Tag: My Writing

Writing Journal 2.16.2022: Not the best of numbers, but some clarity on my pace… and a bit more consistency… plus some other news

Welcome again.

Although it doesn’t look like it, I have been getting some blog writing done behind the scenes, yet not published yet. However, I’ve been making more progress. There’s at least three posts that I’m working on in drafts, and they are getting closer to getting done. I had wanted to get them done earlier, but I’ve been busy with a little passion project that I finally got finished up. (That’s the subject of one of those draft blogs. Maybe Friday I’ll post it?)

So, this week. I got more than a little writing done, pretty consistently across the week. The weekend wasn’t total garbage, even though I only wrote 55 words one day. At least it wasn’t zero, right?

I’m also looking to make some adjustments to the number of words I need to shoot for every day. I mentioned previously my goal for the year is 200,000 words in a year, roughly 16,667 words a month on average. I was a little below that monthly average last January, but I’m hoping to make up the difference over the next two months, especially since March is going to be a slightly “longer” month than the others.

Usually, my goal is to get to around 500 words per day. However, I have done some recalculations and realized that if I am going to make this 200,000 word goal with some words to spare, I am going to have to get closer to around 600 words per day.

That’s not a problem. One of the good things about setting a writing goal in advance and working toward it is spot checking how much you are getting done as the year progresses. I can check those stats and see if I have to make adjustments to daily or weekly totals if I get ahead or behind. Now that I have that goal ahead of time, I’m finding it to be a little easier to see where I am relative to that goal and how much I have to do to get there.

Visualization and goal-setting… seems to be working? We’ll have a better idea after a couple of months, likely.

How am I going to get those numbers up? Well, I have a blog about writing, maybe I need to… write a little more than just once a month about how much I’m writing? (Man, talk about insider baseball.) I need to get a little further into the self-publishing area, especially with this book project I’ve had sitting on the sidelines. I want to get more into Canva for design and Substack for writing – it might be a way that I can get paid for writing directly than what is going on now. But I’m also staying here on WordPress because I consider it to be a very intuitive site and not something that I need a lot of programming skill or cash to keep going.

As for last week’s numbers… they were both good and bad. For the first time in a long time, I managed to write at least something every day. Yeah, I did wind up just writing 55 words on one of those days, but I managed to make my minimum daily quota of 500 words.

(Now, however, I know I’ll have to lay on a few extra words every day to get to 200K. Again, not a problem now since I know how much I need to still write.)

Also, I managed to meet that minimum quota of either 500 words a day or 30 minutes of revisions or planning for writing a day every day last week, which isn’t a nothing statistic. After just meeting my daily quotas just 58 percent of the time, I’m going to be gunning for meeting daily quota at least 70 percent of the time. So, an entire week when I match my daily quota one way or another is going to be a big win in my book.

So, here are the weekly stats. And, it turns out all this is a bit over 600 words. Another good day of writing for me, at least.

Writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.

Writing statistics for the week ending 2.12.2022:
+3,425 words written.
Days writing: 7 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 2 of 7 for 60 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.

I’m Having A Promotional Event on July 10th. Think anybody can make it out there?

After an extended absence from doing any sort of in-person promotional events due first to my move out to South Central Iowa and the whole COVID situation, I thought it was time for me to finally bring that dry spell to an end.

I will be making an appearance at the 6th annual Indie Author Book Expo at Valley West Mall in West Des Moines July 10th. I will be at the expo from 11 am to 5 pm that day.

Come down to talk with me and pick up a copy of my novel The Holy Fool. It’s my debut novel, a journalism thriller about a reporter trying to break a big national security story in Chicago on the eve of the 2008 elections and the Great Recession while trying to help keep his paper alive. Go ahead and come to the My Works page on the blog for more information about the book and links to buy paperback and e-book editions.

Here’s a link to the expo. Hope to see you there.

A Writer’s Biography, Author’s Note: Is this beginning to turn into something… bigger?

