Tag: NaNoWriMo

Exercise, The Bane Of My Food Loving World + Update!

With NaNoWriMo fast approaching (What? It’s only four days away?!) my final October evenings have been spent trying to prepare for writing a novel in thirty days. As I squeeze lore from the lemon that is my mind right now, I stare at the screen hoping for more loreonade. My mind is putty because today I pushed my body to do things it doesn’t enjoy. Heavy lifting. Manual labor. Cleaning (No, wait… that is deeply satisfying). As someone who eats fast food more than anyone should, I’m a bit out of shape (despite a circle being considered in that group). After gaining some weight during my travels back home, an additional ten percent to put it into perspective, I have been making strides to eat healthier. Today was a different beast entirely.

The backroom at work has been somewhat of a nightmare for a borderline OCD guy like myself. I like order and when things make sense. Safety is also always a good thing. So after speaking with my manager we decided to tear down the backroom and rebuild it. I got to plan, design and execute my idea! Oh how delicious gratification is! However when we began to move stuff around today, as good as it was feeling to have everything in order and tidy, my body disagreed with the methods at play. So after about eight hours of continuous lifting and moving, muscles I didn’t know I used began to groan under the most basic movements. Crouching? Agony. Sneeze? Searing pain. The end result was worth it… for now. Order has been chiseled from chaos and beauty born of insanity.

Fast forward five hours.

Present Me hates Past Me for not worrying about Future Me. Future Me is currently excited for bed, while Present Me is trying to be productive. Damn Past Me has destroyed Present Me’s productivity by overworking us all. In short: Working hard all day keeps the night time productivity at bay. However, that being said I think I know where my story is going to start. Unless it changes, the beginning will introduce one of the antagonists and one of the protagonists as well as two forms of magic, set the kingdom and initiate the plans for a coming war. In my mind, I can already see the battles ahead between two factions! Necromancy in my world is classified as a Forbidden Magic. Forbidden magic simply means you are tapping into an energy that is not your own which changes you through the Magician’s Curse (actually from Jefferson’s story at the top right). Necromancy in particular is cruel in the sense that unlike other forbidden magics that can cause insanity, the caster remains clear of mind while their body decays. In short, you waste away until you are classified as a Lich (skeletal magician). The other form of magic early on is Sacrificial. In order to give life, a life must be taken. These two magics won’t be pitted against each other just yet, but I’m excited for the development!

So many things! Four days! Oh man, this is getting crazy! So many consequences to using magic! So little time! Okay, well I open my store in the morning and still have a ton of things to clean up and move there so I should probably sleep. As for you ladies and gents beyond the screen, are you ready? Have you started early? I am considering also trying to do a blog post (short or long, doesn’t matter) after every NaNoWriMo writing session. Not sure how wise that is, but it’ll be nice I think to touch base with the others out there and help celebrate the wins of Team NaNo! Talk to you soon and remember, FOUR DAYS!!!

Passing The Torch

Hello again everyone! Hope your writing is going absolutely swell as November and the fabled NaNoWriMo fast approaches. As for me, planning has been going swell but just recently I was contacted by Mr. Bob Clary over at webucator.com who had apparently stumbled upon my little corner of the internet and enjoyed my passion for writing. Now he’s turned around and asked me to write a post on how I would teach my talent unto others and my personal insight into the subject. This is both more complicated than a post could ever detail and simultaneously more simple than you could ever imagine.

Firstly, a bit about myself for those of you who may just be stopping by. I’m twenty nine and staring down the barrel of thirty. I’ve been bald for many a moon now and perhaps that has something to do with my particular craft. For something that has been with me for my entire life, it never treated me very well! I have worked many jobs and hard work has been something I have always been accustomed to. From company to company, I have been nearly promoted at every turn. I’ve only moved jobs when there has been no room to move up or no room for me where I have moved to. My travels have taken me from humble beginnings in a trailer park in a place called Sackville to living in my own home on the coast of Australia. Things could definitely be worse, I assure you.

