Update

I completely fell off the writing wagon. I think I hit my head as I fell. When I awoke, the wagon was gone and I was lost in the darkness. I have not written anything in a couple of weeks - since the day before my last blog post in fact. Apparently my muse stayed on the wagon and now I have lost her (or him - I'm not really sure.)

I am not overly stressed about this. Technically I'm a month ahead of schedule for my 100 words per day.

So I'm just going to wait for my muse to show back up with the wagon. Surely they will realize I am gone eventually.

In the mean time, I have been reading and doing some modeling. Perhaps I will post some of that eventually.

Tonight I'm going to try something new

This is probably a bad idea.

In fact the more I think about it the worse the idea sounds.

I was thinking about stepping back from my main writing project and working on a little short story I started writing a while back. I came across it and liked what I had written. It made me feel good and that was a nice feeling since I've been thinking about how shitty my writing is lately.

However, as I type this I know its not a good idea. I need to push through with my novella and not get distracted. So no matter what, I'm going to continue to get my 100 words per day written on that.

Maybe I can use this like a reward system. Like, I can only work on the short story if I have already done my 100 words of novella writing. That might work.

It was nice to reread something I had written and feel good about writing it though. I need more moments like that.

Reading update: I'm currently in the middle of two of the books on the list. In the mornings at the gym I am listening to The Last Unicorn on Audible. At night I am reading The Guns of Avalon (book two of the Chronicles of Amber).

A small bit of progress

I wrote last night. It wasn't much, a little more than 100 words, but I wrote.

I think perhaps I got a bit full of myself, trying to increase my words per day beyond what I was truly capable. When I started this goal of writing, I think I knew this already, which is why I originally settled on 100 pages a day.

Now that I have come back to myself, I will continue writing at a slower pace, I think, only writing what I think I am able.

I'm in a rut

I did not write last night. That makes three days in a row. I think part of it is the fear that what I've already written is garbage. I feel good about small moments of it, but I know there are problems in the story. I think I can fix them, but I guess I'm just scared.

I am also concerned that I'm going to put the time in to finish the story and it's going to end up being much shorter than I first imagined. I was hoping to write at least a novella, so about 20,000 - 35,000 words. That seems like a goodish length to charge people money for. Shorter than that and I feel that the story probably does not have enough depth.

What I have discovered is that stories are not about plot. They are about characters. Right now my characters have come to realize that my original plot was not well enough thought out.

I'm going to take some more notes today and hopefully find my muse tonight.

Weekend of Disapointment

I am ashamed.

So on Friday I wrote about my plan to write this weekend. I wrote nothing. I did not even open my writing program. I could write about everything that I accomplished this weekend, and list all the excuses for not writing that I told myself, but I will not subject you to it. The bottom line is I failed. I prioritized other things, put them ahead of my dreams.

I need to stop doing that because my dreams deserve better.

I did play a game of Warhammer 40k with my Daemon army. It was a lot of fun, but I wasn't thinking, and I forgot to take pictures. I will try to remember for next time. Speaking of Warhammer, I found out that the codex for the Thousand Suns Chaos Marines is coming out next weekend, so I'm excited about that. They will probably be my next army. I can't seem to get into anything that isn't Chaos. Maybe that says something about me.

So that was my weekend of failure, but let's not dwell on the past. Progress, not perfection.

Back to writing tonight!

Throughout the day and during lunch, I'm going to plot out what I will write tonight. Last time I did that it worked out great, and I ended up writing about 700 words in an hour.

New Computer & New Software

First some backstory.

I own a computer, a PC. It's a rather nice one that I build with a friend of mine a few years ago. It cost me about $1500 in parts, so it was probably a $3000 computer if I had bought it on the market. I had built it to play games on, such is the labor of youth (I've aged a lot in the last couple of years).

When first began trying to write a couple of years ago, my computer was in our bedroom, which was a good place to write. It was on one end of the house and far enough from the living room that I would not hear the television as long as the door was closed.

However, a few months ago we moved all of the gaming devices into the living room, the computer included. This put a damper on my writing. I can't write there. It's the center of the house with lots of traffic and of course the televisions (two of them!) are in there.

I started writing on my iPad together with a bluetooth keyboard. It was functional, but hardly ideal. In fact it was getting to be a pain in the ass.

I told you all of that to tell you this:

This week I ordered a MacBook Air laptop. I had to increase my credit limit on my Amazon credit card to buy it, but those are the kind of tough choices you have to make when you are chasing your dreams.

It arrived last night and I love it.

