Update on my Story Writing Efforts

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Dave

As promised, here is your Monday update to the last week’s topic on getting my story off the ground. I can tell you that I’ve made a great deal of progress, but I also have to say that I haven’t reached any definitive conclusions on how to move forward and so I’ve decided to extend my self-imposed deadline (why do I publish these things!? lol), so as to give myself a little more time to work out exactly what I want my first full length book to be about.

I do have some ideas, but nothing concrete enough to write about at this time, except to say that I’ve narrowed down the genre to something in the political thriller/legal thriller realm, most likely. These sound fairly vague, I know, but what I’m determining right now isn’t necessarily what I can write, I’m also weeding out the stuff that I’m quite sure I do not want to write, or am otherwise incapable of doing a good job with.

Beyond politics and that sort of realm, I don’t really think I have much skill in other genres except for possibly something along the lines of a science fiction/fantasy realm, but as much as I love and enjoy that type of story I’m not really sure my imagination skews in that direction quite wildly enough to make a go of it. It’s possible, of course, but the more I think about it the more I think that I’ll be much better at writing real world stuff, perhaps with a hint of cutting edge tech or something along those lines to spice it up.

As to characters, I’ve come up with several and I have a bare bones outline of a few more. At the moment my worlds feel rather underpopulated, but I’m sure more characters will come to me as I start working out the true outline and scope of my story. Or at least that’s the hope.

In any case, I am sorry to report that this update can not be quite as definitive as I’d hoped, but I figured I should at least meet the deadline I gave myself here by at least composing a post to explain exactly where I am in the process, in case anyone happens to be checking back to see what I’ve come up with. I will certainly add more updates as they become relevant, in the meantime I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful Sakura gallery I put up over the weekend (they are spectacular as always, I love living in Japan this time of year!), and as always thanks for reading!

On Documenting the Process of Writing

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Dave

Since I’ve got this blog up and running now and I want to add new content consistently, I’ve decided to devote some of my blog posts to documenting my writing process throughout one of hopefully many books I’m in the planning stages of working through right now.

As of this week, I’ve reached one decision and that is to choose which of my story ideas will take center stage and which will be left on the back burner for now, in order for me to focus completely on getting at least one of them finished. So I’ve given myself a deadline. Monday, just a few days from now, I will have firmly decided which story is to be focused on and exclusively, from start to finish, for better or worse, until I either finish it or throw it entirely away in disgust lol.

It might seem fairly counter-intuitive for me to continue on with my blog posting schedule when I’m trying to get focused on the work of writing a book, but I feel as though it will be a good outlet for me to be able to write a little more “on the side” even if it is related to the task at hand from time to time. I just don’t want to continue getting bogged down as in the past with several story ideas that keep getting in the way of each other when it comes to my time and focus.

I will of course compose another post on Monday detailing which of the story ideas I’ve selected and why, along with a bit about the thought process behind it. For now, deadline one is set and the clock is ticking. Now, to go back through my old notes and decide which of these bad boys will get my fullest attention beginning very soon.

Thanks for reading!

At Last, the “Ah Ha” Moment I’ve been Waiting For

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Dave

I’ve been dreading life and writing, losing interest even in my blogging efforts, and feeling myself slide into a sort of malaise because I felt as though I wouldn’t be able to create anything of enough value for people to bother with.

But just today, I had a real Eureka! moment, and started writing and didn’t put down the keyboard for a long while. What I realized was, if I’m going to write something of value and worth, I’m going to have to gouge out my soul and hand it over for public inspection. Does this set me up to be mocked? Admired? A little of both? No way to know as of now, but the rewards are as enticing as the consequences are chilling. I do know for a fact that there’s enough pain and heartache and misery within me to fill up a few dozen volumes of compelling literature if I can manage to spit it out onto a piece of paper and then drum up the courage to let it be seen.

This revelation feels ‘right’ to me in one sense, since it gives me some measure of confidence that I have some stories that are worthy of being told, but the risk is far more painful to think about than I’ve been willing to admit to myself until now. The lighthearted side of storytelling is not me, never has been, and I can’t imaging it would be of any worth to anyone else as even I can’t stand to read what I come up with. Even as I type this, I can feel the dead in the pit of my stomach as I realize what I must do if I’m going to be a successful writer. It involves a ton of soul searching and the re-opening of old wounds and buried pain. Looking at all the options before me at the moment, being a writer is the one thing that I do believe has the potential to bring about that very success I’ve both longed for and dreaded my entire life, the success that has eluded me so perfectly and left me feeling as worthless as a worn out shoe most of the time, and this revelation is exactly why I now know why part of me has dreaded it.

