Tag Archives: covers

Morning Pages Entry – June 17, 2014

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OK, so a little bit slow to the punch here this morning. Just a little tired this morning … that’s two mornings in a row, with less then six hours sleep. Not really a good idea, but I still seem to manage getting through the day. I sure, it’s a result of eating so good these days. Still don’t seem to be losing any weight, but I definitely feel pretty good. Maybe this summer, I’ll get up on the paddle board more often, and get myself into some better shape that way. I don’t think it’s going to be too tough, but we’ll see how it goes out there. I would like to take the paddle board out for longer treks, but not till the water gets warmer. I would like to see, how far out I can go, or maybe even just how far down the shore line. You can only walk so far down the beach, then it becomes impassable, so it would be sort of cool, to go further. It would, even be pretty cool, to go further up south along the shore line. You never walk that way for obvious reasons, but now, you can with the board. No point, in sticking to just your side of the pier. I wonder, how far I could go up the river as well. I’ve never been able to go past the bridge, with just the dingy, but with the board, obviously I can go much further then that. It could be a whole new summer of exploring. I wonder, how long, it would take me to go up the river. I should go with my heart rate monitor, and see exactly how may calories I burn up on the trek. That could be interesting. Just paddling along further and further. You should definitely wear a life jacket, if your going too far though. On a novel writing note yesterday, I did get a pretty decent cover mocked up yesterday. I’ll have to redo the whole thing today, since I just used a dummy image, that had a water mark on it, and there were a few things I did with the effects, that weren’t quite right along the upper and lower borders, but that’s no problem. I was pretty pleased with the look of the cover, for a first attempt. It all kind of fit together pretty well, and not bad for a guy with no cover design skills. I vetted it with the crew on the FaceBook Kindling group, and the consensus was that it was a pretty cool cover. There were a few good tweaks suggested, that I will implement, but other then those, and getting the paid image, it’s looking like a pretty cool cover. Here’s to hoping I can clean up the book a bit more, and make a go of it. I know, it’s not structured the best, and the pacing may be a little crappy, but if it’s enough to get a few readers hooked, I know the next few books will be really good. If it’s too terrible at some point, I can just rewrite the whole thing, or take it down altogether. We’ll see how it goes. Anyway, it turned out to be pretty good day. I played squash yesterday, which was likely a bad idea again, as my shoulder, is still killing me, but what the hell, I really wanted to get out there and play a bit more. Although, the smart move at this point, would be to just put the racquet away for the summer, and focus on the boat stuff … paddle boarding and all. That’s what I really want to spend my time doing this summer. Get into a good writing routine. See, if I can get this next book out on the shelves, and carry on from there. I would be nice to start cranking out a book every two or three weeks for the rest of the summer, and if I can do that working four hours a day, that would be even sweeter. We’ll see how things go. It’s going to be a lot more fun with the brothers here, if you can get that work done ahead of time. So, let’s get things in gear shall we. You do need to do a few edits I think, with the book when it comes back, but nothing too drastic. Maybe, even send it off again for another quick edit by Emily before publishing, or just read it yourself a few times out loud.

TIGERBLOOD: yep DAILYMOOD: good LOCATION: living room WORDSWRITTEN: none (made a cover) PUSHUPS: 2:00 plank TODO: redo cover TV: game of thrones BOOK: none GAME: none EXERCISE: squash WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: left over pork & eggs & tomato LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: steak, brocolli SNACKS: orange, grapes ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 12:15 AWAKE: 6:30

 

Morning Pages Entry – June 16, 2014

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Only five more days, and I get hit 200 days in a row, which of course, means another badge here on 750words.com. Not sure, which is more significant though the badge or the accomplishment. It’s pretty easy to do these words, but lately the journals seem harder to get started on. It’s like, I’m running out of meaningful things to say, but maybe I’m just over thinking the whole thing. Maybe I’ll just get back to the basics of what the whole thing is about. Yesterday, I did something new for the first time, and that was paddle boarding on the lake. Used the new paddle board that I got for my birthday and went up and down the lake. Everybody gave it a try. It was much easier then the one that I tried out last summer at Brenda and Als place, which was surprising. The one I tried out west was a cheap inflateable one, that wasn’t very stable. I think the one I have, is much wider, and of course, it’s solid plastic. Wayne gave me a few tips on proper paddling, but that’s going to take a while to get used to. It was the J sroke, which seemed a bit awkard, but I think if I do it for a week, I should get the handle on it pretty good. Think, I will start to do it every day while I’m up at the beach. That should be enough practice to get the hang of the J stroke. I was thinking, there are some things I can do to make the balance tougher as I do more of it. Moving my feet closer together would of course be the obvious thing. But, I could even do some simple yoga balance moves on it as well. It would be interesting to see if you can incorporate the paddle into the moves. I’ll have to look up some moves online. Even, something so simple as standing on one leg would be trickier. Of course, we should wait till the lake water warms up a bit. It was so friggin cold yesterday. I was pretty glad not to fall in at all. Just standing ankle deep to launch the board was numbing enough on the ankles. Everybody gave the board a try pretty much, except for Karen. Sam, Tom, Andy, Colleen, and Brian all did it. The boys of course found it pretty easy, and so did Sam. It has a certain relaxing quality to it. So, we’ll see, if this week that my editor has my novel finished. Although, she did say, it would take till the 23rd. That’s actually next Monday. Really looking forward to spending more time up at the boat, and working from up there. The change of scenery is always good for me. I should probably look at getting some covers done up this week as well. Either I do them myself … which is what I think I will do initially to start. I can get some good ones out there. Something like what Jeff Olah did with the Dead Years cover. There are good looking covers, but just using basic editing and some stock images. I think, it’s easier doing it for the apocalyptic genre then others, where you need like real people on the cover. I should just do one myself today, and see what it looks like. That one cover you did for “If I Had A Boat” looked pretty good. The trick, is just picking the right stock photo. I think, I have a good eye for that. We’ll give it a go. I should see if I can find the original image I did for that cover. I think, it may be on the laptop. Find a good stock image, and go from there. That may take a bit of looking around, but it shouldn’t be all that hard. Maybe, even just searching for free images on Google wouldn’t be a bad idea. There have been some interesting posts in the Kindling FaceBook page as of late. Lot’s of good information, with a few more successful writers. The group is becoming pretty mature. I need to get the next novel going as well. I think, the new structure I have laid out in Scrivener is going to help a bunch, and using the idea of brainstorming events (Islands) for fitting into the structure would be cool as well. It should certainly give you a better (more interesting) story for your readers this time.

