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Morning Pages – May 12, 2014

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It’s time to get things moving again. End of last week, bogged down a bit with going to the boat, and getting distracted with the Ray Bradbury ideas. Yes, I do think it is a good idea to write more. And yes, an additional short story a week would be good. Something that could translate into a bigger novel, when it got to enough words. A short story every week, would retain focus on your writers name, and give people plenty of books to comment on. Plus, it would keep the Amazon marketing machine that gives a boost to new books a chance to keep you in the spotlight. So, yes, I do believe there is importance in writing prolificially. There is something inside of me, that does have a desire to write and write and write. I don’t think, it’s really had a voice to get out yet. Probably the week I cranked out 25K words was the closest I came, but still, even then it was more about proving that I could just hit the numbers. Going forward, I think I need to come up with more of those internal little inspirations, to keep the stories going. You have things to say, you have ideas in your head, about how things work, or how you think things work, or about fears you want to express, or about just whatever you feel like. What you need, is to get those ideas out. I need to feed a good stream of reading material, that is interesting in terms of life and the world around us. A reading source, that has psychology, and science, and nature, and medicine, and disease, and all kinds of factual things about the world around us, and how humans interact into that world. The kind of stuff that you can use as fodder to twist and turn into stories, or elements of stories. Fact based information. Real life stuff. Sometimes it could be stuff that is immediately needed in your stories, but a lot of the time, I think it should just be interesting stuff and research about the world and animals and people and discoveries and history that could fill in the gaps of things happening in your stories. You should use your intellect for more then just becoming a better writer, but for learning more about the world and those that inhabit it. That’s the kind of stuff you can use in your stories. That’s what could set your stories apart. People can actually learn things from your stories. I do like that. You can learn things as well. So, get back on track to the point, where you just write and write. Where writing is a form of therapy, and you need to do it everyday, kind of like these journals. I couldn’t imagine, not sitting down and writing in the journals. It’s just a part of my everyday, to record what’s going on in my head. Your writing for public consumption needs to be the same. You need for it to become a need for you . . . like breathing. That’s what I’m looking for here. To just publish and publish and publish. You have a voice inside of you with plenty of ideas you just want to put out into the world, and the world needs to hear it. At least, I need the world to hear it. So, start writing and reading and editing more. Start writing, so that you don’t need so much editing as well. I was reading through the first few chapters of my novel, and found it a bit choppy. Maybe it was just the mood I was in, but I do need to have a bit more flow in the writing. Don’t edit everything down to the bare essentials. You also need to mix up the sentence length a bit more I think. Right now, they all felt short and choppy. Try and mix long and short sentences. Which is what I would normally do, naturally. I think during the editing, I went overboard, with cutting back on the wordiness. Sometimes, you want to be wordy, and sometimes you don’t. It’s the variety that really makes a difference. So, get out there, read . . . write . . . edit. Do the work, and let the work consume you. Then the rest of what you need from it will flow from there. And, get your butt in gear. Remember, you have a deadline with an editor to meet.

TIGERBLOOD: yep DAILYMOOD: busy LOCATION: home office WORDSWRITTEN: none PUSHUPS: none TODO: write, edit, read TV: That 70s Show BOOK: none GAME: none EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: salad, chicken, brocolli DINNER: steak, salad SNACKS: orange, grapes, apple, 4 lara bars ALCOHOL: 1 glass wine BEDTIME: 11:30 AWAKE: 6:45

 

Morning Pages Entry – May 10, 2014

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So, I almost left to paint the boat this morning, without doing my journal entry. I would have had time to do it tonight, but there was always a chance, I would just forget. So, let’s do it now. Yesterday, I was really tired. I took a nap for an hour or two in the middle of the afternoon, then I still went to bed at 10:15, and didn’t get out of bed till 7 this morning. So, hopefully I will have plenty of energy for today. I was probably just tired from all that waxing the day before. Ah well. We’ll see. So today, I’m off to paint, and get the boat together. Then it should be totally ready for launch on Wednesday. If not I still have mon or tue to go up and do stuff. Today, painting is the priority, but I will need to put a few things back together. I wonder if the robins nest I found there the other day, will have hatched it’s eggs yet. I wonder, if the mother came back to the nest. I will have to deal with the stuff up there at some point. I do have to attach my dock lines up there. Even if, I don’t put the anchor on before I head out. Which, of course, Wayne wouldn’t approve of. It will be busy up there today I’m sure. Everyone will be out on a nice Saturday to get their boats ready. There will be plenty of distractions. I didn’t get any editing done yesterday, but I did do a bit of reading. Reading, is a good idea for me to do more of. It will get me more into the writing world. I should stop watching so much tv in the evenings. I can still watch my occasional tv show during my lunch / breakfast. But, my evenings should be reserved for reading. And, I should really stop spending so much silly time on FaceBook. There is really not much of value on there. You could likely see everything you need to see on there in half an hour a day . . . or less. Maybe a half an hour every other day, or every three days. There is some good stuff in the kindling page, but other then that, there’s really no need to be on there. It’s mostly just full of advertisment and just pictures and videos these days. So, something to change there. At least, until the first book is published. Not so much facebook. Say, maybe every other day for 30 minutes. And, no more tv in the evenings, when you should be reading instead. And, get your editing and writing done during the day. There’s no excuse for not getting that stuff done. For sure. I do still like, the idea of publishing a short story every week, while I’m working on the larger novel. They don’t have to be perfectly edited, but they do have to be put out there. You need the exercise of getting the story done, and publishing it, and making the cover and writing the blurb, and all that other stuff. Plus, it will give you something you could use at a later date. You could, always take them, and make them into big larger stories, with a proper edit, should the need arise. Then, they would be more likely to sell for you. If you did a 10K short story every week, then next year at this time, you would have 520K worth of words that could be put into omnibus editions and sold as five seprate novels. That would basically be like publishing 5 novels at once. You could do those over the course of the summer. Have them edited with new covers put on them, and perhaps spend some time writing extra narrative putting the stories together. Just like Bradbury did with his stories. Now, wouldn’t that be so cool. You’d basically have 12 novels out there, plus you could put five more out there before the summer finished. That would be a profitable time. The stories should be different enough from the plot line of the current one, but perhaps they could be about different people, in different places. Perhaps, over in Europe or somewhere the mutation isn’t running rampant. That would be pretty wild. Having that many books up within a year. I’m really liking the whole short story thing. I don’t think, they should be overly plotted out either. Just kind of make them up as you go. That would be incredibly cool.