I got it set up and downloaded Scrivener, a writing program I have been looking forward to trying. It is amazing. I will definitely be writing about this program in the near future, so look forward to that.

I only got about 200 words written because it took a while to get everything organized and to get my work imported into the system, but I was expecting that. I had considered not writing at all, and had planned not to, but I knew in my heart that was a mistake. So I wrote.

I'm sitting at about 5200 words right now, averaging 584 per day. I think I squandered an opportunity last weekend that I will not repeat this weekend. I should be able to write 2000 words each day on the weekends, even if it takes me a few hours to plow through it, so that's what I'm going to do.

Also I started reading a couple of books from my 2018 reading list. I already owned the second book of the Prince of Amber series (I read the first a while ago), and I downloaded The Last Unicorn on Audible to listen to while at the gym. I am on my way!

I will try to update the blog this weekend, but we will see.

Books to read 2018

This morning I was at the gym with my wife (see I really am working on those resolutions!). I was on the treadmill listening to an audio-book of Stephen King's On Writing, and he mentions the importance of reading. It makes sense; how can you expect to be a writer if you don't read?

So I decided to make an effort to read a lot more this year. I guess this is an amendment to my list of resolutions, but its my blog and I can do things like that. Anyway, this afternoon I run across a blog post by one of my favorite authors (indeed one of my favorite people), Patrick Rothfuss (ok, he's my hero). In this blog he posts a list of books/series that have influenced him. I thought, "Wow, how handy is that?"

So here is the list (I struck-through the ones that I have previously read). I plan to begin knocking these out posthaste:

1. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
2. The Last Unicorn By Peter S. Beagle
3. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
4. Stranger In a Strange Land Robert Heinlein
5. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
6. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
7. Dragonriders Of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
8. Dune by Frank Herbert
9. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
10. The Discworld books by Terry Pratchett
11. The Chronicles of Amber–Roger Zelazny
12. Brave New World–Aldous Huxley
13. Wizard of Earthsea By Le Guin
14. Sandman  – Neil Gaiman
15. The Fisher King Trilogy by Tim Powers
16. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy by Douglas Adams
17. The Riddlemaster of Hed series by Patricia McKillip
18. Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P Lovecraft
19. Neuromancer by William Gibson
20. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
21. 1984 – by George Orwell
22. Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson
23. Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare
24. The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, by Barry Hughart
25. The Princess Bride – William Goldman
26. The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter
27. Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
28. The Odyssey by Homer
29. The Last Herald-Mage trilogy – Mercedes Lackey
30. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
31. River World Series – Phillip Jose Farmer
32. One Thousand and One Nights
33. Riftwar Saga by Feist
34. The Dark Tower series – Stephen King
35. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams
36. Belgariad series by David Eddings
37. Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson
38. Michael Ende – The Neverending Story
39. The Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
40. The Shannara Trilogy – Terry Brooks

Writing Update

I was able to keep my word goals through the weekend. Granted the goal was very low (100 words per day).

Now that I see that I can meet that goal rather easily (averaging around 500 words per day), I am going to increase my goal to 500 words. I'm to 2800 words total so far and I'm about 5 days in. I'm thinking this novella will be around 25,000 words or so, and if I can start writing 1000 words per day I should be able to finish by the end of next month.

I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but I'm just excited. As long as I can finish the book by the end of the year I will be happy.

I just read an article that I think is going to help me organize my stuff.

I am also looking into getting a laptop and some better writing software, but we will see.

D&D and Warhammer posts coming soon.

I don't get a lot of opportunities to play games, especially lately. I used to try to play at least once a week, but its been pretty busy for a while.

When I do play something its usually a tabletop game like Warhammer 40k or Dungeons and Dragons. Going to PAX earlier this month got me thinking about starting up a D&D campaign so that is in the works. Also one of my Warhammer armies recently got a new set of rules with their codex book release so I'm looking forward to playing with them soon also.

I think I will bet getting a couple of new models for the army soon so maybe I will post some of that.

I will definitely post notes from the D&D campaign when that gets started. I think I will start out the players in the Out of the Abyss story line since I recent purchased the book. I will use that to get them up to level 5 or so and then send them over to Chult with the Tomb of Annihilation book.

I will keep you posted!

Hey, Hey, Hey, Heeeeeeey - Write words everyday!

After two nights of writing, I am now 1814 words richer. Assuming the novella will be around 35,000 words, I've got a lot of words left to go.

My goal is to write every day no matter what, and to get at least 100 words per day. It seems like a pretty paltry goal, but that's one of the reasons I set my goal so low. This is not the first time I've "started writing."

