The boys went to a movie this morning with their mom. So I left the house and went down to UVU to try to do some writing.
See, I'm over halfway done with version 1.5 (version 1 is the rough draft; 1.25 is the read through; 1.5 is the pen and writer's group edits; 2.0 is what I enter into the computer. I just made those up.) and I'm getting a little weary of not writing. It's not as bad as when I simply haven't the time or the ability to focus. Those are "writer's blocks" that I can't really control. They lead to a cranky me, that's for sure. But the edits keep me involved enough with the story that I've been okay not writing anything new. Obviously I don't want to start a new project--that would be killer for me, as I don't have the discipline to do two at once. I tried that before, and I still haven't finished my 2.25 for Words of the Silenced (I'm about 90% through the read through of 2.0, and it sits on my Kindle, patiently waiting for me to finish the blamed thing). So I know that I can't jump into anything new.
Unfortunately, I still want to write. It's a constant pressure, kind of like a bladder. Sometimes it comes out when and where it's supposed to. Sometimes it gets blocked and I get majorly uncomfortable. Sometimes there are accidental writing moments--which, to ruin the analogy, I quite like and enjoy. The catheter of editing siphons off enough writing pressure that I don't have many problems. Uh, I think I'm going to stop this metaphor and go to a new paragraph.
Because I'm always thinking of my story, and my current world is the Tagan Continent, I want to keep exploring and world building. I mean, really, why stop? I have to stay there for the next 25 days or so (more on my editing goals in a minute), so why pine for something else? Do I have other ideas for other stories? Yes and no. There are a couple of cool ideas that I'd like to explore, but nothing is really pushing me--except for one character that I mentioned earlier. He's stewing patiently in my brain as I work toward whether or not I'm writing the sequel to this book quite yet. Without a sharp character impulse or world building desire, I'm not going to worry about something new. In fact, of all that worries me about being a writer, cooking up a new idea or story is not something that crosses my mind.
Today's a great case in point. I mentioned in a post back in January that I had drafted a few thousand words of a short story that takes place in a different area of the Tagan Continent. I decided to check it out, since I was away from the family, and see if it's still worth keeping.
Because I'm in editing mode, I saw more problems with it than is normal for a reread, but on the whole I can see and remember what I was building toward. After reading to the end, I put my fingers on the keyboard to keep going.
Then I stopped.
Nothing was coming. I had no idea what would come next in the story. Undaunted, I pulled out my tome of a manuscript and began to hammer on it.
(As an aside, yesterday, I finished the last chapter that has writer group comments (which, at this point, was chapter 49), so I think the speed of revisions will increase quite a bit. Surprisingly, I was able to get two chapters revised on almost every day of driving during our vacation last week, so I am actually ahead of my goal by just a little bit. It's still going to be hard to finish by Labor Day--and I seriously doubt that the 2.0 draft will be finished before November--probably closer to Christmas--but I think I can make it. I kind of have to. I consider all of these goals that I'm making and keeping as the training that I need to be disciplined enough to write full time some day in the future.)
Anyway, with Spotify playing music in my headphones, I pushed through chapters 50 and 51, once again marking up just about every page. In fact, I don't think that I've passed a single page without at least one mark on it. Sometimes they're grammatical or striking out lines/paragraphs, but more often they're notes to myself about what will need to be changed in the next pass. To be honest, I think that version 2.0 will require a one-chapter-a-day kind of goal. Since I'll probably only have Saturdays once the school year starts, I may have to calculate a different goal for having 2.0 finished.
Once I had finished the revisions, I decided to take a break for lunch (at Burger King, of course). As I was driving about, I let my mind kind of purge itself of the edit stuff and started thinking in terms of the short story (which ought to be about 15,000 words...not a very short short story) instead. I realized that I didn't want to talk about the character from the first part. Instead, I needed someone completely new.
Within five minutes I had Mirym. It took longer to name her than figure out who she was--a noble in the Jajiini aristocracy who has an obsession with clothes and is capable of writing Poetry. Once the character was there, the rest of today's writing fell into place. I dropped nearly 3,000 words on her portion of the story. I don't know how she and Bethidas (the Corathan from the first part) will collide, but I'm sure it'll be explosive. I'm now toying with the idea of including one more character--a man, probably--but as this is supposed to be a short story, it probably ought to stay focused on just the girls. We'll see.
At any rate, it felt really good to be writing again, and I'm hopeful that this little experiment of mine (writing a short story in the world in order to use it as a marketing tool) pays off. Frankly, I just want my writing to pay off.
