One of the things I’ve been trying to do this year is produce something daily. Hence these daily updates. I’ve done my best to keep them interesting and cover all the things running through my brain, but every so often I miss something that may seem trivial at the time, but a week or so later it’ll seem much more important.

The reason I’ve tried to post something daily is to get content out there. Granted this has been almost like a daily diary about what’s going on with me and I’m not sure if I’ll change the format or not. I do want to post more important topics that might interest a wider audience and bring in more traffic. Traffic and getting noticed is the overall goal of this blog. So there might be more interesting content coming in the next month or so (including daily duck pictures and that long awaited duck post).

As a writer that’s my main focus is to get the attention of potential readers. That’s all any writer wants. Well, that and to get paid huge sums of money. But the audience must come first before the money starts to roll in. So I’m already writing down ideas on topics I can cover that might interest people. Yes, I have Unorthodox Writing Tips each Friday, so I’m going to look at something else I can post on another day of the week. I’m thinking about Monday. We’ll see what happens. Wednesday is just as good of a day as Monday is. Tuesday and Thursday are also other days of the week that I’ve got my eye on. Saturday and Sunday are right out as people have other things to do on the weekend than read something posted by me about some rambling topic I haven’t even chosen yet.

While I will still ramble daily about what I’m doing, how my writing is going, and the like, I want to expand what I’m offering on these pages. More than just advice. One thing I had thrown out there was a daily writing prompt so that might appear soon (along with the daily duck photo). Just something to keep content coming out. Another thing I may do is post character sketches. Not actual sketches mind you, but written notes on a character in a given story. I might start with Of Gnomes and Dwarves as that’s fresh in my mind and I’m currently working on that story.

Finding things to write about each day can be difficult, but I seem to be managing. I read a post by someone else that they’ve been writing daily that they no longer believe in writer’s block. I’m of the same feeling at this point. I’ve written every day since January 1st, 2012 and I don’t see any reason to stop now. Nothing has prevented me from posted something on a given day. Sure, time constraints arise, but on the days of light posting I’ve been my own worst enemy not taking advantage of available free time thinking “I’ll get to that later”. I know I can do better.

What I’m trying to say in the long post is that I don’t want to just ramble senselessly. Well, I do. It helps get the old brain juices flowing, but I also want to provide more content on more than just what’s in my head at the start of my day. I hope you’ll stick around and see what I come up with. I hope you’ll share with your friends. I hope I’ll find a wider audience for my words. Maybe that’ll force me to actually become organized when I write these. Who knows.

On the writing front, I managed 3500 words yesterday despite a very busy day. I did take advantage of any free time I had and wrote as fast as I possibly could. I hope to write more words today. I’m currently at 40,000 words in Of Gnomes and Dwarves. I’m not even at the half-way point, but I’m getting there. This book will be much longer than the original. Possibly three times as long (not counting the parts I cut). It’s a much stronger work for all I’ve added. Again that’s my personal opinion. We’ll see what Beta readers thing.

The cool thing about my beta readers. Many of them have read the original Of Gnomes and Dwarves (4 of them have). So it’ll be great to get their feedback as I’m sure they remember those first rough writings. If you would like to read the original, email me and I’ll send it over. Like I said, it’s my first completed novel. It suffers from many first novel issues. It’s rough even though I’ve edited it a LOT and added a lot of words, and rewrote some parts. It’s bumpy, lumpy, and just how I like my mashed potatoes, but it’s lacking. Severely

There is a lot to do so I’m going to get at it!

Until Tomorrow!

WOO WOO!

Monday was a late night. Tuesday was an early morning. Meaning I had about four hours of sleep. I got my daily update done yesterday, but that was about all the writing I could squeeze in. Work is crazy busy this week and that has eaten into my writing schedule. It’s all good though.