TIGERBLOOD: yep DAILYMOOD: good LOCATION: home office WORDSWRITTEN: none PUSHUPS: none TODO: write, covers, outlining TV: none BOOK: none GAME: none EXERCISE: walking, stand up paddling WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: avacado, bell pepper DINNER: chili, bite of pork SNACKS: too many grapes, orange, almonds ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 12:30 AWAKE: 6:15

 

Morning Pages Entry – April 11, 2014

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Well, here we are on day 5, friday, of my first week of doing 5000 words per day, and I’ve managed to hit that number every day. Today is the last day for doing it, and I have no doubt, that I will hit another 5000 words today. That is a friggin amazing feat. It’s crazy what people are capable of when they set they’re minds to something and believe in what they are doing. Sure, they may not be the most eloquent words ever written, truth be told, they are far from it, and yes, it did take me forever to get to this point, but fucking eh! I’ve gotten here. And, I did it against some adversity. My reward for doing it, the carrot I was dangling in from of my self, was to take the afternoons off, and do whatever the hell I pleased for them. [personal stuff edited out] But, in spite of being annoyed all to hell, I still managed to hit my numbers every day. Just imagine, how much better I can get at this when I’m in an even better frame of mind. I did actually come up with a good use of my afternoon times. I’ve always wanted to do graphics stuff, either through photoshop work, or some kind of animation tools. And, I think I should spend the afternoons coming up with some cool covers for my books. Sure, it may take me a while to get it done, and the first few likely won’t be all that pretty, but I have no doubt if I stick with it, just like the writing, then I can come up with some pretty amazing covers. And, quite possibly, I could even do that as a bit of a side endevour for other writers. I’m not sure, why so many writers shy away from the cover art. It’s like anything else (and specifically writing), you can get better at it if you just stick with it. Do a few drawing lessons, and get good at it. Come up with a concept, and see if you can express it artistically through visuals. Anyways, enough of that. It’s time to give a bit of thought to the words your going to write today. So, we have our three heroes reunited in the labs at the lower levels of the fort knox facitlity. Now, I think, what we want to do, is to get them out in the open. They want to make a break for it. A few possible scenes that they need to go through: 1. They need to fight their way through the Fort proper, and make it out into the open. 2. They need to fight through the zombie horde that are outside the fort. We’ll see, how they react to Christa. 3. The powers in charge inside the fort, need to have a little talk after the fact, about how they let them go, through Christa spreads her new mutation. 4. Our heroes Chaz, Alex, and Christa should have discussion as their leaving about where they go, and what they do next. 5. Do we leave them in the midst of huge attack by the freaks. The epilogue you had originally written, showed Chaz waking up from a coma into a world of pacified zombie freaks, controlled by the drug devisied by Dr. Montgomery.

That’s probably enough foder to get you through the next 5000 words. There are a few things that still need to be fleshed out about the book. The facility inside Fort Knox, needs to be fleshed out a lot more. More back story about the old fort, and the secret installation under it would be more interesting. You need more development of the different types of zombies encountered out in the wars. Even if you just use it for back story to help you make the novel more interesting. In general, I think you need to be a bit more descriptive about what’s going on in the novel. More description of the characters, and the environment. Right now, I feel the story is mostly plot driven. I need to come up with a bit of a checklist of things to focus on while editing the book. So, I’m not just editing for grammer, and logic, but actually, have a few things, that makes the story more engaging. You might want to give a bit of thought as well to the possibility of getting two stories out of soon to be 90,000+ words you’ve drafted. If the edit ends up adding more, then no doubt, you could end up over 100,000 words. That’s 400 pages, and there’s no doubt that putting out two novels before the summer would be a huge bonus. Even, if you have to write another 10,000 words, that would totally be worth it. Something to think about.

I should also add, that last night was the finals night for squash league finals, and it was a pretty exciting affair. There were some great close matches going on, and plenty of thanks went out to the organizing committee (including me) for a job well done over the season. It felt pretty good to be a part of it, and, just as much fun, to see everyone else having such a great time. There is still a bit of followup work to do, but overall, a pretty amazing night. And the really good thing for me on a personal level, was I didn’t have a thing to drink, or any junky food to eat the entire night. Yaaay! for moving towards getting in great shape for next year.

TIGERBLOOD: of course DAILYMOOD: annoyed, and pretty happy LOCATION: living room WORDSWRITTEN: 5147 PUSHUPS: 2:00 plank TODO: write, meet at jessicas school TV: American Horror Story BOOK: none GAME: none EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 172 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: none SNACKS: orange, grapes ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 12:00 AWAKE: 6:30