Tag Archives: writing ideas

Morning Pages Entry – July 02, 2014

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Let’s talk about inspiration and habits and getting motivated and excitement, and whatever else comes to mind. First of all, you need to defeat the bastards of procrastination and fear. Those two evil buggers really need to go by the wayside. Remember, write for the love of writing, and nothing else. Let nothing else get in your way. It doesn’t matter how bad or good it all is, you just need to get into the habit. The habit of loving what your doing. They go together pretty well actually, and I know, I really know, that if you stick with it for long enough, nothing can stop you. So, just write … go write your ass of, and don’t worry about anything else. Just make some shit up and get on with it. It’s doesn’t have to be spectacular, it doesn’t have to be pulitzer winning, it just has to be good enough. Good enough for what though? Good enough for someone else to find it interesting to read … more specifically, good enough for someone to pay for. And to be even more specific, homefully it will be a whole lot of someones. Way more then just one to be sure. Actually, hopefully more like thousands … even tens of thousands would be good. The thing I still don’t know yet, is what does that “good enough” look like … or sound like … or read like … or smell like. WHAT IS IT? I read some of my stuff, and I usually think, “this is pretty good” or even occassionally “this is REALLY good”, but then I don’t know how biased I’m being. I do know, that I read some stuff and I think, BLEH! I can do better then that, or at least as good. Maybe, it’s just not my kind of thing, or maybe the bar is lower then I think. I suspect that the bar is pretty low in some niches. But what is it in mine? I sold a few books, in the first few days of the release of the first book, but I haven’t sold any since on amazon. I think, I’ve sold a total of 5 copies on Amazon for 99 cents, and one on Draft2Digital for 2.99. But, nothing else since then. Not sure, why that is. Why would I sell a copy a day for the first five days (actually day 2 sold 2 copies), and then have things peter off. Not sure what’s going on there. I need to get the third one out there though. I do really need to finish it. I wanted to have it done before the family arrives, at least a rough draft. Or, at least the new scenes should be roughed out. Part of it has already been proofed by Emily. I think, I only need about another 25K words, and I could likely have that done in five days, if I get my shit together. So, why don’t you do that. Right after your done with this shit, you should crank out 1250 words. Get it done. Just fire up Scrivener or WriteMonkey, and write a bunch of words to see how far you can get Chaz down the hall and towards the lower labs where Christa is. That’s what you need to do. He can run into patient zero on the way, knock a few soldiers and maybe lab personnel around, and see what happens on the way. Be crazy, and maybe a few surprises will pop up along the way. Be creative, be nuts, come up with silly stupid and wacko kind of stuff for Chaz to deal with along the way. Maybe, he could hear a conversation from a few sciencetists along the way. Maybe he could have a conversation with patient zero … or whatever is left of her. What would have happened to that character along the way over all these years. Would she have continued to evolve. I think, that she should. Maybe she would be aware of all the fighting and dying. Maybe she would know what is going on in the labs around here, but somehow, they’ve figured out a way to keep her in check. Get inspired … get creative … let one crazy idea fuel another, and just go with the flow. You have some scenes where you want Chaz to go, and some hurdles you want him to overcome. Find that feeling …. that feeling where you just want to write and write and write. You can do it … get down to it.

TIGERBLOOD: yep DAILYMOOD: happy, pissed LOCATION: boat bayfield WORDSWRITTEN: none PUSHUPS: none TODO: write write write TV: none BOOK: none GAME: none EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 170? BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: sausages SNACKS: orange, grapes, half an apple, 4 lara bars ALCOHOL: 1 light beer BEDTIME: 4:30 AWAKE: 9:30

Morning Pages Entry – June 12, 2014

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So, still no outline to work from this morning, but I just noticed, that I am only 9 days from hitting 200 straight days of morning journals. I did read through the next few scenes I had written up for after the gang arriving at Fort Knox, but hadn’t looked at in a while. I had decided to end the first story at Fort Knox a while ago, and hadn’t looked at those scenes in a while, and they’re suprisingly not that bad. They certainly need some rewriting, but nothing too bad. Plus, there are only 4 scenes, so it wouldn’t take long to get this in shape. I do still have a number of chapters outlined, with brief descriptions for each. I do, still really like where the chapters were headed, and I do believe that it holds potential for a very interesting story. It has shaped up to be more a dystopian story, then necessarily a zombie story. I’m thinking, I should remove the word zombie entirely from the story, and maybe only reference it as a legend of sorts that nobody actually believes in. That’s likely a better way to go. I’ll have to come up with a better title as well. It’s really more a story, about how society deals with a rather dramatic mutation in the human species, that threatens homo sapiens role as top dog on the planet. While of course, the humans try to control and prevent the new super race from taking over, eventually evolution will have to have it’s way. Mother Nature won’t be deterred. That’s really your over reaching arch. The battle of humans vs the new super-humans. And, if you were going to do this as a series, that’s the story that needs to be revealed. How does that affect what you’ve written already, and where do you go from here? How do you work into the story, things like the sinkholes. It’s time to do a bit of research into that. Could there be a seed, or something buried deep underground, that was left by the ancient aliens, that built the pyramids? Somehow, it got mixed in with human dna, and hatched prematurely, with humans arising out of the sink holes. But, then you still have the whole story around Christa being the next muation. Maybe the aliens that left some dna lying around, were actually a species that evolved much faster than humans. And, that’s really what Christa and the others were part of. It could be, that that’s why her mutation spreads differently then regular human mutations. Some sort of disaster, like the Japan tusnami could have triggered the release of the alien dna. The whole alien thing, could be revealed much later. Maybe, a reference to to War of the Worlds would be appropriate here, where those aliens learned that trying to invade the planet would only bring disaster because of the natural diseases like common cold. Their solution, was then, to leave their dna, so it gradually evolves and changes on the planet, so it becomes impervious to the natural earth borne diseases. It could be their intention, to have their mutation dna actually mix with human dna. Perpahs, they triggered the events that caused it to happen. They are manipulating us … allowing us to fight amongst one another, rather then trying to do the fighting themselves. It could be their attempt to take over from the inside so to speak. That’s not something I would want to release for at least another few books. Perhaps, someone from the Fort could go down into the sinkholes in the swamps, and find out for themselves, that there is some sort of secret facility infecting humans with their dna. And, what if the government knew about it? What if the government was forced into allowing it to happen, as the alternative, was for the aliens at the time to destroy the entire planet. Could this at some point not just be about the humans losing control of the planet to the new super humans, but somehow, for the superhumans to turn on their original alien creators, and fight against them … so that they don’t get control of the planet, which was of course their ultimate goal. Can you tie the god / religion stuff into the original alien race, like maybe they were where all our religious beliefs came from. That maybe, they’ve been around since the beginning of humans on the planet. That maybe, they seeded the original humans, that we rebelled too much, and that the mutation was necessary for them to regain control? Some crazy ideas in here.

TIGERBLOOD: yes DAILYMOOD: distracted LOCATION: home office WORDSWRITTEN: none PUSHUPS: 2:00 plank TODO: outline, write, covers? TV: The Complete Skinny On Obesity, Fat Chance: Fructose 2.0 BOOK: Bird by Bird GAME: none EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs & tomato LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: chili SNACKS: orange, grapes, apple ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 11:30 AWAKE: 5:30