Daily Writing - Posting My Work

Write everyday. That is the one lesson you need to hammer into your brain if you want to be writer. It does not matter what type of write you are or need to be, writing everyday is how you get better. No writer will tell you different.

I write, almost everyday, and keep those activities private. But who does that help? No one. I am writing sure, but am I doing properly. Are my ideas any good. Are my flows working. Are my grammar good? (see what I did there?)

Nothing in my daily prompts are secret, insightful to me, I try to take whatever prompts I use and turn them into 1,000+ word stories. I start with the prompt and go with it. No planning, no idea where I will end up, just let it flow. Break out of the over-analytical mind and teach my self to be free creatively.

I have decided to start to post my prompts in a Wattled collection of mine. Raw, unedited dumps. Why not? If I get any feedback it's more than I would get by keeping it in my Scrivener binder, never to see the eyes of anyone but myself.

I will use this blog more to update when I add to that collection. It may not be every singe day but will contain my daily prompts when I do.

Feedback is welcome and maybe a bigger story will come out of these. Who knows?

Time to turn the page.

New Story - Chance Encounter

I'm on a roll. I added a new story called Chance Encounter to my Wattpad collection. Go check it out and let me know what you think.

I have been writing more fringe sci-fi or at least those are the ideas that have been brewing the most. Not quite futuristic but not quite modern either. Trying to wrap the plausible into the reality you know. It's something and I am writing almost everyday. 500 words a day is the goal and if I go more I write more. If I hit a block and I hit my goal I stop and sleep on it. Usually I can pick right up where I left off without skipping a beat and without banging my head on the desk for an hour trying to get to the next step.

Let the brain work, don't work your brain.

Time to turn the page.

Back In The Writing Swing

I am begging to find my writing groove again. I am writing every day trying to focus mainly on fiction, creative works but also blogging meaningful posts on my other blogs that are more aligned with my career works.

I am using Wattpad as my posting place and where I write the most. Here's my profile.

All the little ideas I have I am putting into collections or writing them as stand along short stories. My goal this year, like last, is to ramp up and participate in the NaNoWriMo this year. Either complete my Emerald Event novel or start a new one. I may trash and re-write The Emerald Event but between now and then I may get motiviated on something else in my journals of ideas.

Either way I am getting my routine and loving it again. I have finally figured out how to let go and stop over analyzing my works to an impossible goal of 'perfection'. Create, mold, then let it go.

WOOT!

Time to turn the page.

Writing While Living, Blog Break Time

Who am I kidding? I am having a hard enough time trying to get 500 or 1,000 words a day written that doesn't include this blog. With a full job, family, extracurricular activities, exercise, staying active, and other unexpected challenges of life something has to give.

This blog will pause for a while until I reclaim my writing habits. My ope was to make significant progress on my main Perspectives project but I just haven't had the passion to get into it. I allowed emotion to get into the writing process and fell into the abyss of failure. That's what happens. Stephen King said that you need to write always, your mood or emotion is irrelevant. (or something to that).

Instead of writing posts here for the sake of writing posts I am going to step back and see how other successful do-it-yourself writers are doing it. Maybe this will be less about 'posts' and more journal or diary based.

If I am blogging more than I am writing creatively then I am missing the point. Sure I could write 500 words in a blog everyday, that's easy but that is not going to help the creative style and practice to put a well constructed story together.

I will be back, few weeks, not months.

End of Line.

NaNoWriMo Is Almost Over And I Failed

EPIC FAIL. That's me. Terrible, awful, no excuses although I did my best to make them up. Last year I completed the NaNoWriMo with my project Perspectives. Almost 60,000 words and looking back on it the draft is crap, but it has a shell of a story. Long and drawn out but a story nonetheless.

This year I have nothing to show for it. Nothing structured anyway and no where near 50,000 words. Only myself to blame, words ain't going to write themselves.

However there is a bright, white light. I had an epiphany that may be my gateway to getting something solid and perfected and I owe it to my 6 year old son. He has taken to reading like a duck out of water. He's reading at a 3rd and 4th grade level with near photographic memory comprehension... he's in 1st grade. He is bored with the books his age, refuses to read 'picture' books and only chapter books yet we haven't found a series he likes yet. He has read two American Chillers books which are not really horror genre because the 'horror' is a setup joke to take away the real horror. They are about 150-180 pages and he'll read them about 5 chapters at a setting. He' reading who cares, right?

