Progress (Week 2)

So far, so good. I have been finding getting up at 5 am every weekday is tough at times and may simply not be something I can do every morning. Still, There's only been two or three mornings I haven't gotten up at 5 to write. There have been a few times I've gotten up early but been distracted and not gotten any writing done. I need more discipline or some other system for avoiding distractions. Perhaps turning off the internet or something similar.

Even still, it's going well. I've written 6752 words this month. I've written three blog posts with more ready to come down the pipe. More work completed on my Nano novel, though it's a slow process.It's still extremely difficult to make myself write in the afternoon after work. Not sure how I can change that, maybe giving myself some reward if I write? Something to think about.

Current Daily plan/schedule/goals: (percentage of success)

-Wake up at 5am to write: 90%
-Write Anything: 95%
-Work on MTEL Textbook for Grad School: 90%
-Write two tweets: 80%
-Read Mistborn: 98%
-Read Kickass Writer: 80%
-Read Wonderbook: 75%
-Pullups (2x6)

Weekly:

-Write blog post: 100%
-Write tumblr post: 100%

Monthly(January):

-Write flash fiction piece: 100%(Check Wonderbook Wonderings Chapter 1 to read first one)


Blog posts Coming:

-Habitrpg: 90% written
-A Month of Sobriety: 0%
-"If I Had a Heart" flash fiction: 100% written
-Wonderbook Wonderings Chapter 1: 100% written/published
-Wonderbook Wonderings Chapter 2: 90% written

Current Fiction Piece:
-The Long Awakening

Currently Reading (Fiction)
-Mistborn

Currently Reading(Nonfiction)
-Kickass Writer by Chuck Wendig
-The Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer

Wonderbook Wonderings(Chapter 1)

I received “Wonderbook: An Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction” by Jeff Vandermeer as one of my Christmas gifts. I had heard wonderful things about this book and having finished two chapters so far, it’s fantastic. It’s bright, the illustrations are fantastic and the information contained within is compelling. It doesn’t lecture at you, it provides ideas, drawings, paintings, random works of art that tingle the mind and make you ask questions. It provides structure to the structureless creative process without putting it into a lifeless cage or turning it into a methodical machine.

The first chapter, “Inspiration and the Creative Life” is a great example of what I’m talking about. It provides strategies for jump-starting inspiration and talks about where inspiration comes from, with a couple essays from other writers about it. That’s another great thing packed in the book, thoughtful essays by authors about the various subjects. This chapter is informative, attempting to break down Inspiration outputs and inputs. It delves into how the creative mind can explore, inspirations leading to more successive inspirations. Though some might find it basic information, it provides a framework of inspiration and provides tools to inspire yourself.

It also provides writing prompts to stir the creative blender of the mind and I figured, having a blog and all, I would write about my journey through the Wonderbook, post my response to the book as I go through it and also my responses to the writing exercises within.

Another bonus with the book is it provides a website with additional information in various subjects. It has web extras, a writing ‘exercise room’, and more, much of it input from other authors. It’s a very cool way to make the book seem more open, vast and exciting. The information is valuable. While reading Chapter 1, I came across this writing exercise:

Write a story about that picture. Now, after writing out a story (which wasn't easy), I read the original story based off the picture and saw many little details I'd missed. Isn't that always the case? You see the details you missed after you completed the task? 

The original story kicked mine's ass, being a fictional (and awesome) history of the picture and its creator. You can read it here. You can read my short short story below:

A pile of books lay open and scattered in a haphazard manner. They’d been poured over, notes scrawled across them, coffee spilled over them, pages ripped and torn.

“Finally,” the wizard said. “Finally.” He held a bunch of umbrellas under one arm. He wasn’t sure why but he wasn’t going to let it distract him. He’d studied the books of power. He knew the words of summoning. He stood in the garden in filthy unwashed clothing and laughed. They’d called him a crackpot, harebrained and crazy. They hadn’t let him into the Wizard Academy, saying he had no magical talent. The fools. He’d show them. Days of research, of little to no sleep, of practicing incantation after incantation. Finally, the time was ready.

