Category: Personal

Writing Journal 6.7.2020: It doesn’t feel like summer… or is it an endless summer?

The new block formatting for WordPress seems a little strange… at least, it seems strange to me. It doesn’t seem as straightforward as the old WordPress system, but I’m guessing that it might allow for some people who want to be more visually creative to spread their wings. I’m more of a written word guy myself.

Not too much to share this week. It is the first “official” day of my summer break, but with the big pandemic I have been more or less out of my classroom since mid-March, so it feels more like an endless pretend summer myself. I started the school year with a wife and two kids and now I have a wife living in another town whom I will soon join while I share my home with two adult kids. It has been an interesting adjustment.

I need to get moving on some items, like other writing projects, getting in contact with people, etc. I need to read what other people have been doing on blogs if I’m hoping others read mine, although the whole point of this blog, other than expressing my interests and thoughts on writing, is to keep me honest about the writing process and keeping up with creating something whether it eventually gets published or not.

Got a good start to June – probably my highest weekly word count yet this year [UPDATE 6.14.2020 – Lies, as my daughter would say. I miscalculated last week. The numbers are now revised.]
All you other writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.

[Editing note: I do not like the fact that there is apparently no quote box anymore and we have to do separate boxes for nearly everything. It’s annoying. If there is a way to do quote boxes still, let me know in the comments.]

+5,696 words written.
Days writing: 6 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 2 of 7 for 90 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

Writing Journal 4.27.2020: Down week as I try to read as much as write

Not much new news, so I will keep this short.

 

Had a slight drop in productivity this week as opposed to last, but not a disastrous amount, so I was happy for a small favor. I’ve been honestly a bit lethargic for the past couple of weeks. If there is someone who might be able to deal with being alone or not, it’s likely me, but not going to a library has been a bit tougher than I expected. The fact that our two dogs seem to want to hang out in my bed every evening is a bit endearing and annoying at the same time.

 

However, things are getting better. I’m wrapping up whatever there is left of the school year and afterward, I will be looking forward to reuniting with my wife on a more regular basis when I finish the move to Chariton, although the full transition is going to take a while.

 

I think it’s important that I need to do better to try and stick to a schedule. That can be sort of tough with two teens not on a regular schedule and people coming in at irregular hours to look at the old house.

 

I’m going to make every effort to read farther along in Lord of the Rings and do a first reaction to the next couple chapters. Wish me luck, and here are last week’s stats.

 

+6,048 words written.

Days writing: 4 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 2 of 7 for 45 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.

Writing Journal 4.21.2020: I’m writing everything but writing journals, apparently

There’s not much to say, so I’ll say it quickly.

 

I have been keeping busy writing, so this previous week worked out very well for that, much better than last week. The stats will be at the end of the post as usual.

 

Found out last Friday that we are out of in-person school in Iowa for the rest of the year, so no more in-person classes for anyone, which includes both me and my senior year of high school daughter, which is a bit of a downer for her. So, I’m going to have a bit more writing time than I anticipated, which is one of the few bright spots of the recent troubles that are hitting everyone, many far harder than me. I’m grateful that I am still working as is my wife, and that I now have signed a contract for a new school district closer to my wife so we can be at the same place. Still more difficulties, but at least those are not any of them.

 

I read Chapter Three of Lord of the Rings and plan to get through Chapter Four in the next few days and do a review of it. I’ll post the Facebook link when the time comes.

 

Anyway, here are the stats for last week. Everybody keep safe and all you writers keep writing.

 

+9,305 words written.

Days writing: 6 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 0 of 7 for 0 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

Writing Journal 4.12.2020: Easter weekend was quiet, but I’m chugging along on the writing

Well, I broke my four-week writing streak of growing my weekly word count, but did pretty well compared to last week. I’ll list the numbers below per usual.

 

I stayed indoors most of this week, to be honest. Iowa is not a shelter in place state at the moment, though that could change. It’s just getting harder for me to be around large groups of people under the circumstances. We had a quiet early Easter dinner with just my wife and two kids, none of the older relatives over. Given that we’ll be moving away from them soon and my kids will soon have their own plans (a nineteen and eighteen-year-old in the house), that might be the last Easter celebration of its kind for a while.

 

If you didn’t catch it, I’m doing video reviews of my first ever read-through of Lord of the Rings on my Facebook writing page. Go ahead and check them out there – I just posted my review of Chapters One and Two and should have another one up later this week.

 

That’s it for now, I think. I’ll have my stats for the week below. All you writers keep writing, and for everyone, stay safe.

+5,369 words written.

Days writing: 5 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 2 of 7 for 150 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.

Writing Journal 3.24.2020: Sorry for not posting for a while, here’s a cute picture of a dog

In case you were wondering, the dog in question is Winston (Winnie) Liegois, a shih tzu about… 10 years old now? He’s one of the most chill pups ever, and often likes to hang out with me when I’m writing, especially when my wife is not around. So, there you go.