[PHOTO NOTE: The featured pic is a 1913 picture by Oscar Grossheim of downtown Muscatine, Iowa, courtesy of the Musser Public Library’s collection. Since this is about my past, I decided to add an old photo of my hometown. It sort of fits, even though I didn’t move there for another 60 years or so after that was taken.]

It’s a bit freaky to me that it was almost four years ago since I wrote this blog entry. At the time, I wasn’t thinking too much about it. I was just thinking of the basic idea that I had to write about writing and my relationship to it over the years. In that post, I was talking about when I was a young kid first getting into the written word and starting to ponder the idea that I might be able to tell the type of stories I had been reading about.

Well, a couple of posts about the type of stuff I read as a kid turned into a few. They were coming hot and heavy for a while, but then continued, in dribs and drabs, throughout the lifespan of this blog. I finally put out a couple more of those posts after a seven-month hiatus. That prompted to me to wonder – how many of those have I actually written?

Well, I went ahead and looked at all of the posts I’ve now written under this Writer’s Biography title, and did some counting… and I have twenty different posts. With this post, that number is now twenty-one.

Those are about twenty different posts of me talking about myself and my life as a writer. Of those posts, 8 of them I have labeled as Volume I (covering my time as a kid and adolescent). Another 7 posts I’ve labeled Volume II (covering my time as a young adult). Finally, there were 5 posts labeled Volume III (covering things that have happened as I began to write again in middle age after an extended series of hiatuses). All of those stories were centered around either my writing or the influences of my writing (what I read). So, I didn’t think too much about it… until now. And now, there’s this story that you are reading now, when I finally sit down for a moment and contemplate what’s been happening.

To look back and see that I had been doing that much writing about myself… that was a bit of a surprise.

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

I’m not sure, but I think that this is, without any particular initial intent, becoming something more than just a few blog posts. I think I’ve somehow wound up with something that is approaching… a memoir.

There are more than a few old pieces of fiction and some of the columns I wrote for newspapers that would indulge my youthful, quixotic dreams of being a famous newspaper columnist that wind up being at least semi-autobiographical. I remember reading Charles Yeager and Miles Davis’ autobiography and was impressed by their stories. I loved Andre Agassi’s Open and thought it was brilliant, but I totally understood he needed a co-author to make it work. And, it was a great job that they did.

But me trying to write an autobiography? Why?

First, it’s not like I have that interesting of a life to talk about. I was an only child in eastern Iowa who read a lot of books, watched a lot of television, and played a lot of video games. I got into sci-fi geek culture, or as much as I could find out about it in the pre-Internet Midwest. I got married, had a couple kids, kicked around a few newspapers and got into teaching. I never did wind up getting arrested or had any major tragedies happen to me. It’s been a relatively quiet life.

And secondly, I always thought you had to remember a lot about your past. There’s not too many memories, or fully formed memories, of when I was a kid, at least not enough to fill an entire book. Likely, they wouldn’t be enough to fill in one of those self-published books of memoirs you see in local bookstores or fairs. I really related to how David Carr of the New York Times, when he wrote a memoir of his time as an addict, he wound up interviewing people in his life because he didn’t think that he could be relied on for the accuracy of his recollections.

It turns out, however, that I might have more to talk about than just a few stories. The series is turning into something of its own creature, something that is happening in spite of itself. I’m honestly not sure about whether I’d ever consider turning it into an actual book, or where it might lead.

I do know I still have more than a few of those types of stories to tell, however. So keep checking in – you’ll never know what I might remember next.

A Writer’s Biography, Volume I, Part 8: The Old Mississippi

I recently completed my move from Muscatine, Iowa, where I’ve lived for more than 30 of the fortysomething years I’ve lived, to Chariton, Iowa, in south-central Iowa. In many ways, I’m excited about the move – it has been a great professional opportunity for my wife, a good financial move for us, and a good change of pace for me. Being closer to Des Moines might even be helpful for me as far as writing goes – more writers, more people to network with. My wife even has suggested that I start a Chariton or Lucas County writer’s group, but I have to admit that I have no idea how many writers are out there or what type of writing they might do. I’d be open to the idea, however.