He raised one hand into the air, eyes ruddy and face pale. He spoke a slurry of arcane words, and then, the summoning chant. “Bezedal! I summon you from the depths of the Gates of Helloth! Hear me and answer! Hear me and be mine to command! I SUMMON YOU!” The wind whirled about him, howling, a piercing cry rising in the air. “I SUMMON YOU!” He called out again, raising his hand higher. “HEAR ME AND OBEY!”

The cry grew louder and mist rose from the ground.

The wizard looked on, eyes widening, smile growing larger. “I SUMMON YOU! BRING ME POWER! BRING DEATH AND SHAME TO MY ENEMIES! MY FOES WILL KNEEL BEFORE YOU!”

A flash of white erupted, blinding the wizard. The wind died, a hushed silence falling.

The wizard blinked his eyes a few times, his muscles tense.

A fish as tall as a man stood in front of him, with large fins spread out to either side. The fish gawped at the wizard, mouth opening and closing.

The wizard sighed and dropped his hand.

The fish fell over and flopped on the ground.

“Oh to hell with it,” the wizard said and went inside.  

Progress (January 9th)

We’re a little over a week in so far. How am I doing?

Well, I’ve written about 3300 words. It’s not very good, it’s not even close to quota. But you know what? It feels good. I’m writing almost every day. It will only continue to improve.

I’ve gotten one blog post down, second one ready to go. I even feel like I may be able to do more than one a week, but we’ll see. I might do a progress one each week which is simply a record of how well I’m achieving my goals of 2015, how much I’ve written and if I’m on track or not. They might just be short little updates on how I’m doing in this grand new year.

So, one week in. 1500-2000 words written. 2 blog posts. More work on The Long Awakening, my Nano novel. Waking up at 5am every week day to write. Working at home after work until my girlfriend gets off work...not going as well. It’s harder to get motivated to work in the afternoon after work than in the morning, I’m finding out.

An update to my current plan/schedule/goals.

Daily(Weekdays):

Wake up at 5am to Write

Write anything(blog post/novel/flash/short story/ANYTHING)

Work on MTEL text book for Graduate School

Write two tweets

Pull-ups

Read Mistborn

Read Kick-Ass Writer

Read The Wonderbook

Weekly:

Publish a blog post

Publish a tumblr post

Monthly:

Write/publish a flash fiction piece

Yes, you might have noticed I’m currently reading three books. One is for fun, I’ve heard the Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson is great and so far that’s proven true. The magic system is genius. The other two books I recieved for Christmas and just can’t help diving into. They both have to do with the craft of writing fiction and I’m finding them very useful. The Wonderbook is especially awesome, just take a look at it online to see what I mean. I like to read at least a couple pages a day to stay fresh.

Soon, I hope to add more physical activities to the plan, like running once a week and going to the gym.

I’ll end with my current works in progress, including blog posts in the pipeline, the fiction I’m working on, ideas in my head, and what I’m reading.

Blog posts coming:

A Month of Sobriety

Habitrpg

“If I Had a Heart”

Wonderbook Wonderings, Chapter 1

Current fiction work-in-progress:

A Long Awakening

Currently reading(fiction):

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

Currently reading(non-fiction)

Kick-ass Writer by Chuck Wendig

The Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer

Current physical activities:

Daily Pull-ups(5)

Expect a progress post every Friday, with your regular weekly posts every Monday.

Reflection on Flash Fiction: On 2014 and before

Throughout my blogging adventures, I've never really collected my flash fiction into one place and written about it. It's been fun to look back.

We'll start with 2014.

It began with Griefstruck God, a random title I'd rolled from one of Chuck Wendig's flash fiction friday prompts. It's a great title and I really liked what I came up with. I kept asking myself, what would a griefstruck god look like? What could cause a god grief? I could only imagine it in a fantasy setting and after looking back, it's a decent story.

