Tag: #writing

  • I Missed a Day of Writing

    So… When I started working on this blog back in July, I decided that I was going to do things differently. in the past, I wrote something when the mood hit me, which meant that this blog was rather infrequent, lots of ebbs and flows of inspiration. The choice I made in July was to write at least one blog a day during the week, with the exception of holidays. I was going to treat it more like a job, a job that I enjoyed, but it was a job that I had to accomplish each day of the week. Large or small, I had to write a blog.

    Yesterday, I missed it.

    There was a window for me to get it accomplished, but I kept letting myself get pulled sideways. We are trying to get Covid tested, and then there was making the Thanksgiving shopping list, and it was a nice day out, so I wanted to make sure the kid got lots of park time, and then I got sucked down a Twitter-hole of checking on Trump’s efforts in Michagain.

    In that same vein of thought, It has been close to a month since I have worked on any of my fiction. At first I chalked it up to the coming election, as that was and still is dominating a great deal of my mental space. But it has been three weeks, and I think it is time to admit that I have fallen off the writing wagon.

    It is a matter of self discipline. I am lacking it, and also staying focused. This isn’t meant as a pity party, but more a matter of recalibration. We are still a long way from normal, or even a normal schedule, but I have to find a way to work within this situation.

  • Writing That Nevers Sees the Light of Day

    Everyone is an artist, or at least has the potential to be an artist. I think the unifying idea is creation to express emotion. In that sense, just about anything can be an artist endeavor. Thus, the world of self-expression.

    Sharing art with others for monetary compensation is a whole other ball game. Making art that sells is a tough trick, and not everything created is meant to be consumed.

    If we are to go down a cliché route, such as dance as if no one is watching; write as if no one will read it, right? What was it that Stephen King said, write the books you want to read.

    I know that I have stated that one of my goals is to be a paid write that can earn enough to replace this computer that I am writing on. The other goal is to just complete a project. I started something, followed it through, and finished it. With the world the way it is, I think I just need a personal win.

    That leads me to believe that what I complete will be something that is awful, and will never see the light of day. And that’s okay. I remember that John Lennon said you have to write a lot of bad songs before you can start writing some good songs.

    I also remember what I tell my kid everyday, you got to practice if you want to get good at something. I might get lucky, but I might also just might be getting my practice in.

  • New Writing Schedule, and Some Inspiration

    Well, the good news is that I think we are finally coming to an understanding of what our daily schedule will be with the wife working at home, the kid remote schooling, and me floating around all of it, while writing when I get a chance.

    I can write this, a blog, when the kid is “in class” and my involvement is at a minimum. Writing in the journal is still during park time, which gives me a solid thirty minutes. Working on fiction is happening during the kid’s hour of TV time in the later afternoon. In the end, I get about two hours of writing during the week. Clearly, I would like more time, but this, right now, is keeping the balancing act working. With this tentative schedule in place, I am feeling a bit more relaxed, and have a reasonable expectation of what I can accomplish in a given week.

    The bonus effect of establishing this “schedule” is that I am now finding that I am inspired to go back to old ideas, and flesh them out more. Notes and sketches that I tucked away months and even years ago, have sprung to a new life, and are interesting to me again. I found myself working on an old story that I had shelved about a year ago, because I thought the idea had run out of steam.

    This isn’t really surprising, nor a revelation, but I had lost inspiration and drive of late. Small changes can make a difference. I have to remind myself that this is a marathon, and will take more time than even I expect.

  • Fictional Real Life Fiction

    I go back on forth on what I should fictionalize when it comes to events that happened in my life. I remember a writing professor stressing to all of us students to never write about themselves. “You are more boring than you think you are,” is what he would say when any of us challenged him on that.

    The reason I bring all of this up is that I had an idea of a story about this time that I tried to record a song off the radio back on the mid 90’s. At one time or another, most of us Gen Xer’s tried to do this. The reason that this seemingly common exercise in music acquisition still sticks with me is that in 1997 I had every Led Zeppelin song on tape except for one; “Hey, Hey, What Can I do.” It was the B-side of the “Immigrant Song” single from 1970, and “Hey, Hey,” never appeared on an album, and wasn’t widely available until the Led Zeppelin box set came out in the early 90’s. At this time in my life, I was rather poor, and didn’t have the money to spend on a box set to just get one song. So late one night, I called my classic rock station to request that they play the song, but also requested that the DJ not speak over the song, which caused the DJ to joke/threaten that he was going to talk over the opening, or ending of the song. I had to stay up close to another hour till the DJ played the song, and he held his word, allowing me to record it clean, and complete my collection. It was a victory, and I held on to those tapes well past the times when I stopped listening to cassettes and CDs.

    It’s a funny, nostalgic anecdote, but it’s isn’t a life changing story. Yet, I have this feeling that if I take the “me” out of the story and drop another “character” in, then I think this story would have legs, and might shed insight on a character, and help with their development.

    So, maybe I’m not that boring after all…

  • Unicorns and Dragons

    Today is a day that I am not feeling it. There is a lot going on in the world, and personally, I am having a tough Covid day. Just not in a place to try to come up with something witty, or have a surprise twist to it.

    I asked my daughter, what should I write about, and her response was “Unicorns and dragons.” Always a good answer to any question.

    In that spirit, I think that I am again waiting for a unicorn to come along and make everything better. I am also waiting for the dragon to arrive and make the world an exciting adventure again.

    I remember when I was a little kid, say eight or nine, and I said that I wanted to grow up and be an adventurer. In my mind, I thought there was a company that you applied to for that job. I didn’t know yet that adventure is a freelance type of job.

    The unicorn for me is act of no effort, the silver platter experience, where you don’t have to do anything and it is magically better. You know, just handed to you.

    Those are the thoughts that came off the top of my head.