Yesterday we went to visit my mother-in-law and father-in-law and didn’t get back home until late. This usually happens as much conversation ensues. I also got to see a couple of my sister-in-laws and my favorite niece and nephew (they’re all my favorite if you’re wondering).

When we did finally get back home it was late, I was hungry, so I had a light dinner. A pollo asada burritio. My favorite daughter and the wife split a bean burrito. It was my intention to write for 30 minutes or so just to stay up on my word count. Then maybe read for a little bit. Perhaps watch an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Yeah, that was the plan. My brain decided it was best to just fall down and sleep. I didn’t argue. Sleep happened. I woke up a couple of times from strange dreams. I always have the weirdest dreams when I eat a lot before I go to bed. The only sad part is that I was so tired I didn’t remember anything when I woke up. If I could remember any of them I’d tell you all about them. Sadly last night’s escapes me.

At present Of Gnomes and Dwarves is at just over 36000 words. I’m happy with the progress and I had thought at this point I would be roughly half-way through the book. From what I can tell that’s not even close. I’m not worried about that. If I hit 100,000 words with it, I’ll be happy because that means I’m telling the full story that needed to be told rather than glaze over certain points and miss out on a lot of detail that the world needed for it to be fully fleshed out. I hint at a LOT of things that will be used in later book. I didn’t want to drop a lot of hints that I never come back to.

Being that I’ve written the first four books and have basic plots for more, I know where everything is going and how it all ties together. I think being that I’ve done that, I have a much better understanding of how things will play out and will be able to foreshadow many events and build up characters better than I did before. I can’t wait to share this story with people. It still has a lot of the humor the original did, but it’s also a lot darker in spots and I’m really liking that.

There’s still a lot of day job left. My favorite daughter has a physical and a volleyball dinner for her travel team. School is almost done. Vacations are coming up soon. There are pictures of ducks to download. There’s a lot of words to get in while I can. I’d better get at it.

Until Tomorrow!

WOO WOO!

Yesterday was a good day for words. I wrote a lot of them. 4600 in fact. Less than I could have, but I needed to spend time with the family, pick up my favorite daughter from a schoolmate’s house where she was working on a project, workout.

Oh yea. I started working out again. I’d been walking a couple times a week while my favorite daughter was at volleyball practice. Now that she’s done with that for a little while, I’m making her go to the workout room at our complex and workout with me. The wife is also joining us. We didn’t get there until 8pm and were back home around 9pm. I was pooped. I had intended to do a little more writing but today is an office day so I was up very early. I read for a little bit then crashed hard.

Speaking of reading, I’ve finished Mik Murdoch: Boy Superhero by my good friend Mike Plested. I will be reviewing that this week and getting that posted real soon.

I recently renewed my subscription to Flying Island Press: Flagship. It’s been a year already. Wow! Time files so fast. So many good stories. I subscribe to the audio and text versions as I never know which I’ll be able to read/listen. It’s nice to have the choice. And for $12.99 for a year. That’s a no brainier.

A little more on the writing. There are a couple of reasons I’m able to write Of Gnomes and Dwarves so quickly. I’m over 30,000 words. Of the last 25 days I’ve written on the story 16 of those days. I wish I had put in more days, but that’s a pretty good pace for writing. When I do with and write the words just flow out so smoothly. The main reason for this is I’ve lived with these characters in my head since the mid-80s. I knew the people who played them. I knew the style they played the characters. But I took all of them beyond the game. I’d already written this book several times. I’d re-written it. I’d edited it. I’d written it as a comic book. To say I know this story inside and out and know the world just as well as I know my own would be an understatement. I know them so well that their actions are like second nature to me.

I’ve introduced new characters and new scenes, but that hasn’t slowed me down at all. Why? Because I already knew who these characters were. I had mentioned them briefly in the first writing, but in my head I knew all of their back stories. I knew everything about all of the characters that I’ve introduced. At some point I had intended to write short stories about each of the minor characters I introduced to give them more personality. I’m sure I’ll be writing a lot of short stories in this universe. In my mind is so rich and full of things that I’ll never explore in the novels and there are a lot of stories that I want to tell.