As for writing; it has always been with me. No matter where I’ve been, what I’ve been paid to do, who I’ve been working for… it has always been right there, nagging me to explore the worlds in my mind. Perhaps my muse is harassing me. Maybe she’s in love with me as much as I am with writing. But no matter the case, I’ve been to some far away lands and met some incredible beings. I’ve always wanted that chance to make it my career, to spend time in those places and with those beings. This has lead me to read many books, not only on the subject of writing but classics as well.

From my twenty odd years experience in writing, from all the books I have read and from all the blog posts and articles I can tell you a few things. If I were to try and teach someone the art of writing, first would come the art of reading. It is just as important to research your genre as it is to read and enrich your vocabulary! Then, the most important task ever. Write. That sounds easy enough right? No. It’s impossible. It will grind you to dust and crush your very spirit. It will haunt your dreams. You will think about it in your most intimate of moments. It is everywhere, and many days- nowhere at all. 

Oh! You’re still here. I see. Despite all that I’ve said? Interesting. Then I’ll fill you in on a little secret. The most important thing I’ve ever learned about my craft is never lose the passion. Ray Bradbury was a writer I discovered all too late after his passing in 2012. His book, Zen in the Art of Writing, was not about writing. It wasn’t about words or building a story. It wasn’t about inspiration (Not for me at least). It was entirely about how this man, despite his many set backs and people telling him his work was rubbish, came out on top and just kept writing. He wasn’t writing to become a billion dollar man. He was writing simply because he loved it more than anything in the world. You need to have the passion, as it will drive you through the mud when it’s at its thickest.

In short, you want to be a writer? You need to read. A lot. You will need to write. A lot. And you will need more passion than you could devote to anything else. Writing is my mistress and when my girlfriend is mad at me, it is most likely writing’s fault (or mine!). And when I say read? I mean the genre you want to write in. When I say write? I mean start small. Accomplish The End in a short story. Then work your way up. I have hundreds of exceptionally short stories. Then suddenly The End was getting further and further from the start point. My last short story, entitled Circle of Vengeance out there on the internet, was twenty five full size pages. After that? I wrote a novel. Remember though, inspiration is everywhere!

Writing is more complicated than you could ever imagine, but at its most basic… just write. Write for you and people will either like it, or not. I could tell you how I do it, I could give you templates and books to read on the subject. But just write. Then you too can call yourself a writer.

However if you need any help with Microsoft products, I hear Webucator gives away a free course each month. See http://www.webucator.com/microsoft/index.cfm for details!

With that out of the way, I’m lined up and primed for November. My world is coming together and the lore is lining up. Many exciting individuals are moving in and the stories are beginning to intertwine. As we approach NaNoWriMo, I am feeling confident that this year I will destroy the target. Also my girlfriend will be gone during the final week, which frees up my time tremendously to pump out those final words if need be. My hope is to get book one done, with the tentative title: The Immortal Realms. Exciting times are ahead for me and I’m not even sure where to begin for it! I suppose I will have to decide that before November first! Get excited! Get ready! Let’s do this!

So tell me, are you guys ready for NaNoWriMo? How’s the prep work going? Also in regards to the above topic of teaching others how to write, how would you do it? I only ask because it really got me thinking about my own writing and my inspirations! Thanks for swinging by and talk to you soon! Now I leave you with a music video that I think of when I think about national writing month!

NaNoWriMo Ends, Christmas Begins.

From the frying pan and into the fire. From bad to worse. From craziness to insanity. From NaNoWriMo and into Christmas. All of these sentences mean the exact same thing when you work retail. Have you been wondering where I have been recently? I have been working myself really hard to prepare for christmas, and for puppies (Which arrive this saturday. Which… OMG I’M SO EXCITED, FACE MELTING CUTENESS! YAY!). I’ve never had a pet, so I don’t even know how these little buggers are going to take to our house. We are very much hoping they’ll take to each other and become the best of friends. But… I have worked retail for the past (Oh Man…) decade.

Christmas in retail is like being stuck in a building crammed with people and someone pulling the fire alarm. There are so many people and so few staff that trying to get to everyone is near impossible. Not only that, but I’m not sure when or how people came to the conclusion they’re entitled to everything, but they definitely do. My product was defective, and now I want a new one AND a fifty percent discount. Oh ha ha… oh wait, that guy was serious. Christmas brings out the crazy in people. Also, people make it very clear that “This is a christmas gift, so I need it before then.” I’ll be honest for all of you out there, no matter if you need it next week, or next year… the exact same process is in effect for both situations and you will get it ASAP in both scenarios. I promise!

