a hyperactive imagination, but plotting was an absolute mystery to me. It took me a few weeks to write 3k (and it wasn't a particularly inspiring first effort at that.) But I finished, I showed it to a few first readers, I edited and submitted, and i collected a stack of rejections. And I wrote the next one.
I believe finishing the second story was even more crucial than finishing the first. One of the things I learned from that first story was that I could write a complete story, featuring both characters and a plot. I learned from the second (and every subsequent one) that I could do this more-or-less at will. I've completed the majority of the stories I've written since then, although I've abandoned several that just weren't working as well. But I made sure to finish those first few, to establish the habit and to give myself confidence.
I'm in the same boat now. I'd actually started several novels prior to Nano last year, when I finished the zero draft of The First Novel (or Fnerge!--another tentative title.) One novel made it up to about 14k before I fizzled on it (and I might still return to it.) So I've had enough of unfinished novels. That sort of thing wrecks my confidence. So I am keeping my concentration firmly on this novel until I hit THE END.
My plan to do 2k a day five days a week is going right out the window (and has been all year.) I am going to still try to keep at the self-pubbing (on weekends,) but I am willing to let that slip as well. For the long-term health of my career as a writer, I have to learn how to produce quality novel-length fiction at a reasonable pace.
Plus, like many others have commented, novels are actually easier. At least in terms of effort per page, if not in terms of total time commitment. Short fiction takes a lot of work to pull off. I'm certainly not abandoning the form, but I want to be able to write at whatever length suits me, and write well. Which means practice. Which means I have to keep at the novelling. Ipso Facto Ergo Sum Lorium Axiom Non Serviam. Which translated from the Latin, means (roughly): I don't know any Latin.
Media breakdown - I finished listening to Halting State by Charles Stross. The second person multi-character POV was a little hard to get into, but he pulled it off, overall. I wouldn't say that the POV added anything essential, but it was an interesting change of pace. The near future media/connectivity/hacking and security focus was quite well done. The world-building and character interactions were the main draw; the actual "mystery" at the heart of the plot was rather hum-drum and mostly involved people standing around in rooms explaining things to other people. There were some fun action bits, though. I enjoyed the book and plan on reading Rule 34 (the semi-sequel.)
I've been enjoying the heck out of the recent episodes of The Walking Dead. The show is still as drama-queen focused as ever, but they've gotten pretty good at including a few juicy action bits every episode. Good stuff and probably my favorite current TV show. The upcoming second season of A Game of Thrones might change this, however.
Gadget Corner - I've been using the Android OS a lot more, now that I have two tablets. My older tablet is rooted, but not the newer one (Acer Iconia A500). I find them convenient, if a bit underpowered (in utility, not in actual processing) compared to my netbook (which mainly functions as a desktop.) Android is lacking in quality applications, plain and simple. Even worse, the OS encourages applications to be far more intrusive than I am comfortable with. I am becoming increasingly annoyed by this. I use Ubuntu
The one thing Android does better than Ubuntu is games. The repositories (Android Market and Amazon are the main ones I use) are much flashier as well, and somewhat easier to navigate. This is more than offset by the difficulty getting root, the lack of customization, the paucity of apps (no Openoffice or Audacity, Firefox is still in beta, and so on), and the OS's insistence on constantly trying to monitor me, and apps insistence on launching themselves and/or reporting back to wherever they report back to.
In other words--in terms of my privacy, Android is insecure; in terms of utility, Android is inadequate. Android feels very much like an OS that is more concerned with telling me what I can do than with allowing me to do what I wish. I'll say it again: I can't wait until I can use Ubuntu (or any other open-source Linux distro) on my tablets.
I hate having to hack on the OS just to get root. It's my hardware: I bought it; I own it. I should be able to get root as a matter of course. I should be able to set it up however I want, to do whatever I want, and to prohibit it from doing anything I don't want it to do. Seen in this light, the Android OS is an absolute failure.
And with that rant, I'm done for the week. See you all next time.
EDIT: I just had to switch over to my Ubuntu desktop computer to finish publishing this blog. It took me nearly as long to pub it as to write it on the tablet, and I was still getting screw-ups. Grrr... Android + Safari + Blogger = Suck.
Sorry about that, folks.
I haven't had a particularly busy last few weeks, anyway. I restarted Novel Number Two (very tentative title) at the beginning of the month and have been slogging away at it. I am again finding that the Nano model of 2k a day come Hell or high water just isn't working, the same as last month. I am persevering anyway, sometimes only getting a page or two, sometimes getting nothing. In the last two weeks I've managed to write four chapters (out of close to forty planned.) I have no idea why this novel is so much more difficult for me to get going on, but...
The ultimate answer here is--it doesn't matter. I want to write this novel; I'm going to write this novel; the end. If it takes me six months or a year or whatever, so be it. I really would love to figure out what's slowing me down and correct it, and I will continue to devote some mental energy to doing just that, but the most important thing is that I keep pushing forward until I hit the finish line, irregardless of whether I am doing so in the most efficient way possible.
When I first tarted writing fiction, lo these many months ago, my goal was simple: finish a story. I've always had a hyperactive imagination, but plotting was an absolute mystery to me. It took me a few weeks to write 3k (and it wasn't a particularly inspiring first effort at that.) But I finished, I showed it to a few first readers, I edited and submitted, and i collected a stack of rejections. And I wrote the next one.
I believe finishing the second story was even more crucial than finishing the first. One of the things I learned from that first story was that I could write a complete story, featuring both characters and a plot. I learned from the second (and every subsequent one) that I could do this more-or-less at will. I've completed the majority of the stories I've written since then, although I've abandoned several that just weren't working as well. But I made sure to finish those first few, to establish the habit and to give myself confidence.
I'm in the same boat now. I'd actually started several novels prior to Nano last year, when I finished the zero draft of The First Novel (or Fnerge!--another tentative title.) One novel made it up to about 14k before I fizzled on it (and I might still return to it.) So I've had enough of unfinished novels. That sort of thing wrecks my confidence. So I am keeping my concentration firmly on this novel until I hit THE END.
My plan to do 2k a day five days a week is going right out the window (and has been all year.) I am going to still try to keep at the self-pubbing (on weekends,) but I am willing to let that slip as well. For the long-term health of my career as a writer, I have to learn how to produce quality novel-length fiction at a reasonable pace.
Plus, like many others have commented, novels are actually easier. At least in terms of effort per page, if not in terms of total time commitment. Short fiction takes a lot of work to pull off. I'm certainly not abandoning the form, but I want to be able to write at whatever length suits me, and write well. Which means practice. Which means I have to keep at the novelling. Ipso Facto Ergo Sum Lorium Axiom Non Serviam. Which translated from the Latin, means (roughly): I don't know any Latin.
Media breakdown - I finished listening to Halting State by Charles Stross. The second person multi-character POV was a little hard to get into, but he pulled it off, overall. I wouldn't say that the POV added anything essential, but it was an interesting change of pace. The near future media/connectivity/hacking and security focus was quite well done. The world-building and character interactions were the main draw; the actual "mystery" at the heart of the plot was rather hum-drum and mostly involved people standing around in rooms explaining things to other people. There were some fun action bits, though. I enjoyed the book and plan on reading Rule 34 (the semi-sequel.)
I've been enjoying the heck out of the recent episodes of The Walking Dead. The show is still as drama-queen focused as ever, but they've gotten pretty good at including a few juicy action bits every episode. Good stuff and probably my favorite current TV show. The upcoming second season of A Game of Thrones might change this, however.
Gadget Corner - I've been using the Android OS a lot more, now that I have two tablets. My older tablet is rooted, but not the newer one (Acer Iconia A500). I find them convenient, if a bit underpowered (in utility, not in actual processing) compared to my netbook (which mainly functions as a desktop.) Android is lacking in quality applications, plain and simple. Even worse, the OS encourages applications to be far more intrusive than I am comfortable with. I am becoming increasingly annoyed by this. I use Ubuntu
The one thing Android does better than Ubuntu is games. The repositories (Android Market and Amazon are the main ones I use) are much flashier as well, and somewhat easier to navigate. This is more than offset by the difficulty getting root, the lack of customization, the paucity of apps (no Openoffice or Audacity, Firefox is still in beta, and so on), and the OS's insistence on constantly trying to monitor me, and apps insistence on launching themselves and/or reporting back to wherever they report back to.
In other words--in terms of my privacy, Android is insecure; in terms of utility, Android is inadequate. Android feels very much like an OS that is more concerned with telling me what I can do than with allowing me to do what I wish. I'll say it again: I can't wait until I can use Ubuntu (or any other open-source Linux distro) on my tablets.
I hate having to hack on the OS just to get root. It's my hardware: I bought it; I own it. I should be able to get root as a matter of course. I should be able to set it up however I want, to do whatever I want, and to prohibit it from doing anything I don't want it to do. Seen in this light, the Android OS is an absolute failure.
And with that rant, I'm done for the week. See you all next time.
EDIT: I just had to switch over to my Ubuntu desktop computer to finish publishing this blog. It took me nearly as long to pub it as to write it on the tablet, and I was still getting screw-ups. Grrr... Android + Safari + Blogger = Suck.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
The Struggle Ain't No Snuggle
Don't worry if that title doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you. It isn't that clear to me either. It's meant to suggest some sort of adversarial something or other. Yeah, I know. It rhymes real nice though, don't it?
This week has been a fairly rough one for me. I started off good, getting a lot done on Monday. But I got really sick Monday night (stomach bug), and spent the next few days moaning and groaning. And deeply disinterested in doing anything but lying in bed. I wasn't able to avoid work, so I basically stumbled through my day like a zombie then came home and crashed. Not fun.
Even so, I managed to write a short story (based on a rather feverish dream I had, and remarkably non-Lovecraftian considering that fact.) I did a critique for a friend on Thursday, as well as one for the online critique group I frequent (Critters.com, great group BTW.) I did several revisions on old stories that needed touching up and turned in eight submissions to various paying markets.
One of which has already come back with an accompanying rejection. Sigh.
On the plus side, the nausea helped kick my weight loss into high gear. I am down about ten pounds since New Year's, right on schedule and feeling great about it, even though I didn't feel so great. Some times we have to dig a little deeper to find the bright side of things, huh?
I did manage to get some voice recorder work done on Monday, but when I decided to reorder the structure of the story I was working on, I got a little thrown. I am planning on taking another run at that story tomorrow. I also wrote the dream story start-to-finish on voice recorder, then transcribed it (with heavy edits.) That was more the normal process, though, which works great for short pieces (this one is about 2k.)
This week, like the last few months and like the months that preceded NaNoWriMo, has been fairly unproductive compared to my first six months or so writing. I take solace in the fact that my actual output, while smaller, is of a higher quality.
All of this is meant to be a short explanation of why I don't feel like doing the blog this week. Snort.
Media Breakdown:
I finally saw the new Underworld movie (Awakening.) Great special effects, fun fight scenes, barely passable plotting, as illogical as ever. The movie felt (and was) very short and incomplete. I suspect this was originally a very long movie that's been chopped into two parts.
I also caught the first episode of the second part of the second season of The Walking Dead (phew.) It was good. Not much in terms of action, except for one brief and fairly awesome scene, but I am still enjoying the often hammy and overly dramatic zombie goodness. The show is one step away from a soap opera, and mostly keeps my attention by virtue of being the only zombie show on TV, and therefore the best. Plus the zombies look great and the squick factor is very high.
That's it for this week. See you next time.
This week has been a fairly rough one for me. I started off good, getting a lot done on Monday. But I got really sick Monday night (stomach bug), and spent the next few days moaning and groaning. And deeply disinterested in doing anything but lying in bed. I wasn't able to avoid work, so I basically stumbled through my day like a zombie then came home and crashed. Not fun.
Even so, I managed to write a short story (based on a rather feverish dream I had, and remarkably non-Lovecraftian considering that fact.) I did a critique for a friend on Thursday, as well as one for the online critique group I frequent (Critters.com, great group BTW.) I did several revisions on old stories that needed touching up and turned in eight submissions to various paying markets.
One of which has already come back with an accompanying rejection. Sigh.
On the plus side, the nausea helped kick my weight loss into high gear. I am down about ten pounds since New Year's, right on schedule and feeling great about it, even though I didn't feel so great. Some times we have to dig a little deeper to find the bright side of things, huh?