It’s going to be the river, however, that I’m going to miss the most.

For more than forty of my years, I have lived a couple miles or so from the Mississippi River. That has been something that I truly treasured. I remembered when I was a little kid, reading something in a National Geographic book about how the Mississippi/Missouri/Ohio river system was the third biggest river system in the world, topped only by the Amazon and the Nile. Heady stuff for a little kid.

I want to describe what this river meant to me, then and now. Doing justice to the subject is a little intimidating, to be honest. I haven’t done much looking at other people’s writings about rivers or the Mississippi in particular.

When I talk about this, I need to be honest. It wasn’t like I was some river rat, hanging out on the shore every weekend or even every month. If I wandered down to the riverfront once every week it was an uncommon occurrence. But the fact that the river was there was reassuring to me. It was a living, breathing river and passageway to me, a place where I could lose myself if I had the chance.

Since I learned that we were going to be moving to South Central Iowa, I’ve been thinking more about my feelings about the Mississippi, some of the ways that I have experienced the river. My old writing group back in Muscatine did a lot of poetry and a lot of writing about our region. I decided to finally try my own hand at poetry, which turned into my current Project C.

So, I’m thinking that maybe a poem might be a good way to maybe get at the way I feel. This is the first time I’ve shown this – be gentle.

NO-MAN’S ISLANDS (A River Story)
2.2019
The thing that The River has over other rivers and streams
is its own land.
Usually, it’s just a dirt road of two-lane blacktop of muddy water
or a four-lane at best.
But The River has its own land, right there tucked in the channel.
Carved and molded and rounded-off by the ever-shifting waters
with no shape but overwhelming mass and motion.
These are the No Man’s Island’s.  
Temporary Sentinels guarding the river for as long as they’re around.
They are for no one for everyone that has a boat
or strong enough swimming stroke.
Some are bare sand, all but ready for a rise in The River
to send it away.
Others are thick jungles, oaks and maples cluttering the interior
and hanging off the banks like a daredevil hanging from a bridge.
They’re perfect for parking your boat,
and getting some sun quota for the day.
You hang out with love behind the trees and bushes
obscuring the view of the jet skiers and party boat passengers and barge crews.
It’s their own little fiefdoms away from the cares and stresses
On Shore.
At least, they are until the snacks and beers in the coolers run out.

I’m planning on trying to do more of that poetry with river themes, as a way of keeping those memories alive with me and keep creative.

There’s no rivers the size of the Mississippi around here. There are some sizable lakes around here, including Lake Rathburn and some others within decent driving range. However, I do have an active railway not a block away from my house. I’m actually living on a highway for the first time in my life, as well.

Maybe its time to try out some train and road poems.

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.

What I’m Working On: Start of 2020 edition

If there is one thing that I don’t have a problem with, it’s ideas about what to write about, at least from a fiction perspective.

 

I always had writing ideas, some good, some rubbish, that I’d play with in my head, work out, prewrite a couple years before committing them to an electronic file or paper. That and a lot of other hangups led me to a lot of procrastination.

At the start of this blog, I let readers know some of the things I’ve been working on. I think that it would be helpful to keep anyone reading this blog up to date about those projects, but it also helps me organize what’s going on with me, as well.

These projects cover several different genres and subjects. I have to say that I’ve always considered myself more of a genre writer than literary (and if anyone can let me know what makes a novel “literary,” I’d appreciate a definition because I have no idea what it is). Actually, I always worried about telling a good story more than playing around with words or whatever.

