I did a thing… then got to do another thing!

So I wrote a thing and then I was invited to another thing.

Alive After Reading is a podcast where Tim talks to writers about writing and everything in between. I am not the only author on the show. He has interviewed some like Paul E Cooley, Sarah Johnson, and H.M. Gooden. Take a listen, you won’t be disappointed.

But to my weekly blog.

Throughout my time blogging, I have written about various topics from futurism to my theories about motivation and everything in between. I tend to talk about what I want, and I may repeat myself. I’m not much of a good blogger. I just write words on Sundays, some of them have a specific topic, the rest are ramblings. Like this one.

As a writer, my greatest strength is that I write lots. I don’t see it as I see others who write more. My wife kindly reminds me that more traditional published authors only write and publish a single novel per year, and I have already got that done, and its only May. I will have two more novels published before July. Plus, I have three more novels, another trilogy that will be published by the end of the summer.

This excites me as it is two years of work is coming to frustration. A lot of time was spent learning my process. How do I write a boatload of words, plus edit them without losing momentum? Also, how do I write every day, while juggling school, novels, second drafts, edits, proofreading, marketing, social media, my wife and my kids?

That is what took me two years to learn. Juggling my priorities to the best of my abilities. My solution is to keep my goals reasonable (my wife laughed at this line when I told her) and to lose the unneeded things in my life. This was video games, movies, and TV. The parts of my life I don’t need. I write instead.

If you want to get a goal done, then sacrifices must be made with an eye for priorities.

This journey is not something I can do alone. It takes support from many people for it to become a reality. The easiest way is to visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. All of my books are available on Kindle Unlimited, and if you have a subscription, they are free. Help support me by reading my books. I do have a tip jar set up at Ko-Fe, where you can buy me a coffee. Or you can also visit me on Facebook. Your help and support are much appreciated.

COVID and the Haircut.

With the economy shut down, many businesses are closed. This post is not about politics or whether or not it was wrong to lock down or to stay locked down. This post is about hair.

All around the interwebs, there are memes about the COVID hair cut. Where someone tries to cut their own hair or the hair of a loved one. This ends up in hilarious horribleness.

For me, this is not the case. My wife has cut my hair for the last five years. The one change for me is that I have stopped shaving. A razor hasn’t touched my face in over sixty days.

But before that, I had stopped shaving. Not because I was lazy (like now), but because I was at 289lbs. I was fatter than I was now, and I have discovered, to my horror, that I had another chin. So I grew my beard out to hide that.

Now, I am weighing 258lbs, and my additional facial flab may be gone. I am not 100% sure as my beard covers my face. It could be gone, but I have no intention of finding out.

What do you think about my facial hair?

This journey is not something I can do alone. It takes support from many people for it to become a reality. The easiest way is to visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. They are available in all countries and for free on Kindle Unlimited. I do have a tip jar set up at Ko-Fe, where you can buy me a coffee. Or you can also visit me on Facebook. Your help and support are much appreciated.

The Cell: Review

This is something completely different. A review of a book.

Enjoy.

In 2005, the King of Authors, Stephen King wrote the biggest pile of toilet paper I have ever read, and I’m a Creative Writing Major, so I read a lot. Cell is full of broken promises and a wandering plot. Clayton Riddell is a graphic artist visiting Boston to get his first book deal. At 3:03pm, the “Pulse” blasts everyone else’s brain into jelly, then turns them into ravenous zombies. Clayton needs to find his way home in Maine to find his kid, who he left with his ex-wife, all before the child gets turned into a brain-dead beast.

Admittedly, the opening section of the novel is amazing. It reads like the best of the Zombie Apocalypse genre. From page one to where Clayton and his companions get out of downtown Boston, tension rises and the threat Clayton might die is real. He doesn’t know who to trust but must trust someone.

Despite the initial promise, this story is not meant to be a Zombie Apocalypse. The author meant the novel to be a psychological horror; the first broken promise of Mr. King. Once the first day is over, tension from the zombies disappears, never to be seen again, like the precious time it took me to read this horrid piece.

King gets nothing accurate with firearms. One: it’s called a magazine, not a clip. Two: revolvers don’t eject spent brass on their own. Three: in the United States automatic firearms are banned. Four: the AK-47 has been banned in Massachusetts since 1994. Five: even if obtained from out of state, it won’t fire thousands of rounds a second.

In addition, Clayton and his companions don’t use the looted weapons in any meaningful way. This adds another broken promise King in his Godhood doesn’t fulfill.

The Zombies develop from the standard brainless ones to something different and unique. This strategy is meant to adapt a dry trope. However, the developments of the zombie evolution into new psychic beings aren’t seen by Clayton. It’s told to him by a plethora of useless bit characters, all of whom exist to tell Clayton one fact, and to never be seen again.

