Category Archives: Writing

I'm Still Alive

Well, here we are, in December already. Life has been hectic and the writing has been almost nil. I really want to get this project finished so I can get onto the next one that is pounding in my head.

On the good side, I’m pretty much finished my Christmas shopping. I really only buy for the wife and kids, but I help with the other gifts as well. I’m hoping to get the inside of the house decorated this week, and the tree should be going up about a week before Christmas.

The boys have been… interesting… lately. It seems that the basic rules that we’ve had in the house since they could walk have all been forgotten. They run, they talk with their mouth full of food, they fight and roughhouse way too much. I thought Christmas would make them behave, with the threat of Santa so close. Ha! Santa used as a threat. Cool!

Anyway, with that, I’ll sign off.

I need routine

So, my bro is gone. He hasn’t left the country yet, but will soon. For three months he’ll be traveling in the Philippines, Thailand, China, Taiwan,etc. He’ll have no laptop and very few Internet cafes. I miss him already. Doh! We don’t keep in touch as often as I like, but when all access is cut, I notice it.

Writing
I’ve been procrastinating a lot lately. A lot. Writing is really what I want to do. I even have dreams of supporting my family by it. Yeah, right. I can’t even sit down and write a word a day, for chrissakes. It always seems that something comes up and takes away my time. The kids, the house, the wife… whatever. I need to get back into a routine. I thrive on routine, pretty much like kids. I need it, and this stay-at-home dad thing really doesn’t want to give me one. Still, I’ll work on it. I’ll bring the wife in on it and see if we can’t finangle some sort of writing routine for me. Why the wife? Well, whatever time I take, it will take away from something else, like the kids, or her, or the house work. She deserves input into that.

I still want to finish the initial draft of the novel by the end of December, and I’m a long way off. I’ve also come to realize that I will be way short on my wordcount in that draft. I need to add more, so I can whittle it all down to something really good.

I may have said this before, and for the life of me, I can’t remember where I heard it last… Life is what happens as your making plans. Well, time to stop making plans and actually do.

Conversion Complete? Nope!

Well, it has been a long time, hasn’t it? I guess the reason I haven’t been writing (here or on my WIP) is a mixture of Life is what happens while you’re making plans and Computers have the magical ability to suck me in and spit me out.

Whatever the reason, both the blog and the WIP have suffered for it. And I’m done with that mess! Time to get back on schedule and finish all of this work!

So, what have I been doing? Well, it may make me sound slow, but it took a couple of days to get SpamAssassin to do bayes filtering on my email. Truly, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. It’s fixed now, and 99% of my incoming spam is now caught and put off to the side. I had that before, using a client side app. Now it’s all done on the server.

I also decided to convert my laptop to Linux instead of Windows XP. What caused the switch? Well, I recently re-installed XP, since my boot times were atrocious, and I can’t stand slow computers. Before you know it, Windows was slow again. Aaaargh. I absolutely hate that.

It took me a couple of days to get Gentoo working on the laptop (why is it never easy). But now it all seems to be running smooth. I still need Windows to sync with my Dell Axim x51v, and Outlook syncs better with eGroupware than some Linux programs I’ve found. I kept my original Windows XP install, and I use VMware Workstation to boot into XP from Linux. I don’t know what changed, but XP boots about 4 times faster under VMware than by itself, and it’s the exact same install.

The Linux install is still not 100%, but I like it. Linux never makes it easy, especially for laptop owners. I think next time I’ll get a Mac. So, whats missing so far?

  1. hibernate to ram (sleep) works, but when restarting, starts the shutdown processes (Whhhaaa?)
  2. hibernate doesn’t work.
  3. I have a fan that stays on all the time.

That’s about it, I think. Now, back to work!

Weekend Update

Hey, I actually wrote over 1600 words today. If I keep this up on a daily basis, I should have entered NaNoWriMo this year. Oh well, maybe next year. For those keeping track, I’m currently at:

[pfmeter id=1 target=90000 progress=15548]

Which is not too bad.

I have some friends that entered NaNoWriMo this year. If they read this and say ‘thanks for mentioning me on your blog’, I’ll know that they’re fooling around instead of writing. So, to save myself the hassle of harassing them, I’ll skip the names and just say Get back to work!.

5 Little known Facts

Hmmm. It seems that I’ve been tagged by Nichole, and I’m supposed to come up with 5 little known facts about myself. I’m then supposed to tag 5 other people so they can do the same. My only problem is that I don’t really know 5 other bloggers to tag, so the buck stops here (to use a worn out cliche, badly). Coming up with 5 things is somewhat tough.

  1. I’m scared of the dark.
  2. Only one person in my family knows I blog (Hi bro!).
  3. I’m scared of heights, and I started rock climbing to over come that. (And every spring, I have to reconquer the fear).
  4. I write. (Truly, not too many people know that. When I’m published, that will change).
  5. My sarcastic attitude hides a sensitive soul.

Well, there ya go.

Misc
Here’s another youtube link I enjoyed: YouTube Porky Pig.

I’ve read some of these and found them good. Hopefully the rest are as well.

Reading
Tales of the Otori – Brilliance of the Moon by Liam Hearn

And the world shifts

I’m not sure what is going on here. It’s as though my entire world has gone topsy turvy, and I’ve lost what level of control I had.