 

I’ll keep the rest of this short.

 

The school closure I worried about is now in its second week. I just had a meeting with my bosses to see what was up and get things prepared for the weeks to come.

 

Look out everyone, quick political material here.

 

Our president insists that everyone is going to be back at work exactly the way it was in a couple of weeks. I have the feeling that I am going to be starting a long summer break.

 

My wife, who is a city manager in the new town where we will make our home, is essentially one of those first responders/essential personnel that they talk about in the news. It’s all uncharted territory for me and her.

 

The kids are bummed about having to curtail what they do, and I totally understand that. Worry about what is to come is common among those who have a lot more time on their hands than what they were expecting.

 

Anyway, as far as writing goes, I’ve been keeping busy on Project D (check here for more information). You can go here if you want to read it on Archive Of Our Own. Not too much else… but after a bit of a run on redoing one thing on my Project A, I want to start shopping that along as well, hoping that COVID-19 doesn’t mess up online book publishing, etc.

 

I’ll leave the stats below. They’re a bit better than last week’s, but not by much. I guess I was getting used to the hermit life under COVID-19. I’m going to try and write and revise mpre in the week to come. Stay safe and hope that all of you writers have some time to cut loose.

 

+2.590 words written.

Days writing: 5 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 2 of 7 for 60 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

Writing Journal 3.16.2020: IRL issues kept me from writing, and IRL issues will give me more time to write. And so it goes.

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: I was going to write this Sunday, but IRL events (which I’ll explain) got in the way. Just follow along and all will be revealed.]

 

[AUTHOR’S NOTE #2: Today’s featured photo is my new copy of the Writer’s Market. Got it used for a decent price and it arrived yesterday.]

 

Well, this week was… productive and not productive. I’ve written something every day this week, although I have not reached my daily quota at any time during the week. The days have been tumultuous and exciting, but with a lot of waiting as well. (This is going to be a fairly personal blog, so bear with me.)

 

I now have a new home in the new community that I’ll be moving to soon. A ton of documents signed, but it is now officially ours. We’ve begun fixing a few things up and my wife intends to start living there at the end of the month. [As I mentioned before, I plan to move when they school year ends (haha) and we hope to sell our old home eventually.

 

So, I’m dealing with that, writing, the impending graduation of my son from tech school (heating and air conditioning program) and my daughter from high school, wrapping up the last couple of months of my old job, among other items on the plate… when something comes up.

COVID-19+(Coronavirus)

Exactly.

My son’s school is shut down for two weeks, just as he’s getting ready to get his certification.

My daughter’s school is likely to cancel for the next four weeks, so her spring break is going to be a lot longer than we expected.

I’m off for four weeks from my school district.

When will life approach something resembling normal? Who knows.

Until then, I will keep busy trying to keep the house picked up for any potential buyers, hunker down and not go out unless necessary, and write. Write a lot. Also, maybe doing some of the busy work on some of the projects I have outstanding (read here if you’re bored).

Stay safe, everyone, and bless you all. Good luck writing to all the writers out there.

And for those of you curious, here’s the stats for last week:

+1,972 words written.

Days writing: 7 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 0 of 7 for  0 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 0 of 7 days.

 

Writing Journal 3.2.2020: Starting March by getting caught up from the past two weeks

Yeah, I’ve been a bad blogger.

 

I’ve been getting a lot of stuff caught up IRL. Outside obligations mean that I will basically not be at work for a good portion of this week for various reasons (closing on a new house, new job opportunities, etc.). I’ve had my old house on the market and a ton of people have already seen it, but no takers yet. It’s only been on the market a week.

 

And I have been writing, this is the truth. It’s been more writing than acting like a writer, but there you go. Trying to reach out to the outside world can seem more like a hassle than it is worth, but I do appreciate anyone reading and checking in. Other than the writing, there hasn’t been much news…

 

…wait, there is one more thing. Writers on the Avenue, the Muscatine, Iowa writer’s group I have belonged to for years, is releasing a 30th anniversary anthology of past and present writers from the group, and I made a couple of contributions to it. Once I find out when it’s getting released and how to get it, I’ll pass it along to you.

 

So, I’ll be keeping busy and doing a bit of traveling, so I’m not likely to get in any extra blogs this week. However, I have been keeping up with the journal, so I’m leaving the stats for the last two weeks of February here for your perusal. Enjoy, and best of luck to your writing, whatever it might be.

 

Week of Feb. 17:

+5,724 words written.

Days writing: 6 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 1 of 7 for 90 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

 

Week of Feb. 24:

+4,684 words written.

Days writing: 4 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 2 of 7 for 90 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

Writing Journal, 2.2.2020: Wrapping up January

So, this week was a bit more planning than writing than it has been before.