My Current Projects

  • Project A: This is a book about a young man who is a football player and the son of a famous college football coach who is also obsessed with soccer. I first got the idea to write about what I thought the first American Lionel Messi might be like and it turned into one of the richest characters I’ve ever written about.
    STATUS: Revised, proofread, and now ready to be shopped around.
  • Project B: This is a short novel about a young teen who shoots two of his classmates during a psychotic break. After five years imprisonment, he is looking to rebuild his life with the help of his brother, but former high school classmates start turning up dead around him…
    A former NaNoWriMo project, this is one of the shortest books I’ve written, around 50,000 words. I want to make this one nice and tight, not much longer than it is now, which I think will be a good plan for a thriller.
    STATUS: In the process of a major revision/”second rough draft.”
  • Project C: For someone who never messed around with poetry, the idea of me putting together a poetry collection is a real trip. The poetry enthusiasts of Writers On The Avenue in Muscatine were so much into poetry that I decided, starting around 2010 or so, to give it a whirl as well.
    This has led me into some interesting areas, and has been a way for me to connect to where I grew up. A big theme in this collection is the Mississippi River, how I’ve experienced it, and what it means to me. I first got the idea of this project well before I knew I was going to eventually leave the Mississippi River area, but I think it’s going to have more significance for me as I move on to other places. I don’t know if I’ll ever return to a town on the Mississippi, but I’d love to move near a big river or lake again some time. (People leaving their homes for various reasons appears to be a reoccurring theme in a lot of my work).
    I had originally decided to try to put this out as a whole project, but some recent advice from a poet I’ve met has convinced me to try and get some of these out individually. So I’m going to start looking into those markets, with the intention of getting those poems published and thus generating interest in the larger collection.
    STATUS: A full collection is only one-half to two-thirds finished.
  • Project F: This is the fantasy project I was inspired to write based on my Game of Thrones obsession. The basic theme that I’ve been playing around with is this: So, I started thinking of a scenario, of a new fantasy world, where civilizations representing the concepts of magic, chivalry, and science and progress would clash and face each other. The more that I’ve watched Game of Thrones and what they’ve done right and wrong, the more this idea of writing fantasy intrigues me, and it’s the genre that really has my undivided attention at the moment. I’ve started to look over fantasy map building sites and think about what these civilizations would be like.
    STATUS: Early planning stages.
  • Project D: This is the second fanfiction project I took on inspired by the debacle over the last season of Game of Thrones. I’m basically rewriting the entire eighth season to how I think it should have gone. I’m well over 100,000 words on the project and close to halfway through what I think the story will be as of this writing. Obviously I have no interest in monetizing this whatsoever. One of these days I’ll have to think more about why this story snagged my attention. Maybe it’s been keeping me sane with all of the changes I’ve been facing this past year.
    If you want to read what I’ve done so far, you can read this project here on Archive Of Our Own (AO3). My profile name on AO3 is librarysquatter.
    STATUS: Writing in progress.

Here’s two other projects that I am calling inactive due to my attention on the previous projects and my blog, but I’m still listing them.

  • Project R: A story of a fictional indie rock band and its history from the early 1980’s to the early/mid-1990’s, my love letter, so to speak, of the indie rock that caught my ear so many years ago. This will likely turn out to be a trilogy.
  • Project W: A thriller, just the germ of an idea. But, it’s pretty intense, pretty heavy material. This might wind up simmering for a while.

I set a lot of lofty goals for myself last year, but those crashed and burned for the most part. As I look back on the goals I set last summer, I completed one out of my six goals. I’m writing, but it’s tough getting things done otherwise. I’ll be moving to a new community soon and wrapping up my affairs in the old one, so there’s no telling what I will be able to What I think I need to do is make my goals longer term and more realistic for both what I want to accomplish, what I can get accomplished in the time I have, and frankly, what my track record is in getting things accomplished with my writing up to this point.

  • So, my goals:
  • Project A: Begin querying agents and publishers: Sometime during 2020, hopefully beginning in spring/summer/fall 2020.
  • Project B: Finish major redrafting of the rough draft (more of a second rough draft rather than a more focused revision): ?
  • Project C: None at this time.
  • Project F: None at this time, but I would like planning for this to continue when I have the chance.
  • Project D: Finish by summer 2020.
  • Project R: None at this time
  • Project W: None at this time

Also, remember that I already have a book out if you want to read my fiction.