I did manage to get some voice recorder work done on Monday, but when I decided to reorder the structure of the story I was working on, I got a little thrown. I am planning on taking another run at that story tomorrow. I also wrote the dream story start-to-finish on voice recorder, then transcribed it (with heavy edits.) That was more the normal process, though, which works great for short pieces (this one is about 2k.)
This week, like the last few months and like the months that preceded NaNoWriMo, has been fairly unproductive compared to my first six months or so writing. I take solace in the fact that my actual output, while smaller, is of a higher quality.
All of this is meant to be a short explanation of why I don't feel like doing the blog this week. Snort.
Media Breakdown:
I finally saw the new Underworld movie (Awakening.) Great special effects, fun fight scenes, barely passable plotting, as illogical as ever. The movie felt (and was) very short and incomplete. I suspect this was originally a very long movie that's been chopped into two parts.
I also caught the first episode of the second part of the second season of The Walking Dead (phew.) It was good. Not much in terms of action, except for one brief and fairly awesome scene, but I am still enjoying the often hammy and overly dramatic zombie goodness. The show is one step away from a soap opera, and mostly keeps my attention by virtue of being the only zombie show on TV, and therefore the best. Plus the zombies look great and the squick factor is very high.
That's it for this week. See you next time.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Double-Fisting the Voice Recorders
Despite the suggestive title, today's blog this isn't about excessive alcohol consumption (or deviant about sexual practices.) Rather, it's about one of my favorite subjects--using a voice recorder to increase my productivity. Or in this case, two voice recorders.
Why on earth would I need two? you might be asking yourself. Also How do I indicate italics in html so I can write this blog on a text editor instead of fighting with Blogger's crappy tablet web-interface? Or maybe that's just me.
Edit--figured out the italics thing. Ya! Now I'm gonna use way too many italics today, just to celebrate.
Turns out you don't really need two, but it sure is handy. At least, I think it would be handy. This is all theory, since what I am using currently is an MP3 player and a recorder. If this new process pans out, however, I likely will investing a second recorder, mainly to save myself effort in transfering files back and forth from recorder to player.
The idea is this: record a Zero Draft on my recorder (what I am already doing), then transfer it to MP3 player, then record a first draft on the recorder, rinse-and-repeat until I have a near final draft to transcribe and final edit. This is basically just looping the recording phase in an attempt to minimize the amount of typing/editing/time I have to spend when I am at home in front of the computer.
Important caveat: I spend a lot of my work time driving. It is practical for me to spend that time recording, but not typing. Using a recorder doesn't really save me time, since I can certainly write faster and better at the keyboard than I can by voice. Doing stories by voice is a clunky process for me. But it is a more productive use of available time than staring at traffic or listening to podcasts or whatever.
In order to make the looping efficient,and easy to parse, I am now recording very short files, generally one paragraph at a time. This makes it easy to loop them when I am transcribing (and thinking while I type) as well as helping me to organize better when I am on the road recording. By doing short files and multiple passes I am hoping to reorganize the way I think when I am writing verbally, as well.
I already use a basic version of this system when I record a Brain Dump about a story prior to recording the Zero Draft, and that's worked well for me so far. So this expansion of that system ought to work out great. I'm finding, like all things, that the more time and effort I put into writing verbally, the more my process improves. Practice makes perfect, or at least more efficient. Especially since I make it a point to regurlary evaluate what I might do differently to improve my process.
One more note--Writing Verbally (or Verbal Writing) is my new preferred term/keyword for Writing Using a Voice Recoder. Much less clunky, no?
Media Breakdown--I listened to the audiobook version of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. I have enjoyed much of his short fiction, but often been somewhat unsatisfied whith the endings. I went into this book worried that I would have a repeat experience, enjoying it up until the end then finishing unsatisfied. I am happy to report that my fears are unfounded. Little Brother is an awesome book from start to finish. I highly recomend it for anyone with an interest in crypto, civil liberties, and hacker culture. I'm looking forward to the upcoming sequel, Homeland.
And that's it for this week. See you guys next time
Why on earth would I need two? you might be asking yourself. Also How do I indicate italics in html so I can write this blog on a text editor instead of fighting with Blogger's crappy tablet web-interface? Or maybe that's just me.
Edit--figured out the italics thing. Ya! Now I'm gonna use way too many italics today, just to celebrate.
Turns out you don't really need two, but it sure is handy. At least, I think it would be handy. This is all theory, since what I am using currently is an MP3 player and a recorder. If this new process pans out, however, I likely will investing a second recorder, mainly to save myself effort in transfering files back and forth from recorder to player.
The idea is this: record a Zero Draft on my recorder (what I am already doing), then transfer it to MP3 player, then record a first draft on the recorder, rinse-and-repeat until I have a near final draft to transcribe and final edit. This is basically just looping the recording phase in an attempt to minimize the amount of typing/editing/time I have to spend when I am at home in front of the computer.
Important caveat: I spend a lot of my work time driving. It is practical for me to spend that time recording, but not typing. Using a recorder doesn't really save me time, since I can certainly write faster and better at the keyboard than I can by voice. Doing stories by voice is a clunky process for me. But it is a more productive use of available time than staring at traffic or listening to podcasts or whatever.
In order to make the looping efficient,and easy to parse, I am now recording very short files, generally one paragraph at a time. This makes it easy to loop them when I am transcribing (and thinking while I type) as well as helping me to organize better when I am on the road recording. By doing short files and multiple passes I am hoping to reorganize the way I think when I am writing verbally, as well.
I already use a basic version of this system when I record a Brain Dump about a story prior to recording the Zero Draft, and that's worked well for me so far. So this expansion of that system ought to work out great. I'm finding, like all things, that the more time and effort I put into writing verbally, the more my process improves. Practice makes perfect, or at least more efficient. Especially since I make it a point to regurlary evaluate what I might do differently to improve my process.
One more note--Writing Verbally (or Verbal Writing) is my new preferred term/keyword for Writing Using a Voice Recoder. Much less clunky, no?
Media Breakdown--I listened to the audiobook version of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. I have enjoyed much of his short fiction, but often been somewhat unsatisfied whith the endings. I went into this book worried that I would have a repeat experience, enjoying it up until the end then finishing unsatisfied. I am happy to report that my fears are unfounded. Little Brother is an awesome book from start to finish. I highly recomend it for anyone with an interest in crypto, civil liberties, and hacker culture. I'm looking forward to the upcoming sequel, Homeland.
And that's it for this week. See you guys next time
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Awesome Stuff I Enjoy
This is yet another week that I haven't got much done writing-wise. I had planned on this week being FebruWriMo, with all the attendant NaNoWriMo type word-frenzyness. Frenziness. Whatever. Point being, that hasn't happened. I say "happened", as though their was some sort of mystical waiting-and-hoping process here. Truth is, I have not done the work, because I have chosen to spend my time on other pusrsuits. Mea culpa.
Just like last week, I'm not particularly keen on beating up on myself for my lapses. I've tried guilting myself into accomplishing more, and it doesn't work (for me anyway, might be a wonderful tool for you.) Instead, I'm going to spend some time talking about some of the awesomeness I've been consuming lately.
First up--Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. I just stated listenin to this on audiobook yesterday. I'm only about a third in, so this isn't a full endorsement, but so far, so awesome. I have enjoyed Doctorow's short fiction in the past, most notoably on Starship Sofa (great podcast for SF fans, BTW). One thing I've picked up on about his work though is that his endings are often meh. I'm really hoping he works harder on the ending of this book, since it's novel length and all, because I'm really digging the story. Good stuff. I'm planning on checking out some of his other novels now, because I am liking this one so much.
In the same vein, I just finished listening to Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, read by Wil Wheaton. This book was really good as well. The writing was not as polished, definitely reading like a first novel. The characters and plot were decent but nothing amazing. The 80's nostalgia was absolutely outstanding, and the whole reason to read what would be an otherwise average book. If you grew up playing Atari 2600 and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, this is the book for you. Plus, Wheaton does a great job with the reading, so I definitely recommend the audiobook version over the text version.
I'vebeen watching a ton of the old Mega Man cartoon with my son lately. For no comprehensible reason, he is absolutely in love with it. It took him all of two or three days to start singing along with the theme song, and the show is now the only thing he wants to watch. I find it to be a good dose of cheesy, retro fun. It's not really well-animated, the plots are thin, and on and on. It does feel true to the early entries in the videogames series, at least enough to satisisfy me. Despite it's flaws, I quite like it.
On the subject of robots, I just had the chance to watch Real Steel. As an exercise in Hollywood unreality, it was pitch-perfect. Except for the incredibly silly yet undeniably fun robot-boxing theme, it could have been any estranged-father/son-triumphantly-reconcile movie ever made. Totally forgettable, but worth watching exactly once to see the robots beat the tar out of each other. SF geeks who need quibbling details like control schemes that make sense, tech that is in any way plausible, or even such minor details as fully developed characters need not apply.
I've been spending a huge amount of time on another sort of robot, an Android, if you will. The tablet that gave me so much grief trying to do a blog on the soft keyboard the other day has proven itself to be a compelling gaming machine. I have had many late nights lately, lying in bed playing Triple Town, Base Defense HD, and various and sundry other games. Between the stuff that is available for free on the Android Market, and Amazon's free-app-of-the-day, I have yet to spend any money on software. But my tablet (Iconia A500) is very close to replacing my laptop, already. As the software development sector matures over the next few years, I don't see any reason it won't.
I do really wish I could dual-boot Ubuntu on my tablet. One thing I really don't like about Android is how much stuff the OS tries to hide from the end-user. The insistence of manufacturers on trying to keep consumers from having root access to their own machines in furtherence of this is annoying as well. I haven't rooted my A500 yet because the process looks like a pain, but I am sure I will sooner or later. I really wish Acer hadn't made it such a nuisance in the first place; that attitude is very customer-unfriendly. Even so, I do really like the tablet. Full-sized USB port for the win.
I can't think of anything else, so I guess I am done for the week. See you next time
Just like last week, I'm not particularly keen on beating up on myself for my lapses. I've tried guilting myself into accomplishing more, and it doesn't work (for me anyway, might be a wonderful tool for you.) Instead, I'm going to spend some time talking about some of the awesomeness I've been consuming lately.
First up--Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. I just stated listenin to this on audiobook yesterday. I'm only about a third in, so this isn't a full endorsement, but so far, so awesome. I have enjoyed Doctorow's short fiction in the past, most notoably on Starship Sofa (great podcast for SF fans, BTW). One thing I've picked up on about his work though is that his endings are often meh. I'm really hoping he works harder on the ending of this book, since it's novel length and all, because I'm really digging the story. Good stuff. I'm planning on checking out some of his other novels now, because I am liking this one so much.
In the same vein, I just finished listening to Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, read by Wil Wheaton. This book was really good as well. The writing was not as polished, definitely reading like a first novel. The characters and plot were decent but nothing amazing. The 80's nostalgia was absolutely outstanding, and the whole reason to read what would be an otherwise average book. If you grew up playing Atari 2600 and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, this is the book for you. Plus, Wheaton does a great job with the reading, so I definitely recommend the audiobook version over the text version.
I'vebeen watching a ton of the old Mega Man cartoon with my son lately. For no comprehensible reason, he is absolutely in love with it. It took him all of two or three days to start singing along with the theme song, and the show is now the only thing he wants to watch. I find it to be a good dose of cheesy, retro fun. It's not really well-animated, the plots are thin, and on and on. It does feel true to the early entries in the videogames series, at least enough to satisisfy me. Despite it's flaws, I quite like it.
On the subject of robots, I just had the chance to watch Real Steel. As an exercise in Hollywood unreality, it was pitch-perfect. Except for the incredibly silly yet undeniably fun robot-boxing theme, it could have been any estranged-father/son-triumphantly-reconcile movie ever made. Totally forgettable, but worth watching exactly once to see the robots beat the tar out of each other. SF geeks who need quibbling details like control schemes that make sense, tech that is in any way plausible, or even such minor details as fully developed characters need not apply.
I've been spending a huge amount of time on another sort of robot, an Android, if you will. The tablet that gave me so much grief trying to do a blog on the soft keyboard the other day has proven itself to be a compelling gaming machine. I have had many late nights lately, lying in bed playing Triple Town, Base Defense HD, and various and sundry other games. Between the stuff that is available for free on the Android Market, and Amazon's free-app-of-the-day, I have yet to spend any money on software. But my tablet (Iconia A500) is very close to replacing my laptop, already. As the software development sector matures over the next few years, I don't see any reason it won't.