See, I've been listening to Brandon Sanderson's lectures (I think I mentioned this) about how to be a writer. Some of what he talks about is new--a little bit of it is old--and some of it makes me feel super stupid. For example, the other night I was listening to a part where he was talking about characters that don't use contractions, use big words, and act like they're smarter than everyone else. Yeah, that pretty much describes Nicomachus to a T. I have nearly 200,000 words of amateur writing.
Huzzah.
But, whatever. I like my story and I think it works the way that I have it written, for the most part. Anyway, as I've listened to the lectures, I realized that I think I have the ability and the desire and the skill to actually succeed as a writer. I'm trying to change my thinking so that, when people ask what I do, I say that I'm an unpublished writer and a teacher--that I'm the former first and the latter second. There's a bit of arrogance to that, I admit. Nathless, I feel like I can actually do this job. I am confident that I can put the necessary work into my story and submit it and be rejected and submit again. I don't see what's stopping me. So I'm becoming more and more committed to the idea of doing this as a career and profession...
...until I remember that I need a steady job that pays at least the same amount as my teaching job does. And, more than that, I don't want to give up being a teacher. It's one of those 'have a cake and eat it, too' things (which is a stupid phrase we use, since we always get a slice of our birthday cake, don't we?) that makes me a little bit nervous. I haven't told Gayle this (and, since this is on the internet, she's never going to know!), but I can easily see myself asking my school to give me part time status with three periods to teach in the mornings and then the rest of the time dedicated to writing.
Obviously, I wouldn't do this until I had sold my book. An advance would probably only be about $10,000, which isn't enough to make up the difference of a part-time teacher--which is why I haven't discussed it with my wife. But I can't see myself, as a good friend put it yesterday, "turning on cruise control". I can't simply let my life be the annual cycle of classes during the week, hobbying with writing, and relaxing in the summer. All of those components are fine--but I can't see that being the entirety of my future. I need--yes, NEED--to get my Master's Degree. Not because of my job or desires to be more attractive to future employers later on, but because I have a physical requirement to get more schooling, and iTunesU only takes me so far. That works just fine as a Plan B, but I have to have something larger that I'm striving towards. Cruise control living is so far from what I want to have at this point in my life, yet it looks like that's all that's left to me.
So, we'll see. The future hasn't been written yet.
See, I'm over halfway done with version 1.5 (version 1 is the rough draft; 1.25 is the read through; 1.5 is the pen and writer's group edits; 2.0 is what I enter into the computer. I just made those up.) and I'm getting a little weary of not writing. It's not as bad as when I simply haven't the time or the ability to focus. Those are "writer's blocks" that I can't really control. They lead to a cranky me, that's for sure. But the edits keep me involved enough with the story that I've been okay not writing anything new. Obviously I don't want to start a new project--that would be killer for me, as I don't have the discipline to do two at once. I tried that before, and I still haven't finished my 2.25 for Words of the Silenced (I'm about 90% through the read through of 2.0, and it sits on my Kindle, patiently waiting for me to finish the blamed thing). So I know that I can't jump into anything new.
Unfortunately, I still want to write. It's a constant pressure, kind of like a bladder. Sometimes it comes out when and where it's supposed to. Sometimes it gets blocked and I get majorly uncomfortable. Sometimes there are accidental writing moments--which, to ruin the analogy, I quite like and enjoy. The catheter of editing siphons off enough writing pressure that I don't have many problems. Uh, I think I'm going to stop this metaphor and go to a new paragraph.
Because I'm always thinking of my story, and my current world is the Tagan Continent, I want to keep exploring and world building. I mean, really, why stop? I have to stay there for the next 25 days or so (more on my editing goals in a minute), so why pine for something else? Do I have other ideas for other stories? Yes and no. There are a couple of cool ideas that I'd like to explore, but nothing is really pushing me--except for one character that I mentioned earlier. He's stewing patiently in my brain as I work toward whether or not I'm writing the sequel to this book quite yet. Without a sharp character impulse or world building desire, I'm not going to worry about something new. In fact, of all that worries me about being a writer, cooking up a new idea or story is not something that crosses my mind.
Today's a great case in point. I mentioned in a post back in January that I had drafted a few thousand words of a short story that takes place in a different area of the Tagan Continent. I decided to check it out, since I was away from the family, and see if it's still worth keeping.
Because I'm in editing mode, I saw more problems with it than is normal for a reread, but on the whole I can see and remember what I was building toward. After reading to the end, I put my fingers on the keyboard to keep going.
