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.

This Is Getting Humorous....

A writer. What does that mean?

I write everyday, emails, blog posts, white papers, summaries, reports... my career is reading and writing. If I don't do either I don't make a living.

Geek to Author was not intended to be the career side of my writing but the transition into fiction writing. Storytelling. Expanding beyond my realm of comfort. The biggest challenge has always been the balance between career, home life and the pursuit of which is categorized as luxury.

I don't need to write. I do have an inner spark that is telling me to. Although I have not been writing and putting out works as regularly as I want to, I still have been studying on the practice. Ironically and against everything I have read it's easier to read and study for 30 minutes than to get quiet time for that amount.

Now that the career has calmed down. Kids are older, less 24/7 focus. I have more free time to work. Acquired new tools and a new approach to writing will change things for the better as well. As a career technologist, when you have a dynamic and mobile life as mine you need to have writing tools that are as dynamic and mobile as you. Pen and paper are fine, if you like to write that way, but I don't. Now I have tools, mobile, laptop, desktop that are all the same, interconnected for collaboration and synchronization. I can work on one, pick it up on another and continue on.

The prove it I will talk about the next big short I want to write called Fear of God. It's a story of a newly haloed angel visiting New York and meeting Satan who proceeds to tell him the true power of God.

Write everyday. I now know that. Reading about writing is fine, but not if you write. Everything put on paper doesn't need to see the light of day, in fact, most shouldn't.

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.

New Story Published - The Buddy Well

I have a collection of stories that are more on the horror side, disturbing maybe, I hope I build them with the right twists to catch the readers off guard. It's over on my Wattpad profile and I call it Creepy Spine Tinglers. In there am putting my short stories that fit this genre. The stories run from a 500 words up to 5,000. Short to short-ish.

My latest I call The Buddy Well. This one is one of the more morbid ones I have put on paper, it definitely could have been more graphic but I left it to the readers to fill in the gaps. I am still working on writing and creating suspense, but that's how you learn. You write many things that suck to get the good stuff out.

Go check it out, leave feedback, enjoy it either way.

Time to turn the page.

Wattpad profile.

Hello 2015, Not starting New But Readjusting Focus

Happy New Year! Are you pumped? Are you ready to tackle your resolutions for the new year and feel regret around Feb. that you failed them the 2nd week of Jan? Resolutions like goals are worthless unless you have a plan to get to them. Just saying I am going to write more, drink less, make more friends are valueless without an idea on how you are going to do it.

I didn't make resolutions I made plans.

Plans to write 500 words a day. Instead of locking myself into 500 words of fiction or 500 words of my projects, open it up to 500 words in general. Everything I write can be counted except for emails, texts or other communications. Journals, blogs, stories, brain dumps, or just free writing with absolutely no purpose all count. The only sub-rule is that my writing style or approach is slightly new each time. Whether I use alternative language, rely on a thesaurus for new ways to say the same thing or change the tone. That's the only way you can grow, stick to the same and you will remain the same. How do you know if another way is better for you unless you try it?

That's my year. Rebuilding my routine but opening my walls to a less restrictive approach and that may sharpen my other focuses on the things I do want to get really good at. Fiction writing.

You don't know unless you experiment. You really don't know unless you actually do it.

Time to turn the page.

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 Everyday Exercise - Remembering Smells

WRITING EXERCISE -

Remembered smells. What’s your earliest memory? How old were you? Try to remember the smells around that memory. Describe it and why you remember it.

=========================

Here's another exercise that will get your mind working overtime. Try to describe something intangible that's subjective to each person. Then recall it from your past.

They do say that the olfactory memory humans are capable of is the strongest, most reliable connection to past memories when there's a smell attached to it.

If I ask you to remember your grandmother's house on a random Saturday afternoon from your childhood, chances are you recall the smell. The very distinct association with that memory.

Have fun with it.

Time to turn the page.

Writing Everyday Exercise - Write about Red

WRITING EXERCISE - Write about the color red without using the word 'red'. Describe it to someone.

=======================

This exercise will really push your mind to the limits. How do you describe something that no one else knows how the other sees it. How do you know that your color red is the same as what other's see? We assume but that's it. Perhaps in our brains the shades are identical but the actual color processed is blue for you where it's red for me.

Another twist on this exercise is thinking about try to explain a car to someone from the 1600s.

This exercise was a good one and from the challenge was the lowest word count productivity that I have done with these 10 minute sessions.

How will you do?

Time to turn the page.

Writing Everyday Exercise - Headline

WRITING EXERCISE - Daily Headlines. Read the first word of the first story headline in today’s newspaper/website. Write that word at the top and go for 10 minutes from there.

