Category Archives: Writing

Saturday Bitchin' Blues

With Jared being in full time school, and Ryan in three afternoons a week, I end up getting about 2 hours at a stretch to do stuff before I have to pick either of them up from school. Most days, that is a bit shorter, somewhere around one hour and 45 minutes.

That gives me time to do some house cleaning, a bit of writing, yard work. Stuff like that. If I need to leave the house, I can get grocery shopping in, including the unpacking and placing on shelves all the stuff I bought.

What it doesn’t give me time for, is something like buying a winter coat for myself. So I end up doing stuff like that on Saturdays or evenings.

Last week, I went to Canadian Tire one evening and bought a Columbia Jacket with zip in fleece. Very nice. My only problem with it was that it was a waist length jacket, rather than a colder weather mid-thigh length one. I knew when I bought it that I wasn’t too comfortable with that, so I made sure to ask if I could return it at any Canadian Tire in Winnipeg (like, say, the one closer to my home). “No problem,” I was told.

Today, I went to return the damn thing. After 1/2 at Canadian Tire, I was told they would not take it. It wasn’t a regularly stocked item at this store, and they refused. Frakin’(1) great. I drive 25 minutes to the store I bought it from, get my money, and head over to WalMart for a cabinet they have on sale that the wife wants. The parking lot is fairly empty, so I go in an pick it up. By the time I get to the check-out stands, they are huge. I waited 35 minutes to buy a $29 cabinet. Yay!

I then drive to meet friends for coffee. The place recently switched to table service from ordering at the front counter. No problem. The place is half full with one waitress. A new waitress. A flustered waitress. A slow waitress. After waiting for 20 to 30 minutes, I went up to the counter to place my order, got what I wanted and sat down. My friends at the table had to wait at least 10 more minutes to get service. I can see that this is going to go well.

Okay. So far so bad. I am not a happy camper. On the way home, I get the boys skates sharpened (classes start on Monday), and all goes well. Things are looking up. I get home, the boys have been good and are playing nice. Marnie is happy, and I start to cheer up a bit.

After about 1/2 hour (is that a magic time-frame or what?) the kids stop playing computer and end up in Jared’s bedroom. Around two seconds later, Jared is bawling his head off, and he has teeth marks on his belly. Anger flares, punishment is delivered, and bad moods erupt everywhere. (Ryan started biting three days ago. I don’t get it).

Well, at least the day ended well. We went out for dinner with Grandma and Grandpa and the kids were good, though maybe a tad loud, and they went to bed just fine afterward.

I had hoped to get some writing in, but I am truly fried and must sleep. I’ll read a bit and then pass out, fresh and ready for dealing with the boys tomorrow.

Writing
Well, not too much, but some. It’s almost all crap (Show, don’t tell).

I am considerring lowering my expectations, and reducing the novels size to 90,000 words. We’ll see. I am also contemplating breaking one of my rules. With my short stories, I did not revise until the entire story was on paper. With the novel (considerring my poor morale so far) I thought I would take the prologue and do second revisions on it right now. I don’t know, it depends on the mood you catch me in. Aaaargh!

Misc
I found a cool on-line camera. It’s called Africam, and can be found right here: srobbin.com: AFRICAM The sound quality is awesome, and I’ve already seen some sort of antelope creature come to the pond for a drink. Cool.

(1) Gotta love Battlestar Galacticca!

Very busy and nothing done

A very busy, non-writing day. Ryan and I did some fun stuff with some of the other parents and kids this morning, and this afternoon was pretty much wasted at the dentists office.

Writing
I had planned to write this evening, but my brother called and we talked for a few hours. It was okay, since I was feeling under-motivated and lethargic. I would have spent the evening clicking links on web pages anyway. Tomorrow will be a productive day!

Misc
The Sunburst Award for Canadian Speculative Fiction was given out.

And now for some solo rock climbing up The Nose in Yosemite. 3000 feet up, and no rope. Yikes.

Forward Motion

Tomorrow is going to be quite the day! Jared has a ‘hot lunch’ day at school, so I won’t see him for lunch. Then he has a play date at a friends place after school. The only time I’ll see him will be in the early morning, and again for dinner. I think he’ll be tired.

