Gerald Brandt

There seems to be some sort of block at 6:00 AM.  Moving from a 7:00 AM wakeup to a 6:00 AM one went very smoothly.  The alarm would go off, I'd get up and start the day.  Getting past 6:00 AM has been a bit of a challenge.  The alarm is set for 5:45 AM, I turn off the alarm, and hang around in bed for 10 minutes.  Not exactly working.  I think I'll try one more day at 5:45 AM, and move to 5:30 AM anyway.

I started getting up early in order to get more writing time.  I am managing to stay off the internet, and I did write 200 crappy words this morning, but I'm not seeing the progress I want.  Most mornings I've been working on a contract technical document, which is not why I'm doing this.  Switching from the technical writing to the fiction writing is a tough switch;  I find myself using more of a passive voice.  

I'll keep plodding along.  If this getting up early thing doesn't work, when I go back to regular hours it'll be like I'm getting 2 hours of extra sleep. 

The WordPress conversion is complete, now that I've upgraded from version 2.0.10 to version 2.2.

I spent a few hours this morning changing the website to 100% hosted on WordPress.  I no longer use or need CityDesk for the site, which is good since it's essentially a dead product.

I still have a static start page, simply because I didn't want Google and other search engines to lose all their links to me.  I'll think about it over the next week or so and see if I really care about it though.  Maybe I'll look into using Apache redirection to send anybody going to my start page to make things easier.

edit: The Apache 2 redirect was easy, and it's all done. 

Well, my plan for getting up early appears to be working.  Yes, it can be a struggle getting out of bed, but I am getting out of bed.  Currently, the alarm is set for 6:00 AM.  That's one hour difference in two weeks, which means another two weeks before I reach my goal of 5:00 AM. On Monday, it will be set back to 5:45 AM and the next stop on Thursday or so will be 5:30.  Here's to hoping it keeps on working.  As a side note, the kids are pretty much back to their regular time of waking up.

Speaking of kids, both the boys are in soccer.  R has games on Monday and Wednesday, while J has games on Tuesday and Thursday.  Both sets of games get them home past their normal bedtime.  This schedule is driving me crazy, and we still have 6 weeks of it left.  Aaaarrrggghhh!

I've also gotten out of the habit of posting this:

Reading
Description and Setting (Ron Rozelle) 

Writing
Technical Documentation for local company.

I didn't realize until today ('cause no one told me) that posting a message was REAL slow.  Well, I fixed that.  Post away with all speed!

As I've mentioned here before, I started a local Writers/Critique group.  One of the rules that we instituted was that you should have something to critique every meeting.  We did allow for the occasional missed meetings, but we were looking for an overall participation rate.  Last meeting, I didn't drop anything off, so in order to follow my own (stupid?) rules, I need to have something for this meeting.

When I write, my first drafts are bad.  I have sudden POV changes, I change from third person present tense to third person past tense on a whim.  I haven't yet put any first person POVs into a third person POV work, thank goodness.  I really can't hand in the first draft stuff for critique, it'll get torn apart, and rightfully so.

For the last few days, I've been moving my first scene from its first draft stage to something more solid, something that fits in with what a scene should be (POV characters goal moving through to POV characters disaster, with multiple motive-response sequences in it, blah blah blah).  I've found it to be exceedingly slow work.  The thing is, I'm enjoying it.  I like going through and making sure things are structurally correct.  I enjoy sitting on a word or a turn of phrase, making sure it brings across the emotion or sentiment I want.  I thrill at making sure my similes and metaphors bring out the imagery I want, like the work of a fine painter on canvas.

My problem now is, I wanted my first chapter (three scenes) critiqued the next meeting, and I should have handed in my work last Friday.  How am I supposed to get this done by todays extension date?  Aaaargh! 