Last week was the boys birthday, and I think that’s where it all started. We had birthday party after birthday party, family over for dinner, etc. And I haven’t recovered yet. I still (yes, still) have dishes left from the Sunday dinner. It’s not much, just a couple of glasses really, but still. The house is a horrible mess. And I’ve written about 1000 words this week.

And that’s just not enough. To meet my deadline, I now have to write 1200 words a day, which can feel like a lot. What I seem to have done is slip back into full research mode. And it’s a waste of time. I really haven’t learned anything new.

I wish I knew what happened to me this week.

First WIP Milestone!

So, it’s the young ones birthday today. We’re not doing too much special today, but the ‘kids’ party is on Friday, and the family party is on Sunday. Even my bro will be here for that! I’m very much looking forward to his visit.

Anyway, the look on Ryan’s face was priceless this morning. For the last year, he’s always heard me ask ‘Who’s my favorite 3 year old?’ This morning when I asked ‘Who’s my favorite 4 year old?’, he grinned, went kinda shy, and pointed at himself. Wheee!

Writing
I’ve noticed something. When I’m neck deep into my WIP, the blog languishes by the wayside. Interesting. I’m guessing it’s just because of the limited hours in a day. I hope y’all (yes, y’all can easily be translated to ‘my single reader’) don’t mind.

And speaking of the WIP, it’s progressing. I’ve officially brought the word count down from 100,000 words to 90,000. At this point, I don’t think I’ll reach 100,000. Heck, at this point I’m not sure I’ll reach 40,000. I’m hoping my ‘instincts’, as much as I can have them on my first novel attempt, holds true. This being draft zero, there are a lot of sections of simply telling. And, as we all know, when the showing starts, the word count goes up. Saying ‘Bob was mad’ could easily turn into a paragraph showing that Bob was mad.

I’m hoping anyway. I’ve decided not to worry about it too much (only about 100 times a day), and just complete draft zero. I’ll worry about everything else later.

You may have noticed I’m calling it draft zero. My personal opinion is that the first draft is such a hodge podge that it can’t really be called draft 1. There is tons of telling, a few POV issues, and I seem to be moving from 3rd person present tense to 3rd person past tense at random. What I will call my first draft will first and foremost solve those problems. Draft 2 and onwards will start looking at other things.

I’ve passed what I will call ‘The First WIP Milestone’. I have over 10,000 words in 11 scenes. I’ve outlined 41 scenes, which is why I’m concerned about word count. Still, I’m happy!

[pfmeter id=1 target=90000 progress=10826]

More plodding…

I thought I’d post, just so y’all knew I was still alive!

I’ve been able to write every day, but not nearly as much as I would like to. I’m behind my (self-imposed) schedule, and in order to make it, I need to write about 1200 words a day. I prefer some breathing room, so I’m going to try for some 2000+ word days. We’ll see what I can do.

[pfmeter id=1 target=100000 progress=8081]

or, if I change my target, as I think I may need to…

[pfmeter id=1 target=90000 progress=8081]

My nephew and his girlfriend took the boys to a corn maze tonight. They came home pretty late, and both boys were obviously tired. We’ll be paying for it tomorrow. But the happy looks on thier faces when they came home is all worth it.

Plod plod plod

Well, we got snow. Not a lot, and it most likely won’t be sticking around, but snow none the less. I don’t think our temperature went above 0 (Celcius) today, even though our normals should be up around 12. Brrrrr. Cold.

I’ve got Jared into the lunch program at school tomorrow, so I don’t have to be home for most of the day. I have a few longer errands to run, and it’ll be nice not having to look at the clock. I’m still hoping to get some writing done in the afternoon.

As for writing, not a bad afternoon for me, about 1200 new words on the WIP. I was hoping for a tad more, but the wife will be out of town for the next couple of days, so I’m going to spend the evening with her. I’m hoping to standardize the times I write, but we’ll see if the kids let that happen.
[pfmeter id=1 target=100000 progress=7132]

Time Management? What Time Management?

Jonathon Sherwood recently posted a question on his blog. This is my response:

Juggling the time to write with the time for kids or work is one of the most difficult tasks I have to perform.

Some have told me I should have no problem juggling my time, since I am a stay-at-home dad. Personally I find that my personal/writing time is scarcer than it ever was. I’ve actually written a bit about this in my blog recently.

What happens is that the stress really starts to pile up. I look at my WIP and the kids start clamouring for attention. I play with the kids and the WIP languishes at the wayside. By the time I sit down and start writing, it’s mostly bad (okay, so it’s still first draft).

I tend to be an organized ‘by the clock’ kind of guy. I had my days scheduled to play with the kids in the mornings, while doing housework. In the afternoons, monitor the kids play and write write write. Hey, it actually worked for a month or two, until the pressure built too high.

My decision in the end is closely related to my ‘by the clock’ method I described above. The main difference is my attitude. I have decided to prioritize my work, and be much more relaxed about the whole process:

1. kids
2. writing
3. housework
4. others

A short and simple list. If I am working on item 3, I allow items 1 and 2 to interrupt at any time. If I am working on item 1, nothing is allowed to interrupt.

Do I get any writing done? Surprisingly yes. In fact, I get more time than when I stressed over it.

Is my house clean? Sure. Not as clean as before, but it’s still good.

I told my wife about my priorities, especially that the house may not be as clean as normal, and she was all for it. I’m more relaxed, the kids are happier, and the world continues to spin.

I’m still writing mostly bad, but that’s a different issue entirely! 🙂