Writing Goals: Week 2.5

Ok, back before I realized what a stupid idea it was to try and talk about CURRENT PROGRESS before it happened, I wrote this post for week three. You can have it now, and I'll work up a better post for my actual progress report for week 3, which is going much better than anticipated. Week 2 had me really, really down.

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TERRIBLE week this week - too much work. Kids came back to school, bad weather and illness in the staff meant I was working way, way overtime, and lost the groove of what was going on in Asylum. We'll get back to it, but it's going to be a struggle, I think. Wish us luck.

Writing Goals for 2014: Week 2.5

 -Keeping my blog post scheduled up at least a week in advance, so I'm not stressing deadlines: Still working with the re-vamp of the schedule, so I guess Mini-goal: Figure out what posting schedule I want to go with and get its page up.

-Writing at least once a day, as is suggested by so many successful authors: Not happening lately. I'm really not happy about this. But it is the first week of school, and everything is crazy, so maybe once I actually settle into a routine?

-ACTUALLY FINISH A COMPLETE STORY so that I can flex my editing muscles a bit: ASYLUM HAS GROUND TO A HALT! I need to figure out how to get back on track with this!

However, on the editing note, it's apparently time to start editing my NaNo, so I guess if Asylum keeps confounding me, I can work on that. I dread the idea of touching that horrid thing again, but I did make a legally binding promise on a silly website, so I suppose I must. :P

-Research employment opportunities in the writing field (so vague, I know) since I'm tired of my soul sucking service industry job: Might have a lead on this, one of my employees suggested I look into working for the local newspaper - any feedback on that, anyone? HR is also a possibility, apparently - I hate that I feel like I don't know anything about the grown up world and grown up jobs! I'm 27, damnit, when will I finally feel qualified to be an adult?

Aaaand that's my writing week. Anyone else able to chime in with something more positive? I could use some success stories right now.

Opinion Time: To post, or not to post

One of my characters is deeply disturbed.

DEEPLY disturbed.

Like, takes it out on small children, 5 flavors of crazy disturbed.

Also not human.

The question is: do I share the crap that rolls through her head with the world? I wrote a scene with her and her brother earlier, and it's still got me shaken up. I'm disturbed that something like that lives inside me. But it's part of the world, part of their story, and just plain who they are. However, it's not at all relevant to what they're doing. She's a side character, with no place to go and no major plot point to affect. She just happened to want to share with a pretty graphic sex scene.

So, to post or not to post? I'd intended on posting some more mature stuff in here as I go on, to see what does and doesn't hit the filters, but this stuff is pretty bad. Nothing too terribly descriptive (at least as far as the disturbing stuff goes - the sex is as graphic as any other sex I write) but just... I dunno. It's bad enough even I'm not sure I want to claim, and for those of you that know me, that's pretty bad.

So what would you do, if you have a psychotic violent killer in your head, talking to you about the stuff they would do if their brother wasn't there to keep them in check?

Finishing my first book

The first "book" of The Asylum is coming to a close.

It's been an interesting journey, and I've learned a whole lot along the way. This is the first book I've ever written all the way through to the finish, though of course the story is no where near over. But my partner and I both know this is the end of book one, we can just tell. There's a big plot point looming on the horizon that'll change everything, and open everything up for books upon books to come.

It's kinda funny, we've know this was coming for weeks, but the closer we get to it in the writing, the longer its seeming to take to actually get there. Like an event horizon of a black hole. I don't think the characters want us to write it. :P I can't say I blame them, it's going to be pretty intense.

Looking back on it all, it's been an odd adventure.

I'm still kind of in shell shock about it all, but once I've decompressed a bit and had some time, I'll share more complete thoughts on the matter, and maybe talk about the editing process a bit as well (once I've given myself the required "just walk away for a while" stage)

The Writings: A bit of Zig

Sometimes, inspiration will strike at the strangest moments.

Cooking dinner earlier, I suddenly heard Zig start talking, and this little snippet was born. It's not as clear in the beginning, because I rushing to capture the dialogue, but as I was able to keep up with it, the writing blossomed, then just as quickly faded. Maybe this will be part of a story I write for him one day, maybe this is all he cares to tell me of it. Who knows? Sometimes, it's just enough for you the author to know, so that when a character references something, you're not completely lost. Sometimes, its fun to collect all these little nothings and share them with your audience (at least I hope you're all having fun :P)

Filler or Fuller? Posting every day

Sitting down to queue up this week's posts, I find myself wondering: what is the "ideal" posting schedule?

On Writing: Keeping track of time

One of the author's I follow posted this today, and I've sort of fallen in love with idea of "pantsing". I am a definite pantser, because my characters demand it out of me. However, some planning is absolutely necessary when you write several stories in the same world in the same day, so to keep things straight, Cait and I tend to use timelines, like this:

What if I run out of things to say?

This thought just struck me last night, as I was driving home from a long day of Christmas shopping. What happens when - not if- I run out of things to say? There is only so much that can be said about writing, and even less that can be said about it by me.

And yet, I've been writing, and talking about writing, for years.

I knew less about writing when I first started talking about it, and it didn't stop me then.

How to stay on (multi)task

As I've mentioned, my writing partner (Caitlin) and I tend to work on multiple things at once when we write together. It makes sure we each have something to work on when we sit down to write together, for one, and we tend to get distracted and follow plot/character bunnies for two. Currently, we're running ...4? stories in the same world (same neighborhood, actually) and same time frame at once, and so the plot lines are a lovely tangle mess. To keep ourselves straight on what we've already written, we tend to take pretty extensive notes.

These are the notes from Haven, the story I wrote my NaNo to learn more about. The events of my NaNo take place two years before my real time Haven, so you'll see some familiar characters, and some new ones as well. There's also even a proper excerpt at the bottom, so real writing for "Day 8" Hooray!