When it clicks.

There was a moment this past weekend while writing that I found the story going in a direction that I hadn’t anticipated.

This sent me to rework the story and go after it from a different direction.

It started, as many stories have lately by being a story prompt. This one took me where I hadn’t been before in my writing. It became more personal.

The personal aspects of it is leading me towards questions I’ve asked about my family while growing up.

Where did we come from? How did our family get to America?

I don’t know why this came up. My family has been in the U.S. on my father’s side since the 1600’s. The other side has been in the U.S. since the late 1800’s.

I know bits and pieces about aspects of my family members on one side. To me it always felt like aspects of my maternal grandmother’s family weren’t told. Those aspects are things I’ve wanted to know.

I’m choosing to delve into them with my writing.

Keep writing.

There are moments as a writer when you have to ignore the world around you.

This is related to my post on Tuesday.

I often consider going quiet on social media, in text messages, and everything else.

I want to take this break to finish projects.

There’s a worry, especially as an unpublished writer, that going offline for long amounts of time you’ll lose eyeballs.

I feel this is true and if I leave all my social media I’ll lose everything I’ve built.

Being that I’m publishing on Amazon later this year, I know I won’t leave my blog or Twitter and I may have start a new Facebook account.

I don’t want to but in order to get eyeballs on my writing I may have to.

I’ll keep going on the blog because I’m enjoying talking to all of my readers.

I hope you’re having a good day!

Stop caring about other’s perceptions.

Over the last year there have been more moments where I felt alone in my process and journey.

Where, other than my wife and one or two others, I didn’t feel there was the support I thought I’d get.

Those moments grew throughout the year. They led to decisions in my writing as well as in my social media activity.

As a writer working towards publishing, especially in the past year, I felt it was time to address this.

I went off of Facebook a year ago. Have taken breaks from Instagram and Twitter, as well as this blog.

I learned a lot from those breaks. One of things is, there are a core group of people who want me to succeed in writing, then there are those who don’t care.

A few years ago, this would have hurt like hell. Today, it burns a little, but that’s all. Those who don’t support my writing are not necessary for me to write. Nor are they necessary to my every day life.

It may sound like a rant, which I don’t do often, but maybe it is. I’ve reached a point as a writer where approval isn’t necessary for my mental health , that’s good right?

The last few days I’ve been writing something different and it’s been hard. It goes against a lot of who I am. It’s also a great story idea. When we, as writers and humans, reach a point where the approval of others is no longer necessary. That’s when we’ll stop caring what people think about us. It’s freeing and scary.

Today, I put some words on the page on this story. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it once it’s done, but its fun as hell.

Hope you’re having a good Tuesday. Make sure to take care of yourself today and I’ll see you on Thursday.

Happy Writing!

Braking down…

Yes, I spelled the title right.
 
Over the last week I’ve been writing a second book to go with the one I finagled to write in a month.
 
 I thought I should go into the second book. sIt was on my mind more than any other story, what happened is I hit the wall and the brakes went out.
 I didn’t break, but the brakes failed when the wall approached.
 
 I’ve never tried to write a follow-up. I didn’t know what it entailed. I had no idea that staying within one universe in my head, at least for me, caused me to reevaluate.
 
 Now that I’m through the wall, onto the other side I’m working on something else. Its different from the fantasy I’d been writing.
 
It will take reading a genre I’ve had difficulty reading in the past.
 
 There are many reasons for the difficulty of the genre but I had realization about it and it “should ” be better now.
 
 Now that I’m through the wall, braking down may have been the best thing to happen.
 
 My mind needed a break from the story. This morning I slept longer than I have in a while, I thank my wife for letting me rest.
 
 Sometimes our work comes crashing to halt because our mind is telling us to take a break. So I’ve tapped the brakes on the story, started another because I don’t have a button that says stop.
 
 Have you hit a wall recently in your writing or life? This one took me a couple of weeks to sort out. But I’m better for it.
 
 Happy writing.

The World Continues To Move.


The last couple of weeks I talked about writing 86,000 words, and how I overcame narration issues.

What I haven’t talked about is my journey to get where I am.

I used to talk about depression.

How I fight with it, how I get through it every day, and how my life has changed because of the TM technique.

I want to move away from TM, not because I stopped, I never will, but because writing about TM isn’t my focus.

I write stories because its one of the couple of things I’m decent at, making cocktails, and baking the others.

I feel better after writing than at any time during my day. When I edit, sometimes I feel that way, though it is editing so its not always sunshine and rainbows.

I have goals for this year.

I’ll be working on them one at a time. I have books to publish this year. Last year I didn’t understand a couple of things. It took me longer to figure out how to fix certain areas of my writing. Narration was one I spent a few months adjusting.

Today, as the years moves forward, I know better about how to write and I’ll keep going.

The process it different than it used to be. Writing a lot of words wasn’t something I’d ever done. But things change.

As humans we can either change things or left hoping the world changes for us. Here’s a hint, it never will. We have to change, we have to do the work.

What are you doing to change, either in your life, writing, or other things? Tell me about it.