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.

Perspectives Project

My big project I have been slowly working on is called Perspectives. It's a collection of novellas / short stories focused around a single event but from different perspectives. The idea being is that you will get novel size depth and development but in stand alone novellas tailored for the new ebook, short time reading people do.

Each story has a piece of the puzzle but do not rely on them to build within themselves. Only the last story pulls everything together to reveal the climax and the conclusion. Different approach to it but as a writer trying to write, the novel is the goal, then several. Short stories are great but they are a skill to master that is completely different from novel writing. So I thought why not combine them both?

I have the first story done, but needs to be edited badly. The next one I am going to tackle is called Family Values or Family Time. I am not sure on the title but it revolves around a young family, 2 kids under 5, innocent, naive to the world and the disaster crashing down around them.

There may be 7-9 stories of about 30 pages each. That should make for a novel length read yet broken up into non-sequential, non-connected stories that can be read easily on the bus or in bed at your leisure. Then the reader, the casual reader, doesn't feel obligated to commit so much time into novel where you have to keep the story in your head and the longer the gaps are between reading sessions the easier it is to forget sub-plots, side characters, or even what is happening at that moment. With perspectives you are enthralled into a short burst and can read them in any order.

That's the idea anyway. We'll see how it starts to pan out as I write them. The first overall Perspective I am calling The Emerald Event. But you can apply this approach to any topic.

Time to turn the page.

Writing progress

I have fallen into a slump. A pit is more accurate. My writing and my focus on it has slid again. My interest is still there, I have significantly increased my casual reading and studying but sitting down and putting words on paper has waned.

This is the challenge when trying to balance a job, family, young children, and keeping up with casual activities to keep my mind sane. Things get re-prioritized and shifted away. Writing has had that happen to it. I am not sure if it's intentional or not, but that has what's happened.

If I ever crossed a genie my first wish would be to never have the biological need to sleep again. 24 hours a day to be able to work, play, and grow. Sleep gets in the way.

I am picking away at my Perspectives series. I think now that I am looking at it I will limit the project to 400 pages. Since it's made up of several sub-stories its not that unobtainable. Keeping the connections between the stories to accomplish my design of what Perspectives is however very difficult.

I will keep more diligent discipline to my scheduling. I will be more detailed on my scheduling and what my goals are for each session. Create writing goals. Write more leisure, one page sessions of complete random thoughts, maybe try picking a random sentence out of the newspaper and writing a few hundred word short story around that sentence. Anything.

Progress is still being made just not as much as I'd like. Which is 100% my fault.

Time to turn the page.

My First eBook Project - Perspectives: The Emerald Event

Geek to Author is all about the journey of an IT Security expert into fiction writing. Up to this point I have been working on the craft of writing by working on short stories. Very few I have released to the public, I will be changing that. Ultimately the goal is to write a novel or two or ten. To make that goal and do it the way I want to I need to start small and work up, getting better at each step.

In the spirit of chronicling the journey I will do something a little different and detail out my project before I start working on it. The idea for this project is create a hybrid of a collection of short stories and a full length novel. I am calling this project and potential ongoing series Perspectives. This will not be episodic stories and it's not a random collection of short stories rather an interconnected collection of view points around a central theme.

A full length novel focuses on a set of characters that all flow, for the most part, from start to the end. Throughout that story other sub-characters and sub-plots will be encountered but their branches have to be trimmed and ended quickly as to not take away from the core of the novel. In a short story you have the restriction of length to not allow for deep development of the character's emotional states, relationships, or extensive backgrounds. Perspectives will attempt to merge the two in a unique and fun way where the reader will get the breadth of a large novel subject but in small slices.

The other aspect that I want Perspectives to address is how people read books today. Whether you like it or not, people are not sitting around by the fireplace consuming large novels in mass quantity anymore. Occasionally you get the viral explosions like 50 Shades of Gray, Hunger Games, Harry Potter, but those are far and few between. I don't think in this age of information people truly read enough anymore. One reason is the fast and furious lifestyle we have in our society and people are put off and discouraged to not read because of the effort and time involved. Perspectives is designed to change that. Even though Perspectives will have a novel's worth of subject matter and content, the actual stories are broken up into individual stories that are not interconnected. Meaning that you can read any story, at any time, in any order... except the last one (I'll explain in a second.) Each story's length will be less than 75 pages on purpose to allow the story to be read, consumed and enjoyed in a short time. The only connection between the stories will be a much larger, encompassing event and each story is a unique perspective that normally would never be addressed in a flowing novel.

Then if you are a commuter and only can read for that 30 to 60 minutes a day, 20 minutes in bed before you go to sleep, this is the majority of reader's style now. A 500 page novel is hard to consume and keep the details in your head over the several weeks it may take for you to consume it. The feeling, the flow, and the reader's connection to the book is lost. Wouldn't be much easier to be able to get through 50 page story, walk away with one perspective point instead of trying to keep 30 characters straight as well as all the interconnected plot points? I think so.

The first is tentatively called  Perspectives: The Emerald Event. Every situation and details discovered are slightly different depending on your perspective.  

Here is the tentative titles of Perspectives: The Emerald Event stories, there may be another or two added depending how long these are. The goal is to have a standard 400-600 pages, novel length.

• 60 Minutes
• Business Class
• Streaks To The Heavens
• Family Values
• City Dwellers
• Preppers
• Safari
• POTUS

The last nugget and fun part to Perspectives is that each story has a 'clue' or 'piece of the puzzle' in them. Because it's designed for quick reading enjoyment, the reader only needs to remember the piece instead of a stream of character names, places, details that can be easily lost over time. This also allows the stories to stand on their own and can be read in any order. However, the last story in Perspectives will be the climax that will bring all the pieces together and wrap up the story, much like a novel's final chapters.

For example, let's say there is an attack on the United States. One perspective may be from downtown of a city when the sirens blare. What would they see? How would they react? What would the attack look like? Are bombs dropping or is it a troop invasion? Another perspective could be from a missile silo complex, you might learn about who or where to send the missiles. One perspective could be from 40,000 in a plane flying above the country seeing what's happening below. What would they do, where would they go, what else is in the sky with them? The climax story could be in the Situation Room of the White House detailing out exactly what's going on, you may assume as a reader that it's World War 3 with the Russians or China, but what if something else was going on that is completely aligned with the pieces of the puzzle but the final picture is nothing what you thought. That's Perspectives.

I thought about releasing the stories as I complete them but have decided to keep them all together so it will be  a while before I get all these written and ready for released in eBook format that I will self publish through Amazon's Publishing Service. This is the first real production of Geek To Author and I am really excited about it. I have no idea if this will work but I think it's a unique idea specifically targeted for today's style of readers. The subject matter may not be for everyone, but if it works Perspectives can be applied to any situation.

Enjoy.

Time to turn the page.