So I know some people who did really well this year at NaNoWriMo (Congrats from me to Becka, BTW Check out that NaNo Cake!) Also Lorie and a few others!) I also know many who didn’t do so well… one notable one especially: Me! I had set the target of the end of November to be completely done my edit. I can give you a million reasons why I didn’t accomplish my goals, but not one as to how I tried to. I failed because I didn’t try to. I admit my defeat and move past it. No sense dwelling on it. But I am now aiming to have it done by the end of the month.

Of course as I mentioned earlier, I work retail. The hardest part about that at Christmas is I always want to do really well for budgets and the team morale. This involves me and some (Read: Many) extra hours at work. Arrive early, leave late, rock it for the entire day and revel in my own incredible productivity. Then I come home and glance at the couch before passing out on, near or around it. Horizontal is the new vertical, and I love it. So comfy. Anyway it seems I need to start waking up before work to get back into the habit I made to write.

Anyway congrats to all those who managed to hit fifty thousand words, and congrats to those who made those fifty thousand words matter! I will be back ASAP with more progress! Talk to you all soon!

The Plight Of The Self Publisher

As a writer in this day and age, we all have hundreds of options available for us to run out and get the story out there. You can use Amazon, Lulu, iBooks and the list goes on and on. Which one do you choose? Which will get you the best audience? How do you do formatting?

Okay, I’ll be honest. I’m not going to talk about any of that. I’m no expert. I’m not even a novice. But I’ve got some nifty experiences to share.

So as you may see down the side bar to your right (no, your other right) there are three options for my short story, Circle of Vengeance. They’re conveniently the above three examples. For each of these there has been a drama in one way or another, from fonts to random characters in conversion (I’m looking at you, Amazon).

So I chose the iBookstore first because frankly, loads of people I know have iPads. Even more people have iPhones. If I combined the two, that’s a lot of people to get my story completely free of charge! So I browsed the iBooks Author app for Mac and settled in converting my story. It went super well and I submitted it. Long story short, bam! Self Published. However some fun facts! First, iBooks is on iPhone, the only problem is books created with iBooks Author are iPad and Mac only. Fine, no worries. But there’s more! Only certain templates do landscape or portrait meaning if you turn my book on an iPad, it maintains its orientation. I’ll fix that as soon as I can.

Next I wanted more people to have access to my story, so I rushed out and looked into Lulu.com. Sweet a PDF format for general use! Don’t mind if I do! I uploaded and everything seemingly went well. No bad feedback and when I look at the file, it is as I expected. Easy and decent. Not bad. However it wouldn’t let me convert to ePub. Fine, I figured I could just head to Amazon and get an ePub there. Simple, right?

Wrong! So I’ve submitted and resubmitted my story a few times and tried to get rid of the little “i” beside my name at the very beginning. As it is a ghost, I cannot rid myself of it. Fine. Also, I am stuck putting in a price of ninety nine cents for what they estimate to be twenty seven pages. It sells itself really. *Facepalm* So at least people can read my story on an iPhone now, right? Yes! With the free Kindle app and by paying a dollar for it. I cannot change the price and I have tried to get them to price match both Lulu.com and the iBookstore which are free. They won’t. Curse them I say! Curse them!

Also, embarrassingly enough, I bought my own book through the Kindle store. Strangely enough, my purchase has yet to show up in their sales figures, which makes me wonder how accurate they are. Unless I don’t count because I am the author… who knows really? Technology is awesome… until it makes no sense!

Because I’m in a fantastic mood tonight and back on track with blog posts, I’m going to share a few things with you! If you’ve read any of my posts of interest, you may recognise these details! Anyway, gather ’round for story time with TJ!

***

Everyone has to get a first job. Everyone starts somewhere. Some people got a paper route. Others worked for their parents. Maybe they got a job where their friends were working. Maybe they focused on studies as they progressed through high school. Me? Oh, well… I tried really hard to get a job back in my small hometown of Sackville, Nova Scotia. For those of us who grew up there, it felt busy enough and it felt big enough. Now that I’ve seen Rome, London, Paris and Sydney… Sackville? Yeah, more like a rural town. Anyway, I digress.

