I have
pretty much fallen out of the race for 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo. I was
frustrated last week with what was essentially word vomit from the week before
and my OCD blocked me from getting very far so I took a breather and worked on
the cover a bit more than I should have. It’s nearly done, but now I am way
behind on the word count. I’m not giving up. I’ll continue to focus on writing
the Terminator: Back to the Future story for the rest of November.
Once December
comes, however, I’ll be working on Devil Dog again, as well as some other
projects that are pushing their way to the front of my mind. I won’t stop
writing the NaNoWriMo project but it will no longer be my complete focus.
As far as
that cover goes, it’s cartoony, but that’s what I do. All that’s left is the
title and a few minor details to Marty's shoe and the Delorean. I’ll finish that this week and put it up on the NaNoWriMo site.
If you’re writing for NaNoWriMo, I hope you’re holding up better than I. I’ll
post again later this week.
It’s November, and after taking off last year from the
National November Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), this year I am glued to my
computer nearly every day in an attempt to reach 50,000 words in one month. I’m
working hard to make writing more of a career than ever before. I have
scheduled 5 days a week where I write or doing writing related activities, and
2 days I spend with my family. Since I work a full time job on top of writing
and family, that doesn’t leave a lot of time for much else in life.
I know my gaming buddies miss me and someday I hope to
return to Azeroth or wherever the RPG gamers are hanging out then… yeah
everyone eventually returns to Azeroth if they are serious Role Players. Admitting
there is an addiction is the first step to recovery, but Marilyn Manson once
said that “Rehab is for quitters” and I’m no quitter, so I will just delay
embracing my Azeroth addiction until I have more free time. Luckily I can
squeeze in some fantasy football on the weekends and I give myself a couple
hours during the week to tweak my teams. If you don’t know what Azeroth is,
then just Google it, you’ll recognize it then by its game name. The game, not
the book by Cherryh.
I've been pretty bogged down recently and unfortunately I've ignored my blog. It wasn't intentional, I just realized today that it was the middle of September. For some reason the NFL season kicking off wasn't tipping me off that time was flying way too fast. Let me share with you what I've been involved in lately. I filed the paperwork to create my own publishing company. No, it's not just so I can look legit when I publish through this company. The company contracts professional editors and artists, and I've got one other writer signed up to publish with me. So, long story short, I've been swamped with learning all the accounting and little details for running a business by myself. It's a little overwhelming, but I'm starting to get everything into a rhythm and create a schedule that will work to help other writers I know that don't have the connections to get professional assistance with their novels and get published. I don't have big dreams of taking on New York, but someday, this will be my full time job. Hopefully not after I retire from the day job.
Pic by Debra Kristi on WANA Commons
The thing that I need to squeeze into my schedule now is the blog. I have no intention of letting go of this blog. There aren't a lot of comments, but the number of hits is pretty mind blowing considering I'm just babbling my little thoughts about weapons most of the time. I appreciate the number of people who repeatedly return and read the weapons and warriors posts and those who haven't given up on that fanfic piece that will soon be squeezed into my schedule as well. Life feels like I'm carry a fridge up a long stairwell right now, but that's the kind of living that makes us stronger. You might wonder why I'm so determined to write a piece of silly fanfic in the middle of all this publishing business management, holding down a daytime office job that has nothing to do with writing, and writing my own novels. It's simple. It's discipline and training. If I am going to be a professional published author, then I need to learn to write faster than I have been. I believe that forcing myself to maintain all of this other stuff as well as write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November will enhance my ability to write faster. I spent the last two years reevaluating and relearning my 20+ years of writing experience. Now it's time to enhance my speed. I need these new writing skills to became instinct and less of a thought process. I'll be back this month with a new weapons post. I'm aiming it at the 27th. The rest of the month is dedicated to work on the new publishing company, which I'm filing a trademark on the title and logo and once that has completed, I'll announce the name here. It's an exciting time for me, and I can't wait to share everything with my readers. This weekend I'm preparing a blog that talks about some celebrity heroes of mine. I should have that up sometime soon.
I have finalized the outline for Terminator: Back to the Future. I never got any response from HISHE on using their amazing video, so I'm going to fill in the blanks for my second outline. That version took the concept but did not use the specifics in the video, which made it a lot more flexible for me and will be easier to write. I will also no longer reference their video, since I'm not sure they are interested in any publicity from my story. If I do happen to hear from them before I finalize the story, then I might consider including the exact scenes in their videos, but at this time I need to begin preparing for Nanawrimo, and I can't wait on them any longer. See you soon.
I have made
progress! I’ve completed two outlines for this story. This summer, I will spend
some time fleshing out more details on those outlines, when I’m not writing on
other things. In September I’ll finalize an outline. Why two outlines? Well,
the video that inspired this project is copyrighted and I have not heard back
from HISHE on whether or not I can use their quotes. I’m really hoping they don’t
mind. At worst, they’ll get free advertising because I can link their website from
my story. This will be offered free as well, so I won’t be making any money off
this project at all.
The second
outline is in case they never respond to me, or tell me I can’t use their
property. The stories are similar but the quotes and scenes that are in the
video by HISHE are altered or removed. This whole project is purely for fun. It’s
just something to improve my writing and storytelling. So it won’t matter if
HISHE approves, fan-fic is not illegal and I will write a "Terminator" and "Back to the Future" mash-up. Don’t you worry.