 

Recently, Project D and Project F have been occupying my frontal lobes. The details are here, but basically Project D is a fanfiction fantasy project I’m trying to move toward completion and Project F is a long-term original content fantasy project. A longtime fan of fantasy, the genre has now grabbed my attention with a vengeance.

 

Essentially, with more work as I wrap up my time at my current district and plans I have to help my wife with regarding both selling my house, buying a new house, moving, helping my son get set up with a new job after finishing his training, and getting my daughter eventually settled in at university, there is a lot going on. I’m happy the month of January is wrapped up – my wife and I are that much closer to having the crazy time finished up.

 

With all of that, my time writing has been somewhat limited. I always hate reading fanfiction that authors have abandoned due to losing interest in the story, life problems, etc. (On the Internet, you likely have to consider the possibility that some of those authors just pass on mid-story or retire from writing without public comment.) I want to make sure what I’m writing gets done. I have a good outline of the project, I have to just sit down and write everything out. From my estimates, I’m about halfway through the project, and I hope I might be able to finish it up by the end of this summer. Whether that happens is another issue, but I am hopeful and I’m really enjoying the story (it’s here if you want to read it).

 

Much of my planning/research has been centered on how I want to name both characters and places in my Project F. I’ve started planning what the world the new story takes place in with the help of Wonderdraft, but thinking of what the names of those places should be and what the names of the people that live in those places are another struggle altogether. Everyone talks about how brilliant Tolkien was in naming conventions and so forth, but the guy was a linguistics professor at Cambridge University, so he had a few advantages that I don’t have. I want them to be good without sounding too derivative and done in a way that’s not going to take forever to research, much less write.

 

I do have some technological resources JRRT didn’t happen to have, however. I think this whole process might be worth it’s own blog post, but don’t ask me to advise you on how to handle it. I’m just muddling along through the creative process just like everyone else is, trying to make something interesting.

 

Anyway, here’s the stats for last week:

+2,203 words written.

Days writing:  3 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 3 of 7 for 240 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

So, nothing horrific.

 

Have a good week reading and writing, everyone.

Writing Journal 1.26.2020: Catching up after two weeks

Well, I wound up taking a break from posting for a bit.

I’ve gotten busy with things having to do with work and with the move. Writing at time seems to be a low priority with me, even though it’s one of the few things that is helping me relax. Many things are going on with trying to find a new house in the new town and selling the old house in the old one. Plus, I have my son finishing up his technical school and looking for work in three months and my daughter graduating high school and headed off to university, where I have the feeling she’ll spend plenty of time at rather than home with us.

With all of this going on, getting writing stuff accomplished and reaching goals seems a low priority with me. Then again, I can make all of the goals I want but still decide not to reach them. I think that I’m trying to keep things realistic this year. Whether I have a better year writing than what I did in 2019 is an open question, but I’m not going to beat myself up if I’m not as prolific.

It’s bleeding over into some other areas now. If anyone has been following my Facebook  and Twitter pages for a while, I haven’t been posting as much writing articles or items other than the blog posts and a few odds and ends. It gets really exhausting trying to post new stuff or articles all the time, and to be honest I’m not really a fan of Facebook for all of the falsehoods and misleading advertising it has all the time. I rarely browse the thing anymore and I’ve deleted the main app for it from my phone (maybe the fourth time in the past several months). If it wasn’t for my page on Facebook there’s a good chance I’d delete my account altogether.

I think everything that has been happening with me has slowed the momentum I had going on as a writer. However, with the move, I’m essentially leaving my writing community behind and I’ll have to start over with that, there’s nothing else for it. It doesn’t make sense for me to try and be this ambitious about a passion project or projects if I have so many real life things to deal with, especially in the next four to six months.

There’s so many changes coming. Hopefully the rest of the first half of the year flies by and I feel more settled by the end of it.

Here’s the stats, anyway. First week went well, but I have a feeling that the most recent week will be more typical of my production for the foreseeable future. Anyway, hope your writing goes well and have a great week.

Week of 1.12.2020:

+8,425 words written.

Days writing: 4 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 4 of 7 for 210 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.

Week of 1.19.2020:

+2,160 words written.

Days writing: 4 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 2 of 7 for  90 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.

Writing Journal 12.8.2019: It was delayed a couple days…

Hi, everyone, sorry forgetting so terminally lazy in some regards with the blog. Things are winding down for the calendar year for work and I had to get a few things in order during the past few days.

 

Also, I’ve now officially confirmed to my bosses that I will not be returning to the school after my contract winds down so I can rejoin my wife in (roughly) central Iowa. So, that is good news, although obviously all of this preparation, initial or otherwise, to move on to a different situation is pretty disruptive of several things, including settling down and figuring out a plan of action for the writing other than this fanfiction that has been obsessing me lately.

 

However, it has been productive. Here’s the totals from last week. I’ll try and get some extra posts around the holidays, and an update on projects and where I’m at with them. Take care.

+10,817 words written.

Days writing: 7 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 0 of 7 for 0 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.