The last major issue in this crap-tastrophe is Clayton’s kid. Throughout the novel, Clayton yearns to find him, but he doesn’t try to get home. He wanders around the countryside getting sidetracked. Spoiler, the reader isn’t introduced to the boy until the very end of the novel.

Why is this strategy an issue? There is no tension generated with the kid. He’s just a name repeated. If Emperor King had put one tiny scene at the start of the novel, introducing the reader to Clayton, his ex-wife, and his kid playing on a cellphone, then there would be tension, a plot worth reading and forgiveness for the other sins. If he had done all that, I wouldn’t have thrown this book across the room and off my balcony, before going outside to retrieve it as it was assigned reading for a class.

Time Management and Choices

Eighty-six thousand, four hundred.

The argument made to me was to imagine having a job earning 86,400 dollars a year. Then imagine making a wrong choice and losing 400 dollars. Are you willing to toss the rest of the 86,000 dollars away for that simple error?

Let me say this another way, there are 86,400 seconds in a day. If an argument takes six minutes of your day, does it make sense to toss the rest of the day away?

This story has been told before but smarter people than myself. It is not new.

I ended up telling this story to my son, trying to teach him about time management instead of having mental health get the best of a person, which was the initial purpose of the story.

My son was up at eleven at night, wanting to read a book after I had told him all day to do just that. He spent the day playing video games, and it was hard to get him to understand that the choices he made had consequences. For him, it was that if he played video games all day, then he had no time to read a book.

But this is relevant to me. I make choices every day, and they have consequences. If I play a video game, I end up losing hours from my life. I have a long list of goals I want to accomplish, and if I make bad choices, spending those 86 thousand seconds on bad decisions matters.

Time is the biggest commodity we are all given each day. Sleep for eight hours: that’s 28,800. Argue with your spouse: that’s 600. Binge-watch 6 hours worth of Netflix: that’s 21,600. These add up. I work at my writing between 6 and 10 hours a day: that’s between 21,600 to 36,000 each and every day. I do it cause I don’t watch Netflix. I don’t let myself throw away all 86,800 for 1000 worth of a bad day. I’m not perfect, but I strive to make each day better than the last.

So, how do you spend your 86,400?

This journey is not something I can do alone. It takes support from many people for it to become a reality. The easiest way is to visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. They are available in all countries and for free in Kindle Unlimited. I do have a tip jar set up at Ko-Fe, where you can buy me a coffee. Or you can also visit me on Facebook. Your help and support are much appreciated.

 

Scraping the very Bottom

This blog post is not about running out of ideas as I don’t have that problem. It is also not about running out of money as I try not to talk about that.

This post is to talk about November 2018, but this isn’t about politics. I don’t talk about politics on this page.

In November 2018, I had hit rock bottom. My writing had flat-lined in terms of quality. I had no idea which mistakes I was making. I know I was making them, but I had no idea why or how to fix them.

I was also unable to write any length of work. I had seven different novels partially written, and I was unable to figure out how to fix them.

In short, I was ready to quit. I was going to give up and toss the towel.

I had written some novels, I knew I could do it again, but I was unable to figure out how to do it again.

Statistically, there is a higher chance for a novelist to quit as they are unable to finish the novel. However, I was getting into the part where I was going to quit due to the lack of progression.

For anyone reading this, who feels the same. This is not the time to throw in the towel. Think about all the time spent getting to the stage you are at. This is the time to double down and try again. It might be time to take a course or two. Or to spend money on an editor or critiquer.

This is not the time to quit. Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

This journey is not something I can do alone. It takes support from many people for it to become a reality. The easiest way is to visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. They are available in all countries and for free in Kindle Unlimited. I do have a tip jar set up at Ko-Fe, where you can buy me a coffee. Or you can also visit me on Facebook. Your help and support are much appreciated.

Being Creative and Dealing with Distractions: Interwebs

Last week, I talked about the giant distraction creatives have to deal with called Children. However, they are only one of the many distractions we have to deal with. The big one I have to deal with is the internet.

Easy access to the plethora of human knowledge and the trillions of cat videos. This is an immense distraction that keeps me from writing as much as I’d like.

I understand it is a problem, and I can stop anytime. I just don’t want to.

In all seriousness, here are five methods I use to mitigate my internet addiction.

Five Methods to Keep Distractions at Bay.

1. Turn off the internet.
2. Go to a coffee shop/ library.
3. Keep track of internet time usage.
4. Take away visual and use it for noise.
5. Limit research.

Turn off the internet.