I do really wish I could dual-boot Ubuntu on my tablet. One thing I really don't like about Android is how much stuff the OS tries to hide from the end-user. The insistence of manufacturers on trying to keep consumers from having root access to their own machines in furtherence of this is annoying as well. I haven't rooted my A500 yet because the process looks like a pain, but I am sure I will sooner or later. I really wish Acer hadn't made it such a nuisance in the first place; that attitude is very customer-unfriendly. Even so, I do really like the tablet. Full-sized USB port for the win.
I can't think of anything else, so I guess I am done for the week. See you next time
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Tablet Blogging Again - Acer Iconia A500
So the main theme today is going to be on gadgets rather than on my ongoing struggle with LMS (lazy man syndrome). So fair warning to those of you who tuned in merely for my customary self-flagellation--this week's blog is bound to disappoint.
Unless you were tuning in for spelling hijinks. Apparently Blogger's spelling auto-checker thingamawhosit doesn't work in Dolphin browser lite on my tablet. And I can't remember if disappoint is spelled with one S or two. I also may have the number of Ps wrong. How dissapointing.
Anyways...
I got a new tablet this week, the Acer Iconia A500 mentioned in the title above. So far, I'm loving it. Much better build quality than the crappy Coby I had previously, and the new version of Android is an improvement as well.
Side note--due to their ridiculously horrible customer support, I will never purchase another Coby product of any kind. Also, I will never shop at Toys-R-Us again, for the same reason. Just saying.
I've mostly used the A500 for games so far (of course). Their are tons of free and cheap games on Android Market, plus the Amazon Market free-app-of-the-day is often good. So I am definitely happy on that score.
You didn't know I was just gone for about an hour, but I was. Turns out that editing a blogger blog is really difficult (once you get a few paragraphs in), using the installed soft-keyboard. I've got a wireless keyboard and mouse hooked up now, but it's still tricky going compared to just doing the durn blog on my computer. Which is a shame because I had hoped to be able to do the Sunday-morning-blog-in-bed-thing.
Okay, I am now typing this blog in an external note-taking application. The fact that you are reading it indicates I was successfully able to copy-pasta it back to Blogger. But what a pain. I wonder if this is a fault of the Blogger interface or of the Android OS? Either way, I may look into starting a WordPress blog instead, assuming that platform is easier to work with via Android.
Okay, I'm tired of the shenanigans, so I'm going to wrap this entry up. Although the Iconia A500 isn't great for blogging, it's awesome for games, comic books, and movies. I suspect I will find more uses for it as well, hopefully some that are at least marginally productive.
Unless you were tuning in for spelling hijinks. Apparently Blogger's spelling auto-checker thingamawhosit doesn't work in Dolphin browser lite on my tablet. And I can't remember if disappoint is spelled with one S or two. I also may have the number of Ps wrong. How dissapointing.
Anyways...
I got a new tablet this week, the Acer Iconia A500 mentioned in the title above. So far, I'm loving it. Much better build quality than the crappy Coby I had previously, and the new version of Android is an improvement as well.
Side note--due to their ridiculously horrible customer support, I will never purchase another Coby product of any kind. Also, I will never shop at Toys-R-Us again, for the same reason. Just saying.
I've mostly used the A500 for games so far (of course). Their are tons of free and cheap games on Android Market, plus the Amazon Market free-app-of-the-day is often good. So I am definitely happy on that score.
You didn't know I was just gone for about an hour, but I was. Turns out that editing a blogger blog is really difficult (once you get a few paragraphs in), using the installed soft-keyboard. I've got a wireless keyboard and mouse hooked up now, but it's still tricky going compared to just doing the durn blog on my computer. Which is a shame because I had hoped to be able to do the Sunday-morning-blog-in-bed-thing.
Okay, I am now typing this blog in an external note-taking application. The fact that you are reading it indicates I was successfully able to copy-pasta it back to Blogger. But what a pain. I wonder if this is a fault of the Blogger interface or of the Android OS? Either way, I may look into starting a WordPress blog instead, assuming that platform is easier to work with via Android.
Okay, I'm tired of the shenanigans, so I'm going to wrap this entry up. Although the Iconia A500 isn't great for blogging, it's awesome for games, comic books, and movies. I suspect I will find more uses for it as well, hopefully some that are at least marginally productive.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Lazy Because Idunno -or- A Bye Week
This will be a short post, because I don't have much to write about. I've been extraordinarily lazy this week. I wrote a very short story fragment on one of my typewriters and went to SlugTribe (Austin genre critique group.) That's it.
There are lots of excuses I could make, or justifications, but I'll just be blunt instead: I needed a break (clearly), so I took one. I'm certainly not blocked; I have a ton of ideas, including the seeds of my next novel. This was part of the intention behind pushing so hard on my "on" weeks--an "off" week doesn't kill my yearly production schedule. Of course, this assumes my "on" weeks are sufficiently productive, which hasn't quite been the case so far.
Sigh...
Enough of all that. I almost forgot two other tidbits. I've been doing critiques for Critters online workshop, which should prove enlightening, and I did manage to lose my weekly pound. So this week isn't a total loss.
Media Breakdown: I watched The Rum Diary. It was good, but felt slow paced and overly long compared to the book. It was a 2 hour movie, and I figure it should have been closer to an hour and a half. Still worth watching, though. I'd give it a solid B.
And that's all he wrote, folks. See you next week, when I will (hopefully) have more engaging reportage to, uh, report.
There are lots of excuses I could make, or justifications, but I'll just be blunt instead: I needed a break (clearly), so I took one. I'm certainly not blocked; I have a ton of ideas, including the seeds of my next novel. This was part of the intention behind pushing so hard on my "on" weeks--an "off" week doesn't kill my yearly production schedule. Of course, this assumes my "on" weeks are sufficiently productive, which hasn't quite been the case so far.
Sigh...
Enough of all that. I almost forgot two other tidbits. I've been doing critiques for Critters online workshop, which should prove enlightening, and I did manage to lose my weekly pound. So this week isn't a total loss.
Media Breakdown: I watched The Rum Diary. It was good, but felt slow paced and overly long compared to the book. It was a 2 hour movie, and I figure it should have been closer to an hour and a half. Still worth watching, though. I'd give it a solid B.
And that's all he wrote, folks. See you next week, when I will (hopefully) have more engaging reportage to, uh, report.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
New Story Up - Furious Fusion Fist
I just uploaded a new story to Smashwords and Amazon. It can be found right here. Any reviewer types out there who are interested n a code for a free download of a review copy, just give me a holler.
The blurb for the story:
Having the last surviving video-game arcade AI as Sensei is awesome. Trying to impress the last surviving female with untested kung-fu is not. To triumph in an encounter with the brain-melted remnants of the former adult population, Peji must unlock the mystical power of the furious fusion fist technique. His life, his chance to win Nisa's heart, and the future of the entire human race depends on it
Furious Fusion Fist is a post-apocalyptic, adolescent love story for gamers, nerds, and geeks. It is 9,400 words long, or about 38 pages.
The blurb for the story:
Having the last surviving video-game arcade AI as Sensei is awesome. Trying to impress the last surviving female with untested kung-fu is not. To triumph in an encounter with the brain-melted remnants of the former adult population, Peji must unlock the mystical power of the furious fusion fist technique. His life, his chance to win Nisa's heart, and the future of the entire human race depends on it
Furious Fusion Fist is a post-apocalyptic, adolescent love story for gamers, nerds, and geeks. It is 9,400 words long, or about 38 pages.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Report On Quarter the Third
I began writing fiction seriously on April 9th, 2001, a little over 9 months ago. This is the third Quarterly Report I have done since then. It is complete happenstance that my quarters fall so near traditional business accounting-type quarters, although I do have to admit finding the convergence funny.
A) convergence may not be the right word, and b) I have a very strange sense of humor sometimes. Also, c) regarding the previous sentence--I am quite confused as to whether I should capitalize all three letters ( a, b, and c), since they are items in a series; only a, because it is at the beginning of the sentence; and/or whether the word convergence should also be capitalized.
I am amused by this confusion, as well.
Moving on.
I have only completed a handful of short stories since the last quarterly report. I was fairly lazy wordcount-wise in the month leading up to NaNoWriMo, as well as in the month after it. That said, I do feel like my most recent stories are some of my best, and the quality does somewhat make up for the lack of quantity. My total stories written tally stands at 34, not including my first novel.
This quarter I entered and won NaNoWriMo. It was my first year of participation (since I wasn't even writing when it was held previously.) I quite enjoyed the experience, although it was fairly brutal. It took me almost the whole month of December to write the last 6 to 8k of my novel, but I did it. It still needs editing to even be considered a first draft, but I am quite proud of myself nonetheless.
The 70k I wrote for the Zero Draft of my novel, plus the other dribs and drabs I wrote this quarter, mean than I wrote approximately twice as much this quarter as in the first two combined.
***A quick note about wordcounts--I am obsessed with them because they are the only reliable metric I have for tracking my progress as a writer. I can see progress in my writing, of course. But how to measure it? Later on, sales and income might help me to understand where I am at in my career, but I don't really have either of those yet. I write at different speeds on different days, so time spent with butt-in-chair is not exact. A Million Words Of Crap requires just that--a million words. The best way I know of to measure those million words is word-by-word.***
I already have on story published that will count towards the current quarter, "Out, De'Moan!", but I didn't manage to publish anything last quarter, despite the promising start I got off to with Tes-Nin's Elbows. I did do a ton of submitting to paying markets, and got a ton of rejections, including a number of personalized rejections. I've also come very close to selling a couple of stories (and those stories still have a decent chance of selling to the markets that are interested.)
I've also vastly improved my typing skills, as well as my ability to use a voice recorder to get more writing done when I am out and about. I started and have maintained a Daily Log, which has already shown it's value as a personal metrics tool (yes, I just made that up. No I don't know what it means either, exactly. Except that a Daily Log comes in handy.) My punctuation and grammar have improved somewhat as well.
All in all, I've accomplished a lot this quarter. Not as much as I could have, but more than enough to satisfy me. The most important--finishing a novel (draft)--counts as not only an accomplishment in and of itself, but as proof-of-concept that I can write and finish long form fiction. I also verified the truth (for me) of what I have often heard: It is easier (at least in a wordcount outputted vs skullsweat inputted sense) to write long fiction than short.
Looking ahead: If I keep up the pace, I will likely end up with 250k or thereabouts written during my first year. More if I hit the goals I set for myself this year. I also hope to finish this first year with at least eleven titles published, a Zero Draft of a new novel, and a bunch more shorts. With some luck, I might start to make a little money off my self-epubbed stuff, and/or a few short story sales.
I've got plenty of content, now it's time to make getting it out there as much of a priority as generating new stuff.
Overall verdict: I kicked tail this quarter.
Weekly report:
I am still losing weight reliably. Nothing drastic or infomercial worthy, but I am down at least three pounds since New Year's, if not four or five. I am having no problems maintaining an improved attitude and outlook (40% improved, to be precise.) My wordcount was better this week (over 8k) but still not up to par. I do feel like I am gaining some momentum in that area, though. And I did do more (over 2k's worth) background material/Idea Bank writing.
I haven't done a self-epub for the week yet, but I am hoping to today or tomorrow. So there's a good chance I will get three out of four again this week. Things are looking good so far for the first month of this year's challenges.
Also, I am planning on doing FebuWriMo next month. If I do as good a job on wordcounts as I did during my last noveling stretch, I may have an easy March ahead of me. We'll see.
Media Breakdown:
It turns out both Superhero Squad and Transformers Prime are right up my son's alley. I like them okay as well. Not awesome, but not any better or worse (when considered objectively) than the cartoons I grew up watching (and loving.)
I've been listening to the album "All Eternal's Deck" by The Mountain Goats a lot. Not a lot of rock-n-roll, but really good, thoughtful, and emotional lyrics. Lots of bittersweet, lots of indie-acoustic vibe, a high degree of thoughtfulness and literacy. I highly recommend it.
And that's it for this week. See you all next time.
A) convergence may not be the right word, and b) I have a very strange sense of humor sometimes. Also, c) regarding the previous sentence--I am quite confused as to whether I should capitalize all three letters ( a, b, and c), since they are items in a series; only a, because it is at the beginning of the sentence; and/or whether the word convergence should also be capitalized.
I am amused by this confusion, as well.
Moving on.
I have only completed a handful of short stories since the last quarterly report. I was fairly lazy wordcount-wise in the month leading up to NaNoWriMo, as well as in the month after it. That said, I do feel like my most recent stories are some of my best, and the quality does somewhat make up for the lack of quantity. My total stories written tally stands at 34, not including my first novel.