As an add-on: I prefer to finish a work before I start revising.  The momentum of generating new material builds on previous work, a cake made of many layers building to create a finished product.  I hope that revising before I've completed the first draft hasn't taken the wind out of my sails.  (Ugh, cliché)

So, I've tried getting up early. Since it's only been going on for five days, I can't report too much. I'm now getting up at 6:30 in the morning, and I'll do that until Wednesday. On Wednesday I'll switch to 6:15 and see how that goes.

Of course, since I'm up at 6:30, my oldest son is now getting up before 7:00. He used to be like clock work and wake up at 7:15. Let's hope that doesn't continue, since the reason I want to change my wake-up time is to avoid the kids and get some writing done.

I was talking with a friend the other day about kids TV shows. The 'Treehouse TV' kind of shows: Backyardigans, Sunny Patch, Dora the Explorer, etc. It's amazing how a supposedly adult mind can get sucked into these things. Sometimes, when the kids leave to get dressed and brush their teeth in the morning, I'm still watching the show to see how it ends. Yuck!

At least we don't watch Barney or TelleTubbies!

And finally, my youngest got very upset the other day. He found a book of his called Snuggle Puppy A Little Love Song by Sandra Boyten. He was upset because he looked for it all Mothers Day and couldn't find it. And now that he found it, she wasn't around to read it to/with him.

Addendum: I'll be at Winnipegs local Science Fiction/Fantasy/Gaming Convention this weekend. KeyCon is held on the May long weekend of every year. Last year I met and talked with Robert Sawyer, and this year it will be Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moeste, which should be fun.

I’ve come to realize there are not enough hours in the day to do all the things I need to do. I typically wake up at 7:00 AM (a luxury, I know), and start taking care of the kids right away. I get to bed around 10:00 PM. I go to bed exhausted and wake up tired. Ugh!

So, I’m going to try an experiment. I’m going to wake up earlier. My goal is to eventually wake up at 5:00 AM so I get about 2 hours of writing time in before the kids wake up. My plan is to move my wake-up time back about 15 minutes every few days. I’m thinking if I move things 1/2 hour a week, I should be okay. I still want to get to bed at the regular time.

Starting Monday, I’ll be out of bed at 6:45, on Thursday I’m going for 6:30. After about a month, I’ll be hitting my 5:00 AM goal.

I tried this once before, but I used a ‘cold turkey’ approach, which didn’t work so well for me. I’ve also done the opposite, where I’ve added two hours to my day by staying up later. It worked exceptionally well, but logistically it was a failure. Let’s see what happens with this new attempt.

Well, it’s official I guess. The writing group I started has had its second meeting. We’ve critiqued two pieces of work, and the format seems to be working well. Originally, we had five prospective members, but by the time everything settled, we ended up with two. Yup… just two. Still, it’s a start, and we are pushing each other to generate more work.

One of the rules of the group is that you must have something to critique every meeting. We’ve already broken that one, and we’re currently at every other meeting. With the feedback from the other member (d’oh), it should be easy enough to accomplish every meeting. I’ve left every meeting with a huge urge to sit down and write, which is great.

Currently, we’re looking for more members. I think five or so in total should be a great size. If everyone submits something for critique, and each critique is allotted 15 or 20 minutes, that’s a good length for a meeting. We’d still get time for socializing and discussing concepts and plots, etc. Originally, we’d planned on a group that didn’t cater to any particular genre, but now there may be a slight lean toward Science Fiction and Fantasy. I’m not sure yet. Keeping things genre specific allows us to skip some preamble on the critiques, since everyone would be familiar with the basic concepts. On the other hand, being non-genre specific give us more points of view and a fresh pair of eyes.

Something to think about.

At any rate, if there’s anybody in Winnipeg, Manitoba interested, leave a comment here and we’ll figure things out from there. I’m trying to create a nice tight knit group, so we’ll need to get together and talk first, maybe have a meeting with you, and then we can both decide if the group is a good fit.

Oh, and I plan on getting back to weekly updates on the blog. I’m aiming for every Tuesday and keeping my fingers crossed (which makes it hard to type).