So jobs were hard to come by and I was stuck in a rut. I handed out resumes and everyone was asking for more experience. How can I get a job to get experience when apparently I need experience to get a job? Seemed like a subtle way of saying no politely. Anyway I went around town and gave out fifty resumes. Finally after weeks of no callbacks, I gave in and phoned in for a favour. One of my friends’ moms worked at the local mall (it has since been replaced by a strip mall) and she said she’d let me know if something came up. February passed by, followed into March and then finally came my call! I had a job! It wasn’t much but it was three days of solid work!

My first job and the most laughable moment of my entire life.
My first job and the most laughable moment of my entire life.

Three days as… The Easter Bunny. I begged and pleaded for anything else. Toilet cleaning. Anything at all. Instead, I decided to give in and not look that gift horse in the mouth. I took the job because hey, ten dollars an hour and free chocolate was as good as it gets at sixteen. I walked that mall like the best damned Easter Bunny you’d ever seen. I did learn some things though. Number one, laugh at yourself… that way if anyone else laughs it simply doesn’t hurt. Number two, all children who like the Easter Bunny are crotch height and manage to hit you like a soccer ball to the groin. Number three, all kids run head first and ninety miles an hour. Finally, I rock blue silk vests.

For the longest time, I left this on my resume. I dropped Burger King (which was the worst work environment I’ve ever had), condensed my stint with Empire Theatres (simply three or so years, ended off at Supervisor) and condensed my stint at EB Games (three years there, ended off as Store Manager). I kept it on there to prove to anyone reading my resume that I had a sense of humour and it always got me at the very least into an interview so people could ask about it. The above photo was taken with an ancient camera phone (Motorola Flip Phone, looked like it had a giant nipple on top… which was the camera).

Today I share it with you, so that you make shake your head and laugh! Maybe you’ll email me to ask if that is really me. Maybe you’ll comment because you’ve never known anyone who has been a holiday mascot (official term) before! Most of all, I share it because it was my rite of passage. It taught me humility and hard work (and toughened up the groin area) and I still carry that boy in the Bunny suit with me today so I never forget how lucky I am to have a job, but also all the great things around me!

Speaking of which, thanks again for sticking around and keeping in touch! This has been an absolute blast and I hope you’ll make the effort to get in touch! I can always use more friends that write!

Productive Day? Don't Mind If I Do!

Have you ever had one of those days, you accomplish nothing yet planned to do everything? Yeah? Not me, sucker! No, today I wrecked what I set out to do and put the beat down on some tasks for the week. On the writing front, I finally was passed back the story I’ve been cowriting with a friend, I bought some satin for the “book cover” attempt and managed to rewrite The Journey’s second piece, Shattered Memories! On the home front I cleaned dishes, laundry and tidied the living room! On the outside the home front, I traded in some games to acquire the much sought after Zelda 3DS XL, swung by work so they could make a delivery, coached the staff in the Telco department and picked up a few new Pop! Vinyl figures! Only things I didn’t get to work on were some edits for my novel and weeding the garden! But I do have tomorrow off, so I will rock it then!

On the flip side, I’ve been watching the NaNoWriMo posts this week as the triumphant begin validating their novels and the ones who miss target are left in a crumpled shamed mess. It’s heartbreaking as some of the concepts and writing skill are definitely there, but those writers may give up because they feel as though they failed. I can only hope those people are reborn from the ashes of their 2013 NaNoWriMo attempt, only to smash 2014, or simply write for another month! Never give up, don’t let it win! Your story needs to be told, there’s an audience out there just waiting for it!

*GASP*

Okay! After all that, I am posting late to hopefully catch up on my blog posts. I hate being behind and I will get ahead. I must. Interestingly enough, The Journey hasn’t been getting anywhere near the amount of comments as other posts! Which as much as I don’t mind the break… I miss the flood of questions and comments! I’m curious to know if the writing is sound or if my style is way off base! I’m also curious if people would want to keep reading! Either way, I’ll keep writing it, as I enjoy the story thus far and the characters. Hopefully that will keep up! If you ladies and gents out there lose interest, perhaps I will too!