This quarter I entered and won NaNoWriMo. It was my first year of participation (since I wasn't even writing when it was held previously.) I quite enjoyed the experience, although it was fairly brutal. It took me almost the whole month of December to write the last 6 to 8k of my novel, but I did it. It still needs editing to even be considered a first draft, but I am quite proud of myself nonetheless.
The 70k I wrote for the Zero Draft of my novel, plus the other dribs and drabs I wrote this quarter, mean than I wrote approximately twice as much this quarter as in the first two combined.
***A quick note about wordcounts--I am obsessed with them because they are the only reliable metric I have for tracking my progress as a writer. I can see progress in my writing, of course. But how to measure it? Later on, sales and income might help me to understand where I am at in my career, but I don't really have either of those yet. I write at different speeds on different days, so time spent with butt-in-chair is not exact. A Million Words Of Crap requires just that--a million words. The best way I know of to measure those million words is word-by-word.***
I already have on story published that will count towards the current quarter, "Out, De'Moan!", but I didn't manage to publish anything last quarter, despite the promising start I got off to with Tes-Nin's Elbows. I did do a ton of submitting to paying markets, and got a ton of rejections, including a number of personalized rejections. I've also come very close to selling a couple of stories (and those stories still have a decent chance of selling to the markets that are interested.)
I've also vastly improved my typing skills, as well as my ability to use a voice recorder to get more writing done when I am out and about. I started and have maintained a Daily Log, which has already shown it's value as a personal metrics tool (yes, I just made that up. No I don't know what it means either, exactly. Except that a Daily Log comes in handy.) My punctuation and grammar have improved somewhat as well.
All in all, I've accomplished a lot this quarter. Not as much as I could have, but more than enough to satisfy me. The most important--finishing a novel (draft)--counts as not only an accomplishment in and of itself, but as proof-of-concept that I can write and finish long form fiction. I also verified the truth (for me) of what I have often heard: It is easier (at least in a wordcount outputted vs skullsweat inputted sense) to write long fiction than short.
Looking ahead: If I keep up the pace, I will likely end up with 250k or thereabouts written during my first year. More if I hit the goals I set for myself this year. I also hope to finish this first year with at least eleven titles published, a Zero Draft of a new novel, and a bunch more shorts. With some luck, I might start to make a little money off my self-epubbed stuff, and/or a few short story sales.
I've got plenty of content, now it's time to make getting it out there as much of a priority as generating new stuff.
Overall verdict: I kicked tail this quarter.
Weekly report:
I am still losing weight reliably. Nothing drastic or infomercial worthy, but I am down at least three pounds since New Year's, if not four or five. I am having no problems maintaining an improved attitude and outlook (40% improved, to be precise.) My wordcount was better this week (over 8k) but still not up to par. I do feel like I am gaining some momentum in that area, though. And I did do more (over 2k's worth) background material/Idea Bank writing.
I haven't done a self-epub for the week yet, but I am hoping to today or tomorrow. So there's a good chance I will get three out of four again this week. Things are looking good so far for the first month of this year's challenges.
Also, I am planning on doing FebuWriMo next month. If I do as good a job on wordcounts as I did during my last noveling stretch, I may have an easy March ahead of me. We'll see.
Media Breakdown:
It turns out both Superhero Squad and Transformers Prime are right up my son's alley. I like them okay as well. Not awesome, but not any better or worse (when considered objectively) than the cartoons I grew up watching (and loving.)
I've been listening to the album "All Eternal's Deck" by The Mountain Goats a lot. Not a lot of rock-n-roll, but really good, thoughtful, and emotional lyrics. Lots of bittersweet, lots of indie-acoustic vibe, a high degree of thoughtfulness and literacy. I highly recommend it.
And that's it for this week. See you all next time.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
New Story Published!
I am proud to announce the publication of my second story in the Hammers and Hexes series, "Out, De'moan!" by Step5 Transmedia. It is available as of today on Smashwords, and will be up on Amazon and all the Smashwords distributed stores like B-n-N, Sony, and iBooks in a few days.
It's available for 99 red cents at Smashwords.
It's available for 99 red cents at Smashwords.
Needs More (Voice) Recorder
I have three thing to cover in this weeks installment. The main point is more voice recorder stuff, including some revelations on my process. I'll also cover (of course) my resolutions and how they are progressing. And we can finish with more Media Explosion.
Voice Recorders - I have managed to write several stories using the voice recorder and have also progressed about a third to halfway through several more stories. I'm getting a lot done with the voice recorder. In fact, my main bottleneck seems to be getting butt-in-chair and actually transcribing/editing/finishing what I'm working on.
My day at work is mostly spent driving, with only short interactions with other humans. I have a lot of time for listening to podcasts and audiobooks, which is nice because I get to learn about writing and the publishing business as well as keeping up on what other writers are doing storytelling-wise. Even so, I felt like I could do more with my day--hence my efforts to write with a voice recorder. I'm trying to maximize the use of my time, multi-task by earning a living and working on a more promising career simultaneously.
The Zero Draft concept has served me well as a writer. It helped me to complete the draft of my first novel, as well as many of the stories I have written since then. It is natural and normal for writers to question the validity of whatever they are currently working on. I often don't add the coolest bits, the things that make me really love a story, until the very end. So a story can go from humdrum to awesome in an instant, if the writer is only willing to keep pushing ahead until they cross that threshold.
I like to think of this as each creativity particle the writer has already added to the work synergistically and logarithmically working together, following Moore's law and the law of accelerated returns until the work crosses the Story Singularity--the point that the writer can neither imagine nor conceptualize beyond beforehand. Okay, I will admit that concept might be a little overblown and grandiose, but it sounds pretty boss, huh?
And I just made it up right now. During the process of transcribing the recording I did yesterday of the zero draft of today's blog. One that struck me as ho-hum before I started. In other words: I just crossed the Blog Singularity.
Back to the Zero Draft. It is mostly a mental tool for me, something that lets me keep charging ahead until I hit that Singularity. It is especially important in voice recorder work, where often a huge chunk of what I dictate ends up unusable. It really isn't possible to cycle, which is my normal method of drafting, using a recorder. Editing goes write out the window, except for notes about what to go back and change. The final product is very, very rough. But the important thing is exploring the story and getting it all down.
Because of these difficulties, I've found it easier to write short fiction than long. Flash fiction works especially well. Outlining is one of the prime uses of the recorder. Also, writing a partial draft, something to get started on when I get in front of the computer, works well. I get the tone and style from the dictated story fragment, and the rest I fill in from the outline. I also do a lot of listening back to what I've dictated so far and thinking about the story, sort of aimless, letting-my-subconscious-work time. And of course, it's great for outlines, character notes, funny phrases and titles, all the tidbits a writer might normally scribble in a notebook. Brainstorming aloud is great, too.
Voice recording is very time-consuming compared to using a notebook or something similar, however. For me, between the difficulty and general bad-idea nature of writing while driving (yoiks), the recorder is a good choice. It saves me time at the keyboard at the cost of more time burned while away from the keyboard; it's a trade-off, definitely not for everyone. Those with good handwriting and the ability to take notes might well be better served sticking with that method.
One idea I am considering is typing up my dictated partial draft to carry with me and to read over quickly, thus saving myself the listening time. I'm sure other tricks will come to me as I keep at it. Which brings up the final point I want to make: Practice Makes Perfect.
Just like learning how to touch-type took time and effort, just like like learning how to tell stories took work and and still does, learning how to write with a voice recorder will take more than just flipping the thing on and starting to talk. It is a new skill, in and of itself. I find myself getting better at it, slowly figuring out new tricks as I go. But it is definitely work. Like many productivity tools, the benefits come downstream once the tool is mastered. A writer who tries using a recorder once, gets frustrated, and gives up immediately would do well to keep this mind.
Resolutions - I've done about the same as last week, perhaps a little better. Lost my pound, was an attitudinal champ, wrote maybe 1k more than last week (still way, way under par), did formatting work on a new story but no cover and no epub. I did a little more Idea Bank writing, and got slightly more done writing-wise, but I'm still calling it only a 2 out of four week. This is both disappointing and somewhat concerning, but I'm not going to dwell on it. I still have 50 weeks to get up to speed. This year is a work in progress.
Media Breakdown - I finally got the chance to watch Moneyball. The theme of the movie was very interesting, and I quite enjoyed the statistical stuff plus the game theory crossed with market analysis aspects. The drama was a little overblown for me. I realize the flick is based on a true story, but I found it disappointing that the protagonist basically lost at the end. I wanted more than just vindication of his theories from the storyline, even if real life hadn't been so compliant. I still recommend watching the movie for anyone interested in outside-the-box business thinking (and baseball, of course.)
That's all for this week. If anyone out there is using or has used a voice recorder and would like to share their thoughts and/or process, feel free to comment. See you all next week.
EDIT - I managed to get a story published for the week, after all. See http://silverbowen.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-story-published.html for details. 3 out of 4 feels pretty sweet.
Voice Recorders - I have managed to write several stories using the voice recorder and have also progressed about a third to halfway through several more stories. I'm getting a lot done with the voice recorder. In fact, my main bottleneck seems to be getting butt-in-chair and actually transcribing/editing/finishing what I'm working on.
My day at work is mostly spent driving, with only short interactions with other humans. I have a lot of time for listening to podcasts and audiobooks, which is nice because I get to learn about writing and the publishing business as well as keeping up on what other writers are doing storytelling-wise. Even so, I felt like I could do more with my day--hence my efforts to write with a voice recorder. I'm trying to maximize the use of my time, multi-task by earning a living and working on a more promising career simultaneously.
The Zero Draft concept has served me well as a writer. It helped me to complete the draft of my first novel, as well as many of the stories I have written since then. It is natural and normal for writers to question the validity of whatever they are currently working on. I often don't add the coolest bits, the things that make me really love a story, until the very end. So a story can go from humdrum to awesome in an instant, if the writer is only willing to keep pushing ahead until they cross that threshold.
I like to think of this as each creativity particle the writer has already added to the work synergistically and logarithmically working together, following Moore's law and the law of accelerated returns until the work crosses the Story Singularity--the point that the writer can neither imagine nor conceptualize beyond beforehand. Okay, I will admit that concept might be a little overblown and grandiose, but it sounds pretty boss, huh?
And I just made it up right now. During the process of transcribing the recording I did yesterday of the zero draft of today's blog. One that struck me as ho-hum before I started. In other words: I just crossed the Blog Singularity.
Back to the Zero Draft. It is mostly a mental tool for me, something that lets me keep charging ahead until I hit that Singularity. It is especially important in voice recorder work, where often a huge chunk of what I dictate ends up unusable. It really isn't possible to cycle, which is my normal method of drafting, using a recorder. Editing goes write out the window, except for notes about what to go back and change. The final product is very, very rough. But the important thing is exploring the story and getting it all down.
Because of these difficulties, I've found it easier to write short fiction than long. Flash fiction works especially well. Outlining is one of the prime uses of the recorder. Also, writing a partial draft, something to get started on when I get in front of the computer, works well. I get the tone and style from the dictated story fragment, and the rest I fill in from the outline. I also do a lot of listening back to what I've dictated so far and thinking about the story, sort of aimless, letting-my-subconscious-work time. And of course, it's great for outlines, character notes, funny phrases and titles, all the tidbits a writer might normally scribble in a notebook. Brainstorming aloud is great, too.
Voice recording is very time-consuming compared to using a notebook or something similar, however. For me, between the difficulty and general bad-idea nature of writing while driving (yoiks), the recorder is a good choice. It saves me time at the keyboard at the cost of more time burned while away from the keyboard; it's a trade-off, definitely not for everyone. Those with good handwriting and the ability to take notes might well be better served sticking with that method.
One idea I am considering is typing up my dictated partial draft to carry with me and to read over quickly, thus saving myself the listening time. I'm sure other tricks will come to me as I keep at it. Which brings up the final point I want to make: Practice Makes Perfect.
Just like learning how to touch-type took time and effort, just like like learning how to tell stories took work and and still does, learning how to write with a voice recorder will take more than just flipping the thing on and starting to talk. It is a new skill, in and of itself. I find myself getting better at it, slowly figuring out new tricks as I go. But it is definitely work. Like many productivity tools, the benefits come downstream once the tool is mastered. A writer who tries using a recorder once, gets frustrated, and gives up immediately would do well to keep this mind.
