Mantras: An Update. Part One.

(Note: Due to a misclick, this wasn’t published on Sunday. Apologies.)

Since the start of starting this blog, I have written over a hundred blog posts. I believe that this will be the hundred and first post. And throughout my writings, I have mentioned that I have adopted some personal sayings that help me keep perspective and encouragement.

There is a couple of points to go over first. These work for me, and may not work for you. If anything that I have seems to work for you, please feel free to adopt it as your own. I am NOT the creature of any saying. I found them from other people.

Sometimes life is about risking everything for a dream no one can see but you.

I honestly don’t remember where I saw this one. I found it on a piece of paper that I had written down a while ago. But this makes sense to me.

Being a creative, I do things that many people in my own family don’t understand or even try to understand. And this is fine. I don’t want or need them to understand. Me attempting to make a living writing is not open to debate. I’m going to go after my dream.

I hear this all the time. A non-creative family member not supporting a creative cause they don’t understand it. They don’t understand it, cause they can’t see the dream. And as such, they don’t support the creative in their task. Some up to the point of hindering the creative. And by hindering, I don’t mean just pure ridicule, though that happens. Hindering by not allowing them the time to do the creative things, or even selling their computer on them.

(A writing friend told me that her spouse sold their laptop to make rent once.)

I have my dream, and I have laid out a path that should get me my dream. I don’t need anyone else to see my dream but for me.

If you don’t risk failure, then you don’t deserve success.

Failing at something is terrible for people. Right? Wrong. Failing at something means that you tried. And that is the crucial part. Many people think that if they don’t try, then they can’t fail. The truth in the matter is that by not trying, you have already failed.

Like signing up to a college class and not writing the exam. You still failed the class. In life, you are already signed up to the class. To succeed in life, one MUST try to succeed and in that sense, risk failure.

I have seen many people that get paralyzed, myself included, by the fear of failure. It is this dark lurking beast that stands over you while you are doing the thing that you love to do. In my case, it stands over me while I write my books.

But the truth in the matter is once you get over the fact that you fell on your face, you can get back up and ask the fundamental question. The question that many people don’t ask. What went wrong?

Many people get emotionally attached to what they are doing and when they find out that it wasn’t as good as they thought, then they give up. They put up the pen and do something else. They give up on that creative desire cause that desire was hard, or they slipped the first try.

You have got to risk the failure and fail to get anywhere. Cause it isn’t without failure that anyone gets any better.

The only easy day was yesterday.

This is actually a saying from the US Navy Seals. The meaning is that every day, you will need to work harder than the last. But when you work hard every day and see what you’re now capable of, then yesterday seems easy.

And that is important as a creative and a writer. I have got to keep going, keep working hard at it. Each book needs to be better than the last. Each character that I create more real, each setting more natural. Each book takes a shorter amount of time, is cleaner. Fewer edits needed than the one before.

I don’t know if I am doing it. I am incapable of judging my own work. I see all the flaws in the novels, but I also see the right parts. I have to keep going, keep learning, cause the last project eas easy. Wait until you see what I have planned for next.

I have a few more to go over, but those will have to wait for next week. Until then, if you like what you are reading and wish to support me in my endeavours, please sign up to my newsletter, visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. Or buy me a coffee. Your help and support are much appreciated.

Update July 3, 2018

So I know that I haven’t been posting in a while. I am sorry for that. I published my first book, then my posting fell off. So far this year, I have written 200k words. I have two full novels published and two smaller kids books that I did with my kids.

Plus being a dad has taken up much of my time. My son is in piano, and my daughter is a ballerina.

I know. I am creating excuses for why I haven’t been posting. The suns in my eyes… the curling game is on…

No more lame excuses.

I will be moving to post once a week for now, and maybe posting more later.

In other news, my day job was going fine. Until they laid me off. It sucks, but I have written 25k words in the last 2 weeks, and I have published one book. I have another in the editing process and a short story in editing as well. I am not letting the depressiveness get to me. I am getting things done.

I also have an outstanding cover artist. His work is fantastic and has upped the game to my novels. His cover is the image for this post.

His site can be found here: Josh Thornbrugh

So now that you know that I am unemployed and working on my novels full-time cause that is the cards that have been dealt, what’s my future?

Well, the plan is to go back to school. Learn more about the writing and publishing process. It is a scary prospect, but I will make a go of it.

I will close off here, but if you all want to support my family and me, the easiest way will be to buy a book or three. Right not they are only available on Amazon and as e-books. They will be released sometime in the near future.

The full list of my published book can be found here.

My published work. 