TIGERBLOOD: not really DAILYMOOD: tired LOCATION: home office WORDSWRITTEN: none PUSHUPS: 2:00 plank TODO: paint boat TV: orphan black BOOK: Hyperion … Dan Simmons GAME: none EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: spaghetti sauce SNACKS: orange, grapes, apple, almond butter ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 10:15 AWAKE: 7:00

 

Morning Pages Entry – May 09, 2014

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Watched an interesting video with Ray Bradbury yesterday, giving a talk at a university. It was about writing of course, and explained his path to becoming a writer, laced with hints and tips on how others could become a writer. It was interesting, to say the least. It was inspirational in how passionate he was about the subject. About how much he loved writing, and about how important it was. He wrote about emotions. I really should read more of his stuff. He talked about the importance of short stories, and how they make you a better writer, and give you a sense of accomplishment by completing something sooner. He said, you should write a new short story every week or more if you can. I really should do something like that. If you can write and edit 5K words of your novel before noon every day, then why not write and edit another 2K words later in the day, and publish it as a short story once a week. Then you could have a bunch of short stories, and still keep working on your novel as you go. That would be pretty cool. That’s a really interesting idea. You could think of the short stories, as your fun reward, for getting the other 5K words finished. They could be no pressure stories. They could build up your prescense on Amazon as well. By the end of a year, you would have 52 short stories out on the web. And like Bradbury said, “I challenge you to write 52 bad stories in a row . . . it can’t be done . . . some of them will be really good.” And it’s true, while I may have a bunch of bad stories, some of them will be really good. I so like that idea. That would be incredibly cool, if you could write that many stories, and publish them. You could, create your own covers, and still pay someone to edit them. They would, only be about $40 to edit if you used Emily. I would think, that after having her edit a bunch of them, you would probably get to the point, where you could edit some of them yourself . . . risky I know. But, your not looking for these stories to make a fortune. You just want to get in the habit of writing them. It would give you so much more experience and you could really grow as a writer. They could be little side stories of the major novel your writing, like little character sketches, that perhaps don’t fit into the plot line of the major story. They could be a way to expand on little scenes, and perhaps build up more back story to go with the subject. You could price them for very cheap, and who knows. When you do manage to build up a readership for the larger novels, then there would likely be a lot of bleed of to the shorter ones. Meaning, if they’re still tied into the larger stories, then anyone interested in the larger stories would likely start buying the short ones. The other thing Bradbury mentioned was how many of his stories came from his own experiences and loves and fears. Little stories, that affected him as a child and older, eventually started finding his way into his stories. He said, that was when he really felt like he was a writer. It took him almost ten years to get to that point, but it was when his stories really got good. And even at the age of 70 something in the video, he was still coming up with experiences that he could use for stories. That really resonates with me. Mining your own experiences and feelings and exposing them on a larger scale in a story makes a lot of sense to me. You could write these stories, likely without plotting them. They would just go where they go. That would be interesting to do as well. Having the experience, of writing a novel from an outline, and writing a short story from the seat of your pants. I’m sure each would help the other be better. I would also bet, that writing the short story would help with the larger novel, especially, if they took place in the same universe. It would get your head thinking more about the larger novel, away from the main story line. The other Bradbury talked about was reading. He said, how important it was to read ever day, and what kind of stuff to read. I think, it was a short story, and a poem, and an essay. He listed a bunch of different authors and stuff. I don’t read enough, but I do get pretty excited when I think about reading. Just looking at all the different novels out there, and interesting stories to read, so makes me want to spend the time doing it. Writing more, and reading more, is something I so need to do more of. I need to find the time to make all of it happen . . . somehow. Oh yea, and, yesterday I managed to untarp, wash, and wax the boat, and still be home by 2:30 in the afternoon. And, I did my 600 calorie fast as well. Pretty good day. Oh yea, and I saw them transporting wind turbine blades on the highway home. Those are incredibly large up close. Kinda cool.

TIGERBLOOD: sure DAILYMOOD: happy & warm (waxed the boat) LOCATION: home office WORDSWRITTEN: none PUSHUPS: 3:30 wall sits TODO: edit, read, write TV: Ray Bradbury talk BOOK: none GAME: none EXERCISE: waxing boat WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: none LUNCH: none DINNER: bacon & eggs SNACKS: none ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 11:45 AWAKE: 6:15