===============
The first story I saw on the Star Tribune website was Caught In A Dark Cult's Embrace. The story was about a nationwide manhunt of a Minnesota native who was a leader of a religious cult. Messed up. For the exercise I used the word caught.

Thinking of the word caught the only logical connection was to catch something that target must be moving, running or doing something to avoid capture. I wrote about a woman on the run. What she was running from or why I didn't get into the details. I eluded to her overall purpose of running, to free someone she knew that was captured by the same group years ago, but never said why.

In 10 minutes you can get the cloudy form of what you were going for but not the details. As I do these exercises I find myself writing about common themes, political thriller, escape, action, which is all fine and good but as you do these exercises I think you also need to change your topics and genres as well. Do these in styles and forms you don't normally write about, truly exercise yourself, go outside whatever box you have built for yourself and you will find more value in doing things like this.

My two cents on the matter, it's working for me, it may not for you but unless you try you will never know.

Time to turn the page.

Writing Everyday Exercise - What time is it?

WRITING EXERCISE - What time is it right now? Take the time and write it down at the top of the page. Create a story around the time. 10 to 20 minutes.

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1:35 PM was my time. I started off with a story of a guy called Wally Plugman being asked for the time. From there I spun out of control and the short turned into a pair of terrorists ready to attack a train station.

I am currently back into political, military thrillers so I had that on the brain. Either way I started off with one idea and I freestyled myself into something completely different. That's the point of these exercises. Break the analytical mind from the creative side and let your creative processing take over before you stop and analyze if it makes sense or not. These exercises aren't supposed to make sense. They are designed to get your brain out of the processing ditch of normality to work in new and fast ways.

Don't think, just write. Your brain will figure out the rest as you go.

Time to turn the page.

Write Everyday Exercise - How Does It Taste?

WRITING EXERCISE: How does it taste? Look around the room you are in right now. Take an object that may or may not be edible and describe how it tastes. Good or bad be as descriptive as you can in 10 minutes.

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This one I had some fun with and grossed myself out writing it. I was in a conference room at work and the only object that was in there worth trying to eat was the whiteboard eraser.

This exercise is more challenging the less edible the object is. Flex your brain, stretch your imagination and put those into words.

This probably won't spawn into your life's work but who cares, you are writing.

Time to turn the page.

Write Everyday - Nearby Streets Exercise

WRITING EXERCISE 

Fun with addresses. What are the three streets that border your neighborhood? List them. Take the there names only, numbers for streets, and write something silly with them. Keep writing.

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Writing is writing and not every exercise has to make sense. Let go from your norm and have fun. This one is designed for just that. Take the streets around you and go nuts with silliness. 

The streets around me are full names, not numbers, so I created three characters and made a goofy short about them meeting in a universal fate angle. At the end, in the 20 minutes I spent on it, I tried to build up that their meeting was for a reason. At the end they bumped into each other on a street corner, said excuse me and went about their day. The silliness was with the characters I created. The first was an accountant that collected bottle caps but only ones that have been removed, dented, by a bottle opener. The second guy was a pierced out bike mechanic in his mid 20s that dreamed of having children running around his house one day. But when he hangs around the Children's Museum staring at the boys you could see he is not getting a family through marriage, a little morbid but I blame the news tonight from that idea. The third guy is a monster of a man, Russian circus performer, that is currently the bearded woman but looks forward to his promotion to dwarf tosser. 

Silly enough? If you are going to go silly, might as well go silly.

Time to turn the page. 

Write Everyday - Through The Window Exercise

WRITING EXERCISE  

What’s out your window? 

Write about the weather, sky, buildings, treetops. Let your writing take you wherever, place and time. Write for 10 minutes.

====================

For the next several posts, about 20 or so, the exercises are designed for the busy, career laden writer. 10 minutes is what's required but the longer the better. No planning, no thinking, no editing. Just write, let the mistakes flow, write as you think. The point of these exercises is to break your mind from analytical overthinking and let the subconscious creativity take over. 

My output for this exercise I wrote while I was working at home and in between meetings. I got about 15 minutes of silence and what I wrote started out to be what i saw out my office window but turned into having mysterious undertones of a single man who was in the middle of this suburban neighborhood surrounded by families. Working on something secret where during the day the streets were silent as everyone was at work, kids were at school, but soon they would all return to make noise. I think the character came from one of my neighbors who is just like that. A single guy, no one knows, someone that we rarely ever see, his house is always dark and everyone in the neighborhood is a young family. What is he doing here? Who could he be?

Anyway, that's where this exercise went for me. You let your mind take you on your own journey.

Time to turn the page.

