Tag Archives: Writing

What are you doing with the Minutes you have left?

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This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time. – Narrator from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

I’ve seen Fight Club over a dozen times, read the book twice and still I never thought, really thought about the above quote.

This changed recently, mostly because my focus has switched from doing nothing, to writing a lot more. I’ve changed my daily schedule, rearranged things to get more writing time.

As I was figuring out my new schedule this quote came up on Social Media.

After reading it a few times I realized what the quote meant to me, because quotes are meant to be analyzed for personal use, yeah…okay.

If our lives are ending one minute at a time, what are we doing with the minutes we have left?

If there were a clock in your mind of how long you have left, would you try harder, do something worth being remembered for or would you just keep doing what you’re doing?

Life does have an expiration date, each of us are dying. Eventually we’ll be gone, leaving whatever we’ve done in this life for humanity to digest.

Why don’t we do something that makes our life worth talking about. Make the minutes left on the clock, only that?

If we’re going to live our life the way we want, why do we let others run our lives. Tell us what we can do and even tell us what we can eat, read, watch or the places we can visit.

There’s a clock ticking away the minutes of our lives and most of us are resigned to go through life not caring whether we’re doing something with our lives.

Our clock is ticking, some of the minutes go by fast, others more slowly, but living those minutes we have left to the fullest of our abilities is what we should be doing.

Living for the sake of enjoying our lives is why we should be doing it.

There’s nothing more important than being who we want to be, doing what we want  and following our own path.

Our clock is ticking. Our life is ending one minute at a time and we have to discover what we want from it.

Discovery will make us stronger, weaker and oftentimes will make us crazy, but finding what we’re meant to do with our lives will give us purpose, a goal to live for and help us through the rough times.

We control how our lives end, but it will end. The clock will strike midnight, the ball will be over and we move on. It’s what we do with the minutes we have left that matters.

What are you doing with minutes you have left? Answer in the comments.

Thankful for this Writing Life.

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When I was 18, I knew what I wanted to be–a Marine–what I wanted to do and I had a plan for how to get there..

It’s been nearly 20 years since I left boot camp without graduating and I still think about it.

I know there’s a reason I’ve been on this path the last twenty years, but I’m not sure what it is yet, but I think I’m getting closer.

Like being a Marine, I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a teenager.

I loved creating something from nothing and discovering new worlds.Writing for me was a power trip, especially growing up when I didn’t have any power.

I started writing again ten years ago when a friend said, “You read a lot Brian, you should write something. You’re a smart guy, you should write.”

I wrote a few short stories after that and in 2004, just before my son was born I started writing a novel, it was my first and I learned a lot from the process.

Last year I finished me second novel, and have written a lot of short stories since then.

This year hasn’t been as strong as last year, but I’ve learned a lot from writing short stories.

For twenty years I’ve been on this path, but since I started writing again I’ve begun to feel more like the kid from Wyoming who wanted to be a Marine.

I’m finding that writing is fun, life is a pain in the ass and that I have an amazing wife who’ll support me no matter what I want to be. Along with our kids I’m sure I’ll find my way.

My path doesn’t include dress blues or the Marine Corps hymn like I wanted it to twenty years ago, but I’m enjoying the writer’s path and spending time with the wife I have, our kids and I”m thankful for being where I am and finally discovering who I am.

A Fiction Writer should be their own Platform

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Stress can kill you, take away what you believe in and recently for me, make you sick as hell.

The stress came about because of my worries for my NaNoWriMo project, a project which, like last year, fell on its face and hasn’t begun to start moving, even though I’ve prodded it.

The biggest reason for its flop is Platform.

That word is such a buzz word in blogging and writing right now. It’s very hard to get away from it.

The biggest problem I see with that word is another word, fiction.

Fiction writer’s create worlds. Sometimes we don’t know where the story is going, even with an outline, and because of that we can’t truly set up a Platform.

A Platform is supposed to be a guide for a project. 

If you’re a fiction writer, that’s more difficult because you may not know where the story is going from one chapter to the next.