Until next time.

Stay Shiny.

 

Productivity

I have a dream. (Enter rest of song from Tangled here.)

Anyways. My 5 year goal consists of me making my living from writing novels and other creative pursuits. To do that I have a plan. And you have to have a plan. There is no way to get a to a goal other than to have a plan.

So what is my plan.

Easy.

Well. Kinda.

It is to be able to write six novels a year. That means writing everyday. No stopping. No days off. No fun.

Kidding. Kinda. Days off are fine. As long as the work gets done. As long as the projects get completed and published.

The way to do that is to vary the length of the projects. I have ideas for longer works as well as shorter works. By varying lengths I am able to complete more publishable works than if  I did one long work. Writing a 500k word novel is good if your last name is Sanderson and have huge advances to keep fed.

Me, however, I don’t get huge advances. I don’t have the capability of writing those long works. I also feel that the market for indie books is not for the doorstops. The people that buy indie books want smaller fiction that costs less and that they are able to get through faster.

So that means pulling back the scope of the books from 150k novels to 70k novels and making two novels. I also want to write even shorter length works. I like writing my 6 yr old middle grade sci fi book.

What does this mean?

That means that I must be writing for half the year. I must be be editing novels for the other half of the year. I must be writing between 1ooo to 3000 words a day. This is assuming that my editing takes half the time. If I can get my editing time down that means that I can spread the writing out between other days.

How do you do that?

Cleaner first drafts. Do I mean less spelling mistakes? Kinda. I mean less developmental edits. I mean that I am going to have to do more outlining. I have to plan my stories. Plan the work better. Get the story right the first time.

But this is not an over night thing. It will take time to build up to that. It will take time to get the productivity up to a point where I am writing enough. I do, however, have planned projects to get me to that part.

That is 4 projects under development. The 4 projects is translated into multiple planned novels. I have one current stand alone being beta read. One trilogy with the first novel being edited. My middle grade has the first book out of six being edited. The last project is a pair of novels. I might change it to a trilogy by cutting the same length of book into three parts.

But I will have to figure out how to add a projected 50k words into the ‘first’ part of the project. My wife says that I need to take a page out of the TV version of game of thrones. Add more sex scenes. I am not sure if she is joking or not…

That means that if I get the current projects completed that I will have thirteen novels. If I can get that done it will be amazing.

But this brings up the question of the night. How can writing and publishing works regularly mean that I can eventually quit my day job and write novels for a job?

By writing and publishing work, on Amazon, builds up a library of work that people can buy. As more books are published, means that more people will see the books and buy the books. They may go back and buy other books in your library. People do that.

Well. I rambled enough. More later.

Cheers.

Nathan Pedde

Outline vs Discovery Writing: The Battle Continues

It is time to enter the battle. The epic battle between Outliners and Discovery Writers.

Both sides are frothing at the mouth and ready to fight it out. Ink will fly. Paper will ripe.

Okay that metaphor died on arrival.

My thoughts on Outliners and Discovery writers. Notice that I called it Discovery Writing and not Pantsers. I find that the term Pantsers doesn’t do the writing method justice. I think that it is a little bit of a low blow in the epic fight.

Well. It makes you think that you have no idea what you are doing. That you are just winging it and have no idea what you are doing. That your inability to want to create an outline means that you are somehow incompetent in writing.

The discovery writers, however, don’t like to feel confined in an outline. They don’t want to miss the spontaniousness that comes with discovery writing.

What does this mean for me and my opinion in this issue? I see the good in both sides of the argument.

Outliners like to plan there stories. They go into the griddy details on what needs to happen and when. They look into the little pieces of info that a discovery writer may miss until the 2nd or 3rd draft. The are better at writing more complicated stories that involve multiple viewpoints or time frames.

Discovery Writers enjoy a certain spice in the stories that they write. A well written discovery written story feels more natural and tends to flow better. Discovery written books tend to have less view point characters or time frames.

They both have issues and the issues with the methods need to be mentioned too.

Outlined stories can be stale and the characters may have a motivational problems. It is usually when the story makes a left when the outline goes right. Or that the outline says that a character must do something that the written story doesn’t allow for.

The problems with discovery written books is simple. Plot holes. As the author doesn’t have a plan on what is happening, there can be un-foreshadowed scenes, and plot holes through out the story. Discovery written stories tend to need more revisions that there counterpart.

So what do I do?

It depends on the story. I do both.

I will leave a pause for the reader to freak out at the political statement.

Done?

Good.