I’m still here, despite appearances, the blog is still alive.
I’ve been focusing a lot on the co-writing gig “Welcome To My Imagination” lately.
I’ve been drawing weapons for the posts already out there, but I’m really slow
at art. I don’t mean to neglect the blog; it’s just been extra crazy. Even my
day job has gone nuts. It’s work, what can I do? I’m stuck with it at least until
I’m a New York bestseller, then maybe I can move on from working for someone
besides my readers. The goal is to someday match my income and benefits with my
writing before I resign from the day job, unless I retire first. Retirement is
16 years away, so I’m hoping I don’t have to wait that long.
I am working on a new Weapons and Warriors article. It’s a vicious
weapon that was pretty common in Medieval Europe. I can’t wait to share that. Later
on I’m going to do a post or two, maybe more, about the Sikhs of India. I’ve
been talking with a person who is from India and at the moment I’m reading and
watching videos to get a grasp of what the Sikh is about. I’m not sure if I’ll
focus on weapons as much, but I am looking forward to writing about the
culture. India has always fascinated me. Someday I will have to visit there.
It’s
been a year and still there is no real progress on this awesome Fan Fiction
idea. I started plotting out a story to match the video and was eventually
overwhelmed by the complexity of my story and then by other projects throughout
the year.
This
is still a project I really want to write up, and I’ve been thinking about it a
lot. So I decided this year, I will set goals for it, like I am doing for all
my other projects. I spent the second half of 2012 rewiring my writing brain to
work more strategically and still retain my creativity. Most of that will
probably rarely reflect in my blog posts, outside of the Weapons & Warriors posts, because I usually just ramble a lot.
I
skipped Nanowrimo (National November Writing Month) in 2012 because I was neck
deep in edits for Devil Dog and Welcome to My Imagination, I still am. I spent
a lot of 2012 in the editing phase because I was learning new techniques for
writing to help me complete a book without having to rewrite it ten times. While
I’m mastering these new techniques I am going to use them to set up a schedule
to write out the Terminator vs. Back to the Future story.
The Chinese New Year is drawing to a close, and the time of the Water
Dragons will soon be over on Feb 9th. This year was the time for
taking chances. The economy was struggling for many, but hording your money and
trying to save isn’t going to put that back on track.
Took this pic from the boat, while passing an island of trees.
I went on that vacation out of the country, although our ship was
rained out of the harbor in Canada, so I never set foot on foreign soil. I
still got to see Alaska from the mountain tops and a glacier. It was beautiful
and inspiring to see. Not even the pictures I took can really express the
majestic beauty of those mountains coming right out of the water.
I began the work on starting that publishing company I always wanted and I’ve
been helping writers as much as I can, but I never did file the paperwork to
make it official. For two reasons, I was worried I’d have to pay some kind of
tax after the year was up and I didn’t have anything prepared to publish to pay that tax. That,
I’ll get into in a minute.
The time is drawing near. I’m still fixing some plot holes and organizing the story, but the “Terminator vs. Back to the Future” fan-fiction project is getting closer to being written. I’m going to aim for starting the first chapter this summer, so it’s still a ways out. The video that was done up by How It Should Have Ended Team is pretty much what the story is about. John Connor wants to kill Doc Emmit Brown so that the machines can never uncover and use his time traveling technology. I’ll go into more detail on the basic storyline at the end of this post.
I saw this the other day and I just couldn’t get it out of my head. I almost immediately wanted to make this into a real full length movie. It would be epic. Instead, since I’m a writer and not Steven Spielberg, I decided to write a fan-fiction piece. It will be a few months out since I’m trying to figure out how to organize my ideas for it and set them up so they aren’t too long for the blog posts. I already have a theme and a list of several concepts. Now that I’ve gotten that far, I’ll begin plotting out a storyline, just as I would any of my novels. In my spare time when I’m not in the mood to read and I’m stuck on something, I’ll start piecing together the story of how John Connor wants to kill Doc Brown and so on when I can.
The fun part will be mixing the stories together. Since the video mashes up parts of the movies, I’m going to pretty much do the same. I’m not sure exactly how yet, but I want it to pretty much follow a time stream that will make sense. Time travel stories get complicated. Every time you do something in the past, you must figure out how it affects the future. Since this might turn out a little campy, I may blow by some minor details and just let the cards lay way they are. “Great Scott!”
Looks like I have to rewatch some movies. I also want to incorporate every scene of this video because I think these scenes would be absolutely hilarious.
Obviously, this is not going to be a priority because I’m juggling three full length novels already, but keep your eyes peeled. I’m going to write this video into a novel eventually. I’ll make it a weekly update, where I actually post what I’ve written for your enjoyment and critiques. It’ll be good practice for me and hopefully entertaining to you. Once it’s complete, I’m going to throw it all into a PDF and put it somewhere for free downloads.
Now, I need to get back to writing, but I couldn’t wait to share this idea. I’m going to make like a tree and get out of here.
I have
pretty much fallen out of the race for 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo. I was
frustrated last week with what was essentially word vomit from the week before
and my OCD blocked me from getting very far so I took a breather and worked on
the cover a bit more than I should have. It’s nearly done, but now I am way
behind on the word count. I’m not giving up. I’ll continue to focus on writing
the Terminator: Back to the Future story for the rest of November.