From the original text I removed the ‘storyteller’. I didn’t feel that it added anything to the story other than a lot of words. My original intent was that the storyteller would be one of the characters ‘telling’ the story of their adventures. Doing so to make sure that people never forgot what happened and the sacrifices they’d made to ensure people could live the lives they now lived. It also gave hints to events yet to come and a little mystery of who the person in the story was as I never mentioned the storyteller’s name.

I removed him from the story as it wasn’t what I wanted to concentrate on. It added nearly 10,000 words to the original book. Where I’m at now I’ve nearly doubled the size of the book. The original text was roughly 15,000 words to get to where I am now and I’ve written roughly 32,000 words. I said this before, I’m a different writer. The original was the best I could do at the time. Now I’m writing what I feel is the best work I can do now. The story is better for all those words as I’m adding in a lot of what was in my head all those years that never made it to the page.

Sure, I could have just edited what I’d written before. But I’d been there, done that, and I didn’t want to just edit and re-write parts. My writing style has changed so much over the years that it would have looked like a patchwork story with parts here being better than parts there and not really telling a cohesive story. I wanted this to be the best I could make it. And I think I’m doing that now.

I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m having a great time getting there. Hopefully tonight will see a lot more words. And pictures of ducks.

Until Tomorrow!

WOO WOO!

With all the TV viewing I did this weekend, I totally forgot that I was up way too Early on Saturday and worked nearly 8 hours. I then took a nap and promptly forgot all about that. We had a database migration and it was a lot of work, lots of testing, and all went as well as could be expected. I’m up this morning expecting something to fall out from the migration, but I’m also hopeful that all went well and we’re in good shape. Nothing so far, but the day is still young.

I didn’t write much this weekend. I took a fiction break and watched a lot of television. Well, not too many actual TV shows, but I did watch a couple movies, a few episodes of Mythbusters, and a few episodes of The Twilight Zone. I also watched the first couple episodes of Star Blazers. I started a few movies and just couldn’t get into any of them after about 10 minutes.

Why?

I was antsy to write. I wanted to just sit and bang out words all day long. Why didn’t I? I needed a break. I’ve been going hard and fast for a long time and even though I found myself twitch and eager to jump in and crank out some words, I need to step back for a couple of days and just take it easy. Recharge the batteries. Have some down time. Spend some time with the family.

I did all that and I’m ready to jump back in with both feet and get some more words knocked out this week. I’ve had two days to let a couple scenes germinate in my little brain and I’m ready to pump out those words like it’s nobody’s business. Pending no serious distractions this week, I’ll have another epic word count week. I’m primed and ready to go.

One of the things that have gotten my brain even more fired up: working out. My favorite daughter needs to do conditioning to get ready for volleyball tryouts. She also needs to get her mile run down under 8 minutes. We’ve been going and working out and it feels great. Time on the treadmill, elliptical, or stationary bike then some light weight training (well, like for her) and it feels really good. I never realized how quick my kid is. That makes me sad. I used to be fast. But I’m happy for her.

We’ll be doing workouts until it’s tryout time and hopefully I’ll continue on ever after she’s back to her Volleyball. It’s going to be another long year.

I was going to post about those NOTW stickers I see everywhere. I read them as NOT NOW! Which is more appropriate for some. I still don’t get the Not Of This World (Is Jesus an ancient alien?) but I decided I didn’t want to go on a rant about religion or how I feel that most non-denominational ‘churches’ are really just businesses that bring you entertainment for money. Like I said, don’t want to get into religion or politics on this blog. Those are rants left elsewhere. 🙂

I will, however, eventually get to that post about ducks and start posting daily duck pics. You’d laugh if you saw the number of pictures I have.

Until Tomorrow!

