Writing As A Hobby The Real World Takes Over Sometimes

Family. Work. Kids. Writing as a side hobby doesn't allow for the consistent time and mental commitments as you'd like. But we do out best to continue the craft. 

Hello

The newest story, Hello.

Eye Contact

New story, Eye Contact.

Routines Are Meant To Be Kept

 Writing is hard, there is no doubt. Like any skill you must keep doing it no matter how mundane or unmotivated you are if you want to keep the skill fresh and growing. 

Pick up any writing book and they will all tell you that regular, routine, scheduled writing is the key to being a writer. This is one of those skills, like music, painting, creating anything where you need to do it in order to get better... and finish something. 

If you break your routine, like I did this past weekend, you get behind. You lose that mojo and fire to do it.

I got behind and missed my self-assigned deadline to get a short story revised and finished each week. Now I need to get two done to get back on track. 

I finished a short story, revisions anyway, called Eye Contact. 

I will review it tomorrow and post it to Wattpad and enter it in the contest. 

Write everyday, no matter good or bad, you don't need to publish or finish everything you write. You never know, a throw away story may have that one scene or dialogue you will need later on down the line. But if you don't write it down, you're just wasting possible moments of creative output your mind may not give you again. 

Another Story Published

I spent the week editing and revising my latest story called Love Created. It's a short story and falls under Romance/Love but with a twist of Sci-Fi maybe. This story was an exercise to attempt to capture characterizations, primarily of the main character Ronald. 

It may have worked, it may have not. Readers will decide. It's out there and submitted to a contest under the Romance category. We'll see. On to the next one. 

How To Get Readers, Enter Contests

Writers write for two reasons. For themselves first and for others second. In order to get the second one to kick off is to get it front of people. The more the people the more feedback, the more followers, the more drive you get to keep writing. There are so many sites, so many writers and so much content being posted and published it's nearly impossible to be stumbled upon and gain that without work on your part.. or you hire a firm and they do it for you, for a price that you won't have. 

One of the easiest ways I have found is to submit your work to contests. Contests do a few things for writers. First it's a gateway to get your work read, good or bad, it will get read. If you make it to be considered for the contest, more people will read your work. Lastly, you might win. If not you will get more readers that potentially will follow you, give you feedback, make a connection and who knows what could happen from there. 

That's what I am doing. I am going to be working to get as many of my short stories finalized and completed, posted to Wattpad and submit them for consideration to a contest on Wattpad called the Ambys 2021.  

We'll see how it turns out. If everyone tells me my stuff sucks, I'll take it. Bad feedback at this stage would be very productive to improve and build on. 

The only little glitch was that the contest rules said the stories had to be stand alone publications and not part of an overall collection of stories. Originally each story was going to be part of a collection book. Now they will be published as stand alone stories, I can always put them together later. 

I changed the first story's title and re-published it. The story is now called Time For Bed. I used a stock photography service I pay for and Canva to create a cover. 

That's the new process going forward, now I have to get back to revising and writing. 

Time to turn the page.

Bedtime - A Short Story

Bedtime - A New Story Published On Wattpad

I wouldn't be improving if I wasn't doing. As I stated yesterday on my direction to start out on Wattpad and I have done just that. I posted, technically re-posted, a story I re-wrote called Bedtime. It's very short, 1,000 words, but that's all it needs to be. 

Read Bedtime here - https://www.wattpad.com/169680438-bucket-of-tales-bedtime

I have also added all the story titles to the Bucket of Tales collection to give a short insight to what is coming. I reserve all the rights to change the titles as I please, they may change to be more fitting and less bland. 

My goal is to get one story out a week, maybe a little quicker, but it comes down to how my revisions go. 

Time to turn the page...

Where To Share

People write for many different reasons. Some write for themselves, never intending their works to be seen by anyone else for one reason or another. Most writers write to share, to have others read and enter their worlds they created and go along with the characters on their journeys. I am the latter.

The trick I have found is where to share your works. Obviously it is rare of anyone to get 'published' out of the gate. What is published mean anyway? A physical book printed? An ebook available for download? Anyone can do that but it doesn't mean it's going to be read or even found on its own. 

Then you have copyrights, first published problems, ownership over your work, etc, etc... I have searched high and low on where to start. I could just post them to this blog but it's too risky for many reasons right now. I want to have something more controlled and meant for writers to share their works. 

Many years ago I did put some of my stories on several sites, some no longer exist, but I kept reverting back to one site time and time again. I also checked on reviews, what other authors were doing and how reputable the site was and the same one was always at the top of the list. Over the years this site has grown and matured into a platform and I have decided to embrace it. 

The site I am referring to is Wattpad.com. 

Wattpad is designed for completed works but also for works in progress. There is a strong social and feedback process designed into it that allows readers to comment and make suggestions on your work. It's a good site to cultivate readers into followers and into much more if your work deserves it. 

In the coming weeks I will start to put my 'Bucket of Tales' stories out on Wattpad for consumption. My goal is to focus and release a story a week. If I stick to that schedule I have over 4 months of stories coming. It's time to get them out there, get them read, hear feedback on my first public push of my work and go from there. 