Today I’d also like to talk about the posts that seem like professional blog posts on “How To Write”, or “How To Get Published”. I’d like to give you all a disclaimer about this site and what I mean when I toss out suggestions. Nothing works for every single person. What works for me, may not work for others. What I suggest on here are simply more tools you can add to the old writing tool belt to hopefully keep it shiny and challenging. At no point did I ever say these are the definitives. They may work, they may not. Nothing works like your own commitment. I only say this because I watched as one of the many blogs I followed had a minor meltdown because the information that they gave was wrong. People will believe anything if it’s on the internet… and that frightens me!

So, I suppose I’ll just ask… are you ladies and gents out there quiet because it is NaNoWriMo make it or break it week? Or did everyone pick up an Xbox One or Playstation 4 and have thrown productivity to the wind? If you’d like, I am available for some guest blog posts (Because Idle Hands are the Devil’s Tools) or you can just comment on here with word counts! I’d love to know how many of you have hit that fifty thousand word mark, if you happen to have read this post, please post a comment! I promise I’ll reply!

Tomorrow I think I will try and smash out the final fifteen thousand word edit of my novel. The problem with that for me, is that concludes my novel and then it goes on to seek out publication. I won’t officially start that until January, but in the meantime I may get a professional editor to go over the story (after my partner of course) as well as look into some options for publication. As this is my first time trying to do the whole professional publication and seeking out a publisher, I am prepared for that gauntlet of rejection that awaits me. The good news is though, once it’s out there and hitting up the publishers, I can move on and work on a new story. With fourteen more ideas waiting in the shadows, I just need to choose one and I think I already have.

Also, if you’ve made it and want to gloat, toss me an email or comment and I’ll give you a callout so people can check out your blog or novel or whatever you’d like me to point them in the direction of! See you tomorrow and good luck to those squeezing in those last few words!

The Quick Post & Poem

So today work reached a new high in disrupting my writing. Get up early I say. Write before work I say. Today had me falling out of bed after six or so hours of sleep and landing into pants. As I wrestled with the little energy I had, I mentally prepared for the three hour drive ahead of me.

Today was a training day three hours away and then three hours back. We left at six in the morning and arrived at our destination shortly after nine. The day was full of useful information and I learned a ton. Then we drove three hours back home, dodging kangaroos, and finally after arriving home I barely had enough energy to reply to emails and comments.

This being said I do have the next two days off, so I’m going to try and smash out some editing and a few posts for the old blog here! Also I am going to try and silk cover a book I have here and see if I can custom make my own cover. I’ve been considering that if I do get my novel published I am going to hand make around ten copies with hand made silk covers as presents for my loved ones! I’ve got some ideas on how I can achieve what I want and the only thing I may have trouble with is somehow cutting an oval cleanly out of silk.

Other things I’m working on my days off: Editing Jefferson & The Magician’s Curse, Rewrite of The Journey Part Two, Pick Up New Zelda 3DS Console with Game, Look into getting automatic garage door opener, weed front and back garden, laundry, clean the house, and catch up on sleep.

Also, I promised you a poem so here you go ladies and gents.

The Fallout

A lake, seemingly frozen in time,
Serene the scene, with calm, cool glaze,
Not so much as a ripple, simply sublime,
Invoking emotions, in mystic haze.
Extinction for those, who ruled the world last,
Beauty unbound, at the end of days,
With no memory, of times that passed,
A sunrise, sets, against nature’s ways.

Sadly tonight I am fighting to stay awake so I think that is all my poor brain can muster. I promise, I’ll get back to some more meaningful posts very shortly but for now, this will have to tide you over! Also if you haven’t read Circle of Vengeance, I would love any and all feedback whether or not you think I’d like it or not. I want to get published so I’ll take the harsh critics and the kind ones. Either way, I think I just typed “snrahdl;s” for one of the above words so I’m off to bed! The Journey Part Two, live tomorrow!

Also, a number of the people I’ve been hassling or supporting have made it just above the forty thousand mark for NaNoWriMo and I can’t explain how proud I am that they’re still plugging along! I’m the kind of guy who always strives for more and challenges myself! Anyway, until tomorrow!