The easiest way to keep the distractions at bay is to turn them off. The internet is addicting, and it’s easy to want to do a straightforward thing, but get distracted by something on the internet. For those with no ability to limit themselves, turning it off is the best way to go.

For those that don’t know, at the bottom right of the computer is a simple internet button. Two clicks on that, and the internet is dead. For those that can’t control themselves, there is an ability to have your significant other enter a parental control password. Then not only is the internet off but then the creative must beg for the password.

Go to a coffee shop/ library.

One way to remove oneself from the distractions called the internet is to go down to the favorite coffee shop and sit there for a few hours. This is good if the internet is too accessible in the home. Coffee shop internet is never very good, being split between an untold number of different people. This is the perfect spot to get some work done.

This doesn’t mean to only go to a coffee shop, five dollars a day in coffee gets expensive. There are also libraries, which are good places to go to. There are also parks, malls, universities, etc that are all good places to go out to get work done.

Keep track of internet time usage.

For those with a good amount of will power, keeping track of internet usage time and turning it off when the set amount of time is up. I’m not this type of person. I can’t turn on and off the distraction. I don’t have enough will power.

But I know of a few people who can. They must have the focus of a God. It must be a great thing to be able not to get distracted by the internet. I assume its a learned skill but the amount of willpower needed sounds immense.

Take away visual and use it for noise.

One method is to let things play in the background. The idea is to turn on noise, music, commentary, etc. This is to train yourself to control the noise being played, especially for those that work in a noisy environment.  By playing something in the background, the idea is to have something interesting to keep the focus on the noise, but not enough to maximize the tab and watch the video.

This is the method I tend to do more than any of the others. I will listen to music, but I’ve also been listening to documentaries while I work on my writing. I use headphones and they block other distractions from keeping me from getting the work done.

Limit research.

One of the greatest issues is squirrels. This is when the creative stops working and to do some “quick” research. This starts with good intentions but quickly goes off the rails. The creative needs to look up one issue, and then they blink for a few minutes to discover hours have passed. They have been watching cat videos for hours.

I’ve been here, I look up one detail on space travel. I blink to discover I have been watching police chase videos. This is a bad thing for getting anything done. To keep from doing it, I limit my research by either writing notes to do the research later, or by keeping it to the topic I need to lookup.

This journey is not something I can do alone. It takes support from many people for it to become a reality. The easiest way is to visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. They are available in all countries and for free in Kindle Unlimited. I do have a tip jar set up at Ko-Fe, where you can buy me a coffee. Or you can also visit me on Facebook. Your help and support are much appreciated.

The Importance of Making Goals

Being the new year I hear all the time that people can’t do resolutions. Or that resolutions don’t work. To prove my point, I am going to bring attention back to my spreadsheet I made last January and filled out over the year.

This is what I did with my 2019 New Years’ resolution. Most resolutions aren’t things that take a single day or a month. They usually involve solving something large in their life. Losing weight is the most common, while others want to make more money.

They usually fail cause they don’t have a real plan on how they are going to enact those plans. They think things will just change when they won’t.

In order to make your life better for the long term, the change must be fought for every day. If a person isn’t willing to keep at it every day, then the resolution will fail.

This is why I have a daily goal. I have a setlist of small daily tasks that will equal the larger goal. As long as I make the daily goals, I will make my monthly goals. That will make me earn my yearly goals. Without these smaller goals, they are no way to keep track of the larger goal.

So if you have a New Year Resolution and want to be successful, then break the goal down into the smaller pieces. Then if you have the discipline to continue each day, you will be successful in your resolution. I did it, and so can you.

This journey is not something I can do alone. It takes support from many people for it to become a reality. The easiest way is to visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. They are available in all countries and for free in Kindle Unlimited. I do have a tip jar set up at Ko-Fe, where you can buy me a coffee. Or you can also visit me on Facebook. Your help and support are much appreciated.

Expanding your Comfort Zone.

Habits, by definition, are comfortable. They become convenient for that very reason. If they weren’t comfortable, they wouldn’t become habits in the first place.

In the career of a creative, there is always the threat they will sink into a rut. This is where the creative will work a job, not in their field, or they will work in their field, but in a more corporate setting. Both of which are soul-crushing and will end with them in a rut. Once in the rut, a creative will end up spinning their wheels, getting nowhere.

For a creative, the rut is comfortable and soft. At least at first. The corporate job will pay the bills, the work not in the field gives the freedom to not work too much at their craft. All of this will become a habit, and habit is comforting to people.

But the rut and the habit are death spirals to creatives. They will end up with either the creative’s soul being crushed or them giving up and throwing in the towel. Either outcome is bad for obvious reasons.