Exciting. 

Very Long Weekend Broke The Rythym

Life happens. 

Family first.

That's what the last 4 days was for me. Although I didn't write I thought. I re-built my stories and went over them from memory to repave the foundation and see what I missed. One of the stories took a turn for the better and I found a complete ending. I am now going to re-write the last half of it, expand it and end it for the better. 

Read Your Work Outloud To Yourself

Your writing is from the inner depths of your mind. Generated, sent to your fingers and on to the paper. I have found while I am revising, and writing new for that matter, it helps to hear myself write. It comes down to understanding how the brain works, especially when you are working with anything analytical. 

So run with it. Read your stories to yourself but read them out loud. Hear the words you wrote, they will sound different, feel fresh and flow differently when you hear them vs. reading them. The last few days as I have been finishing up my first rounds of revision I found myself working through a block by reading it to myself. 

I found myself really expanding my dialogue. Talking out the parts back and forth I found new ways to approach the conversation, change the words used, it really helped bring our the organic nature of how people talk rather than a formula, book learning method. 

Like everything this may not work for you, but I found it helped a great deal for me. Writing doesn't need to be contained between the mind and hands. Use all the areas of your brain and body to get what you really mean out of you and put into your writing worlds how you mean. 

 

Read About Writing But Writing Is The Best Way To Learn

Like any craft writing is a skill that requires study. Also, like any craft, there are thousands of resources each describing their own way to go about it. How to start, plan, write, edit, finish, publish and everything in between. You could spend all your time reading how to write and not take what you read to write. 

Art is a style. It can be learned, it can be gifted to some but it can't grow without using it. That's the balance. As a budding writer you a probably an avid reader as well. As you write, get stuck or as part of your routine you can get swallowed in the piles of book, articles and blog posts about getting better at your craft. That's what I found myself doing the past few days, reading too much. 

I missed blog posts, I got behind on my writing schedule, my revisions are behind and overall my craft is not improving because I am not working on it. You can get the knowledge all you want but until you put that knowledge into practice and actually do it the craft will not improve. 

I would say that reading, any reading, is vital for a writer. Just like an artist going to museums, athletes watching other games and studying film, musicians listening to other music. Those are all vital to learning the craft but each and every one of them, including writers, need to practice to build the muscle memory to become their own masters of their craft and style. 

Write.

Write and Walk Away, Then Return

I am not an expert. I am not calling myself a writer, although I do write. I have written many stories, most short, and many I did a while a go and put away. Never deleted, just tucked away and archived. 

Now as I am reinvigorated to drive toward a finished product I am pulling out these old writings. What an experience this is. Stories I have forgotten about, stories that were half-written but sketched out, and now looking back at some of these I am amazed what I did. Much like going back and looking at programming code and apps that I wrote in the past, you can be just amazed looking at old creative works and think 'Did I do that?'

That's the beauty of writing when you don't do it regularly... and take a year or four off from it. You get to go back and pull out the works you did do and be amazed of what you are capable of. 

Next time I'll just wait a day or two in between revisions. Saves time that way. 

Don't Forget To Read

 How can you write if you don't study others? That's what reading is for and you should be reading casually every day at some level. I have got stuck on some things, not necessarily writer's block but more of technique block with the revisions. So, I have been reading more. 

I dusted off a copy of Analog magazine I bought earlier this year and hadn't finished everything yet and sat back this evening. I consumed several of the short stories, science fiction themed, but I read them to focus on the dialogue and interactions. This is where my technical block has been and several of the stories I need to revise are dialogue dependent between the characters. 

Also by reading you get different points of view, new ideas and reflection on your own work to see between the cracks that normally you get blinders on. In fact one of my stories that I have completed I may re-write another version and make it science fiction based and submit it. Currently it's set on the ocean, but very easily I can set it on a ship in space and keep the same plot, characters, theme and message only the setting changes. 

My point is don't forget to read for fun, your mind will pick up the rest. 

Outlining

Today was not a revision day but after I write this post I probably will go back and re-read some things. 

This morning I 'wrote' for an hour outlining my planned novel. Right now it's a time line, Act I - III. Plot points as it flows from beginning to end. This novel I had planned the ending long before I figured out where it was going to start. I didn't work backward but created an end point, a target and figured out where to start and with that I knew where it was going to end. 

Planning is a fantastic exercise. New ideas, new twists, new answers and having your idea begin to grow and evolve in ways you couldn't imagine. Getting it all written down, even and especially the rejected branches, is vital. Map out your mind as it flows. The ideas that spawn are not retained to memory and can be lost. I page through my idea journals, old writings, past projects and still am amazed of the things I wrote down never remembering the 3 or 4 lines of ideas. 

The next step is to start taking the time line and moving it to a deeper, detailed outline. I have rough sketches of characters but need to start breathing life into them. Give them names, backgrounds, physical appearances, personalities, styles and purpose. Create and expand the world these characters live in. As a writer that's a large responsibility. 

That's why I write, to create.