Resolutions - I've done about the same as last week, perhaps a little better. Lost my pound, was an attitudinal champ, wrote maybe 1k more than last week (still way, way under par), did formatting work on a new story but no cover and no epub. I did a little more Idea Bank writing, and got slightly more done writing-wise, but I'm still calling it only a 2 out of four week. This is both disappointing and somewhat concerning, but I'm not going to dwell on it. I still have 50 weeks to get up to speed. This year is a work in progress.
Media Breakdown - I finally got the chance to watch Moneyball. The theme of the movie was very interesting, and I quite enjoyed the statistical stuff plus the game theory crossed with market analysis aspects. The drama was a little overblown for me. I realize the flick is based on a true story, but I found it disappointing that the protagonist basically lost at the end. I wanted more than just vindication of his theories from the storyline, even if real life hadn't been so compliant. I still recommend watching the movie for anyone interested in outside-the-box business thinking (and baseball, of course.)
That's all for this week. If anyone out there is using or has used a voice recorder and would like to share their thoughts and/or process, feel free to comment. See you all next week.
EDIT - I managed to get a story published for the week, after all. See http://silverbowen.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-story-published.html for details. 3 out of 4 feels pretty sweet.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Two Out of Four Ain't Bad
Today's blog is about goal-setting, specifically expectations versus achievements. I set some pretty high goals for myself as part of my New Year's resolutions. I expected this first week to be as much about learning how to meet those goals as actually hitting them, and I was right. In that same vein, the coming week will be about learning how to recover from missed goals.
Goal #1 is 400k by year's end, broken down into 10k a week (which leaves me every 4th or 5th week off, ie. plenty of room for screw-ups.) And this week was a screw-up. Between my addiction to the Wii game Fortune Street, my organizational efforts in other areas, and a dollop of laziness, I have only manage about 3,800 words this week. So that's one out of four missed so far.
In order to counteract the seductive pull of Fortune Street, and deftly sidestep my natural inertial laziness--or lazinertia--I am adopting the following new rule/guideline: My weekly minimum is 8k, broken into 1,150 per day. Both metrics leave a little breathing room. This is required to be met pre-Internet anything, video game, reading, or anything else I like. The goal is still 2k daily, 10k weekly; the minimum should at least keep me from falling behind.
Goal #2 is to self-epub (and what an awkward term that is) 40 titles this year, which breaks down into 1 a week (again leaving every 4th or 5th week off for a margin of safety.) I have a few JPEGs and a vague idea how to arrange them to make a cover for the title I intend to publish later today. I am not nearly confident enough in my work habits to take this for granted as likely to happen, however. So that's two out of four missed so far.
Seeing a pattern here?
My countermeasure for this is simple: when I finish my wordcount for the day, I will work on my ESP (a way cool acronym for E-Self-Pubbing.) Leisure time comes after my wordcount is done and after I have a title pubbed for the week. Gosh darnit and doggone dagnabit. To heck.
Goal #3 is to lose forty pounds this year, to the tune of one pound a week (same margin of error.) I am happy to announce that I have dropped from 235 to 233. I am keeping meticulous records of my weight, eating habits, and exercise habits; this will keep me on track. So one out of four made, and comfortably at that.
Go me.
Goal #4 is to be 40% nicer. Which I totally have, in so far as this one is even measurable. I have noticed a distinctly pleasant uptick in my daily interactions as a result, and thus my general level of happiness. So two out of four made, for a batting average of .500. Not that bad, actually.
The two I missed are fixable, with some tighter discipline on my part. The two I made are arguably more important, health and happiness trump productivity any day. And may actually improve my productivity long-term.
I will do a more condensed version of this weekly weigh-in next week, and every week after until I make my goals, the year is over, or I die. Hopefully the first rather than the last.
Weekly Media breakdown - Tried to watch "Bag of Bones"--made for TV movie based on the Stephen King book. Only made it about 15 minutes in. No dice. That's all I watched this week. I haven't read anything, either (been busy not writing.) My son likes G1 Transformers better than Voltron and Xena, but he likes Planet hulk even better still. And... erm... that's it. Short segment this week, huh?
Other stuff--I've been using the heck out of the Olympus VN8100PC I got for Xmas. Plan on putting up an in depth review later in the week, but tl;dr is: this is the best cheap-voice-recorder-for-writers currently available.
Writing on a voice recorder is a very different experience from typing. More difficult, definitely, because of the lack of visual input and editing capabilities. Even so, I am finding it quite usable for a zero-draft level of writing. It's probably not much of a time-saver just yet, but I think with practice it will be.
As I get more competent with the process/workflow I will do a blog on how to get the most from spare time and a voice recorder (for writers.) Nitty gritty sirt if stuff.
For now, though, I will say that he key is practice, and lots of it. You can't expect a new productivity tool to change your life immediately. Sometimes they do, but often it's the work put in now that pays off down the line. Like an investment in yourself.
I learned this from Fortune Street.
And that's all I got for this week. Next week will be quarterly report number three (slightly overdue.) See you then.
Goal #1 is 400k by year's end, broken down into 10k a week (which leaves me every 4th or 5th week off, ie. plenty of room for screw-ups.) And this week was a screw-up. Between my addiction to the Wii game Fortune Street, my organizational efforts in other areas, and a dollop of laziness, I have only manage about 3,800 words this week. So that's one out of four missed so far.
In order to counteract the seductive pull of Fortune Street, and deftly sidestep my natural inertial laziness--or lazinertia--I am adopting the following new rule/guideline: My weekly minimum is 8k, broken into 1,150 per day. Both metrics leave a little breathing room. This is required to be met pre-Internet anything, video game, reading, or anything else I like. The goal is still 2k daily, 10k weekly; the minimum should at least keep me from falling behind.
Goal #2 is to self-epub (and what an awkward term that is) 40 titles this year, which breaks down into 1 a week (again leaving every 4th or 5th week off for a margin of safety.) I have a few JPEGs and a vague idea how to arrange them to make a cover for the title I intend to publish later today. I am not nearly confident enough in my work habits to take this for granted as likely to happen, however. So that's two out of four missed so far.
Seeing a pattern here?
My countermeasure for this is simple: when I finish my wordcount for the day, I will work on my ESP (a way cool acronym for E-Self-Pubbing.) Leisure time comes after my wordcount is done and after I have a title pubbed for the week. Gosh darnit and doggone dagnabit. To heck.
Goal #3 is to lose forty pounds this year, to the tune of one pound a week (same margin of error.) I am happy to announce that I have dropped from 235 to 233. I am keeping meticulous records of my weight, eating habits, and exercise habits; this will keep me on track. So one out of four made, and comfortably at that.
Go me.
Goal #4 is to be 40% nicer. Which I totally have, in so far as this one is even measurable. I have noticed a distinctly pleasant uptick in my daily interactions as a result, and thus my general level of happiness. So two out of four made, for a batting average of .500. Not that bad, actually.
The two I missed are fixable, with some tighter discipline on my part. The two I made are arguably more important, health and happiness trump productivity any day. And may actually improve my productivity long-term.
I will do a more condensed version of this weekly weigh-in next week, and every week after until I make my goals, the year is over, or I die. Hopefully the first rather than the last.
Weekly Media breakdown - Tried to watch "Bag of Bones"--made for TV movie based on the Stephen King book. Only made it about 15 minutes in. No dice. That's all I watched this week. I haven't read anything, either (been busy not writing.) My son likes G1 Transformers better than Voltron and Xena, but he likes Planet hulk even better still. And... erm... that's it. Short segment this week, huh?
Other stuff--I've been using the heck out of the Olympus VN8100PC I got for Xmas. Plan on putting up an in depth review later in the week, but tl;dr is: this is the best cheap-voice-recorder-for-writers currently available.
Writing on a voice recorder is a very different experience from typing. More difficult, definitely, because of the lack of visual input and editing capabilities. Even so, I am finding it quite usable for a zero-draft level of writing. It's probably not much of a time-saver just yet, but I think with practice it will be.
As I get more competent with the process/workflow I will do a blog on how to get the most from spare time and a voice recorder (for writers.) Nitty gritty sirt if stuff.
For now, though, I will say that he key is practice, and lots of it. You can't expect a new productivity tool to change your life immediately. Sometimes they do, but often it's the work put in now that pays off down the line. Like an investment in yourself.
I learned this from Fortune Street.
And that's all I got for this week. Next week will be quarterly report number three (slightly overdue.) See you then.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Belated New Year's Post, Plus Fortune Street
I was going to do a New Year's resolutions post yesterday (my normal Sunday post), but I didn't. Instead I got sucked into a new Wii game--Fortune Street. It is absolutely fabulous, albeit only suited for a narrow range of players. More on that later.
I am going to go ahead an tackle the resolutions (in the form of challenges, natch) first, then do the launch of my newest blog feature--the weekly media breakdown. Which is basically what I've been doing the last few weeks anyway, where I talk about books, movies, and games I've been grooving on lately.
I am a (moderately) Old Person. So yes, I am allowed to use phrases like grooving on. You might also note--pursuant to my quest to chunkify my writing--that I am using em-dashes, parenthesis, italics, quotes, semicolons, and colons liberally. You are my punctuation guinea pigs; I hope to make you squeal. With delight, of course. Literary delight.
Moving on, Here is my 2012 Challenge List--otherwise known as the forties. Which is a reference to one of my favorite songs, 40oz. to Freedom, by Sublime. And yes, that is the correct spelling. No space between 40 and oz.; no capital o in oz. either. Thank you Internet search engine.
Also, their are lotsa fours and multiples of fours and other math stuff.
1 - Write 400,000 words of new fiction this year. Otherwise known as the "Beat Michael Stackpole's 2011 Wordcount--or BMS2W--Challenge". This breaks down to about 2k a day on weekdays. I hope to write 3 novels as part of that 400k, which will cover about 2.5 k or so. The rest will be short stories/novellas. This challenge is roughly equivalent to doing NaNoWriMo two out of every three months, which is kind of nuts. Wish me luck.
2 - Self-epub 40 titles. I will likely not count five and ten story collections towards this goal, unless time gets tight. :) Roughly equivalent to three titles every four weeks, or four a month with two months off. Again, fairly aggressive. I'm starting to get scared.
3 - Lose 40 lbs. Which, not coincidently, is about how much weight I've gained since turning into an Old Person. Works out to about a pound a week, with the occasional week off. I am easing into a regular jogging/workout schedule, plus cutting back on snacking. In many ways his is the easiest challenge. Excepting that time to work out is difficult to come by for a blazing pen such as myself.
I clearly have no grasp of the insanity I'm signing myself up for.
4 - Of course there's a four! Be 40% nicer to people. This one is a little tough to quantify, and/or judge success; I'll admit that. Roughly, as long as one out of every two times I say something complimentary instead of choking someone out, I win. Important Note--I only choke people out in my imagination.
So there you have it, quite a full plate for Your's Truly this year. I'll be giving regular updates/running totals to keep myself honest and to (hopefully) provide inspiration for those out there that are struggling like myself. Note the lack of any goal related to submissions. I will continue to send some of my stories off to paying markets (magazines, mainly), but my focus is shifting.
Announcer: Aaannnd now...
cue drumroll
Announcer continues: The Weekly... Media... Breakdown... (echo: own... own... own...)
As promised--Fortune Street. This is a Wii game, featuring characters and themed boards from The Mario and Dragon Quest series. Gameplay is like a much deeper version of Monopoly, and is skill-based (while featuring just enough luck to keep things interesting.) If you love statistics/combinatorial type stuff, Mario/Dragon Quest, property buying and trading games, and are a super-nerd (like me), this game is for you.
Each game takes a few hours and there is no twitch-type action. There are a few minigames, but they are entirely luck based, with no real player input. This game is all strategy and horse-trading, folks. There is an easy mode, with reduced complexity, but I haven't bothered with it. The full game is where it's at. I haven't tried playing with other humans; the AI is good enough for me so far. But apparently you can play online, so I might try that out later.
Also, when you finish games you win stamps, which can be spent on outfits for your Mii (avatar.) I know, I know. But it is squee-ishly fun to dress your Mii up in a Santa suit with pink butterfly wings. Seriously, I love this game.
Other stuff - I finished 11/22/63. Writing was great throughout; ending was a bit meh. Worth reading anyway. 'Nuff said. Just watched Contagion; it was decent. Some fun virus stuff that might be useful for SF/Thriller writers. Hangover 2 - fun if you like jokes about sexparts. This series is basically the raunchier version of American Pie, which was the raunchy version of Porky's, and so on.