WOO WOO!

My intention this morning was to get up very early and spend some time writing. Why? I have a database migration to monitor and it started in the wee hours. Yes, I was up very early. At least my body was up quite early. My brain did not engage until a couple hours later. Even then I thought I’d get a little writing time in. Silly me.

It’s been a moderately busy morning and I really haven’t had time to sit and actually write anything. I’m typing this up in between instant messages from individuals and from a group room. It’s highly distracting and of course requires much of my attention. Soon we’ll begin testing and once that’s done perhaps I’ll get some writing done.

I intended to hit the hay early last night. I’d forgotten that my favorite daughter would be at the One Direction concert. We picked up her and her friend from the arena around 11:30PM and got into bed around 12:30 (traffic after a concert *shudder*). This was the first time they had gone to something by themselves like this. It was a scary dad moment, but there is a LOT of security for these events and the girls are smart and for the most part pay attention to their surroundings.

They had a great time and continued their screamfest in Sputtery Truck as we got them something to eat and made the trek back home. Apparently they had really good seats. From the picture it’s difficult to tell, but I’ve been to that arena before and know where they sat. They would be good seats. 🙂

Not much writing happened yesterday. I do hope I’ll have time later today. This afternoon I plan on taking a nap and at some point go and see Prometheus. I’ve seen mixed reviews. I know it’ll be good eye candy. I’m just hoping that the story will hold up. I’ve been cynical lately and the Avengers too my movie expectations to a whole new level. I’m still hopeful and I will write a review after I see it.

If my day has anything to say about it, I’ll be productive as possible. Though I’m not sure my day is going to cooperate. At the moment it’s a wait and see game.

I need to get busy with this migration. The Millican has a duck picture for me. I’ll make sure to post it here.

Until Tomorrow!

WOO WOO!

Yesterday was a happy writing day. I accomplished two things. First, I got caught up with my JuNoWriMo target. I had thought that was going to be difficult because I had a few days with light fiction counts. A couple where I only got my daily update done and I’m not counting those toward my overall goal.

JuNoWriMo is similar to NaNoWriMo where you attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I’m not trying to write a 50,000 word novel, but I am trying to write 50,000 words of fiction. That should get me nearly to the end of Of Gnomes and Dwarves and get it that much closer to completion. I am not counting these daily blog posts toward those word counts meaning I need to produce 1667 words of fiction a day in June (on average). Being that I was a couple day behind right out of the gate, I didn’t think it’d be an easy thing to accomplish. Well, it wasn’t.

If I were counting my blog posts in my JuNoWriMo goal I’d be at just over 22,000 words so far for June (some posts have been scheduled for future release). So I really needed to push myself the past couple of days to get caught up with my fiction. Over the past four days here are my word count breakdowns: Blog Posts: 332, 1642, 2450, 3600 and Fiction 4227, 0, 3510, 3159.

I’ve really be pumping out the words and it feels great. It feels like a dam in my head burst and I can’t write the words fast enough and there are only so many hours in the day that I can write. It’s a little frustrating, but the day job needs to be done and once I call the day done only then can I sit and write. I have my goal in mind and I have my targets set out in front of me. That makes it far easier to look at where I am, where I need to be, and go for it.

I know there will be naysayers out there who claim that they can sit and write whenever they want and they don’t need to track their progress or sit down daily. I’m sure there are people out there like that. All I can state with any certainty is that I used to be like that and I got books written and words out. Ever since I shifted to tracking my progress and keeping myself on track with writing daily I’ve written more words than ever before. In a give year I might have been able to produce 200,000 words of fiction and that would be all I would write. We’re not even halfway through this year and I’ve already produced nearly 250,000 words. I can’t explain how good that feels.