I write both. as it depends on the story. I have written some where I have done complete outlines to them. I have written others where I Discovery Wrote it. I have done some where I have gotten part way through a Discovery Written book to discover that I had gotten lost and I need to outline my way out of the mess that I was in.

What was better? It depends.

The Outlined one was a collaboration with my 6 yr old and we did an outline as it is his story that I am writing. He just have the grammar of a six year old.

The Discovery written one was a NaNoWriMo challenge that I didn’t have enough time to get an outline done, but I had a fairly good idea on where I was going. The one that I needed to outline my way out of it was that I was writing a book, then I decided that the backstory was just as entertaining as the story and needed to be part of the story.

My conclusion. Don’t worry about how you write the book. Just write it. Decide how you want to write it and get those words on a page. getting word count every day is much more important than worrying about how you are writing it.

Until next time.

Nathan Pedde

Update

Good news everybody.

Well, news.

Well… how do you start these blogs anyways.

Anyways. Last night I managed to finish the first draft of the my middle-grade sci-fi book. Well book 1 of it. It is going to be one book of six. Of many many season’s if my son has any say on it.

So I have ‘When the lights go out’ in the beta readers. I am editing ‘Culture Shock’ right now and Book 1 of ‘Space Courier’ is now marinating.

That means that I am now working on editing my ‘Culture Shock’ book and I still have to finish my ‘Felix the Swift’ book.

My wife dug out a large pile of my note books. The note books have bits and pieces of different stories and story ideas. I have a problem. I am going to spend some time to organize them and sort them out. I am hoping to find some half finished stuff that I can add to the WIP list.

Anyways.  Short update today. I will post some of my thoughts on stuff later.

Cheers

Ramblings: 6 ways being Anxious about your Novel is incorrect.

Everyone feels anxiety. I comes to each of us differently. Some of us feel scared by circumstances. The fear of the unknown is very common to a lot of people. Change does too. All of this can cause anxiety. When you know change is coming, but you are unsure how it is going to change things or how you are going to be able to enact that change.

How you overcome that anxiety says a lot about your character. Some people can handle it better than others. Some can roll with the situation, while others get chocked up by it.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t judge people that have anxiety issues. I have them too. I get anxious about the unknown and change. I have to plan and then plan some more. I talk able the different options that are available. I do research on options that may or may not be possible. It is how I handle my anxiety.

The important thing to do is to recognize that you have a problem and to figure out a way to overcome that problem. Which is a tall order. I understand.

What brought this one?

I am apart of a couple Facebook writing groups and there was one guy on the site that had a friend that was holding an idea of hers to her chest and wouldn’t tell many people about it from fear that it will be stolen.

I understand that mentality. I was there at one point in my writing life. At the time I was suffering bad from anxiety and fear. I felt self-conscious that my writing was no good and if someone were to read my work that they would ridicule me and tell me that my writing was no good. I though that if they heard my idea that they would take it , use it, there work would be better than mine and then they would get all the glory for such a wonderful idea that I had come up with.

There is a couple problems with that concept.

First. Ideas aren’t copy-writable. Anyone can write an novel with any idea out there and it is fine. It is the execution that is copy-writable.

Second. In order to get your work better, the work needs to get read by someone that you don’t know. Someone that will be honest and tell you more than it is good. You need to suck it up, and hear the things that you may not want to hear about your project. Sometimes the truth hurts.

Third. By reaching to fear in this defensive way, you are letting the anxiety control you. Anxiety is not the boss. You are.Fear needs to be confronted and overcome. Libraries worth of books are written on this subject.

Four. Beginning writers always suck. Period. Writing is hard. Drawing is hard. Graphic design is hard. Any creative pursuits worth going after is hard. It takes hours and hours of work to be able to get your art to an advanced level. Refer to my blog post about my full opinion on the word talent. Here is a link. https://napedde.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/ranblings-anxieties-readers-and-talent/

Five. Nothing is original. All stories, movies, art has been done before and will be done may times after you are done. It is a fact of the creative life. You can’t get away from it. Avatar is from Pocahontas and the story of Moses. Star wars is a heroes journey. Like Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit was a take on the Authurian legend.

Six. If you disagree with me about the no ideas point. Look at this. We are being surrounded and pummeled to death with media. Youtube, radio, tv, movies. Everything that we get bombarded by can potentially inspire us. You read the news about a heist. Two years later you are writing a novel about one, that has been inspired by it. For those that are creatively minded, these ideas sink into our psyche to resonate until we can use them. They are there underneath the surface. Waiting to strike. They are not original. Sometimes the ideas that you get are cliche and bad. But that is a story for next time.