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So, today I have a bit good news to put out. I am officially writing again… Or at least, I’m back to writing stories and such. Since the beginning of December, I’ve had trouble trying to write fiction. Mainly it was a a minor issue with me being brain-frazzled at the end of Nanowrimo. It happens to me at the end of every nano and as I somewhat expected, it took me a few weeks to return back to actually having the drive to write fiction again. I think it comes from me not doing enough writing during the year. I don’t write like that quite as often as I should, especially not in the summer months and so it’s like a muscle that I only use intermittently. I can push it to the brink and force it to produce for me, but afterward I have to rest it. It’s a pain, but I think I’ve finally figured out a way to fix it.
See, now that I’m actually thinking again (and by the Gods it’s good to be back and thinking again) I’m able to look at this problem and see why it happens. What I have been doing up to now is simply accepting the problem. I had decided that it happened and that was all that I could really do about it. Wait out the mind numbing wearyness and then return to writing. What I forgot, though, was that the mind is a muscle like any other. And if you use and abuse a muscle, it will give out on you.
Lets take a look at the following example. You decide that you are putting on a bit too much weight and start looking for ways to fix the problem. Loving food and hating diets, you decide to try exercising instead. So, you head out to the gym, but find out that you can only use the equipment for about 5 minutes before you are wheezing and sweating up a storm. You continue for another 10 minutes, determined to not embarrass yourself that badly. After you’ve gotten your breath back and can breath again, you get dressed and head home thinking, “Well that was depressing but I’ll do better tomorrow.” Unfortunately, you’ve over used the muscle now, pushing it harder than you should have. The next day you wake up, unable to move without pain.
What the pain is telling you is that you should have stopped after 5 minutes and tried to do more the next day, instead of pushing your muscles to that point of exhastion. The brain is a muscle too, but since it is only with mental pursuits that you can exercise it (and it doesn’t hurt if you push it) you still need to do it regularly or you’re going to suffer a backlash, requiring overly long breaks before you can write again. How am I going to fix this? Well, I’m not going to stop doing nanowrimo… that would be unthinkable. Instead, what I am going to do is try to write every day this year. And I’m going to keep the daily writings nice and short.
I recently found a website called 750 words, which challenges you to go 750 words a day. Now, it will let you write anything, in any genre or style. I’ve been using it as a mix between word program and writing challenge. Out of the 7 days I’ve been on it now, I have used it as both a place to write “my day was _____” type of journal entries, as well as more fantasy oriented super short stories. I am on a 7 day streak now, and for the first time in what feels like forever (even though it’s only been a month), I feel like I am not only writing again (even if it wasn’t on my novel yet) but that I can do this and survive.
So, I am ready to state now, one of my goals for 2011 is to take the WriYe/750 words a day challenge this year. I will try to write 300K this year, which translates to 50,000 words in November plus 750 a day otherwise… with an additional 6K floating in from the ether to make it a nice even 300,000. This will be a really good challenge, especially since the real challenge is not to write 300K, but to write every day. All of my writing, except for pure journal posts and blog posts will count.
Now I did have one odd question for you guys out there reading this. I have a friend (Hello Samantha!) who recently said that she was going to try blogging a tiny bit each day, including the number of words she wrote each day almost as a tag on the bottom. Now I was wondering, would you all be interested in having me do something similar? So that whenever I write, I try to update my blog, even if it’s just to say “I worked on my novel and got 700 words today” or would you rather I only do that on Twitter?
Let me know and I’ll try to keep you updated as to changes in the New Year!
Posted in Blogs on December 29th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 2 Comments »
Happy Holidays Everyone. I’m certain with the holidays approaching all of you are just as busy as I am. Still, I had to take my time to say hello to all of you out there in between all the holiday hustle and bustle. I know most of you celebrate Christmas and that you’ve yet to have your holiday so I’ll send out a ‘Merry Christmas’ to all of you first. As for myself, I’m Pagan and so I am also going to have to wish everyone out there a Blessed Yule. And this year definitely was a blessed Yule. The morning of the Winter Solstice we had an event happen that hasn’t happened in the last 496 years. Our Winter Solstice was accompanied on high by a once in the last 5 centuries event… a full Lunar Eclipse. This is one of the few solar events so rare that there aren’t any myths of it happening… at least certainly not of it happening on the day of Solstice. Anyways, needless to say, I was ecstatic. I get excited when there is a full moon on Solstice, let alone a rare event like a Full Lunar Eclipse. My ritual on Solstice was beautiful by the way… I hope that whatever you celebrate this season, it brings you the same sense of peace that my ritual brought me.
