Sunday, January 31, 2016

Time to Take Off the Training Wheels

Thirty days ago, I gave myself an ultimatum: Write more. With this in mind, I gave myself the goal of blogging, Facing, and Twitting every day of January. How did I do?


For me, Twitter is like that person whom you get along with well enough, but every conversation is laden with semi-awkward silences because you have nothing in common. Yeah, I made it one week. I also missed three other days later in the month. Not a stellar effort by any means (especially if you take a look at what I had to say), but far better than I thought I'd do. Twitter, I'll see ya when I see ya.

I technically missed one day on Facebook, but that was because I didn't manage a post till midnight. It was before I went to sleep, however, so I'm counting it.

As for here on The Wheel? 31 days, 31 posts. Sure, two were photo collections, and a few others were thrown together just to keep the streak going, but I made it. For much of the month, I didn't feel my posts quite reached my blog's standard level of quality,1 but I began to hit my stride this past week. The stories themselves were merely okay, but the spark had returned. I began to feel good about my posts consistently. And that's exactly what I was hoping to get from this whole endeavor.

So, starting tomorrow, I head back into the word mines.2 That's right, other than the occasional blog post, I'm back to writing about attempted political assassinations and invisible monkeys. I'm closing in on the end of my first draft, after which I get to undertake a major rewrite. It's going to be a lot of work, but to tell you the truth, I'm kind of looking forward to it.3

Wish me luck.


1 As measured by creativity and/or number of footnotes.
2 They're a real thing. Authors head underground for a spell, and resurface with brand new words (if their genre is sci-fi) or brand new combinations of words, hewn from the earth itself.
3 Well, except the part where I have to sort through 70+ pages of (sometimes contradictory) notes I wrote myself. Stupid brain, couldn't you have come up with all these ideas the first time through? Oh, sorry, I didn't mean you're actually stupid. It's an expression. No, really, I didn't mean it. Where are you going? No! No no no! Come back! Please come back! Damn it.

6 comments:

  1. Don't you just love those contradictory notes?

    Enjoy the word mines!

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    1. Love is such a strong word. But I'm thinking I might go ahead and incorporate all the contradictory notes anyway. Hell, it worked for the (#1 Best-Selling) Bible.

      And I shall enjoy my time in the mines. I've already got my lantern and canary ready. (For you non-writers reading this, the canary isn't to warn me of poisonous gases; it's to remind me not to use any crazy dialogue such as "I tawt I taw a puddy tat.")

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  2. Invisible assassin monkeys perhaps?
    You made it a month straight. Well done.

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    1. Invisible assassin monkeys would be fun, but alas, no. After all, I'm trying to keep my novel realistic.

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  3. So invisible assassin monkeys aren't a thing? How would you know? You can't see them.

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    1. I never said they weren't a thing. But if they've managed to sneak their way into my book without my knowledge, things could get pretty unpredictable.

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