Everyday Writing Exercises

Writers write always. Whether it's a blog post, journal entry, a letter to mom. As long as words are being put on paper it's writing. Now, I say that if you are trying to be a fiction writer then you need to be writing fiction everyday on top of the other compositions you may do but that's me.

Geek to Author is a slow go. Finding time to write is very difficult, especially with a full career, wife and 2 kids, coaching baseball, etc... but I see people do it all the time and they are writing books! Why can't I? Why can't you? I know the answer, commitment. Dedication. Failure to build a structured routine.

I came across a resources, several actually, that is specifically targeted for writing with a career. The common thread is ease into the routine but build into your day that you sit down and write. Period. I am going to share these writing exercises for everyone else as well as give an insight to my methods.

I haven't been blogging here much, but that's because I have been writing. Not putting anything out there for consumption yet, but I am writing. Short stories mostly but I have a very rough draft of 50,000 words toward a book. So I am doing it. The second part, editing my work, is where my analytical OCD is battling me. Tweaking the stories, expanding them, changing the dialogue instead of fixing the grammar and flows.

Each exercise I do I will start to publish them here. They are not ground breaking and most of them I tweak around to make them more creative and challenging for me. You don't have to follow them verbatim but use them in your own way for your daily writing. I have found it's very liberating and frees the mind to break away from your stories and structures and freestyle write about nonsensical topics as creative and in styles you may never use again. Experiment.

We only learn from failures.

Time to turn the page.

Geek To Author - Wattpad

I'm still here...

Still here. Still writing. However a newborn and 5 year old in the home with an exploding career workload makes the writing very, very difficult. It pains me to say that especially when I focused and completed the 50,000 word National Novel Writing Month challenge in November. But that was pre-birth.

I am working on getting my stuff over on Wattpad. I feel that of all the writing sites that one seems to be the most promising and productive when it comes to feedback from readers. I put a bunch of stories out there but pulled them all off after I studied the art of story editing and realized that things could use more work.

I am beginning to see that I am not a very good writer but a great planner and editor. Writing is just filler.

1,000 words a day is the goal and if I focus and I know exactly what I want to paint with words I can get 1,000 words out in about an hour. If I only have 30 minutes, 500 words. Etc... You don't need to get the 1,000 words in one sitting.

As a computer programmer of very large, complex systems writing a few good lines of code a day, in the bank of tens of thousands, can go down as a very productive day. Writing is no different.

I see this now.

Post NaNoWriMo Writing

Now that the decompression of the NaNoWriMo is starting to wear off I am beginning to think about what's next. I have 50,069 words written toward an idea that I had that was sketched out on 3 of 4 pages of a notebook. That in itself is amazing to me that I got that far. The task in front of me now is where to go next, do I continue on this journey with The Emerald Event or do I go finish the short stories and come back to the novel?

I think I will go back to stories I wrote before and tune them up. After working for a month and doing more creative writing than I ever have in the past I learned quite a bit on who I am as a writer. I am better than I give myself credit for because I know that I suck and need to improve, but I can only improve through writing more.

The Emerald Events needs lots of plot work to find the preverbal 'rug that ties the room together'.

Either way my goal is to complete, edit, find someone to edit, and ebook publish The Emerald Event before the next NaNoWriMo. If I get a dozen or so more short stories/novellas written as well I'll put together a collection of those as well.

It is a good time right now, I have my second child set to arrive any time, I just completed a novel writing challenge/competition where over 300,000 joined but only 40,000 completed it. That's amazing to me.

Time to keep going.
Time to turn the page.

NaNoWriMo - GOAL REACHED!!!

Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap. I did it. I DID IT. I finished my goal and got 50,069 words completed in 30 days. If you have been following this blog at all you know what an accomplishment that it has been. Job, family, major holiday, expecting wife with our second child which is any day now. On top of all of that I was able to get the time in to create. I broke through all the crap of fear, uncertainty and doubt of writing and blasted through it and I did it.

Now being that it's my first novel attempt I know it's not the best I could do but I did it and that's more than others that just talk about doing it. (I used to be a talker) Now I can say I am a writer. What a relief. What an experience. What an eye opening exercise to see what I am capable of, how my mind works and how my story evolved and went in directions I never imagined as I was planning the story.

There were times in the last 15 days that I let my mind flow, break free of the rut of a plot line that i detailed out and allow my world I had created to control me. New characters were born, new scenarios were created, new ideas were spawned to explore. It's beyond amazing. I get it now. I understand. I know that for the past few years in my prior attempts it was my own mind that was holding me back to allow my full mind to run wild.

Once you hit that point you will understand what I mean.

On my first attempt I completed the NaNoWriMo challenge. With all the obstacles in my personal life to work around it, I was able to get it done.

Whew.

