Tag Archives: Belief

Truth & Consequences in Writing.

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I feel that the world in which I write and what I write are corollaries.

They’re connected to each other. They have a connection to who I’ve been.

The reasons I write horror are connected to what is going on around me. The way I deal with the world and how the world deals with me, it’s all connected.

Horror is that genre that defines me. It’s darkness has kept me safe from myself and my depression since I was a teenager.

I watched horror as a kid because it fascinated me. I read it because it scared me and I write it for both of those reasons.

You’d think in a world gone crazy, I’d write something calming. It’s in the darkest places I’ve always found the brightest lights.

The darkness of horror felt safer than the world around me, it still does.

There’s something about being lost in the dark and having something horrifying take you down a spiral of fear.

That spiral doesn’t take you down all the time sometimes it leads you on a merry-go-round.

It turns until you get off but it always turns.

Keep going until the horror stops and you find yourself.

A beginning and an endpoint.

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When I started writing I felt lost.

I didn’t know how to do this thing.

For years I wrote like my favorite authors. I thought if they can do it by the seat of their pants, why can’t I?

What I really learned is that you have to be honest with yourself about the craft.

Are you getting rejections because of how you write?

I hadn’t thought about this until after I wrote nine books.

I believed that my writing as it was should be good enough to get published. That wasn’t the case.

The truth is, the story meandered through each chapter never finding a true foothold(even after subsequent drafts).

It was only after I thought of quitting that I started to really think about outlining.

When you’re at the bottom and you feel lost, you have to try something different.

I was fearful of outlining because I’d tried it before. It was when I was new to having the time to write and I wanted to get it on the page as fast as possible.

I only wanted to see words on the page.

It hurt to have to take a step back and reevaluate what I wrote, how I wrote, and why I wrote.

All of this was difficult and hard on my ego but I want to be published more than anything.

When you want something bad enough and what you’re doing isn’t working you have to fix it.

I fixed it!

The hardest things are always the most difficult, but also the most rewarding in the end.

Slow and steady.

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Over the past three weeks I’ve done something I never thought possible.

I took it slow with a draft.

I always ran out of the gate madly typing as fast as I can. I had to get the story down before it was gone.

Then I realized that the stories I’d been writing weren’t of the quality I wanted them to be.

So I’ve been going through this one as slow as I can. Making sure everything is where it should be.

It’s hard to do this. Damn hard!

I’ve never done it this way and that makes it all the more difficult.

Now that I’m outlining, the writing and the world I’m building are coming in more clearly.

I’m going to keep going, even if I don’t know where the story is going right now, I will have it in an outline to look at.

I hope you all have a pleasant weekend.

My family and I are going to Oktoberfest at Snowbird resort in Utah this weekend and my wife and I are seeing IT: Chapter Two tonight.

Reaching a new point of writing awareness.

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As I wrote on Monday, I’ve learned to understand the process.

Like every kind of relationship, when you get to the right one, you understand why the others never worked.

That’s how I’ve felt over the last week and half.

I built the foundation of the relationship, found common ground, and constructed a blueprint for how to move forward.

I wouldn’t say my process was broken before it just wasn’t the process I needed for my writing.

Now I’m on the real work of the outline.

I’ve created scenes, learned about characters, and quite a bit about myself.

Throughout, I’ve begun to understand the flaws in my other books and why they just weren’t there. It wasn’t that they weren’t good stories, it’s that I didn’t understand how to create the blueprint for them.

Today I’ll spend my time with the outline. Creating things and finding out what is the best use of each set piece, each section of foreshadowing and how to do it properly.

I’m moving forward and that a good thing. I’m still planning on starting the drafting process in October. It will be a Halloween gift to myself.

Happy writing and always keep writing.

There’s this thing about outlines…

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I always wondered why outlines work for some people but not for me.

I think I cracked the code.

I had a story idea that’s been floating around for a while, six weeks something like that.

A week and a half ago I got out my notebook and started plotting.

I’ve never enjoyed it until this last week and I figured out why.

Before I’d always had either a finished draft or a few chapters written.

This time, I let it breathe. Gave it some room and sat back and let my mind wander on the story.

What I’ve found is I’m pretty good at it and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

I’m still working through the outline and hope to start drafting in October

I’m not sure I’ve ever had this much fun writing.

I’m still doing the same thing(discovering the story) but it’s more intricate and I feel better about what the final product will be.

It’s going good and I’m having fun.