Ryan, on the other hand, I’ll see all day. Our pre school is a co-op, and part of the deal is that a parent must co-teach at least 5 times a year. When Jared was there, Marnie did all the co-teaching. Now that I am at home, that job falls on my shoulders. I have to admit, I’m a bit scared. Me around 19 three and four years olds for about 2 hours. I think I might go and puke now. Yikes.

Writing
So far so good, I did another 1,154 words today. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up to my planned schedule. My main problem is that I am 5 scenes into the novel, which by my estimates should be about 5000 words in. Being somewhere around 3000 words in, makes me think I may have a 60,000 word novel instead of 100,000 word one. If that’s the case, I’ll never be able to sell it. No one buys a 60,000 word novel anymore.

Where am I?

It turned out to be a really nice day here. Weather wise, we had 18C with a cool breeze. Family wise, it wasn’t too bad either. Jared has begin to dislike going to school in the morning. It’s all due to the fact that he wants to be able to play more in the morning. Lunch time isn’t too bad, since he knows that time is tight, but mornings can be a bit tough.

I’ve started doing homework with Jared everyday after school. Another thing he despises. He has to read a book to me, and then we work on his list of 5 words. Last week, he got them all wrong on Monday. By the time the test came, he got 100% right! This week, he got all of the words right, so I expect the same on the Friday test. Even though he got them all right, we still practice his words every day.

According to the teacher, she really doesn’t care how many they get wrong on a Monday. What she is looking for is the amount of improvement between Monday and Friday. Well, since Jared got 100% on Monday, his improvement will be 0. Last week his improvement was 100%. I wonder if I should tell him to throw the Monday words, so his improvement always looks great. (Just kidding, really!)

Writing
Well, 1312 new words today. Not too bad. I am hoping for about 1000 a day. Time limits, including those imposed by the boys, will always cut into my writing time. I just need to work around that. The last 400 or so words are really starting to sound like an infodump, disguised as dialogue. I’ll have to work through that for sure! The meter below shows 1%, but it’s really at 1.67%.  At this rate, I should finish the novel sometime around mid October, 2010 (assuming I started Sept 1st like I wanted to, I’m averaging 87 words per day).

Misc
Crawford Killian has written some stuff on how to write a novel.

The Late Post with Gerald Brandt

Man, this blog thing either has to become more of a habit or get dumped. Five days since my last post. Yikes. Something has to change here.

The weekend was good, well, Sunday at least. Saturday (during the day) was pure hell. Marnie had to work Saturday, so I had the kids. Normally, this would not be a problem, but it seems that the more I stay at home with the boys, the more I look forward to, and even need, a bit of slack time on Saturdays. I need to know that I can share the responsibilities of the boys with Marnie. Having them for the extra day makes me a tad short with them. Again, normally not a big deal, but this Saturday they both seemed to forget how to behave like human children. The day (mid-afternoon) ended up with us leaving coffee early, and Ryan having a forced nap in his room. The boy hasn’t napped in over a year, but I had more than enough!

After the nap for Ryan and a quiet time for Jared, both boys found thier human halfs again and life continued. We ended up at an outdoor wienie roast and chili eating evening at fellows writers Nicholes place. Fun for all.

Writing
As for writing, well… I seem to have had a tough time with the start (it didn’t help that I didn’t have much actual time). So, this is where I am…

It’s a good 382 words though (I think).

Misc
Isaac Asimov on computers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmSYCEMs-Kg

Progress slows a tad

My current WIP is stuck again. I know that I need some extra scenes portraying my antagonist, giving his character more depth and reasons for doing what he is doing. I’m just not sure on how to do it, and where. I may have to keep this idea in the back of my mind, while I go on and start writing. I may need to do some revisions later to make everything fit, which I would prefer to do in the outline. But, I’m not willing to delay the start any longer.

In fact, I think I’ll start placing this word count in my blog.

Reading
Soul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)
– yes, it is taking a long time.

Misc
Here are the six steps to writing a best selling Fantasy novel.

Once again, progress is made

You know, I truly hate being sick. That being said, I have an excuse not to do too much housework, which means I had a chance to re-read and modify my novel outline. I have a couple of more scenes to add, and I should start writing on Friday. That’s actually quite a relief. I’ve been working on the outline forever (or so it feels), and I either need to start writing the damn thing or dump it all together.