Then Bad Cop came next. An awful title that I have to admit I came up with myself. The setting and characters were rolled up from Wendig again. The story have a few cliche tendencies, but the noir setting and the characters stick. I like the tortured main character, as bad as he is, and the reason he does what he does.

I didn't write any more flash until June, a sci-fi short titled "A Key For Souls". (Again, prompted by Wendig. He's got great prompts) This was a random title that I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with and tried to force something. I didn't really like what I came up with, the story not really believable, no real three-dimensional characters to speak of. It's short and you can tell it was rushed. I like the idea, though, of humans creating contained Artificial Intelligences and giving them logic puzzles. It doesn't really work or seem believable at all, though. Especially after talking to a friend who knows way more than I do about artificial intelligences.

A month or so later, I wrote super (prompted by Wendig). The prompt was to take the superhero genre and mix it with something else. I don't know what other genre I was going for...(literary maybe?) but I really liked how it came out. It's not much more than a conversation between a damsel in distress and her superhero, long after the superheroic events occurred. I really tried to think about how a superhero would feel, living in the real world for decades. One of my favorites.

I wrote a three-sentence story in August, almost the same as a twitter story I'd done previously. It's very difficult to condense a plot, characters and conflict into three sentences. I like what I came up with.

I also started Scrap, a sci-fi short story I'd thought about after reading my brother's material about his own sc-fi novel. I loved the idea. A junkyard filled with Old-tech, a town on a planet on the edge of destruction, sheriff and an underworld boss fighting over control of the town and a little scavenger finds a datachip that just might change the world....The story grew and grew, and though I like it, it's rough in places and I've yet to finish it. The original idea changed and morphed and I'm not sure I like it anymore, which is probably why I'm having trouble finishing it. I need to, though. Don't let shit go unfinished. Finish it, even if it sucks. A finished piece that sucks is better than the best thing you never finished.



That's it for 2014. I liked some stories more than others. Griefstruck God, Bad Cop, and super were my best. As I never collected my flash before, I will continue on into 2013 and 2012 as well. That way it's all in one place.

2013:

The first was The Garden in March, inspired by a Wendig prompt. I randomly rolled up a Sword and Sorcery tale set in The Garden of Eden and involving a Talking Sword. So of course I had a Knight in post-apocalyptic times searching for the Garden and believing every step of the way. I won't spoil what happens when he gets there...if he gets there....I really liked this piece, one of my favorites, for sure and the only writing I've ever done that contains bits and pieces of Christian religion.

In May, I wrote It Walked Inside the Spaceship using one of five random sentences Wendig had for a flash friday prompt. It's a comedic piece more than anything, and I think it succeeds in being funny. It makes me smile when I read it, anyways.

Day 6 was some flash I wrote off the cuff because it was "Day 6" of my attempt to write a blog post a day for a month. It's not great, fairly generic post-apocalyptic zombie-type fiction.

Lovecraftian Southern Gothic Flash Fiction was a story I started, (prompted by yet another of Wendig's flash friday exercises) in which I had to mix-mash (you guess it) Lovecraftian and Southern Gothic genres. It turned into a three-part story that I really enjoyed writing. I really tried to get both genres, Lovecraft's cosmic horror, characters going too far into the unknown, and Southern Gothic's country folk, the flat landscapes, the rustic tradition, etc. I really like how it turned out. Definitely one of my favorites.



That's it for 2013, now for 2012, though there isn't much.

In January I wrote the beginning of a piece of fiction with the working title "Post-Apocalypse With Aliens!" at the end of that blog post. The action and character in that are actually pretty decent, I think, but the rest of the story pretty much fizzled out, I just didn't have any more to add to it, at that point. I may come back to it at some point.

