How Far We've Come

It's been a year (367 days, technically) since I started this thing. So what do I have to show for it?

• 1 50,000 word novel
• 2 10,000 word novelettes
• 6 short stories, varying lengths
• 108 blog posts (including this one)

That may not seem like a lot, but that's about 77,000 words of just fiction, while first finishing my degree and then working full time. Nine distinct worlds, each with their own characters and rules and personality. And still thinking of something half-intelligent to say twice a week. That's a lot of writing.

But nothing published, you remind me.

That's true. I set out to be a "real" writer. That is, a writer who makes money writing, or at least is known beyond their group of friends. A writer who has their words printed in a book somewhere. And I haven't done that. Yet.

Pounding Words Into Submission

So, what's new? Well, I've hit 2,000 views, so that's pretty cool. And yes, that's over the course of basically an entire year, but it's still exciting to me. Let me have my moment!

The other thing is that I've finished a story to my liking and sent it off to be considered for publication. The deadline is today, and I excel at waiting until the last second. I finally managed to write a story that's not entirely dialogue. It's two and a bit pages long, and I think there are eight lines of dialogue. I actually set out to write something with no dialogue, and this is what I ended up with.

The story is also written in present tense, which is something I've never done before. Admittedly, that happened because I had one line that ended up around the middle that was in present tense, and it just wouldn't have been the same in past tense. Present tense has a sort of urgency, like all this is happening right now. And that's what this story needed.

Random Screaming

I appreciate everyone's feedback on my last post. The general consensus seems to be "more." And I agree completely. I know that I rushed the ending. I tend to do that. I realize the story's not going the way I want, so I just wrap it up as quickly as possible.

Pacing, that's the issue. Slow enough to build up tension but fast enough to not be boring. It's a careful balance that I have nowhere near mastered. If I think it's moving too slow, I just skip it forward to something exploding. And that's not always the best approach. It's hardly ever the best approach.

What Lurks in the Darkness?

All right, I've "finished" "Losing Daylight." And I'm not feeling it. I'm not good at building tension, it seems. Not to mention, there was world building to be done that there just wasn't room for. So it doesn't really make any sense. I mean, yes, it could be longer. It's nowhere near the max word count. But there's nothing else to happen. He's just… waiting the whole time. I don't think I can fix it enough to appeal to a wider audience, so I'll just share the rough draft with you here, as promised.

Head in the Clouds

Sorry I'm late. I had a job interview earlier, so I didn't want to stay up all night writing the blog post I had forgotten about. So here we are.

I've started writing my story, finally. Nothing like waiting until the last minute. It's tentatively called "Losing Daylight" and it's taking a while to get started. I spent probably an hour yesterday trying to think of a name for the airship.

Bottled Inspiration

I got on here to write my blog post, but then I got distracted reminiscing over the 100+ year history of my old university. I'm not even sure how I got started on that in the first place. Oh, bomb shelters. That was it.

I haven't been doing much writing, sorry to say. Mostly just working and sleeping. And thinking about writing. A lot of good that's doing me.

When I'm at work, I just think about how I want to come home and write my story. But when I get home, I just… don't do that. What's that all about?

Burning Daylight

I have an idea about an airship. Technically, I have a writing prompt about an airship.

In the distant future, most of society lives in massive, powerful airships that fly perpetually westbound in order to stay in daylight permanently, because of something horrifying that comes out at night. The reactor of your ship has malfunctioned, and you have to land for repairs…

These Are the Wrong Sorts of Ideas

I have a story.

Well, more specifically, I have a scene. I have one character, and I can picture this scene so clearly, but it doesn't have any context. I don't know who the other characters are, or exactly where they are, or why they’re there. I think they're on an island, possibly in a hotel/bed and breakfast type place. I know they were brought there against their will by… someone. For… some reason.

See, no context.

A Little Pick-Me-Up

This is my 100th post (yay?) so I thought we should do something awesome. Much as I'd like to debut my brand new masterpiece, I'm not there yet. So how about a return to Mad's Music Corner? The one-year anniversary of my first post is coming up in about a month, and well, I talk a lot about how I'm not living up to the plan I set forth. But we tend to forget (and by "we" I mean me) that I've actually done a lot since then. And we don't need to be all doom and gloom about the whole thing.

So we're going to set our sights a little higher, on something a little brighter. I can be an optimist, too, if I have to be. We passed the winter solstice two weeks ago, so it can only get lighter from here.

A Spark of Something

Inspiration is a peculiar feeling.

For me anyway. I don't know about other people.

I was looking up… something. Okay, technically I was looking up serial killers who think they're controlled by demons, but that's not the point. I found myself on the Wikipedia page for Automatic Writing. And then, a link there in the side bar. Psychometry. "That's when you see the history of an object by touching it, right?" I asked myself. So I clicked the link.