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!