My birthday was earlier this week as well. Yep, your resident Writer is now officially feeling old at the age of 31. Which was all right. I’ve always said that Silver hair means that you’ve been blessed by the Moon. My party was pretty good as well. Me and a few of my friends all went out to dinner at a local pub and then we went to go and see Tron: Legacy. It was pretty good, but I’ll do a full discussion on the movie another time. My prize gift this year came from my Father. He got me Dan Well’s, Mr. Monster! The second book in the “I am Not a Serial Killer” series, I have been waiting eagerly to read it since it came out. However, I was asked by family not to buy myself gifts within two months of Christmas so I haven’t been able to pick it up.
I got a few other gifts as well, but the fact that almost everyone was able to make it was the real awesome gift. I have always said that I require Presence, not Presents. The rest of this week will be a little less busy for me. It’s a lot of visiting with family, since they all celebrate Christmas and I must admit, it will be good to see my nieces and nephew again.
What’s that? What about my writing?
Oh, that’s right… most of you come here to hear what I’ve been thinking about while I learn my way through the writing process. I don’t suppose mentioning pretty bunnies behind you will help, will it?
**sigh**
I’ve been distracted lately, so while I’ve been writing almost every day, I haven’t worked on my novel at all lately. I’ve had a couple of fun ideas (who wants a full novel written about “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” novelette done in a more dark fantasy/no holds barred way), but mostly I’ve just been procrastinating and trying to get caught up on writing that I was behind on (like my letter to my cousin… It’s on the way, I promise!).
I do promise that I will have more coming your way in the New Year… Perhaps even a podcast of some of my writings, although I think my blog posts are way too short to try and podcast them. I will be doing more of my writing and working towards finishing my Nano novel starting the 27th. I have a post planned on New Year’s Resolutions and a couple of short stories that I think I may write in the meantime. Basically keep updated and checking the site/checking your RSS feeds for new stuff. I’m not taking a hiatus this year… although I certainly hope that all of you will be enjoying your well earned rest.
I would like to hear how all of you have been and what holiday you celebrate. Have you been writing? Did you get anything awesome this year?
On a final note, I will leave you with this link to one of my favourite Yule songs of all time. It’s called “Santa Clause is Pagan Too” and it’s sung by Emerald Rose. Enjoy.
Merry Christmas, Blessed Yule and Happy Holidays!
Posted in Blogs, Pagan on December 25th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 2 Comments »
So, I wrote a little X-Mas parody song after one of my players in the evil Dungeons and Dragons game I run said to me, “Me and Jasud need to go raiding!”
I enjoyed it so much… I posted it here for you to enjoy. As always, I would love your opinions of the writing? Do you like it or Hate it? Do you have improvements that you think my work better?
You can find the original work, here.
Well, it’s been a while since I last blogged and all I can really say is that I’ve been busy. No real excuses. I’ve also been getting a bit more sleep lately, heading to bed just that bit earlier which has really been helping. I suppose it doesn’t help that I thought I’d updated earlier this week when I hadn’t. Well, lets get started on what’s been up with me the past ten days.
First off, Nanowrimo was such a roaring success that I am starting to work on it again. Other than the fact that I need to go through it with a fine tooth comb for errors, it’s pretty darn good. This lets me know that I really need to train dragon more or perhaps just that I need to eyeball it a heck of a lot more than I do my regular typing. On the good side of Dragon, my writing has for the most part been understandable which is good. It means that I will have very little issues with editing it. I will be able to go through and figure out what I’ve missed reasonably easily. I could start doing that this month, but I think I’m going to wait for March and start doing that as part of my 50 hours of editing. Perhaps its a bit of a cheat, but I don’t really think it is. I am going to try and do WriYe again. However, my yearly total will be vastly lower than the 300K I set myself up for last year. I’m not certain how much I wrote last year and while I know that it was more than 200,000 I am pretty darn sure that I wasn’t actually able to make it to 300K. This year my total will also be 300K…. mainly because it makes my math really easy and I found a new program that can help me out with that.
The program I found is an awesome little online program/website that is pretty darn simple, but really useful for the average writer like me that enjoys writing but likes having a challenge. It’s called 750 Words and it’s a website that challenges you to write 750 words a day. The creator said he heard that other writers said that writing 3 pages of words a day was a good idea, especially if you were just clearing your mind and getting ready for the day. He figured out how many words approximately that was and it came out to 250 words a page (though he did add that, really, had the address http://750words.com been already taken, he would have changed it to 249 words a day instead). So, the site challenges you to write 750 words a day, although you can certainly write more if you wish. So far I’ve been using it as my default writer, especially when I’m at work (which will irritate my bosses even though I’m only doing it on my break). It also really makes you feel that you have been writing by having a wonderful little points system. It keeps track of how much you’ve written, how many days in a row you’ve written, how many distractions you had while writing, what you wrote about, and a lot of other data that’s sorta superfluous but is really fun to play with.