For me to succeed, I will have to risk exposing everything I’ve carefully kept to myself all these many years, the pain and anguish, certainly, but also the secret hopes and dreams that I so fear will be met with ridicule, or scorn, or even worse ignored or unnoticed which would truly mean that I, myself, am worthy of nothing more than to be ignored and cast aside, a waste of resources and a drag on society at best.

So the question is, do I go for it? At the moment, my gut tells me I’m going to do it. I must do it. But that’s an easy thought to think on day one, and I’m sure it will be a long hard slog whether it takes weeks, months, or even longer to get anywhere. The writer I need to become was born today. Time will tell whether or not that birth was of any value to anybody but myself (or even for myself, for that matter!), but one way or the other I’ve got to find a way to become more successful in life because I am at the end of my tether as far as being just absolutely sick and fucking tired of being a failure. It’s time to get past that, because I can not maintain my sanity for much longer at this rate. Baring my soul on the page looks to be my salvation, albeit a cure who’s side-effects might just prove worse than the illness of my malaise.

Making a habit of writing, shooting for a set number of words daily

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Dave

Is reaching a set number of words a day for a writer of any value if the number of words in question (let’s say 1000 words a day for the heck of it) aren’t much more than stream of consciousness junk?

Or is it better to set a goal towards writing one good scene a day, or one page you’re happy with, a goal more along those lines.

That’s a good question that deserves examination. On the one hand doing these sorts of brainstorming exercises could yield some interesting results. On the other hand, it could be time better spent writing something more coherent and focused, albeit a lot more slowly and painstakingly.

On the third hand, doing these exercises very well could train my brain to get used to writing scads of material on a daily basis, so that I could transfer that skill towards the more focused efforts little by little. So the daily word count idea could serve to get my creative ideas flowing in other directions as well.

In any case, for some time now I’ve set out a goal of writing at least 2000 words a day (thanks to Stephen King, horror master, for the advice!), but I find that some days just end up being a long and rambling stream of consciousness exercise and little more. I still have all that junk saved, though, so I can always go back to it and see if there’s anything worth elaborating on or even keeping at all. Other days, I get some strong ideas out of this type of self-discipline and I find myself writing beyond that goal, either by word count or at least by feeling as though I’ve made a lot of progress to particular scenes or parts of stories that have been bugging me.

Interestingly enough, today’s 2000 word effort started by my coming up with the idea for this blog post. Of course, if I start adding my blog writings to the 2000 words it won’t amount to much (given that I’ll be devoting a quarter to a half of it to the blog and not to story writing!), so I’ll have to be sure and keep all that nice and separate if the objective of getting some good stories written is to be fulfilled partly through this type of creative writing exercise.

Anyway, I suppose as long as it makes sense to me and is reasonably fun I might as well just stick with it. At the very least, it is improving my typing skills!

Our ‘Instagrata’ super fast information society

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Dave

A very full deck

I’d like to talk about the crazy, twitterific fast, faster, ludicrous-speed world we live in, and what it means for those in the arts and entertainment field trying desperately to keep up with it all. I became acutely aware of this issue while writing a Flash Fiction story for submission (more about that in future posts).

This really is a ‘brave new world’ we live in, a world of micro-stories and tweeted news articles and the like in this instant communication age we live in which seems to pick up speed every which way we turn. I have some thoughts on the whole “Instagrata” society we seem to be immersed in these days which, the more I see and hear, turns out to be something that has been around for a while, from the rise of pulp stories and short magazine articles in modern culture to radio and television which all seem hell bent on shoving as much story at us in as little time as possible to make room for more commercials, but this phenomenon has reached a new level of insanity thanks to the internets. Head over to the YouTube stats page for a second and wrap your head around some of those staggering statistics. Three billion video views per day, more video uploaded in a month than the three major networks put out in sixty years, 48 hours of video uploaded every minute. The numbers are indeed staggering, but wait.

What does all this mean in terms of how much actual time people devote to enjoying each of those offerings? I must admit, that sort of statistic was far more difficult to find in a casual internet search, but it has certainly piqued my curiosity. They’ll never say, apparently, but how often do people switch to the next bit of infotainment? A few minutes? Less than a minute? Given the stats above, not to mention YouTube’s usual 10 minute limit for uploads, it’s not hard to imagine that the virtual remote control gets quite a workout.