I finished The Long Nap and put it up on my blog in April. Be wary though, it is definitely a short story and not flash fiction. It might be longer than you expect. I think it also needs a quick editing run through or two, but overall I really like how the story came out. I still have plans for the hard-boiled elementary school kid solving his fellow classmates small-time cases and it's still a setting I love. Who doesn't love the idea of noir in an elementary school? Of a kid detective leaning back in his chair with a toothpick in his mouth and a can of soda on his desk? Oh shit, a missing pokemon card? Who else is going to track that down? I love it.

I did some tiny twitter short fiction and put up a collection here. Some are pretty good or maybe pretty okay. I would like to get back into writing tiny short stories, it's a pretty great mental exercise.

I wrote The Crane because I couldn't get it out of my head as I kept seeing the literal Crane machine outside nearly every day. It's not a great story, feels forced and full of fluff. It doesn't feel necessary, I guess.

I put up Spahgetti and Champagne, a short I'd actually written in my creative fiction writing class back in school. It's a simple little story, sort of plain and maybe dull. I kind of like it, though, for some reason. The end, the dinner with the imaginary woman I find interesting.

In October, I wrote a Halloween tale called  Unliving. A depressing zombie tale that is short, sweet and ultimately demoralizing. I like it. Not one of my favorites but pretty good, I think.



There we have it! That's it! Quite a few gems, I found, going back. Lovecraftian Southern Gothic, It Walked Inside the Spaceship, The Garden, super, Bad Cop and Griefstruck God are my favorites and are enjoyable stories.

That is also the end of my first blog post of 2015! As I promised, one post a week and at least one flash fiction a month. Look for more to come.

The Precipice of 2015

2015 is going to be a year of big changes for me. Big changes in little steps. Steps I’ve begun taking to make myself a better writer and a better person.

I took a month off of drinking and it did me some good. More on that in an upcoming post.

I set up an account at Habitrpg.com, a little motivating system that gives me tiny nudges to get shit done sooner rather than later while also providing a handy daily to-do list. It gives you a little character and when you check things off your to-do lists, you gain gold and experience, which you can then use to make your character(who is basically a tiny 8-bit rpg guy) look cool. It probably sounds silly but providing a daily task/to-do list as well as a little goofy character you can improve is actually pretty motivating, at least for myself. Look for more information about it and how it's going in an upcoming blogpost.

I’m setting a year-long writing goal to keep me going day after day, week after week, month after month and set up a spreadsheet to keep track of my word count. I Need to make it a daily habit, do it do it do it. Every day. Start small so I can keep it going. I’m going to wake up at 5 am on the weekdays to give myself that extra time to write. Nanowrimo is great but one month isn't enough if writing is something I want to take seriously.

I started many of these things in the month of December to get used to them but the plan is to fully implement them with the new year. I’m feeling very excited about it. Time management is an incredible skill that I am not very good at, but I think I’m getting better.

What can you expect from me in 2015?

-Weekly blog posts

-Flash fiction at least once/month

-Updates on current projects

-Bad advice about life? and writing

-A serious push into publishing

NO MORE HIATUS

Nanowrimo is over and I feel refreshed. I didn’t win but as the great Chuck Wendig said, winning and losing doesn’t matter after Nanowrimo ends. What matters is that you wrote something. It might not be a finished something, it might be a shit-something but you have it. I have 35,000 words that I didn’t before, on a project that I’d sort of written before but remade. It’s not finished, though. I need to finish it.

I debated on whether to actually write this blog post, or whether to continue blogging at all. The question is whether, overall, blogging increases my writing or decreases my writing. The problem is it does both. It forces me to write more content, but takes up time I could spend writing fiction. I decided blogging is better than not blogging. I wrote more in August than I have this past month, and I was blogging then. I think it’s time to get back into it.

Take a note, though. Don’t expect a regular schedule of blog posts until after the new year. I have big plans for the new year.