Going through the outline felt good though. It’s the first time I’ve looked at it as a whole unit in quite some time, and the plot felt solid and always forward advancing. The build up of conflicts and the resolutions felt well timed as well. We’ll see what happens once it’s written.

I actually took a break in adding the new antagonist scenes to write in the blog (I’m a bad boy), so I think I’ll be heading back to it now. Oops, what I mean is “Arrr Matey, I’ll be gettin’ back to task at hand… ya scurvy dog”. 😉

Reading
Soul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)
– yes, it is taking a long time.

Procrastination

What is procrastination? Basically, it boils down to doing anything except what needs to be done. When it comes to writing, I think I’m one of the best procrastinators.

Yes, some days I will do anything except write. I have cleaned the bathroom, straightened out a closet, and the most pernicious of all, browsed the web for hours. I’ve just spent 2 days redesigning the look of this blog.  What’s a guy to do? Maybe a swift kick in the butt would help. But then again, maybe not.

There are multiple web sites that talk about writers and procrastination, just do a Google search and you’ll find dozens. Have I looked at them? Have I read them? Ha! Read the previous paragraph again to get a hint. Have they helped? Not really.

A writer needs to get his or her butt in the chair, and fingers on the keyboard. I know, I’ve done it. With a full time job and 2 kids, I put in 3 hours a night and churned out (rejected) short story after (rejected) short story. Now I’m a stay-at-home dad. My work hours are longer, though perhaps not as tightly packed. Some days I don’t have time to breathe, while others it seems that I have more time than I’ve ever had. Yet I’m writing considerably less. Some days I’m lucky if I even get in a blog entry. What the hell?

I switched from short stories to novels. Heck, I read a lot more of them, and I enjoy them much more as well. This has added another layer of procrastination, which is even more evil. Now, I outline and research, which is no better than not writing. Still, I am able to convince myself that I am making forward progress. That eventually I will have a completed novel in my hands. Personally, I blame all that on my programming background. Do the requirements, then the design, then maybe a detailed design, then start coding. Does it work? Hell yes. Is it working for my novel? It doesn’t feel that way.

So, to repeat, what’s a guy to do? I know it’s a rhetorical question, since no one reads this blog.

Here’s my plan. I have given myself until September 22nd to finish the outline and start writing. If I don’t start by then… hmmm… some form of punishment will ensue.

I do know that writing is what I’ve wanted to do since, well, forever. I still have a story I wrote in Junior High, the earlier ones are gone somewhere, and the later ones have followed them. Yeah, a paying career took over for about 22 years, but what is my excuse now? I don’t have one. The end.

More Blog Changes

Well, more blog changes. Although the original style (which can still be seen on the main page) works, I was finding it a bit plain. Along comes a beautiful theme for WordPress called Vistered Little. A little work in The Gimp, a few minor CSS and PHP changes, and voila. It only seems to have one problem: the original load of this site will not have a background. Simply clicking reload works. I dunno. I’m no CSS guru.

Writing
If I do too much more research, my brain is going to explode. I had wanted to start writing on September 1st, but I obviously haven’t made it there yet. Ugh.

Misc
This guitarist is simply amazing.

Several authors have written about How to Write a Novel (via sfsignal.com)
Justine Larbalestier
Jay Lake
Elizabeth Bear
Tim Pratt

Another rushed weekend, and another busy week.  Spent the weekend with the in-laws in Saskatchewan, which included a total of 18 hours of driving.  I think we all had a good time.

Jared starts school tomorrow, and we still need some indoor shoes for him.  So, we are off to Walmart today, along with all the other stuff I need to get done.  We’ll see how Ryan handles not having Jared around all day tomorrow.
Reading
Soul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)
– If anyone can point me to an authors web site, I’d appreciate it.

Reference Classics: China  (Edward L. Shaughnessy General Editor)

Eastern Standard Tribe (Cory Doctorow)

Writing
A good weekend, and all of it pure research for the current WIP.  I did a few weeks of research back in May, but I was really able to supplement it all this weekend.
Misc
How “Lord of The Rings” should have ended.