That about does it for this week. By next time I'll be reading something new; dunno what yet. See you then.
I am going to go ahead an tackle the resolutions (in the form of challenges, natch) first, then do the launch of my newest blog feature--the weekly media breakdown. Which is basically what I've been doing the last few weeks anyway, where I talk about books, movies, and games I've been grooving on lately.
I am a (moderately) Old Person. So yes, I am allowed to use phrases like grooving on. You might also note--pursuant to my quest to chunkify my writing--that I am using em-dashes, parenthesis, italics, quotes, semicolons, and colons liberally. You are my punctuation guinea pigs; I hope to make you squeal. With delight, of course. Literary delight.
Moving on, Here is my 2012 Challenge List--otherwise known as the forties. Which is a reference to one of my favorite songs, 40oz. to Freedom, by Sublime. And yes, that is the correct spelling. No space between 40 and oz.; no capital o in oz. either. Thank you Internet search engine.
Also, their are lotsa fours and multiples of fours and other math stuff.
1 - Write 400,000 words of new fiction this year. Otherwise known as the "Beat Michael Stackpole's 2011 Wordcount--or BMS2W--Challenge". This breaks down to about 2k a day on weekdays. I hope to write 3 novels as part of that 400k, which will cover about 2.5 k or so. The rest will be short stories/novellas. This challenge is roughly equivalent to doing NaNoWriMo two out of every three months, which is kind of nuts. Wish me luck.
2 - Self-epub 40 titles. I will likely not count five and ten story collections towards this goal, unless time gets tight. :) Roughly equivalent to three titles every four weeks, or four a month with two months off. Again, fairly aggressive. I'm starting to get scared.
3 - Lose 40 lbs. Which, not coincidently, is about how much weight I've gained since turning into an Old Person. Works out to about a pound a week, with the occasional week off. I am easing into a regular jogging/workout schedule, plus cutting back on snacking. In many ways his is the easiest challenge. Excepting that time to work out is difficult to come by for a blazing pen such as myself.
I clearly have no grasp of the insanity I'm signing myself up for.
4 - Of course there's a four! Be 40% nicer to people. This one is a little tough to quantify, and/or judge success; I'll admit that. Roughly, as long as one out of every two times I say something complimentary instead of choking someone out, I win. Important Note--I only choke people out in my imagination.
So there you have it, quite a full plate for Your's Truly this year. I'll be giving regular updates/running totals to keep myself honest and to (hopefully) provide inspiration for those out there that are struggling like myself. Note the lack of any goal related to submissions. I will continue to send some of my stories off to paying markets (magazines, mainly), but my focus is shifting.
Announcer: Aaannnd now...
cue drumroll
Announcer continues: The Weekly... Media... Breakdown... (echo: own... own... own...)
As promised--Fortune Street. This is a Wii game, featuring characters and themed boards from The Mario and Dragon Quest series. Gameplay is like a much deeper version of Monopoly, and is skill-based (while featuring just enough luck to keep things interesting.) If you love statistics/combinatorial type stuff, Mario/Dragon Quest, property buying and trading games, and are a super-nerd (like me), this game is for you.
Each game takes a few hours and there is no twitch-type action. There are a few minigames, but they are entirely luck based, with no real player input. This game is all strategy and horse-trading, folks. There is an easy mode, with reduced complexity, but I haven't bothered with it. The full game is where it's at. I haven't tried playing with other humans; the AI is good enough for me so far. But apparently you can play online, so I might try that out later.
Also, when you finish games you win stamps, which can be spent on outfits for your Mii (avatar.) I know, I know. But it is squee-ishly fun to dress your Mii up in a Santa suit with pink butterfly wings. Seriously, I love this game.
Other stuff - I finished 11/22/63. Writing was great throughout; ending was a bit meh. Worth reading anyway. 'Nuff said. Just watched Contagion; it was decent. Some fun virus stuff that might be useful for SF/Thriller writers. Hangover 2 - fun if you like jokes about sexparts. This series is basically the raunchier version of American Pie, which was the raunchy version of Porky's, and so on.
That about does it for this week. By next time I'll be reading something new; dunno what yet. See you then.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Merry X-Day, More King Fanboying, and Maybe I'm Just Lazy
I find trying to figure out which holiday exhortation to use for any particular audience incredibly annoying. Christmas? Holidays? Kwanzanukah? Grr... Happy holidays was supposed to solve the whole mess, but it feels impersonal and overly PC.
So...
In an effort to live by Bob's rule (Don't just eat that hamburger, eat the HELL out of it!), I have decided to just wish everyone a Merry X-Day. I realize X-Day sounds vaguely like foreboding, maybe the day the mutant uprising kicks off, or the Mayan prophecies come true, or the UFOs descend from Mars to consume our Moms. This menacing cheerfulness is just a happy bonus. The vague part was really what I was after.
So Merry X-Day, everybody. May the cattle of your heart remain unmutilated, and your inner Earth shy from climate change. Also, I hope you get cool loot. Or your two front teeth. Or--if you're a thieving tooth fairy--a pair of pliers and somebody else's two front teeth.
I may have been reading too much of Chuck Wendig's blog. I'm only so-so on what he has to say, but the way he says it is f-ing hilarious. Only he would never abbreviate f-ing as f-ing. Other censored phrases he would never use likely include c-ck g-rgler, b--ver d-ck, -nal p-ssy h-le, and so on. So, fair warning there, but go check him out.
Moving on: I've made it about 1/4 of the way through 11/22/63 by Stephen King. Still loving it. Page-turning, can't-put-it-down loving it. Highly recommended. I find the treatment of time-travel--from a horror perspective rather than SF perspective--especially interesting. Also, man can this guy write. A lot can be learned here from how he structures his phrases.
I'm not gonna spend much more time on this, but it bears repeating--King's writing is Chunky. Long-short, florid-simple, occasional and effective use of tricks like repetition, just a wonderful variety, nice and chewy. I'm going to be spending time rereading this book in analytical mode when I 'm done reading it for fun.
Final stop on today's choo-choo of fun: I have written almost nothing this week. A couple of poems, which I consider fun-but-not-really-productive. IE, good luck selling those, you bozo. I keep a daily log, and I've mostly kept up with that this week. My writing calender (what I use in place of something modern like a spreadsheet) is a long row of zeros.
Part of my excuse is that I've been sick, as has the rest of my family. Also, NaNoWriMo burnout should be good for some slack. Still. I may have to face the fact that I am just lazy. Which is No Good.
A successful writing career (the goal of this whole exercise--IE, not working a shitty day job for the rest of my life) requires working my ass off. Not lounging it off. So I am going to have to do something about that.
My goal for next year involves doubling my wordcount from this year, what I'm calling the “Beat Michael Stackpole’s 2011 Wordcount Challenge” (or BMS2W Challenge, which sounds like a German car), which I announced in the comments section of this blog post, because I got the minerals. So now the only question is whether the threat of public humiliation can overcome my natural inertia, AKA the laziness of a depressed cat on Valium.
We'll see.
And I'll see you next week, likely early again (because of Pounding-hangover-I-did-what-to-the-dog? Day--termed New Year's Day in more civilized places.)
So...
In an effort to live by Bob's rule (Don't just eat that hamburger, eat the HELL out of it!), I have decided to just wish everyone a Merry X-Day. I realize X-Day sounds vaguely like foreboding, maybe the day the mutant uprising kicks off, or the Mayan prophecies come true, or the UFOs descend from Mars to consume our Moms. This menacing cheerfulness is just a happy bonus. The vague part was really what I was after.
So Merry X-Day, everybody. May the cattle of your heart remain unmutilated, and your inner Earth shy from climate change. Also, I hope you get cool loot. Or your two front teeth. Or--if you're a thieving tooth fairy--a pair of pliers and somebody else's two front teeth.
I may have been reading too much of Chuck Wendig's blog. I'm only so-so on what he has to say, but the way he says it is f-ing hilarious. Only he would never abbreviate f-ing as f-ing. Other censored phrases he would never use likely include c-ck g-rgler, b--ver d-ck, -nal p-ssy h-le, and so on. So, fair warning there, but go check him out.
Moving on: I've made it about 1/4 of the way through 11/22/63 by Stephen King. Still loving it. Page-turning, can't-put-it-down loving it. Highly recommended. I find the treatment of time-travel--from a horror perspective rather than SF perspective--especially interesting. Also, man can this guy write. A lot can be learned here from how he structures his phrases.
I'm not gonna spend much more time on this, but it bears repeating--King's writing is Chunky. Long-short, florid-simple, occasional and effective use of tricks like repetition, just a wonderful variety, nice and chewy. I'm going to be spending time rereading this book in analytical mode when I 'm done reading it for fun.
Final stop on today's choo-choo of fun: I have written almost nothing this week. A couple of poems, which I consider fun-but-not-really-productive. IE, good luck selling those, you bozo. I keep a daily log, and I've mostly kept up with that this week. My writing calender (what I use in place of something modern like a spreadsheet) is a long row of zeros.
Part of my excuse is that I've been sick, as has the rest of my family. Also, NaNoWriMo burnout should be good for some slack. Still. I may have to face the fact that I am just lazy. Which is No Good.
A successful writing career (the goal of this whole exercise--IE, not working a shitty day job for the rest of my life) requires working my ass off. Not lounging it off. So I am going to have to do something about that.
My goal for next year involves doubling my wordcount from this year, what I'm calling the “Beat Michael Stackpole’s 2011 Wordcount Challenge” (or BMS2W Challenge, which sounds like a German car), which I announced in the comments section of this blog post, because I got the minerals. So now the only question is whether the threat of public humiliation can overcome my natural inertia, AKA the laziness of a depressed cat on Valium.
We'll see.
And I'll see you next week, likely early again (because of Pounding-hangover-I-did-what-to-the-dog? Day--termed New Year's Day in more civilized places.)
Sunday, December 18, 2011
The Wind Beneath My Whine, Also Stephen King and 11/22/63
I am not entirely sure what that title means just yet, but I suspect we're going to find out.
Before I get to the self-critical moaning: congratulations are in order. For me I mean. Goofball. I finished my MS! Yippee-dippee woodlee-hoo! I am a Real Writer now, right?
Granted--and we've talked about this--it's just a zero draft. It needs some heavy edits before it's ready to be seen by anyone, and I'm sure it will want more after that. But still...
But still...
I finished a novel. I am so absolutely, ravingly, ridiculously proud of myself. More importantly, now that I have proven to myself that I am, in fact, capable of writing an entire novel, I can get started on the next one. But maybe not this month.
My current idea is to do at least two NaNo's next year, maybe three or four. Okay, I really want to do four. But I don't want to set my goals unrealistically high. If I do one in March, then Camp Nano in July, Then regular NaNo, that might work out pretty well.
My writing schedule has still been pretty slack this week, but I did manage to turn out the last chunk of the MS, most of a new short, plus a poem. Yep, first poetry I've written in nearly ten years. No idea why I haven't had anything to say in that form, but I haven't. Until now.
Still not up and running on all cylinders, but at least I'm sitting in the chair again. Which is the most important thing--apply butt to chair is all a writer really needs by way of advice on writing.
I have also been doing some reading, Stephen King's 11/22/63. I'm not far into it, so I'm not ready to make any pronouncements about the plot. But the writing is absolutely gorgeous. Not in a flowery way, or overly descriptive or ornate way. In a chunky way.
One of the flaws in my own writing is a tendency to repeat too few of the same sentence structures too many times. King's prose ducks and weaves, tending toward the long-winded but keeping things interesting by constantly breaking things up, doing things differently. I'm really digging it.
My name for it--Chunky Writing. Like peanut butter. I want my writing to be Chunky Writing.
So yeah. I've gotten to a point in my own writing where I'm definitely seeing a need to increase my awareness of grammar and punctuation, so I can vary my phrasing more. I want my Writing to show off and enhance my Storytelling, propelling it forward rather than holding it back. Which maybe isn't exactly a job for peanut butter, but whatever. Work with me here.
This new focus/area to improve/awareness can now go on the To Do pile, along with more writing by voice recorder, self epubbing weekly, writing new short fiction, and on and on and on.
If finishing my first MS is the Wind, that last paragraph, folks, is the Whine. Each depends on the other. I need accomplishments and success to keep up my pace, and I need a frenetic pace with high expectations to get anything done.
Speaking of which, I need to get back to work. So thanks for reading, and I'll see you next week.