Anyway out of the blue he asked me to write him a book and he will read that. What a great idea! His 6 year old mind of absolute insane imagination and processing would be a great source of material and flow for a story. Tell me what you want to read about and I will fill in the blanks. I have even began to record him in the morning to describe his dreams from the night before, sometime they are the scariest things I have heard. To him it's as real as life but to me it's a starting point to wrap a world around and aim it to a sub-10 year old mind.

Yes! Exciting.

I don't need NaNoWriMo, I just needed my purpose. I think I found it.

Time to turn the page.

Writing About Writing

NaNoWriMo 2014 is approaching and I have no idea what novel idea I am going to tackle. Last year I wrote, or began to, write my Perspectives book idea. I was successful and completed the NaNoWriMo goal but after that I looked at it and realized what a pile of disorganized crap it was and left it. I haven't touched it since.

What to do now? Do I go back and re-write Perspectives with a straight storyline approach or continue with it on the compilation of novellas? Episodic or novel. Even though I did produce 50,000 words toward the project am I better off abandoning it altogether and starting with a new idea. Learning from the lessons of the past and pressing forward with something new to maybe someday coming back to finish the first real work I have created. The more I think about it it is becoming more and more clear that I start anew. Fresh and clean.

Nov. 1 is right around the corner and in my writing thought journal I have lots of good ideas for stories that could be built to novel length most require significant research to get the details right. This then pulls me back into the struggle I have been wrestling with for years. An over analytical mind trying to be creative. I have a passion for writing, I hate doing it but I absolutely love it and I don't do enough it of it. There's a fire inside of me to do this and I don't know where it's coming from, all I know is I have to quench it.

Geek to Author was supposed to have a published book by now. Something. Instead I have short stories I am not happy with, continue to re-write and nit-pick, I am afraid to show them to anyone or post them to any site for critique even though I am members to the major ones. Struggle after struggle and it all resides in my own mind.

Time to get public, get the support, find the others who are in my position and work together to get our work out there. I write for myself but if one person come back and says that my story was good then it all was worth it.

Write to write. Write everyday. Write without borders or obstacles and no matter what anyone says about your efforts, like all arts, opinions are subjective and matter very little.

Time to turn the page.

Writing With A Hectic Life

What the hell am I doing? I am trying to expand a creative hobby that is one of the most time consuming and lonely. I have posted many times about false starts, lack of this, not doing that. Life getting in the way. Excuses upon excuses.

I have broken the cycle. Ironically the birth of my second child, that's right a newborn in the house on top of all the rest, her arrival has helped me focus. Routine, structure, scheduling, rinse and repeat.

When you have a baby you suddenly lose all the enjoyments of being lazy anyway. TV, video games, going out with friends, all of that is restricted. So run with it. When the older child is off to bed and the baby is close to winding down before she goes to sleep, write. If she's in the swing or bouncy chair, have her do it in the office while you write. Don't sacrifice cuddle time but you can't and shouldn't hold a baby 24x7 anyway. That's when I write.

Generally I can get a good 30 minutes of hard writing done, if I am lucky an hour. If the baby wakes me up after 4am I get up for the day. Get her back to sleep, the wife is up getting ready for work. I slide downstairs, make a quick cup of coffee from my Kuerig, and write in the silent dark of the pre-dawn morning.

Now I am working in writing sessions at the office. Instead of eating lunch at my desk and browsing the web I will sneak off to a conference room and pound out a few hundred words. You know what? I am writing. I have several stories completed that I have set aside as I create new ones, then I go back and edit.

This blog I am putting out the exercises and tips that I have been told or read about for the rest to see and maybe use in your journey. I wish I could get 4 or 5 straight hours to pound out a few thousand words toward a novel but with a career, family, and everything else that comes with it that is very, very hard to come by. I am just making sure those are no longer excuses and it's working.

My goal is to bump up my daily targets to close to 1,000 words a day, no matter what it is. Although I am not sure blog entries should count, but putting words down in any format is still putting words down.

Now go write something.

Time to turn the page.

I Blog To Update Not To Create A Diary

My blog has always been to chronicle a journey of a middle aged guy, sick and tired of BS from the American Corporate world, work toward honing his creative craft of fiction writing. For a long time I have struggled with this blog and figuring out how much to write and what to write about. Do I post every time I have an idea? Do I update when I get 1,500 words written in a day? What's interesting, what's boring, and what's coming across as egocentric?

Since the NaNoWriMo my second child was born so that has been the focus of a majority of my time and the drain on my energy to keep up the pace that I did during the NaNoWriMo. I have a 50,000 word draft of a novel sitting in my Scrivener binder ready to be continued. I am working on finishing another short story called Chance Encounter, actually I will finish it today.

