I broke through the wall yesterday, wrapped up the scene, and began the series of events that will lead to The Final Showdown. I’m pretty pumped. I think I’ve got a pretty solid story so far, and after a few revisions it should be quite shiny and good.

That’s all for today. It’s Monday. I’ll think later in the week.

I’ve been all sniffly and sneezy tonight due to some unknown allergen in the air, so I’m going to pretend like that’s the reason I’m not writing right now. Yup. That’s my story. We have groceries now, anyway.

That’s not to say I’m without ideas. We recently put curtains up, which is forming the basis for another Aery, Destroyer tale. Ever had a cat? You know what I’m talking about.

I have hit a wall with my story. Well, more of a half-wall, really. I can put plants, pictures, and Christmas cards on it. The trick I learned from Writing Excuses was, “When things start to feel slow, make the bad guys kick the door in.” That is surprisingly good advice and has worked pretty well thus far. Thing is, I just used it, and they’re still dealing with the bad guys. I guess the answer is more bad guys? That would certainly increase the “OMG” factor. When I last left my heroes, the tide was starting to turn in their favor. I’ll turn it back and see what happens.

Do you guys have any fun tricks you use to keep things moving?

In other news, I read a novel. Sadly, it has been a pretty long time since I’ve done that (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows). At the risk of massive embarassment, I confess that I read (and enjoyed!) Twilight. I would have picked up New Moon if it had been in stock at Wal Mart tonight. Yikes. A coworker told me I’m going to transform into a thirteen year old girl. My response? “If that’s the key to immortality…”

I also cracked open a short story collection called Legends and read the story that Stephen King contributed (it’s set before his Dark Tower series). I enjoyed it, and now I want to reread books 1-4 and finish up the series.

I also want to borrow the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles from my sister and read those. The Twilight movie really burned vampires in my brain. Wait, did I just admit to reading the book and seeing the movie? Seeing the movie twice? What?

Time to go! My lit professors would be so ashamed.

Dan over at Dan Wrote This wrote something on Monday that’s been turning over in my head for the last couple days, and since I’ve already left a wordy comment, I figured I should just make my own entry. He’s a film guy, so it’s not like I’m completely ripping him off by bringing his theme to the written word.

When I think of phrases like, “Writing with a purpose” or “Writing with a message”, I always think of this guy from my Intro to Creative Writing class. The first section was poetry; most of us were aiming for humorous or tear-jerking, but this one guy opted for political. The gist of the poem was, “I used to dream of being a trash collector, but then those Mexicans came up here and took those jobs, so now I have to go to college and be a lawyer.” It was cute, but his hand was heavy enough to require a crane. When he finished reading and we finished chuckling softly, he said, “Do you get what I’m trying to say?”

Keep reading ‘Attempting to convey a message’

So, I cleared my first Nano. I’m not even going to try to be modest: I rocked. I rocked so hard it knocked Michael J. Fox off his feet and he was late to class, forcing a confrontation with Mr. Strickland. Then he went back in time…

The downside, though, is that it feels like a semester just ended, and my first instinct is to slack off. I did just enough work on the novel last week to keep it from completely slipping off my radar. Bad Stan!

This week about getting back on track and learning to be accountable to myself, rather than an outside influence. Last month I learned that I have enough free time to write all kinds of words if I sit down and do it. This month I need to learn how to do it without leaning on something else. I kind of have to, if I want to make a career out of this. It’s not that software testing doesn’t have its own special charm, but it’s not what I had in mind when I sat through a bunch of boring lit classes.

One thing I have decided is that I definitely want to keep putting fiction out on this blog. My brain tackles it differently than when I’m pounding away at OpenOffice, and sometimes the results make me very happy. I’m going to shoot for once a week, at least for now, with one or two other updates throughout the week. Maybe I’ll even make fancy PDFs out of the fiction to make it look more professional-like. Yeah. That sounds doable. Meanwhile, I’ll keep chipping away at the novel.

Sound good? Good.

Hey guys! How’s it going? I realize I haven’t been around much in the last month or so. My initial plan was to post an updated every night that featured my word count and some thoughts, but eventually I realized that I could get even more words written if I just kept working on the story.

I did win, just so you know. I would have felt like a toolshed if I’d disappeared for the better part of a month and didn’t have a victory to show for it. My final word count was 50,113, and it was a good start for this story (which takes place forty years after this semi-canonical snippet).

Insert smooth segue here.

Updating this blog (kind of) daily was a great exercise, and I don’t think I would have been able to do Nano without the Rocky-montage that July through October was for my development as a writer. I had some great ideas, some terrible ideas, and developed consistency. The blog as an outlet is definitely going to stay. But how, exactly? My goal has been publication (and hopefully a career change), and the blog hasn’t done anything to contribute to that, since I tend to write something, post it, and forget about it. I have plenty of practice with first drafts, but I’ve neglected the revision process. That’s like saying you’re training for a marathon by stretching a lot — it’s just one part of the regimen.

Apart from writing, there is a whole bunch of other stuff I want to do, and it will definitely be taking up potential blogging time. Now that I don’t feel like I have zero free time, I’m going to make a point to chip away at all the stuff I’ve been putting off for “sometime in the future.”

So, the question now is, “What do I do with the blog?” I’m open to suggestions.