Obviously, I am enjoying the program and in fact, this blog post has gained me my first badge (not counting the one you get once you’ve written anything down, whether you reached any goals or not. That one is an egg, just in case you’re wondering). My first badge is that of the Turkey, which means that I had three days in a row when I have not only written, but written enough to fill 3 pages (750 words) with writing. It does make me insanely happy, although perhaps it shouldn’t. The one after this is I believe Penguin at 5 days… Regardless, I think I will keep you updated on which badges and how many I’ve gotten before. Also, while I don’t think that I need to overly annoy you guys with how much I’m writing, I think I will start posting how much I’ve written since I last wrote a blog post on here… Perhaps forcing myself to do some math when I write up these posts will keep me from missing them. After all, two days worth of math is a heck of a lot easier than 10 days!
That’s about it for now though, and I won’t be done writing for the day… Just done writing here. Now, off to work on my book!
WORDS WRITTEN SINCE LAST BLOG POST: 4976
Posted in Blogs on December 18th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
Please feel free to comment about the music, my review or even just about the band here!
Posted in Musing About the Words... on December 8th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
Today is one of those days when I wouldn’t mind using #FML as a hashtag on Twitter. Not that its even been that bad of a day. All in all, it’s been a good day actually. I finished Nanowrimo with 56,331 words, an awesome total. In addition, I came in twelveth overall in the city for those that hang out on the Nanowrimo forums, and probably the top 20 of writers in Calgary if we count those who don’t. I had a friend visit today, last night was a TGIO party… all in all, it’s been excellent. The main problem stems from me. I have made a deal with my body; If it works harder for me in November, I’ll let it rest in December. So I still feel like I’m running on fumes, 7 days later… though it is getting better.
As if to make it worse, I’ve also been hit by a light bout of insomnia. It means that if I don’t head to sleep the moment I feel tired, I wake back up immediately. Normally this would be counted as extra writing time, but in December, it starts weighing on me, since I actually need to work. On the other hand, at least insomnia never lasts more than three to five days for me so I do know that simply waiting it out is a viable plan.
I do have more vacation coming up at the end of the month (Yes more… I take all my vacation late in the year) which will give me some good time to catch up on all the writing I’m not doing right now. This is why I’m not feeling too guilty about taking 15 – 20 days off to recover from the work of Nanowrimo. And what was that? Writing?
Yes, I have completely stopped writing… I need to get myself back into it, and this blog is a vital step towards that. I find that one of the hardest parts of Nano is to start writing again after December rolls around. However, I am going to make some promises to you guys.
1. I will be writing this year, and much more this month than in November.
2. I will have my novel rough draft finished for the end of February.
3. My music reviews will hence forth be finished within two weeks of receiving them.
4. This novel will be edited and I will start sending it out to publishers before the end of next year. In fact, if I’m lucky, I’ll have it done pre-SiWC 2011.
As for my story? Well, it’s actually been a roaring success this year. I am working on Chapter 14, of a probable 30 Chapter book, so I’m almost half way there. I have a complete story so far. Not much in the way of subplots… more a mention of such here and there. My story has thus far been written in order and the chapters are coming out mostly of a reasonable length (about 4K worth of words). The plot is making sense, I have good explanations for my world building that is fitting in. The only thing I’m somewhat disappointed in is that thus far, I’ve alluded to the war that the vampires are in but I haven’t actually come out and said it. This will need to rectified and will probably include me writing in a new character, a commander in the war on the side of the vampires.
I feel that my writing is definitely improving this year and with every book I write, it gets easier and easier to put together a cohesive story that works.
On a non-nanowrimo front, I have finished reading the High King of Montival now and while I can say that it is one of the best books I’ve ever read, I am quite annoyed with SM Stirling. This was originally going to be the end of the series… apparently now there are another two books coming out. While I love reading more of his books, which makes this somewhat a good thing, it is also a bit of an annoyance, since I was thought I was going to read the incredible and satisfying conclusion. Ah well, I can’t be really annoyed… it was too good a book for me to be actually annoyed! For those of you who asked, I have now started reading Geist and its almost as good as High King of Montival. I’ll review it as soon as I’m finished it and have just a bit of time.
In closing, How was nano for you? Did you get anything written? What have you learned about your noveling over the last nano? What books are you reading and what books do you think I need to review for you?
Posted in Blogs on December 6th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 2 Comments »
