Tag: #WriterDream

  • Merry Christmas, Thank You, and 2020

    Say everybody, I’m going to take the next few days off for the Christmas Holiday, and won’t be consistently back at it till the start of the New Year. So, I wanted to wish everyone out there in the writing/blogging world a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and a general Happy Holidays.

    I also wanted to say thank you for following this little experiment of a blog. Since I started putting a forth a serious effort toward writing back at the end of July, I have doubled my followers, and grown in views, visitors and likes. Your support has been very encouraging, and reinforced that doing the work is worth it.

    As we all know, 2020 has been one of the strangest, most awful, and plain sad years ever. Since Thanksgiving, I have been trying hard to find some encouraging… anything to try and salvage my emotional well-being from the onslaught of this year. What I have come to see is that I should never take for granted my family, friends, and community I live in. How fragile this fabric is that connects us all together, yet how strong is our desire to be connected.

    Again, thank you readers, Happy Holidays, and if I don’t see you before, I’ll talk to you in 2021.

  • Outlining a Story

    On Friday afternoon, during my brief writing time, I sat down and outlined a story that I have been trying to write for a couple of weeks. I have been speaking about my need to focus better during the short amount of time I have to write a day, and also the need to have an executable plan when I sit down and write. Hence, the outline.

    I was going to try and follow a simple Three Act structure; first act to establish characters, second to start plot, and third for the climax. (I’m a theatre guy, so I’m relying on what I know.) I also thought about the Joseph Campbell/Dan Harmon “Hero Cycle” structure, which is more about the emotional journey the hero takes. For that “cycle” to work, the hero needs to learn something by paying a heavy price, to return home changed.

    So, I’m trying something new with outlining, which is causing me to go outside of my comfort zone when it comes to creative writing. But, I also need to be honest with myself and admit that writing when the mood hits me has not lead to an inconsistent output of material. I also feel bit amateurish to make this admission; I mean, shouldn’t I know to do this? Well yes, I have known this information, but I didn’t want to admit to it. I didn’t want to admit that this is work, and could be unsexy, hard work.

  • Learning to Write

    So, day two of full online kindergarten classes didn’t go any better today as compared to yesterday. In fact it was a little worse.

    Our online teacher is making the best of a bad situation, and she is dedicated to the students and, as far as I have seen in the past five days, she is taking all of the kid’s mental well being very seriously. It has been a morning video chat, and then an assignment asking the kids to draw themselves. Then we had a second video chat about emotions and expressing how we feel. A lunch break with another assignment to watch a video of a person reading a book and asking the kids to draw their favorite part of the story. On the final chat of the day, the teacher wanted all the kids to show their drawing to the class, and then try writing a word or a sentence that can describe the picture each drew. The teacher was very clear that each kid should try writing a sentences, or word, or even a squiggle. She was clearly trying to see where each of the kids was at when it comes to writing words, language, and phonic sounds. That’s when we came off the wheels at our house.

    My daughter got very nervouse, then really embarassed that she couldn’t write out a sentence. Since we were down to the last 15 minutes of the day, and I could see that this was making her very upset, that I sent a text to the teacher that we had to leave, and I shut off the chat.

    This had been building all day.

    This is a big change for all of us, and making sure all the kids know and learn how to express themselves is very important, and our teacher is doing a very good job with that. My kid-o had a very clear expectation in her mind that as a kindergartener she thought that she would be learning, everyday. And with five days of drawing pictures, she was getting confused as to why she wasn’t learning. She kept saying that to me all day, “I want to learn. When will we learn?” Then when she was asked to do something, she ran right into the wall of not knowing how to do it.

    This is my fault, and I know it.

    I spent all Summer with her working on teaching her how to read. We worked throguh two different series of first reader books, and she is picking out words she recognizes in other books, newspapers, and even on tv. But as I learned today, learning to read is not the same as learning to write.

    We spent the next hour working on letters, and writing simple words, and just trying to make her feel confident in learning about writing.

    I’ve got a lot of learning to do myself.

  • A Place in the Woods, Reading and Writing Stories

    This morning, when I was journaling in the park, as I was running through some ideas and desires, I had a thought that, “I wish I had a place in the woods to read books and write.”

    Then my mind jumped right to an interview I had for a theatre conservatory in San Francisco back in January 2019. The interview was going really well, and then the woman asking me questions shot out, “If money wasn’t an object, what would you being doing right now?” And without missing a beat, I blurted, “I would be living at a place in the woods, reading books and writing stories.” She smiled a disappointed smile at me, and that pretty much ended the interview. It was clearly not the answer she wanted, as I didn’t get the job.

    Then I was reminded of an interview I had in February of this year for a rather prestigious theatre company. I had made it to the final round, and the managing director of the company asked me pretty much the same question, and again I said, “I would be living at a place in the woods, reading books and writing stories.” I think there were other issues with my candidacy, but again, I didn’t get the job.

    It reminded me of Maya Angelou’s quote, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

    I think sentiment cuts both ways.

    When I show people who I really am, I should believe it myself, the first time.