Before I get to the self-critical moaning: congratulations are in order. For me I mean. Goofball. I finished my MS! Yippee-dippee woodlee-hoo! I am a Real Writer now, right?
Granted--and we've talked about this--it's just a zero draft. It needs some heavy edits before it's ready to be seen by anyone, and I'm sure it will want more after that. But still...
But still...
I finished a novel. I am so absolutely, ravingly, ridiculously proud of myself. More importantly, now that I have proven to myself that I am, in fact, capable of writing an entire novel, I can get started on the next one. But maybe not this month.
My current idea is to do at least two NaNo's next year, maybe three or four. Okay, I really want to do four. But I don't want to set my goals unrealistically high. If I do one in March, then Camp Nano in July, Then regular NaNo, that might work out pretty well.
My writing schedule has still been pretty slack this week, but I did manage to turn out the last chunk of the MS, most of a new short, plus a poem. Yep, first poetry I've written in nearly ten years. No idea why I haven't had anything to say in that form, but I haven't. Until now.
Still not up and running on all cylinders, but at least I'm sitting in the chair again. Which is the most important thing--apply butt to chair is all a writer really needs by way of advice on writing.
I have also been doing some reading, Stephen King's 11/22/63. I'm not far into it, so I'm not ready to make any pronouncements about the plot. But the writing is absolutely gorgeous. Not in a flowery way, or overly descriptive or ornate way. In a chunky way.
One of the flaws in my own writing is a tendency to repeat too few of the same sentence structures too many times. King's prose ducks and weaves, tending toward the long-winded but keeping things interesting by constantly breaking things up, doing things differently. I'm really digging it.
My name for it--Chunky Writing. Like peanut butter. I want my writing to be Chunky Writing.
So yeah. I've gotten to a point in my own writing where I'm definitely seeing a need to increase my awareness of grammar and punctuation, so I can vary my phrasing more. I want my Writing to show off and enhance my Storytelling, propelling it forward rather than holding it back. Which maybe isn't exactly a job for peanut butter, but whatever. Work with me here.
This new focus/area to improve/awareness can now go on the To Do pile, along with more writing by voice recorder, self epubbing weekly, writing new short fiction, and on and on and on.
If finishing my first MS is the Wind, that last paragraph, folks, is the Whine. Each depends on the other. I need accomplishments and success to keep up my pace, and I need a frenetic pace with high expectations to get anything done.
Speaking of which, I need to get back to work. So thanks for reading, and I'll see you next week.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
I Have Been a Very Bad Boy
Uhggg...
Apparently my ability to complete a novel is far weaker than my ability to write most of one. My Challenge this week was simple--finish my NaNo novel by writing the last four chapters. I failed miserably.
Okay, not miserably. But not good, either. I managed to get my butt in the chair and actually write only one day this week. Which makes a grand total of two days I have written since NaNo.
Sad, huh?
I take solace in the fact that I'm getting lots of other things done, like playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. And reading (in a nice, hot, bubbly tub.) I also changed a flat on the side of the freeway, got new tires, disposed of the old tires, and put away the air compressor I've had to use every other morning for the last few months.
I've come up with an equation for this: Exhaustion + Life Roll = NoNoWriMo.
So, yeah. Time spent on non-writing has been really nice, but. But, but, but. I would have been far better served to have kept going as if NaNo wasn't done, rather than taking the small break that turned into a longish break.
On the other hand, I got two chunks done. which means I'm only two from the end. Assuming those two chunks tare enough to tie everything together, of course. I think so, but...
This brings up another point. Since this is my first novel, this is my first novel ending. I'm not real sure how this whole ending a novel thing is supposed to go. I wonder if perhaps I'm delaying the inevitable, out of either fear or attachment?
Anyhoo, I need to finish, and soon. I already know the rest of the story. The chunks are outlined. This is a four-to-six hour job now. No reason not to be done by mid-week.
--cue theme to Rocky--
The real kicker is all the stuff I want to be getting done that's on hold until I finish this MS. Which brings up the rest of today's post--future challenges.
I've already starting working on writing short stories by voice recorder. I have a well developed idea, and one story started already. My goal is to complete one short a week, in addition to reinstating the Day Off Story Challenge. I'm going to bundle all these together into one challenge--The Two A Week Story Challenge, AKA 100 in 2012 (cutting myself a little slack, in order to have a nice round number.)
Yep, I'm not actually starting until 2012. Gotta finish that MS, you know. The 100 in 2012 challenge will ensure that I write at least 200k or so. I also want to write a few more novels. Hopefully I can hit somewhere between 360k and 720k for the year (between 1k and 2k a day, or 3k a day during the week and weekends off.)
I am still considering how the self-epub challenge will run, but I'm definitely getting started on some version of that as soon as this MS is finished. Short stories and collections, at least one a week, are the basic plan. More TBA, as was the case last week.
Final thoughts--everyone needs a break sometime, failure is just another excuse to try harder, appreciate every accomplishment, and the only way to lose is to quit.
See you next week.
Apparently my ability to complete a novel is far weaker than my ability to write most of one. My Challenge this week was simple--finish my NaNo novel by writing the last four chapters. I failed miserably.
Okay, not miserably. But not good, either. I managed to get my butt in the chair and actually write only one day this week. Which makes a grand total of two days I have written since NaNo.
Sad, huh?
I take solace in the fact that I'm getting lots of other things done, like playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. And reading (in a nice, hot, bubbly tub.) I also changed a flat on the side of the freeway, got new tires, disposed of the old tires, and put away the air compressor I've had to use every other morning for the last few months.
I've come up with an equation for this: Exhaustion + Life Roll = NoNoWriMo.
So, yeah. Time spent on non-writing has been really nice, but. But, but, but. I would have been far better served to have kept going as if NaNo wasn't done, rather than taking the small break that turned into a longish break.
On the other hand, I got two chunks done. which means I'm only two from the end. Assuming those two chunks tare enough to tie everything together, of course. I think so, but...
This brings up another point. Since this is my first novel, this is my first novel ending. I'm not real sure how this whole ending a novel thing is supposed to go. I wonder if perhaps I'm delaying the inevitable, out of either fear or attachment?
Anyhoo, I need to finish, and soon. I already know the rest of the story. The chunks are outlined. This is a four-to-six hour job now. No reason not to be done by mid-week.
--cue theme to Rocky--
The real kicker is all the stuff I want to be getting done that's on hold until I finish this MS. Which brings up the rest of today's post--future challenges.
I've already starting working on writing short stories by voice recorder. I have a well developed idea, and one story started already. My goal is to complete one short a week, in addition to reinstating the Day Off Story Challenge. I'm going to bundle all these together into one challenge--The Two A Week Story Challenge, AKA 100 in 2012 (cutting myself a little slack, in order to have a nice round number.)
Yep, I'm not actually starting until 2012. Gotta finish that MS, you know. The 100 in 2012 challenge will ensure that I write at least 200k or so. I also want to write a few more novels. Hopefully I can hit somewhere between 360k and 720k for the year (between 1k and 2k a day, or 3k a day during the week and weekends off.)
I am still considering how the self-epub challenge will run, but I'm definitely getting started on some version of that as soon as this MS is finished. Short stories and collections, at least one a week, are the basic plan. More TBA, as was the case last week.
Final thoughts--everyone needs a break sometime, failure is just another excuse to try harder, appreciate every accomplishment, and the only way to lose is to quit.
See you next week.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Easy-Does-It vs Middle-of-the-Road vs Oversetting
Today's post is a binary post. As in, there are two kinds of X: Y and Z. Since this is also a beginning writer's blog, I am naturally going to tell you which of the two kinds of X works for me.
But first you might want to know what, exactly, X--and thus our subject--is, hrmm? You might also wonder why I'm being so obtuse, and rightly so. The answer to that question comes later.
Today's post is about goals and goal-setting. Humans naturally set goals; every time someone decides to do something, they've set a goal. Generally, these short-term goals are easy, or at least not too difficult. Writer's example: I'm going to sit down and write for a while (an hour, 1k words, a page, a chapter.)
When we set clusters of medium-to-long-term goals (termed a Challenge), we get into more difficult territory. This sort of goal-setting requires more determination, discipline, and effort. Writer's example: I'm going to write 1k words a day (a short story every week, 4 novels this year, win NaNoWriMo.)
Challenges are a great way to get your butt in gear, by giving yourself a concrete set of attainable goals to work towards. The best Challenges also have the added benefit of having a plan-of-action built in. "Become a better writer" is a difficult to measure, and thus "win", goal. "Write a short story every week" is clear and measurable.
Different personalities do better with different forms of motivation. Some people might do best by setting their goals low (easy-does-it.) This ensures that they succeed, helping to build confidence. I like to set my goals at the highest level I think I can achieve, but not unrealistically out of reach--a middle-of-the-road approach. I know others who set their goals ridiculously high, knowing they won't make them, but also knowing they won't accomplish anything if they don't "overset."
Yes, I know I said all that binary stuff at the beginning. And here I went and gave three different kinds of goal-setting (trinary?). This is why I am a writer and not a mathematician.
Once you understand what kind of goal-setter you are, you can tailor your Challenges to what suits your personality best. The important thing is that you are setting Challenges. Writing is like exercising; your writing muscle needs to be worked out, not just maintained. And especially not allowed to atrophy.
Personal updates and lessons learned this week:
Writing my NaNo novel has taught me that I can create suspense and plot hooks by leaving little mysteries in my writing, to be explained later. Even if the explanation is something innocuous, holding a little back for later helps maintain interest. And sometimes, silly little mysteries morph into major plot points, because I gave myself something to work with early on.
I still haven't finished my MS. I know the gist of the rest of the story, and only have a few chunks left to write, but life (and burnout) has been getting in the way. Which is a shame because I am so looking forward to celebrating my first completed MS (first completed zero-draft, to be clear.) I will be done by next Sunday, I am sure.
In fact, small challenge--Micro-NaNo. Or NaNoFiWe (National Novel Finishing Week.) I will finish my MS (at least 4 chunks and 8k) by next Sunday.
Coming up: Once NaNoFiWe is done, I plan on starting a regular self-epub challenge, details TBA, as well as starting a write-by-voice-recorder daily challenge (for short stories.) Finally, I plan on re-outlining my zero-draft, in preparation for rewrites to make the MS a coherent, readable story.
But first you might want to know what, exactly, X--and thus our subject--is, hrmm? You might also wonder why I'm being so obtuse, and rightly so. The answer to that question comes later.
Today's post is about goals and goal-setting. Humans naturally set goals; every time someone decides to do something, they've set a goal. Generally, these short-term goals are easy, or at least not too difficult. Writer's example: I'm going to sit down and write for a while (an hour, 1k words, a page, a chapter.)
When we set clusters of medium-to-long-term goals (termed a Challenge), we get into more difficult territory. This sort of goal-setting requires more determination, discipline, and effort. Writer's example: I'm going to write 1k words a day (a short story every week, 4 novels this year, win NaNoWriMo.)
Challenges are a great way to get your butt in gear, by giving yourself a concrete set of attainable goals to work towards. The best Challenges also have the added benefit of having a plan-of-action built in. "Become a better writer" is a difficult to measure, and thus "win", goal. "Write a short story every week" is clear and measurable.
Different personalities do better with different forms of motivation. Some people might do best by setting their goals low (easy-does-it.) This ensures that they succeed, helping to build confidence. I like to set my goals at the highest level I think I can achieve, but not unrealistically out of reach--a middle-of-the-road approach. I know others who set their goals ridiculously high, knowing they won't make them, but also knowing they won't accomplish anything if they don't "overset."
Yes, I know I said all that binary stuff at the beginning. And here I went and gave three different kinds of goal-setting (trinary?). This is why I am a writer and not a mathematician.
Once you understand what kind of goal-setter you are, you can tailor your Challenges to what suits your personality best. The important thing is that you are setting Challenges. Writing is like exercising; your writing muscle needs to be worked out, not just maintained. And especially not allowed to atrophy.
Personal updates and lessons learned this week:
Writing my NaNo novel has taught me that I can create suspense and plot hooks by leaving little mysteries in my writing, to be explained later. Even if the explanation is something innocuous, holding a little back for later helps maintain interest. And sometimes, silly little mysteries morph into major plot points, because I gave myself something to work with early on.
I still haven't finished my MS. I know the gist of the rest of the story, and only have a few chunks left to write, but life (and burnout) has been getting in the way. Which is a shame because I am so looking forward to celebrating my first completed MS (first completed zero-draft, to be clear.) I will be done by next Sunday, I am sure.