I would never say you absolutely need to change your writing habits. What I will say is that if you’re not writing on a regular schedule, give it a shot. I’ve seen so much progress in my writing both in quality and quantity that I’m happier than ever and it’s a joy to sit and write even if I really don’t feel like writing. I can go from a foul mood to a happy mood in 100 words and then I’m off and rolling away and words start to flow. Sure it might be difficult to start at times, but I’m getting words written.

Oh, speaking of the title of this post, that’s my second accomplishment. Over 50,000. What did I mean by that? I set my annual goal for 450,000 words. My target goal is 196047. That means that I should be at roughly 196000 words but I’m actually at 246849. I’m over 50,000 words ahead of my goal. I’m currently 41 days ahead of schedule for the year. I know that unless something catastrophic happens, I’ll hit that goal and more. For me, that’s HUGE! I’m super excited about it .So excited that I feel the need to write. I’m not going to modify my goal at this point, but I will be upping my goals for next year. Based on where I finish, I’ll be setting a blogging goal and a fiction goal for next year as well as a combined goal.

This year is looking to be a great and productive year. If all goes well, next year will be more of the same.

I’ve got pictures of ducks to down load.

Until Tomorrow!

WOO WOO!

I had intended to get caught up with my fiction writing yesterday. Instead I wrote a post about Mr. Bradbury, read a couple of his short stories, and watched several interview/discussions/talks with Mr. Bradbury. I even watched the Dead Alewives Ray Bradbury skit. It’s funny, but insulting. And funny. I love Bradbury, but it’s still funny.

Anyway, so I also went to the Millican’s son’s Lacrosse banquet. That was great fun. My favorite daughter had many practices in the gym where the ceremonies were held. The best comment of the night was about his son: “He shocked us at tryouts”. He was one of two freshmen that made the varsity team. He’s a freakin BEAST on the field.

Even with all that going on yesterday I still got my daily update done along with the post on Mr. Bradbury. There were a lot of great posts yesterday including on from Mark Evanier and Neil Gaiman. If you have time, I don’t have the links. But I’m sure if you do a google search on their name + Ray Bradbury you’ll find them quickly enough.

I got sidetracked. What I mean to say was that even with all that going on and getting my regular job work done, I also managed to squeeze out a few words. Yesterday’s word total was nearly 6000 words. I was a typing fool before the banquet and after the banquet. I’m on a roll right now. I’m about to write a chapter that will turn out more like a short story involving Slick and a job he needs to perform. The good thing is it’ll cause Slick to cross paths with Maus and Willie. Soon the three of them will wind up together, though no because any of them want to be together. It’ll all make sense when you read it 🙂 honest.

It’s nice when I’m writing Maus and Willie. They’re interactions at this point are adversarial which makes for great dialog. Once I introduce Slick to the equation it’ll be even more fun. When we used to play D&D Sean and Cam played Willie and Slick (respectively) and I played Maus. Needless to say I had the gnome, the cart, I hauled around out ‘loot’ and they would do everything they could to make my life a living nightmare. They would often pass notes back and forth to ensure I stayed sufficiently paranoid about what they were plotting and planning. Even though most of those notes consisted of “hi” “Hey” “Think he’s going to go off about this note?” “No, I think we should keep writing notes until he gets upset” “hahaha” they still made me paranoid. Looking back it was a lot of fun gaming with them and Pat, our DM tolerated their antics much to my dismay.

I did not and will not include a lot of things like this in he story. That was part of our D&D gaming and will forever stay there. Instead I will build on the character traits we developed during the game. This is a story using those characters, not a retelling of their adventures. I will not include stats, none of the encounters will be random no matter how they initially come across, and I will never use D&D terms when referring to the characters other than to specify their race. I won’t call Willie and Maus fighters, I won’t call Slick a thief (even though he’s a member of the thieves guild). I won’t call Reeg a paladin. You get the point.

