I’m a patient person. I’m really good at waiting. I really am. It doesn’t bother me when a waiter or waitress is slow or behind. I can wait. I’m usually never in a hurry. I don’t mind taking my time. I keep telling myself that the wait will be worth it.

I have several works out and some have been out since the end of November. I’m waiting. I have to look at it as longer is better. If the work were to be rejected outright I’d have heard something by now, right? So I have to assume that the longer, in this case, is better. I just need to be patient and keep plowing forward with other works. I need to keep submitting anything I’ve got finished and see what happens. I cannot allow myself to dwell on works I’m waiting on because the waiting will kill me. Just a little more time. People are busy. I understand.

On that note, I’ve begun working on the next episode of Golden West. The story is going to take a slightly different direction. I like where it’s going and the story will be stronger in the end. The first Action Pack episode is getting great reviews from those who’ve listened to it. That has made the three of us involved quite happy and hopefully we can keep it going strong. I know my second episode is building up to be quite interesting.

My Teacher is a Zombie is getting some editing done to it. I’ll be bugging Dan Dan the Art Man once again for a cover on that one. Once I get the second Episode of Golden West out of the way I’ll be doing my Teacher is a Werewolf. The characters were so much fun I need to keep those ones going. I’m having a lot of fun just writing. Even To Fall From the Sky is coming along nicely. I had an epiphany while writing the other day and WOW! I now have an even more powerful ending in mind that will take the story in the same direction, but just make it a more powerful ending.

Writing 2000 words a day during Lent is helping me really work out some writing issues I’ve had in the past. It’s great hitting a flow where words just seem to fall out of my head. Still not as fast as I would like, but I know with time I’ll get there. I can type fast, I can write fast, I just need to keep at it and both will get faster. There are so many stories in my brain that I need to write, it’s just a matter of making the time to write them all.

Stories like How I Got to Where I Am today. Let’s continue, shall we?

After submitting Of Gnomes and Dwarves: Book 1 to multiple agents and editors, I got disheartened. It’s tough to take rejection and everything I got was a form letter. The only plus side was my work was going quite well and I was learning how to program. My father had sat me down at the age of 12 and handed me a book on how to program in BASIC on a TRS-80 (maybe I was 13). I took another programming class in 10th grade and I loved programming. Why I switched and went into electronics I’ll never know.

So when I started doing web pages full time for my job, I was in heaven. I love designing for he web and I’ve been doing it as my job full time since 2001. Mostly I do back end work with getting things tied to databases and developing working interfaces, but lately I’ve been doing a lot more front end work. The field changes so quickly.

I think when it comes to writing that’s what I love about programming and creative writing. They’re both similar in the fact they require a certain amount of creativity, planning, and dedication to sit for hours alone and just type. Be it code frameworks or plot outlines, I find creativity in both endeavors.

As for my writing, I hit a slump after a lot of rejections. I took about a year or more off from writing. When I came back to it, I read several books on writing. Alright, closer to 30, but I was reading as much as possible.  I took a challenge from one book and decided to write as many short stories as possible and in one year I wrote over 100 short stories. Of those 100 I submitted nearly half as I knew half were really bad. Of those 50 or so I submitted I had 10 publications. This was when online fiction was just starting out and there were no real strong ebooks. Half were online and half were anthology and smaller magazines. I was excited. I got back into writing fiction with V&A Shipping as a NaNoWriMo novel. I got the entire book written during that November and I felt great. I wrote Astel, Billy Barbarian, I even started three other novels that I didn’t finish, but I had strong starts to.

Then I lost my grandfather. That took the wind out of my sails. A year later when I started writing again my mother lost her husband. He’d never really been my dad, but I loved him all the same. I had difficulty getting back into writing, but I’d been playing around in the podcasting community for a while. I decided to podcast V&A Shipping. As I was recording the episodes I started writing again. Then I lost my dad.

It was a difficult one, two, three. But when I lost my dad I kept on podcasting and did Billy Barbarian and a number of short stories. What finally got me out of my writing funk, after trying to write and only getting a couple rough starts going, was Mike Plested suggesting that we do a collaborative work together. Bring out Jack Kane.

Sure it took he and I over a year to write, but that was due to many stops and starts. Finishing that book lit something in my brain and suddenly I decided that I needed to stop puttering around with my craft and get serious. I needed to treat my writing like it was a part time job. That’s what I’ve done since mid-December and this year I intended to keep a string of words flowing out and have not missed a day.

I started with writing this blog daily. That’s helped more than you can imagine. Then I decided that I needed to do more than just blog, but I needed to write daily. Not just write daily, but keep track of how much I was writing each day and to keep that word output in front of me so I could keep tabs on myself. And not just keep tabs. I needed to PUSH myself to do more. To do better. To perform at a level I’ve never performed at.

I’m not going to reach publication with works sitting in a drawer and hoping for the best. I’m not going to get published sitting back and waiting to get discovered. I always knew that, but keep myself from doing what needed to be done. Guess what, I’m writing more than I ever have. If this year turns out like I hope, I’ll produce as many words in 2012 as I have my entire time writing. That will tell me that I am capable of writing more fiction. yes, I’ve been blogging a lot, but once I get rolling, I need to keep rolling.

Look out world, 2012 is the year for Murdock to announce that I’ve arrived! Just you watch. This blog will chronicle all I am doing and all I’ve done. Some I cannot talk about yet, but as soon as I can, you’ll see. You’ll see.

Until Tomorrow!

WOO WOO!