In fact, small challenge--Micro-NaNo. Or NaNoFiWe (National Novel Finishing Week.) I will finish my MS (at least 4 chunks and 8k) by next Sunday.
Coming up: Once NaNoFiWe is done, I plan on starting a regular self-epub challenge, details TBA, as well as starting a write-by-voice-recorder daily challenge (for short stories.) Finally, I plan on re-outlining my zero-draft, in preparation for rewrites to make the MS a coherent, readable story.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
NaNoWriMo Foursies and Looking Ahead
This blog post is all about what many believe is the hardest part of NaNoWriMo (hereafter NaNo)--the dreaded fourth week, when nearly a month's worth of frantic scribbling, missed sleep, and fraying nerves combine to wreck many an author's progress.
Nah, just playing. If you made it past week three you're probably over the mid-novel hump and headed into the homestretch. It only gets easier from here on out. You've tuned up your engine to a steady rumble, the words are flowing, and all your worries are over.
So, without further delay, first things first--I really, really hope everyone's NaNo is going as well as mine. I am currently around 57k, and over 2/3rds of the way through my MS. I have already won, according to the official goal of NaNo (50k.) I should hit my personal par of 60k in 2 more days, ahead of schedule. Finishing my MS will likely take another week or so, so I am a little behind there. I blame this on the three extra chunks I've added.
I am extremely excited to have made it this far, and also very proud of myself for the official win. Less than a month ago writing a novel, of any length or quality, seemed like a monumental task. Now it just seems like another thing I can do if i put my nose to the grindstone. This new self-confidence will serve me well when I start the next MS. Yep, you heard me right. This is just the first of many books I hope to write.
All of this goes to Goals and Intentions, which is one of the things I want to highlight today. As the actual writing has gotten easier, I have had more mind-space available to figure out where to go next. My original intent for this NaNo, which I wasn't at all sure I could accomplish, was to finish a novel-length MS, no more and no less. I will have done this very soon, I am absolutely confident of that now. So what am I going to do with the MS, and what am I going to do next?
I am not sure if the MS is good enough to be worth going back and editing into a coherent first draft (this is a zero draft, remember.) Even so, I will likely go ahead and do that anyway, for practice if nothing else. I've learned a huge amount about story-telling and structure from this process, I intend to apply that to my next MS by doing a much more in depth outline beforehand. In the interest of practice, once again, I plan on going back and drafting an outline of the current MS, as well as every kind of story analysis I can think of.
Basically, I want to use this work as a springboard to a better understanding of noveling as a whole. It took me several short stories to even begin to be happy with my short story skills, I don't see any reason that novel writing should take any less effort.
Last week I said that 2k a day was burning me out, and i didn't think it was sustainable. I've reversed my opinion on this. In short, practice may not have made perfect, but it sure has made easier. I've also seen the quality of my writing improve, becoming much closer to finished quality. The latter portions of this MS will require less editing than the beginning chunks.
All of this is great, because I intend to be a fast, prolific writer, as well as a good one (no modesty there, huh?) The only way to write both fast and well is to practice writing both fast and well. Not that I'm there yet, but I hope to get there.
It's amazing what you can accomplish when you sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen for hours a day, refusing to get up until you finish your wordcount.
Nah, just playing. If you made it past week three you're probably over the mid-novel hump and headed into the homestretch. It only gets easier from here on out. You've tuned up your engine to a steady rumble, the words are flowing, and all your worries are over.
So, without further delay, first things first--I really, really hope everyone's NaNo is going as well as mine. I am currently around 57k, and over 2/3rds of the way through my MS. I have already won, according to the official goal of NaNo (50k.) I should hit my personal par of 60k in 2 more days, ahead of schedule. Finishing my MS will likely take another week or so, so I am a little behind there. I blame this on the three extra chunks I've added.
I am extremely excited to have made it this far, and also very proud of myself for the official win. Less than a month ago writing a novel, of any length or quality, seemed like a monumental task. Now it just seems like another thing I can do if i put my nose to the grindstone. This new self-confidence will serve me well when I start the next MS. Yep, you heard me right. This is just the first of many books I hope to write.
All of this goes to Goals and Intentions, which is one of the things I want to highlight today. As the actual writing has gotten easier, I have had more mind-space available to figure out where to go next. My original intent for this NaNo, which I wasn't at all sure I could accomplish, was to finish a novel-length MS, no more and no less. I will have done this very soon, I am absolutely confident of that now. So what am I going to do with the MS, and what am I going to do next?
I am not sure if the MS is good enough to be worth going back and editing into a coherent first draft (this is a zero draft, remember.) Even so, I will likely go ahead and do that anyway, for practice if nothing else. I've learned a huge amount about story-telling and structure from this process, I intend to apply that to my next MS by doing a much more in depth outline beforehand. In the interest of practice, once again, I plan on going back and drafting an outline of the current MS, as well as every kind of story analysis I can think of.
Basically, I want to use this work as a springboard to a better understanding of noveling as a whole. It took me several short stories to even begin to be happy with my short story skills, I don't see any reason that novel writing should take any less effort.
Last week I said that 2k a day was burning me out, and i didn't think it was sustainable. I've reversed my opinion on this. In short, practice may not have made perfect, but it sure has made easier. I've also seen the quality of my writing improve, becoming much closer to finished quality. The latter portions of this MS will require less editing than the beginning chunks.
All of this is great, because I intend to be a fast, prolific writer, as well as a good one (no modesty there, huh?) The only way to write both fast and well is to practice writing both fast and well. Not that I'm there yet, but I hope to get there.
It's amazing what you can accomplish when you sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen for hours a day, refusing to get up until you finish your wordcount.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
NaNoWriMo Part the Third
Week three of NaNoWriMo (hereafter NaNo) is drawing to a close. Like the last two weeks, I want to talk about how the experience has been for me. Particularly the lessons I've learned, what has worked and what hasn't. As always, my hope is to provide some encouragement, as well as a sense of solidarity. We're all in this together!
First things first. I am currently at 44.6K. about 2K of that is because of the Double Day I took back in week one. The rest is from doing my best to go over par every day, plus words I've added to each chunk as I've reread them. So I am only a few days from winning NaNo by the official count of 50k. I should win by my par of 60k a few days early, too.
I generally read the last two chunks before I start writing, just to get my head back in the story. I try not to do any actually editing (rewriting for clarity or style), just get a sense of the story's flow. I've noticed that I am spending more time pulling up old chunks to recall what happened earlier, in the dim past of weeks one and two.
I've also noticed that my characters have changed, sometimes radically, from my original conceptions. When I go back and rewrite, I will have to do more than just fix awkward sentences. Since I intend to add a lot more to each section of each chunk (chunklets?) this shouldn't prove to be much of a hassle.
My original outline was really sketchy, intentionally so. I wanted some kind of arc, plus enough idea kickstarters to maintain momentum all the way to the end of the book. Much of what I wrote in that outline early on I am reinterpreting now, and some of it I'm just ignoring. Hopefully I'll do a more complete outline (as well as prep work in general) on the next novel.
Not being organized is OK for this draft, though. The main intention here is to finish a novel, period. Learning exactly what goes into a novel is a strong secondary goal, and that knowledge will help me with the next book. I am going to go back and do a synopsis and a detailed outline when this story is done, so I have a clear idea of my novel's structure.
I've learned a lot from what I've written so far. The rate of "figuring things out" seems to be accelerating each day, more like a curve than regular growth. My chunklets are getting longer and easier to write, although the chunks themselves are generally still just a little over par.
If I had it to do over again, I would have organized by chunklets rather than chunks. I would have saved each one as a clearly labeled (like an outline summary) and numbered individual file. I also will make a new outline as I write next time, so I can use that for story structure reference more easily.
Even so, the chunk system has worked really well, both to motivate me and to keep me from having to wade through a really long .doc every day before starting to produce.
The mindset I detailed above, of focusing on finishing rather than quality, has been key. The zero draft, or what I'm now referring to as the Less-Than-Zero draft, has kept me writing when I would have quit out of disgust at my storytelling skills. But a writer learns by writing. So keeping at it is not only giving me a complete draft, its teaching me how to write the next one better.
And that's what it's all about. As a writer, and especially as a beginner, I have to be focused on the next story, not the last one. Looking ahead is what will get me past the first million words and into the good stuff.
As far as what hasn't worked (and still isn't), my biggest problem right now is sleep deprivation. Between work and home, there just isn't enough time to write for me to hit my pars without me sacrificing some sleep. Over the short term (NaNo) this is doable, but over the long term I am going to have to scale back my pars. 2k a day every day is not sustainable for me, especially because it leaves no time for editing or epubbing. In other words, I'm borrowing from next month to pay for this month.
The hardest part of my day is sitting down in front of a blank page. my outline is so unrefined that I am spending a lot of writing time just figuring out what happens next. I adressed this above. Next time i want a far more detailed and clear outline. I believe I will be able to write faster and a higher quality prose with a better map.
Finally, surfing the Internet kills my writing time. Twitter, I'm especially looking at you. But everyone already knows that, right?
So that's what I've got for this week. Overall things are going well, better than I expected even. I hope your NaNo is just as awesome. Heck, I hope your NaNo is even awesomer. <--zero draft style grammar.
First things first. I am currently at 44.6K. about 2K of that is because of the Double Day I took back in week one. The rest is from doing my best to go over par every day, plus words I've added to each chunk as I've reread them. So I am only a few days from winning NaNo by the official count of 50k. I should win by my par of 60k a few days early, too.
I generally read the last two chunks before I start writing, just to get my head back in the story. I try not to do any actually editing (rewriting for clarity or style), just get a sense of the story's flow. I've noticed that I am spending more time pulling up old chunks to recall what happened earlier, in the dim past of weeks one and two.
I've also noticed that my characters have changed, sometimes radically, from my original conceptions. When I go back and rewrite, I will have to do more than just fix awkward sentences. Since I intend to add a lot more to each section of each chunk (chunklets?) this shouldn't prove to be much of a hassle.
My original outline was really sketchy, intentionally so. I wanted some kind of arc, plus enough idea kickstarters to maintain momentum all the way to the end of the book. Much of what I wrote in that outline early on I am reinterpreting now, and some of it I'm just ignoring. Hopefully I'll do a more complete outline (as well as prep work in general) on the next novel.
Not being organized is OK for this draft, though. The main intention here is to finish a novel, period. Learning exactly what goes into a novel is a strong secondary goal, and that knowledge will help me with the next book. I am going to go back and do a synopsis and a detailed outline when this story is done, so I have a clear idea of my novel's structure.
I've learned a lot from what I've written so far. The rate of "figuring things out" seems to be accelerating each day, more like a curve than regular growth. My chunklets are getting longer and easier to write, although the chunks themselves are generally still just a little over par.
If I had it to do over again, I would have organized by chunklets rather than chunks. I would have saved each one as a clearly labeled (like an outline summary) and numbered individual file. I also will make a new outline as I write next time, so I can use that for story structure reference more easily.
Even so, the chunk system has worked really well, both to motivate me and to keep me from having to wade through a really long .doc every day before starting to produce.
The mindset I detailed above, of focusing on finishing rather than quality, has been key. The zero draft, or what I'm now referring to as the Less-Than-Zero draft, has kept me writing when I would have quit out of disgust at my storytelling skills. But a writer learns by writing. So keeping at it is not only giving me a complete draft, its teaching me how to write the next one better.
And that's what it's all about. As a writer, and especially as a beginner, I have to be focused on the next story, not the last one. Looking ahead is what will get me past the first million words and into the good stuff.
As far as what hasn't worked (and still isn't), my biggest problem right now is sleep deprivation. Between work and home, there just isn't enough time to write for me to hit my pars without me sacrificing some sleep. Over the short term (NaNo) this is doable, but over the long term I am going to have to scale back my pars. 2k a day every day is not sustainable for me, especially because it leaves no time for editing or epubbing. In other words, I'm borrowing from next month to pay for this month.
The hardest part of my day is sitting down in front of a blank page. my outline is so unrefined that I am spending a lot of writing time just figuring out what happens next. I adressed this above. Next time i want a far more detailed and clear outline. I believe I will be able to write faster and a higher quality prose with a better map.
Finally, surfing the Internet kills my writing time. Twitter, I'm especially looking at you. But everyone already knows that, right?
So that's what I've got for this week. Overall things are going well, better than I expected even. I hope your NaNo is just as awesome. Heck, I hope your NaNo is even awesomer. <--zero draft style grammar.
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