Then I stopped.
Nothing was coming. I had no idea what would come next in the story. Undaunted, I pulled out my tome of a manuscript and began to hammer on it.
(As an aside, yesterday, I finished the last chapter that has writer group comments (which, at this point, was chapter 49), so I think the speed of revisions will increase quite a bit. Surprisingly, I was able to get two chapters revised on almost every day of driving during our vacation last week, so I am actually ahead of my goal by just a little bit. It's still going to be hard to finish by Labor Day--and I seriously doubt that the 2.0 draft will be finished before November--probably closer to Christmas--but I think I can make it. I kind of have to. I consider all of these goals that I'm making and keeping as the training that I need to be disciplined enough to write full time some day in the future.)
Anyway, with Spotify playing music in my headphones, I pushed through chapters 50 and 51, once again marking up just about every page. In fact, I don't think that I've passed a single page without at least one mark on it. Sometimes they're grammatical or striking out lines/paragraphs, but more often they're notes to myself about what will need to be changed in the next pass. To be honest, I think that version 2.0 will require a one-chapter-a-day kind of goal. Since I'll probably only have Saturdays once the school year starts, I may have to calculate a different goal for having 2.0 finished.
Once I had finished the revisions, I decided to take a break for lunch (at Burger King, of course). As I was driving about, I let my mind kind of purge itself of the edit stuff and started thinking in terms of the short story (which ought to be about 15,000 words...not a very short short story) instead. I realized that I didn't want to talk about the character from the first part. Instead, I needed someone completely new.
Within five minutes I had Mirym. It took longer to name her than figure out who she was--a noble in the Jajiini aristocracy who has an obsession with clothes and is capable of writing Poetry. Once the character was there, the rest of today's writing fell into place. I dropped nearly 3,000 words on her portion of the story. I don't know how she and Bethidas (the Corathan from the first part) will collide, but I'm sure it'll be explosive. I'm now toying with the idea of including one more character--a man, probably--but as this is supposed to be a short story, it probably ought to stay focused on just the girls. We'll see.
At any rate, it felt really good to be writing again, and I'm hopeful that this little experiment of mine (writing a short story in the world in order to use it as a marketing tool) pays off. Frankly, I just want my writing to pay off.
See, I've been listening to Brandon Sanderson's lectures (I think I mentioned this) about how to be a writer. Some of what he talks about is new--a little bit of it is old--and some of it makes me feel super stupid. For example, the other night I was listening to a part where he was talking about characters that don't use contractions, use big words, and act like they're smarter than everyone else. Yeah, that pretty much describes Nicomachus to a T. I have nearly 200,000 words of amateur writing.
Huzzah.
But, whatever. I like my story and I think it works the way that I have it written, for the most part. Anyway, as I've listened to the lectures, I realized that I think I have the ability and the desire and the skill to actually succeed as a writer. I'm trying to change my thinking so that, when people ask what I do, I say that I'm an unpublished writer and a teacher--that I'm the former first and the latter second. There's a bit of arrogance to that, I admit. Nathless, I feel like I can actually do this job. I am confident that I can put the necessary work into my story and submit it and be rejected and submit again. I don't see what's stopping me. So I'm becoming more and more committed to the idea of doing this as a career and profession...
...until I remember that I need a steady job that pays at least the same amount as my teaching job does. And, more than that, I don't want to give up being a teacher. It's one of those 'have a cake and eat it, too' things (which is a stupid phrase we use, since we always get a slice of our birthday cake, don't we?) that makes me a little bit nervous. I haven't told Gayle this (and, since this is on the internet, she's never going to know!), but I can easily see myself asking my school to give me part time status with three periods to teach in the mornings and then the rest of the time dedicated to writing.
Obviously, I wouldn't do this until I had sold my book. An advance would probably only be about $10,000, which isn't enough to make up the difference of a part-time teacher--which is why I haven't discussed it with my wife. But I can't see myself, as a good friend put it yesterday, "turning on cruise control". I can't simply let my life be the annual cycle of classes during the week, hobbying with writing, and relaxing in the summer. All of those components are fine--but I can't see that being the entirety of my future. I need--yes, NEED--to get my Master's Degree. Not because of my job or desires to be more attractive to future employers later on, but because I have a physical requirement to get more schooling, and iTunesU only takes me so far. That works just fine as a Plan B, but I have to have something larger that I'm striving towards. Cruise control living is so far from what I want to have at this point in my life, yet it looks like that's all that's left to me.
So, we'll see. The future hasn't been written yet.
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