I am writing more and more I am just not blogging about it as much. The main reason is that blogging takes time, time that I could be spending writing. Blog writing is very different than fiction writing and I want to craft the latter. Blogging is just a nice way to stay connected to whatever regular readers are curious enough to read my posts.

During the NaNoWriMo there was a website that I was introduced to called Wattpad. If you are a serious writing either by hobby or trade you are probably familiar with it. Instead of sharing my stories on my own blog I will be using Wattpad to share to the community. There are a few other writing websites that attempt to do the same thing but not as nearly as popular and I will be pulling out of those and going all in with Wattpad. Here's a link to my profile.

My resolution in 2014 was the year of productivity. A new baby in the house makes that more challenging but not impossible. I am using my disgust and frustration of the bureaucratic BS of the world I built my career around as fuel to build worlds and tell stories my way without someone who thinks they know better to suggest it's done this way.

Stay tuned, I will be updating well thought out constructive posts from now on rather than posting for the sake of posting. At least one a week for the rest of the year, maybe more if the week has activity.

Time to turn the page.

Re-Editing Already "Published" Stories

I have written several short stories, some that I have put out to the public on various sites. In the complete redesign of my approach to writing I am pulling these back out and re-looking at them. As I re-read them and from what I have learned and how I have 'grown' over the last year of writing I am see that those stories really need some work. I am a fiddler by nature, always tweaking, improving, adjusting. With writing you need to get to a point and let it go and move on, but not when the stories are fundamentally flawed in the English language. I am not adjusting the story itself but working on improving sentence structure, expanding details, clarifying explanations, improving dialogue flows.

The two stories I am putting my effort into are Temporal Enforcers and The Devil's Nest. The two stories thus far I am most proud of. Even thought they are my first true short stories of any length. There are two problems I have with both, the first was that they were written for a site with a hard word limit and I cut corners to get the word count down. The second is that I never had anyone else look at them with an editing mindset. The feedback I have received from them is more about the story structure and plot points than how it's written. I am going to go back and fix them.

With Temporal Enforcers this may grow into a nice novella project. The main feedback I received on this one was to get more background with the old man and younger apprentice. How did they get to where they are? I touched on it, but there is more to it in my mind but cut it out for length. No rules but my own, right?

In The Devil's Nest I lied earlier. I will be changing the plot a tad bit. It needs to be expanded and I need to go through an exercise of setting description of painting the Nest more vividly. Secondly, I need to alter the fight scene in the prison. I foreshadowed too much to not have the ending twist be as strong as I intended. I will be doing that as well.

Then I will be done and let those children go. I want to get back working on my Perspectives project, I have another short I have planned up called The Murder Of Mr. Tipton, and continue planning a novel length story.

Plan, plan, plan, write, write, write.

Time to turn the page.

Greetings From The Geek

Lots has happened since I started up this side persona of the Geek to Author. Life happened as we were blessed with another child set to arrive at the end of the year. Work happened. Healthy focused lifestyle happened. Writing as much as I wanted to and what I wanted to write did not.

I was re-reading this blog and saw more posts about excuses and false starts than productive posts about my writing and things learned along the way. I still desire to write, I don't know why it appeals to me. I love to read and what I have wrote I thinks is pretty good. Putting it together in a routine of practice and getting out of this mind set that everything I write must be published is hard.

A writer writes, always. I am not. I am, but not everyday and not fiction. Even this blog has inadvertently turned into a blah blah post about something worthy instead of a blog or journal of the transition of an 20 year veteran IT Geek to an author. My claim to say that I officially am an author is to make 1 sale of an ebook in Amazon (to a complete stranger). That's my goal. Then I can say I did that, if it gets more great, if someone spends time to rate it, good or bad, even better.

Another mistake I have made is trying to get more exposure first with little substance of stories or works to put behind it. I am a mamber of several writing sites, lists, boards. I get daily stories to read that I never get around to, tips everyday, podcasts, and the more time I spend reading those topics I am not spending on writing something. Even if it's a short narrative of what I see outside my office window at a random time during the day, at least it's writing. Who knows, that small idea may spawn into the next big seller.

You will see more posts from me, I promise. More personal posts and less me trying to be a news source of canned inspirational posts, reposts or links to another site. I will if I stumble across something that I find very useful but no more of that stuff just to get a post done.

The Geek will become an author and I want to take you with me.

More to come, I promise.

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