What I’m trying to say is that I’m doing everything I can to make this story my own and not an extension of D&D adventures. I’m having fun with it and will continue to have fun with it. My hope is someday people will read it and also have fun with it. At some point I’ll record and podcast this story as well as release it as an ebook. It’s the first in a series and at this point I’m not sure how long the series will be. I just know Maus and Willie have a lot of story to tell and I hope to tell it all.

At this point my plan is to write the next installment of V&A Shipping after the first book for Of Gnomes and Dwarves. If all goes well, I’ll write the next Astel book after that. There’s still a lot of year left and a lot of words to write. There are also a lot of pictures of ducks I need to download so I can post a daily duck photo. I will get that dock post done one day soon.

Until Tomorrow!

WOO WOO!

Today is my mom’s birthday. I know a lot of people talk about their mothers and how great they are. I would do the same, but I hear how great my mom is from a lot of different people. Every time I go back to her bar in the backwoods of Minnesota where I grew up, I hear stories. When I call someone in the bar always yells to thank me for calling my mother and what a great person she is.

My mom is straight up. She’ll tell you exactly what’s on her mind and if you don’t like it, get the hell out of her bar and take your business elsewhere. For some people this is a big turn off and has driven those people away for a time, but 99% of the time they come back. Her bar is the second oldest bar run by the same management in McGregor. If you talk to anyone in McGregor about Rae Ann or the Cajun Queen, they’ll know exactly who you’re talking about. She’s been running that bar since 1983 and has done a fantastic job because of her honest, straightforward attitude.

Growing up she never put the fear of ‘God’ into me. I was never afraid of my mother. Oh sure I got my share of spankings and scoldings, but never anything I didn’t deserve. She was firm, but caring. She gave my brother and I very long leash, but she always knew where we were and what we were doing. I wouldn’t think twice about coming home after dark without calling and normally that was for her to come pick me up because I rode my bike to a friend’s house that was 10-15 miles away.

Today she celebrates the 30th anniversary of her 40th birthday. She may be slowing down, but she’s still not a lady you want to tangle with. When she was around 60 I saw he walk a man about 6’6” out of her bar after she told him repeatedly to watch his mouth. He lipped off to her face saying “I’d like to see you kick me out of here” and she came over the bar, grabbed him firmly by his tingly bit and did just that. You’d think his friends would have been laughing, but when she came back and said “Any of you got a problem with that?” They all said “No ma’am” and ordered another pitcher of beer. The person in question returned the next day to apologize for his behavior the night before and became a regular at her bar…as long as he watched his mouth. All she had to do was say his name, and he knew exactly what she meant.

I’ve posted here before that my mom has made sailors blush. My brother brought some Navy buddies home saying you have to meet my mom and it took her all of 10 or 15 minutes and they were either laughing of turning bright red.

In the history of McGregor every bar has been broken into. All save one. You might be able to guess which one. There are two reasons. 1) My mom lives in the back. 2) She’s armed. She’s feisty and has never kept it a secret that if you come into her bar when she’s closed she’ll shoot first and figure out what happened later. She’s got a shotgun by her bed and a handgun on her headboard. Her late husband also collected guns and they would go shooting often. Yes, my mom can shoot a gun and she’s not afraid to do so.

I’ve had my mom all my life. Something I appreciate more now that I’ve lost my father. She’s a spectacular woman with an interesting past. She’s done a lot and hasn’t left McGregor much over that past 30 years. I know of at least 10 different kids I grew up with that all call her mom, send her mother’s day cards, birthday cards and calls. Many who have come to respect my mother for who she is and would do anything to protect her. It warms my heart to know that so many have come to know and love my mom.

If you’re ever around the McGregor area, stop in, see my mom, tell her that her sons told you to stop by. The Cajun Queen is a great place to sit, have a beer, and enjoy some conversation.

Happy Birthday, Ma!

I need to go find more picture of ducks. I read an article that you can find on your own (I like to keep my site PG) about duck mating habits. I was surprised. I won’t post pictures of THAT!

Until Tomorrow!

WOO WOO!