Those who write self-help books can use Platforms really well, while the rest of us are left wondering why it doesn’t work when we try it.

Here are reasons why I believe Platforms don’t work for Fiction Writers:

  1. Most fiction writers don’t write for an audience, and those who do already have there established group of readers.
  2. Platforms don’t allow for movement. If things change in your life, you have this Tribe that knows you as one person, but if you go through a spiritual awakening that is different than the one your Tribe knows you as, you have to start over.
  3. Change. Life is filled with change, some of it under your control, most of it not. If your writing changes or you choose to write in another genre it may alienate your tribe.

You may want to create a Platform, but in creating a Platform you may not be taking into account your life changes, your writing changes and the biggest of all, You Change.

The change you go through personally may alienate your tribe or may create divisions in your life.

Creating a Platform shouldn’t be something difficult, for fiction writers maybe it shouldn’t be something at all.

Writers create stories, some of them have similarities that when put together as a collection ofr work show those similarities, but as we write we may not understand the similarities and may become annoyed by those telling us to write another book like our past book.

For me who’s never published, though I’ve written two novels, I just want to get a book on the shelf.

Looking for a Platform for my writing caused me so much stress in the last few weeks I became ill and with that I swore I’d never do what people expect me to write.

My Platform is I’m a writer of different genres, mostly Science Fiction or Fantasy based, but I’ll never limit myself to those two.

I choose that Platform because trying to pigeon hole myself made me sick.

Your Platform should be what makes you the person you’ve lived with for your life, never limit yourself to who you are, or your Platform.

Be your Platform!

I’d rather be my Platform than do something I wouldn’t be proud of.

What Baking a Cake Taught me About Writing

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My daughter loves carrot cake, the frosting, the mix of certain spices…alright, mostly the frosting.

Last week I decided to bake a carrot cake with my daughter. On the recipe it said to use spring form pans, this is possibly because it’s easier to take the cake out of the spring form than a regular cake pan.

We don’t keep those types of pans in the house; they don’t get used enough.

Instead of the spring form I used basic cake pans, and they worked beautifully.

Recently with my writing I’ve been trying to write something more literary than the sci-fi stuff I usually write, well I haven’t written a word I actually like, then I made the cake last week, and like the cake I was trying to fit my writing into a mold, a pre-form of what I thought I should write.

I started writing something that is more like my other writing and discovered I shouldn’t try to be a writer I’m not.

As long as the writing tastes good on the reader’s palette you shouldn’t try to fit into a mold of what you think you should write.

Don’t use a mold, and write what you prefer.

It’s good to experience new things, but sometimes you’re either not ready for that new experience or your mind hasn’t settled from another story.

Remember, You’re the writer, write what you want and break the mold.

Our Delusions of Storytelling.

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Street at night
No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.
Joyce Carol Oates
A story can come from anywhere.
The man at the bus stop with the sad face, why is he sad? The woman at the mall, her kids looking at her with frustration and anger as they’re dragged through the mall. What is going on with them?
There are also the dreams.
Waking from a ultra-visual dream and having a notebook on a bedside table to write it down, that’s one of the best things.
Storytelling and the visuals you see in each moment of the story–from the opening to The End–requires the writer to be creative at times with the writing, these moments can make or break the storytelling.
Look at your favorite books. Does the story pull you in immediately? Does the story take you to places you were expecting, or does it revisit old tropes?
When our species was young, we learned about things through stories told from travelers. They could be about anything, but those stories were written on cave walls for others to see. Because the stories were written down we know those people existed. We may not completely understand the stories, but through the drawings we get the gist of the story.
From ancient wall carvings to the newest thriller, storytelling is part of heritage.
Every story we tell, like the cave paintings of our ancestors, lives forever. One day someone will pick up a book, read a blog or tweet and learn about us.
What they read should be something wonderful. Write what you want to write, never write what the market is, you’ll like the writing better and enjoy the process more.
Show them great storytelling!