 

It’s called The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt. It’s a journalism thriller years in the making, inspired by my past career as a journalist (I never did anything like what happens in the book, however, the world of journalism just inspired me), and I’m so happy that I’ve finally gotten it published. Get to the My Work page on this blog for all of the links if you want to find out more about it and (possibly?) buy it. But, there’s other ways you can support it, too.

Anyway, that’s what I’m working on. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to ask.

OK, I Actually Wrote Fan Fiction

Saturdays on my writing Facebook and Twitter pages are #SciFiFantasySaturday. I usually post cool stuff I’ve read about the science fiction and fantasy genres. Growing up, they were among my favorite things to read or watch on television or the cinema. So, I figured I might post this tonight, even though I’m posting late again like the social media people advise me not to do.

As I mentioned previously, the final season of Game Of Thrones did not leave me happy. As a result of that, I found myself looking over several different fan fiction reinterpretations of that final season.

What I was impressed with was the volume of people doing this. When I ran across more than 4,000 examples of a particular type of stories, that blew my mind. I always read the cliches about fan fiction being the breeding ground of bad writing. But in a world where I keep hearing that writers and the written word are eventually going to die out, I keep seeing example after example of people who love to write and want to blend their love of why they’ve read and watched into their writing. Why shouldn’t that be encouraged as long as people acknowledge what they are doing and don’t try to profit from other people’s copyrights?

So, I finished Project S, my previously-named epilogue to the Game of Thrones TV series. I called it The Reunion Of The Pack. It takes place three years after the events of the series finale. It shows what happens when Arya Stark returns to Westeros after sailing around the world and learns how her family and friends have adjusted to the new order of things.

After posting on FanFiction.Net and Archive Of Our Own (AO3), I decided to let you know about it here. As on Reddit, my username on both FF and AO3 is librarysquatter.

It’s here that I will make a standard announcement that this work is absolutely inspired by the writing of George R.R. Martin and the writers of the TV series. I have no interest in monetizing this story in any way. I did it solely to entertain myself and hopefully anyone who reads it.

This process has inspired me to do a few different things. I now feel compelled to write a total redo of Season 8. This is not going to be a short-term or even a high priority project for me, but I am going to do it. I’ll likely post it on FF and AO3, but my question will be about format and timing. I definitely do not want to take away from my other projects like my original fantasy project, known as Project F.

But, yeah, this is a thing. Go ahead and read it if you’d like.

The Reunion Of The Pack (AO3)

What I’m Working On Now, June 2019 Edition

A while ago, pretty shortly after I started this blog, I let readers know some of the bare-bones basics regarding some of the projects that I wanted to work on and that I was working on. I thought now might be a good time to update that, just to keep myself, much less any readers, in the loop about what’s coming down the development pipeline.

I’ve mentioned these projects before in some of my writing journals, but to keep from being too repetitive, I decided to put them all in one place as a reference. I’m not going to mention working titles or big details about plots, etc. However, I think you will get an idea of what the gist of each of the projects are below.

I also think, looking at some of the items on this list, that you’ll see that I’ve been bouncing around with several different genres and subjects. I appreciate writers who want to stick to one thing, but I enjoyed too many different styles and genres of writing to stay in one wheelhouse. I want to create and I want to spread my work to others – that’s basically my life goals regarding writing.