However, there is a way for a creative to do soul-crushing tasks while still staying sane. For example, they can use the soul-crushing job to pay for the creative endeavor they genuinely want to do. This is hard as it takes determination and willpower to keep moving.

This will usually take the creative to expand and get out of their comfort zone to get out of their rut. It is not a natural thing for people to do, and it takes them to seek it out. The creative has to consciously make a move as it won’t just happen on their own. If they leave everything alone, nothing will change. They will blink three times and discover a decade has passed in the meantime. Staying in the comfort zone creates a complacency which hinders a creative.

What do creatives need to do?

Take on something outside of the comfort zone just cause its outside of it. Ignore the voices that say it’s not going to work. Or that it’ll end up in tears. The important part is to step up and acknowledge the need for growth. This growth will create the ability to get out of the comfort zone.

If you like what you are reading and wish to support me in my endeavors, please sign up for my newsletter, visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. Or buy me a coffee. You can also visit me on Facebook. Your help and support are much appreciated.

How to keep going when you don’t want to?

All this week, I have been down with what had started as a cold and now is bronchitis. It sucks.

But. I don’t get sick days. I have to produce every single day, or I won’t get things finished. There’s no one else to do this work for me. There is only me.

How to do it? How to keep going?

Motivation doesn’t do it. If I was only motivated, this post wouldn’t be getting written. I would go back to bed and not worry about it.

Motivation only lasts so long and will fold when confronted with real obstruction. Motivation is like eating pasta; it only lasts so long.

Discipline

Discipline will carry you forward through the hard times when the only option motivation tells you is that it’s okay to take a day off.

Discipline is like eating a hearty, filling meal with meat, vegetables and carbs. It is where someone feels full hours later and doesn’t want seconds or thirds.

Being Sick. Or what to do when you don’t feel like it.

When sick, many smart people tell me that it is okay to take a sick day. It is suitable for mental health, physical health and all of that. You will remember that a month ago, I had burnt out.

For me, I have a minimum daily word goal. For 2019, that number is 150 words. (That number will be increased for 2020 and will be discussed in another post.) No matter how I am feeling on any particular day, I will get at least that much. This won’t allow me to make my monthly or yearly goal, but it gives me the chance to recharge.

Which is also why I count my goal monthly. This gives me a day (or week) to freak out and write to make the yearly goal.

I do this for two reasons.

One.

I have yet to take a day off since the last week of December 2018. I don’t want to lose the streak. Some days, it is the sole reason I turn on the computer and hammer on the keyboard.

Two.

I have this fear: despite almost a full year of writing every day, that if I let a day go, then I will come up with an excuse for tomorrow. Then the next day, and the next.

I did this before. I have been successful for NaNoWriMo before, and I have never capitalized on the momentum. I have always taken a break, which turned into a leave of absence.

What does this mean for me?

Despite being sick and wanting to go to bed, and as soon as I hit the publish button, I will be looking at the story and will be writing. There will be some honey tea, some pain killers, and some butt in my chair.

What does this mean for you?

Call this “a push.” If there is something, you want to get done. Whether it is writing, getting in shape, drawing, working on small business, or whatever it is. Stop making excuses. They are all bullocks. Set a minimum daily goal, and preferred goal. If life gets in your way, and you can’t make the preferred, then get your minimum goal. Make up for it another day.

If you like what you are reading and wish to support me in my endeavours, please sign up for 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.

 

Its NaNoWriMo and I wrote how much?

On November 21, 2019, I was successful at NaNoWriMo. That means that I had managed to write 50k words in a month. But it wasn’t a month. It was for 21 days.

I didn’t manage to write enough words to do the double NaNo. I am on track to be able to get a 1.5 NaNo. (Yes, I have made NaNoWriMo into a unit of measurements.)

But what does that mean? That means that I have worked hard to get this done, but so far, it is not much of an achievement. For me. I write between 35k and 46k words per month, which I plan on increasing in the future.

That means that this might be the last time I do a NaNo. I may hang up my hat and call it good. Perhaps it is time for me to retire from doing NaNo’s.

The purpose of NaNo is to encourage those who struggle to write anything. It is not for those crazy fools who have written 475k words this year so far.

But NaNo is flawed in some ways. It encourages those to write words, but not to finish the story. It has also created a herd of novelists who only write for NaNo. They don’t write at any other time. When you ask why they have some excuse.

Don’t get me wrong, many people have decided to become writers after completing a NaNo. After, they started writing a novel afterward.

So this message is for all of the NaNo writers out there. If you enjoy writing novels, then write every day, every week and every month. Don’t just write in November, write all the time and write lots. Write hard, and write like no one is watching, but just write.

If you like what you are reading and wish to support me in my endeavours, please sign up for 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.