Considering those stats (and what I’ve extrapolated, hopefully with a modicum of reason and logic), is it me or is this “instant entertainment” thing getting somewhat out of hand? I mean, seriously, does every single popular video have to be 45 seconds or less? I blame Twitter. I dunno about Twitter, maybe I’m just showing my age but I’m sort of reaching my “hold yer horses!” point with this whole deal. Tell your story in 30 seconds or less, or I don’t have the attention span to bother with you! :p

But anyway, yeah. Flash Fiction is interesting. It’s obviously not a product of the internet per se (many flash fiction websites illustrate this by pointing out the famous six word story supposedly attributable to Ernest Hemmingway). And at least it forces you to really think about what you want to write and prioritize every word. Brevity can be useful, even important, I can’t argue that point too much. And personally the super short story was intriguing enough a writing challenge to motivate me towards write something I wouldn’t normally attempt and then even go so far as to submit it and see if I could get it published online. For the time it takes to write something that short it was definitely worth trying it on for size just for the fun of it.

In any case, as far as instagrata is concerned it certainly appears that it is here to stay. There are some areas of push-back, for instance the notion of ‘slow food’ and people getting away from the drive-through, grab-and-go eating culture that seems to be losing some of the popularity it enjoyed for some several decades at least. But in terms of entertainment, information gathering, 24 hour news, and more generally the overall way in which we view and interact with all these sources of infotainment that are brought into our homes, ideas such as Flash Fiction seem to be settling in for the long haul.

Thanks very much for reading my blog. If you like it, please share it using the icons below. I also hope you’ll consider following my progress here by signing up, because I’m planning to offer frequent updates, and also I look forward to reading your comments.

Habits of procrastination give way to high energy bursts, burnout

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Dave

I must confess I’ve have a real issue with procrastination, or at least I have struggled with it over the years. When I need to get stuff done, I find every excuse in the book to do something else. Sometimes even something else that’s a lot harder than the thing I’m trying to put off! Like when I’d get an assignment in college to read chapter 5 I’d read chapters one through four and then from six on to the end, all in an attempt to put of reading stupid chapter five. But, that’s largely in the past now. Over the years I’ve had periods of decent productivity along with times where I feel as though I got next to nothing accomplished, but I suppose that’s fairly typical. These days, I get highly motivated to get stuff accomplished, like blogging for example, and I go all out but then tend to burn myself out after a while. There has to be a middle ground somewhere.
This has not been true in all of my endeavors, though. Particularly when it comes to music and drumming, I’ve got a great work ethic and I have no problem practicing and preparing for as long as it takes to get stuff right. Which, I suppose, is a good indication that that’s what I should be focusing on, since I love it so much I have endless amounts of energy and drive to apply to it. Recently my energy has been far greater than before in other areas as well, and I’ve managed to get some stuff done including several music projects, a short (micro fiction) story, and some blogging along the way as well. Plus I’m setting up several websites at the moment, and I managed to crash a couple of them after having the keys for less than 24 hours! Oops.
I’ve also gotten some of my other music down on paper, mostly just rough stuff on cheap software that isn’t at all ready for prime time although there is one piano piece I’m reasonably pleased with. I’m realizing day by day that all the projects I want to take on creatively will most likely require some collaboration, so my next objective as a recent non-procrastinator will have to be getting in touch with musicians and creative-types in an effort to bring my projects to life and take them to that next level.
In the meantime, music aside, one thing I can and have been able to do on my own is write. And I’ve been doing quite a lot of writing. I’m attempting to write at least 2,000 words a day (advice I read from none other than the grand master of horror and pop culture, Stephen King), although a lot of it is just brainstorming/stream of consciousness kind of stuff. I have managed to get a few stories off the ground, or onto the launch pad at least, and I’m in the beginning stages of actually making notes and developing a timeline for a novel I’m tentatively referring to as “the Preservation Project”, hopefully that will continue to become a reality. It’s a techno-thriller kinda piece, although when I think about my work it’s hard for me to consider what genre or area of expertise my writing falls under. I suppose that will all work itself out when I get more finished work under my belt.
In short, the would-be procrastinator vows to improve. Now that I’m writing this blog I’ve sort of put myself out there because people will actually be aware of the fact that I’m trying to get some creative efforts off the ground, and at some point people might expect to see some results. Or at least they might lose interest and stop reading my blog lol. I’ll use that as motivation for keeping up the effort and coming up with something hopefully decent to share with everyone. When that happens, you’ll most definitely be hearing about it here.