Time to get back to reading and writing my other short stories I abandoned to focus on this.

If any of you are thinking about doing it, I say do it without hesitation. You will be amazed what you are capable of.

Your Average Per Day

1,668 

Words Written Today

4,476 

Target Word Count

50,000

Target Average Words Per Day

1,667

Total Words Written

50,064 

Words Remaining

0

Current Day

30 

Days Remaining

1

Goal Achieved On

November 30, 2013

Words Per Day To Finish On Time

0

NaNoWriMo Days 22 - 25

Stumbling

It's beyond crunch time now. This challenge is everything that it says it is especially for someone that is not a full time writer, studying to be a writer or anyone else that has never wrote anything this size before.

My wife and I , Mrs. Geek, are expecting child number two very soon. To avoid details lets say the doctor had her get off her feet for a while. On top of that my son came home from school Thursday with a cough, fever, and all that jazz. So instead of shooting for 10,000 words, making the run to the end, I was taking care of them and the house as well as everything else getting ready for a little.

I am just over 12,000 words to the end, throw Thanksgiving into the mix this week and I have no choice but to write all the time this week. 2,000 words a day for the next 6 days. That won't happen, especially on Thanksgiving Day. I have been watching the time and my pace when I get into a groove and I can write about 1,000 words an hour, as long as the idea and scene are developed in my head. So it's only 6 to 7 hours left.

I am too close now to say I was close enough. No way. 50,000 or FAIL.

Your Average Per Day

1,519 

Words Written Today

2,796 

Target Word Count

50,000

Target Average Words Per Day

1,667

Total Words Written

37,982 

Words Remaining

12,018

Current Day

25 

Days Remaining

6

At This Rate You Will Finish On

December 3, 2013

Words Per Day To Finish On Time

2,003

Time to turn the page.

NaNoWriMo - Day 21

Keeping up the pace considering what's going on around me. These are not excuses because I am not behind, I am keeping the pace to finish my goal in 30 days, but rather obstacles to explain the difficulties I am trying to work with while doing this challenge.

Today at my profession the team shrunk unexpectedly which put more work on my desk. OK. Second big one is my 8 1/2 month pregnant wife got put on bed rest as a precaution. Third, my son came home today with a winter season cough and a fever. Yipee. Which mean tomorrow will be challenging too to find the time to focus on writing. We may have broken sessions all day to get the word counts flowing, not what I prefer but one word today is better than no words.

I really wish I could get 3 to 4 hours sessions in but no matter how much I planned to get it, they never solidified. Something came up and for this challenge there are other priorities. Regardless I am 15,000 words away from finishing this goal and I am at the point where I cannot stop.

I now have enough ideas and planning to get there, I just need to get it all down.

Your Average Per Day

1,675 

Words Written Today

1,806 

Target Word Count

50,000

Target Average Words Per Day

1,667

Total Words Written

35,186 

Words Remaining

14,814

Current Day

21 

Days Remaining

10

At This Rate You Will Finish On

November 30, 2013

Words Per Day To Finish On Time

1,482

Time to turn the page.

NaNoWriMo - Day 20

Whew, what a day.

Did I mention I have an 8 month pregnant wife carrying our second child. Yeah, no pressure on top of taking on the NaNoWriMo Challenge. However, it will just add to the story when I complete it. I find the time because it's important and the more I do it the more I live it.

My novel is taking on a life of its own. Originally set to have a series of novellas, it's turning into a multi-plot singular story. I can't let my characters go. I wrote a section/novella titled Family Valued. It was a pure survival, all action of a family of 4 scrambling to evacuate the horror that is the Emerald Event. The kids are 4 and 2. Which adds to the drama and helplessness to it. Things that you should be able to do are very limited with those babies. How do you get around that? How do they decide? And so on.

The more I think about them I want to go back to them. Then as I am writing another section titled Business Class is was supposed to be a few sections, novella but I am over 20,000 words on that one alone. Now I am evolving the original idea to cross the two plots and I have a clever way to do it. One story, young helpless family, the other a jumbo jet filled with 300 people. Although not all 300 may make it to them... or maybe they will I need to iron out the details.

But as I expand and grow I can see my easily blowing by 100,000 words in this novel and I haven't even worked on the antagonist yet. I have more free time tomorrow to get another couple thousand done then it's the sprint to the end.

Your Average Per Day

1,669 

Words Written Today

1,935 

Target Word Count

50,000

Target Average Words Per Day

1,667

Total Words Written

33,380 

Words Remaining

16,620

Current Day

20 

Days Remaining

11

At This Rate You Will Finish On

November 30, 2013

Words Per Day To Finish On Time

1,511

Time to turn the page.