And Now, The Projects

  • Project A: This is a book about a young man who is a football player and the son of a famous college football coach who is also obsessed with soccer. I first got the idea to write about what I thought the first American Lionel Messi might be like and it turned into one of the richest characters I’ve ever written about.
  • Project B: This is a short novel about a young teen who shoots two of his classmates during a psychotic break. After five years imprisonment, he is looking to rebuild his life with the help of his brother, but former high school classmates start turning up dead around him…
    A former NaNoWriMo project, this is one of the shortest books I’ve written, around 50,000 words. I want to make this one nice and tight, not much longer than it is now, which I think will be a good plan for a thriller.
  • Project C: For someone who never messed around with poetry, the idea of me putting together a poetry collection is a real trip. The poetry enthusiasts of Writers On The Avenue in Muscatine were so much into poetry that I decided, starting around 2010 or so, to give it a whirl as well.
    However, I think this is some of the most interesting stuff I’ve written, and a way for me to connect to where I grew up. A big theme in this collection is the Mississippi River, how I’ve experienced it, and what it means to me. I first got the idea of this project well before I knew I was going to eventually leave the Mississippi River area, but I think it’s been a good reflection of what I will be leaving behind. (People leaving their homes for various reasons appears to be a reoccurring theme in a lot of my work).
    I had originally decided to try to put this out as a whole project, but some recent advice from a poet I’ve met has convinced me to try and get some of these out individually. So I’m going to start looking into those markets, with the intention of getting those poems published and thus generating interest in the larger collection.
  • Project F: This is the fantasy project I was inspired to write based on my Game of Thrones obsession. The basic theme that I’ve been playing around with is this: So, I started thinking of a scenario, of a new fantasy world, where civilizations representing the concepts of magic, chivalry, and science and progress would clash and face each other. The more that I’ve watched Game of Thrones and what they’ve done right and wrong, the more this idea of writing fantasy intrigues me. I’ve started to look over fantasy map building sites and think about what these civilizations would be like.
  • Project S: What started out as the idea for an analysis of one Game of Thrones character has now turned into an epilogue for the series that is running over 27,000 words as of this writing. Obviously I have no interest in monetizing this whatsoever. I’m going it as an exercise and as a way to get over how ridiculous the last season was.

Also, there are the following projects that might get letter designations as well, to help keep them straight.

  • Project R: A story of a fictional indie rock band and its history from the early 1980’s to the early/mid-1990’s, my love letter, so to speak, of the indie rock that caught my ear so many years ago. This will likely turn out to be a trilogy.
  • Project W: A thriller, just the germ of an idea. But, it’s pretty intense, pretty heavy material. This might wind up simmering for a while.

As part of my greater efforts to keep myself publicly accountable for my writing successes and failures, I also want to list when I am planning to get these projects done. So, feel free to cheer me on or have a laugh at me, depending on my successes and failures. Putting my goals in print makes them more real for me.

  • So, here are the current projected deadlines for those projects:
  • Project A, begin querying agents and publishers: Sometime in early-mid summer 2019.
  • Project B, finish major redrafting of the rough draft (more of a second rough draft rather than a more focused revision): End of summer 2019.
  • Project C, finishing creating rough draft poems: End of 2019.
  • Project F: None at this time, but I would like planning for the project to be well underway by the end of 2019.
  • Project S: Maybe posted by the end of the month (tentative)
  • Project R: None at this time
  • Project W: None at this time

Finally, don’t forget my first published project, The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt. That project was years in the making and getting it out this year was a major life accomplishment for me. Get to the My Work page on this blog for all of the links if you want to find out more about it and (possibly?) buy it. But, there’s other ways you can support it, too.

Anyway, that’s what I’m working on. If you’ve got any questions or comments, leave them here and I’ll be glad to answer them.

Hello From The Road

Yeah, I promised I would be working on things – now I know what George R.R. Martin feels like. 🤣

I was on the road today to visit the new community my wife is going to be living in and where I’ll be moving to in a year or so. So, I thought that since I had some time sitting in the car, I’d let you know what’s been going on.

Although I haven’t done much on my upcoming projects, I have been writing – quite a lot, actually. I’ve talked before about my Game Of Thrones addiction; now, I’ve been busy on writing an epilogue to the series that, to me, wraps it up in a way that’s generally satisfying (in several ways) to the series and in my mind makes it canon.

I’ve been writing this thing for the past several days. I’m now over 8,000 words into it and I’m not nearly done.

😬 Yeah, that’s not what I expected, either. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I learn more about writing every time I do this. This week I’ve learned about true writing motivation. For the past week, I’ve been tapping on my cell phone writing something that I have no expectation or plan to make money on at all. (Plus, it would be a massive copyright © violation if I did.) I didn’t do it to prove anything to anyone, or as some sort of protest for how the last season worked out. I wrote it as s way to work out how I did feel about the series and the characters I fell in love with. I wrote it because writing that made more sense than worrying about any of the stupid things in life that can get you down for no reason.