I’ve noticed I need to make some changes in my life. Actually, I noticed this towards the beginning of November, but being in the midst of novel writing and such, did not write a blog post about it until now. I need to make time in my life to write more. I need to generate better habits, of writing, exercising and generally making better decisions. I need to learn moderation. How does one do these things? Are we not a creation of nature and nurture? Slowly. Ever so slowly, one small step at a time. I believe we can choose to become better versions of ourselves, in fact, we make or don’t make this choice all the time. When you choose to yell at a friend instead of listening to them, when you choose to let a stranger pull out into the street in front of you, just to be nice. Every time we make these decisions, we are being better or worse versions of ourselves...if that makes any sense.

If you want to change, you have to be motivated. You need motivators, reasons to change. That can be other people, that can be your own decisions, but you need reasons to change.It could be an epiphany you have after an experience but simply thinking “I need to change” probably isn’t going to be enough. Why do you need to change? What about your life will this change affect for the better? Who in your life will this change affect for the better? How are you going to deal with old habits and old urges? These are questions you have to consider if you really want to change.

When we don’t have rewards for things we do, it is difficult to do them. When we don’t have people relying on us to do things, we have difficulty doing them. Sometimes we need others to keep us responsible. The more motivators you have for doing a specific thing, the more likely you will do it. Think of a deadline, that’s a pretty powerful motivator. The thing is, it’s hard to self-impose deadlines because we know that we can always give in, we can always put off. We are very good at giving ourselves an extension. So, you might make a deadline to finish a story by the weekend but who is going to call you out if you don’t do it? Who is going to stop you from saying, “well, maybe just another couple of days” or “I’ll finish it next week for sure!” I do this often. I self-identify, fairly accurately I’d say, as a procrastinator.

Procrastinating is bad. It’s a bad habit. Putting off the hard work is almost always a bad decision. A month or so ago, I procrastinated in driving our car the day before vacation, because I wanted to play some silly video games. Unfortunately, it had a battery issue and because I had procrastinated, I needed to get it to the dealer’s in a half hour or so, so they could fix it that day. Because we were going to use the car for a vacation trip the next day, this was a problem and could have made things very difficult. Thankfully, I got lucky and a mechanics a block down jumped the car for five bucks and I managed to get it to the dealer in time. Things worked out but I still think about it, how my procrastination very nearly led to difficulties and how easy it would’ve been if I’d done it first thing. After that, I feel it’s a very good skill to get your shit done first, then enjoy time off. Don’t put shit off just because you have time, because you don’t know what’s going to happen and you might not have as much time as you thought. Shit happens. Plan for it. Procrastination, unfortunately, is a tough habit to break.

I have noticed one thing, though. If I write out a to-do list and I get it done first thing on a Saturday, I feel fantastic the rest of the day. I feel like I succeeded, like I accomplished something. It’s a great feeling. Much better than the feelings I get when I push off stuff to another day and feel like I wasted a bunch of free time goofing off. I’m not saying goofing off is bad! It’s not! But it feels so much better when you don’t have things hanging over your head.

Speaking of changes, I recently stopped drinking alcohol for a month. It cleared my head a little, and I think it’s good practice to take a break from vices every once in awhile. Realize you can live without it, you can have fun without it, and it sort of loses its power over you. I think a more in-depth blog on the month will come in the near future. I’m very glad I did it.

I’m trying to become more productive and less of a procrastinator. I’m using tools like to-do lists such as Wunderlist and productivity apps like Habitrpg which gives you little silly rewards for completing daily tasks to start and continue good habits. I’m dipping into it this December, but plan to really delve into production in the new year. I’m talking blog posts weekly, fiction writing daily, and generally getting shit done.

In closing,

Do Shit First, Ask Questions Later.

Hiatus

I'm going to be on hiatus for a couple weeks. I apologize for the lack of posts. I will be attempting to finish Scrap in a week or two, and will throw it up whenever it's ready. I also plan on doing a quick edit of it once it's finished and putting out a more finished story. Thanks for reading.