Stephen King reportedly writes a minimum of 2000 words per day and in the beginning that was what I set out to do. Of course I soon came to the obvious conclusion that I, in fact, am not Stephen King. This realization eventually crippled my writing because I was constantly missing the 2000 word mark, and whatever that creative juice is inside us that makes writing magic happen eventually just ran out of me.

I am hoping that the low word goal will encourage me to write every day. 100 words is not a lot of words - that's like a third of a double spaced page. In fact, I will probably have four times that number just in this blog post (too bad my blog does not count toward my goal!)

Another problem that I have run into in the past was trying to constantly edit what I wrote as I wrote it. I still struggle with this, and I have to force myself to move on and keep writing. I have to tell myself that, "Yes, its shitty, but we just need to get all the ideas on the page - we can come back and fix it later!"

I've read that sentiment in several writing books, and I have read a lot of writing books. If you constantly try to fix what you have written then you will never finish the book. So my plan is just just write everyday until the first draft is finished, and then after a short break I will start at the beginning and try to convert my story into literature (or at least readable thoughts).

I think my biggest hurdle is that I really don't know what's going to happen in the book. I've got a good idea about this first part that I'm writing, and I'm pretty sure about where it all ends up, but the middle part is very fuzzy. Like scary fuzzy.

Alas, I guess we will find out soon.

PAX South 2018

Got back from our PAX vacation. I took an extra day off this year, so I didn't have to go work the next day. I think I will continue to do that in the future because it gave me an extra day to decompress.

We had a really great time.

We changed hotels this year. We normally stay at the Grand Hyatt, but we decided that it was just too expensive for what we got, so we switched to La Quinta. It was a great decision. The beds were a little smaller, but other than that it was great. There was even free breakfasts with waffles and sausage and stuff.

PAX itself was amazing as usual. We loved seeing the Penny Arcade crew again and hearing their stories. This year there was a double helping of D&D live games and they were both great. Chris Perkin's game was perhaps the best ever. And I got everyone's autograph in my Dungeon Master's Guide.

We only did one night of concerts because we were so tired by the end of the day, but the music was really cool.

I had a couple of complaints about the merch this year, but I will keep those criticisms for the PAX survey.

Post-PAX depression is a real thing and I get it every year. I'm not sure its the same for me as other people, but it is probably similar. Some of it is due to being surrounded by so many people with similar interest - people that understand you and get your jokes and references. Going back to the 'real world' after that is depressing.

For me specifically though, I go to PAX and see people who are doing what they love for a living. They describe it as doing what they always wanted to do and always knowing what that was. I do not have that. And when I get home it is even more obvious. I really want that.

This is the main reason for the PAX resolutions that I do each year. They are an attempt to get closer to that goal. I think in the past they were more vague, but this year is going to be a big leap. This year I am going to write a novella. I think getting that done will be a step in the direction I want to go.

The other goals, like going to the gym, are more along the lines of what I usually do. Speaking of the gym, we were supposed to start going this morning, but we had a snow storm and I was worried about traffic so we did not start that yet. Soon I promise!

So I told you all of that to tell you this: I'm going to start writing tonight. Like real writing - not the outline and note taking bullshit I usually write. There are 349 days left in the year and I want to write about 35,000 pages. So that's about 100 words a day. That sounds totally doable and I'm going to start tonight.

The Year of the Blog

One of my resolutions this year was to blog more. I could not stand writing another "I'm restarting this blog" on my other blog so I decided to just make a new blog here.

I don't start my yearly resolutions on New Years day; I start mine at PAX South. We go to San Antonio every year in January to attend and it always feels like going home. However it is such a high point of my year that returning to "real life" always caused me to fall into depression. I needed a way to sort out my life upon returning and having goals to accomplish seemed to help. I call them my PAX resolutions. Will be blogging more about PAX South in the coming days.

So here are my resolutions in no particular order:

• Blog more. (Yay me! Already got this one going!)
• Write a book. (I've got a couple of ideas, but this one is starting off slow.)
• Get rid of junk. (It's starting to pile up at the house.)
• Dismantle my disintegrating front porch.
• Learn more about streaming on Twitch. (Maybe next year I will have the guts to actually start.)
• Go to the dentist. (My wife and I both need to take care of this one.)
• Start going to the gym again.
• Finish all those modeling projects (This would help with clearing out junk also.)
• Keep better track of finances.
• Go on a star-gazing vacation at a national park.

That seems like a good start. If I think of any more I will post them in another post.