Anyone who tells you that writing is just a profession is either a liar or delusional. If you’re serious about writing, it is a way of life. Money is an important thing, you know that you are a writer when you are so compelled to tell a story you can’t not do it. That was my lesson this week.

BLATANT SELF-PROMOTION HERE

Speaking of writing and talking about it, this is just one last reminder that I’ll be at the Rock Island (Illinois) Public Library at 2 p.m. tomorrow (Saturday) giving a book talk about my book, The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt, as well as a few things about my life as a writer. Here’s the event announcement if you want to see it. You know I truly care about this event because I’ll be missing the first part of the UEFA Champions League Final featuring my English Premier League team, Liverpool FC. I might have to run to the nearest sports bar to catch the rest of it.

BLATANT SELF-PROMOTION ENDS

As for the rest of my weekend not having to do with promotion, football, or life changes, I need to finish at least two book reviews for people and get active on my Goodreads doing reviews there. I’ll probably wind up posting some of those reviews on here, as well.

Coming up will be the regular weekly journal report on Sunday, and my Game Of Thrones reaction (as well as that epilogue I’ve been writing) maybe by the middle of next week. See you then.

So I Want To Be A Fantasy Writer…

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: Yeah, I know I said I was going to write this in the middle of the week. Blame the end of the school year craziness for that. But, as it turns out, I’ve long had a theme on my Facebook writing page of #SciFiSaturday (or, as I should say now, #SciFiFantasySaturday). So, maybe it was for the best that I saved this for now. Anyway, here’s the post.]

Genre fiction was my thing growing up. (Maybe I should have made this into one of my Writer’s Biography pieces. Oh, well, maybe another time.) Science Fiction I was into for a long time – I was a Star Wars and Star Trek kid and loved the classic scifi of the 20th century (Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, etc.)

Fantasy, however… it wasn’t unknown to me, but it wasn’t something that was near and dear to my heart. At least, it wasn’t at the same level as the science fiction was. But it always was there, lurking around the margins. When I was either in elementary or middle school, I discovered Lloyd Alexander and his series The Chronicles of Prydain. I remember The High King making a massive impression on me, the epicness of it, how Taran was forced quickly to become a man and the choices he had to face. I loved that book.

There were other fantasy things that fascinated me, both growing up and in recent years. The film Conan The Barbarian came out when I was in elementary school, and I dug that character so much. I saw The Dark Crystal in the theater, watched the animated series Dungeons and Dragons and even played the game it was based on once or twice. (I spent more time reading the dungeon master’s manual than playing it, however.) I never have read The Lord of the Rings series, although I’ve now seen all three movies.

And finally, I have seen a good portion of the series Game of Thrones, and have read the first book in the series A Song of Ice and Fire. I keep promising that I’m going to give a quick review of the TV series (maybe this coming week?). There have been many think pieces written about the final season, and the series as a whole, but I would describe the series as follows: a flawed masterpiece.

What I will say is that all of the comments about the series and the inadequacies of it’s writing (which can certainly be argued) didn’t depress me, and the fact that the series didn’t end exactly the way I wanted it to didn’t depress me. No, what it did do was inspire me. It was the same thing that has always inspired me, looking at something in a book or online or on the screen that immediately made me think “I can do that better.”

So, I started thinking of a scenario, of a new fantasy world, where civilizations representing the concepts of magic, chivalry, and science and progress would clash and face each other. It’s been a theme that maybe my mind has been… playing with for a while, taking the concept out for a test drive. The more that I’ve watched Game of Thrones and what they’ve done right and wrong, the more this idea of writing fantasy intrigues me. Now I’m starting to look over fantasy map building sites and thinking about what these civilizations would be like.

Yeah, it looks like I want this to happen. I’ll let you know more about it later.