A Long Week Ends and New Writing Begins.

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There are days, weeks, and sometimes months that try us. We must get through those days and on to better ones.
This past week, was one of these.
Celebrities come to this little corner during Sundance Film Festival.
Those of us in the service industry cater to them and take care of them.
Its difficult working long hours but we do it.
Over the past week I worked crazy hours, woke up tired, but I persevered.
The only thing that fell apart was my writing. My family held it together because it was Sundance.
I’m getting my writing back on track and working on a new project, something darker. The past week was a lot of fun, I served some great actors and actresses, but I’m ready for normality. Whatever that means.
I’ve worked hard to get stories ready for publication. I still plan on publishing this year, but not sure which novel it will be.
I’ll begin the read-through this weekend of the novel I finished in December. I’m looking forward to this.
Every day is a
challenge, especially when I’m tired. Depression sneaks in when I least expect it and it tried this past week.
Today, I’m a day closer to publication and working on a story idea that came to me a while ago. Now that I’m working on it, I love it and it scares me. If I’m not scared, the reader isn’t either.
Happy writing.

How Being Forced to Read Changed My Writing.

For the last couple weeks I thought I’d try and write something different. It hasn’t turned out well.

My usual stories are fantasy of one form or another. I tried to write a Sci-Fi novel.

It was going good, as my other attempts at writing within the genre had, then the bottom fell out and I got bored.

I’m not sure whether it’s the story, the process I use, or whether I can’t write a Sci-Fi novel.

I’ve written a couple of Sci-Fi short stories in the past, no problem. When they grow longer than 10,000 words, that’s when the problems happen.

For now, I’ll be sticking to Fantasy, and its mini-genres…i.e., Epic, Sword & Sorcery, Urban, Grimdark, and the like.

But Science Fiction gives my brain fits.

I’m still not sure why this is. I can write a horror novel and be completely in love with it, same goes with Fantasy, but science fiction, I have trouble with it.

I believe that comes from the books I felt forced to read growing up.

My father would read Tom Clancy novels, I would read them. The Techno-Thriller had so much tech in it at times it bogged me down and I believe its why I can’t write similar things today.

Whenever I wanted to read something different he would look at the cover, read the blurb and decide for me whether I could read it.

Many times I would be reading a couple of books at a time, one that he chose, one that I found at the library.

It wasn’t until I moved out of his house and in with my mom and dad, that I felt I could read without judgement.

Though there were times I would have comics hidden under my bed or wherever I slept. The fear of someone finding out I liked comics, that I enjoyed fantasy novels was too great a thing for me to break from.

It took me a long time to enjoy reading fantasy and not having the fear of judgement for what I read.

Today, I enjoy fantasy and horror more than other genres. I don’t read Tom Clancy style books, though I do believe they have influenced some of my current writing.

I feel we should read and write what we’re comfortable with, though stretching ourselves can lead to great things.

Anyway, on to the next story, may it be ripe with Fantasy.

Finding my way to publishing this year.

There are times when life warrants taking a break.

With the completion of an eight book I’m pulling the trigger this year on publishing.

This decision stalked me for the last couple of years. I knew I needed to do it but I also didn’t understand publishing very well.

I listened to various podcasts through the last couple of months to improve my knowledge. Now it comes to finding a copyeditor.

The financial means are there, but its by a skin of our teeth situation.I want to publish something others will enjoy. I also don’t want to put my family at a financial disadvantage.

When it comes to creating covers, I’m searching for affordable. Like I said, I don’t want to put my family at financial disadvantage to publish.

These are what haunt me at night.

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.