Ramblings: A story of how I manage to write novels while living with children

So I am a dad. More specifically, I am a father of two. I have a six year old boy named [REDACTED] and a five year old girl named [REDACTED].

My kids are great. I am not sure how it happened, but these kids are nothing like I was as a child. I was the child playing in the mud, ALL the time. I didn’t want to be inside the classroom, I wanted to be outside playing. I had multiple run ins with the Special Needs Teacher because they thought that I had a learning disability. It was just that I didn’t care, I knew the stuff, and I passed all the tests that they threw at me.

What can I say… I wanted to be outside.

My kids, however, love learning. They love doing things that expand their minds. My son, [REDACTED], loves science, math, and reading. He plays the piano and he practices for a couple hours a day. He is in grade one and is currently reading the 2nd book of Harry Bloody Potter. My daughter is a dancer and loves reading and drawing. She is the arty one out of the two of them.

Me? I have been writing for as long as I can remember and  I am pretty prolific. Not to brag…but I have a pretty high word count (more than some writers that I know). I manage the word count by writing whenever that I can. I  don’t have an office… I write my works in the middle of the living room  (which acts more like a study).

Often I find myself writing to the sound of Paw Patrol. (If you are a parent, you know what I am talking about. If you are not. Google is your friend. Watch a bit of it.) Thank God it is not Cailliou.

Now that you know the back story, I can tell you what is going on with my writing.

My son loves watching me write. He’ll sit beside me on the couch and watch me hack away at the words appearing on the screen. Now that he is reading Harry Potter, he is able to read what I am writing.

Word for word.

That makes writing sex scenes a little harder at times…

About 3 months ago, my son approached my with a bundle of printer paper, folded in half and stapled together. He was going to make a book. I encouraged him, and told him to write away. It didn’t last long. He got bored with it. He is six.

A couple weeks later, I caught him sitting on my laptop, on Scrivener trying to open a new project. He still wanted to write a book. He wanted to write with the keys as it looked easier.

He wanted to do what I do. I write novels, so he should too.

At that point I knew that there was nothing that I could do to get him not to write something. That’s not my way as a parent. I don’t believe in putting up road blocks to get my kids not to do something that I may find annoying, but isn’t harmful to anything but my sanity. (Sanity abandoned me on the roadside ages ago. It went on strike due to poor working conditions.)

And having [REDACTED] work on creative pursuits is not harmful in anyway. He isn’t climbing and jumping out of trees. Or eating mud. Or hitting his sister with sticks.

Like I did at his age. (Although, all but the hitting are still good past times)

So there was no way (in good conscience) that I could tell him no. He is too young. Or whatever lame excuse that I could come up with to get him to leave me alone so I can get another thousand words down.

My solution to this problem: Encourage him more. That’s right, I kept encouraging him, The same thing that got him wanting to write a book in the first place.

Now…My son, being six, has the writing skills of a six year old. He is advanced in sentence structure, but not that advanced… He is six…So I decided to do a collaboration with him. I sat him down and we started to brainstorm a story…

He decided the genre.

The setting.

The plot.

He named all of the characters.

All I did was be a guiding hand to keep it somewhat logical. I am the one that does all of the writing, but my son is the one that is in charge of the plot. We are constantly brainstorming ideas.

The book, temporarily named ‘Space Courier’ is now being written as a serial. Each book will be 25k in length, and we plan on 6 books for the first season.

That’s right. He wants multiple seasons.

In conclusion. I have created a monster.

May God have mercy on us all…

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Late night blurb: Work stopages

So every writer experiences this. Times when it is hard to get any word count down. Times when it feels like you are trying to squeeze water out of a sponge. Well, today was one of those days.

I still managed to get 500 words on my Space Courier book and I edited 30 pages of my Culture Shock book. Not bad for a night that I managed to get writing at 10pm.

What happened?

At 6pm, for some reason I got grumpy. I am not sure 100% why, but I did. Maybe it was my two kids not listening, or maybe the house was too hot. But then once I got grumpy, I stayed grumpy cause I was grumpy that I had gotten grumpy in the first place. Not a good cycle to be in. Once I was grumpy, I couldn’t write. I was too grumpy.

How did I get out of it?

I relaxed. I stopped worrying about writing down words. I had a snack, some tea. And then I managed to pick up work once more.

Was it that easy?

No. I also decided that I wasn’t going to be grumpy anymore. I made a choice in my mind and then I made it happen. I took back control of emotions and I went with it.

Will this work for you?

Maybe. The big thing to remember is to remind yourself that you are the boss of your emotions. Not the other way around. You get angry when you need to be and you are inspired when you need to be. Sometimes really strong emotions, like anger, will interrupt you and take you for a ride. They will run wild and not let you off.

As an adult and a productive creativeblo person, it is up to you to take control. Figure out what sends you into those grumpy spells and what makes you inspired. Then do more of it.

No one is going to write that book but you and if you don’t keep at it, then it won’t get done and we need that fiction. If you send it to me, I will beta read it and put a review on the website of your choice. Just saying.

Late night blurb: Progress as a writer

So the novel that I am pushing to get published was written eight years ago. It has been edited a half dozen times. It is about a group of friends and strangers and there experiences of what happens when technology fails to a solar storm.

I have written another novel that I wrote for the latest NaNoWriMo. I posted a small sample of it in an earlier blog post. I printed it out and I am now reading through the story. I am on page 73 of 264. This book is ten times better than the rag that I wrote before.

They are both disaster stories.

They are both about surviving the end of the world as they know it.

This story gives me hope. Hope that I am actually getting better and not just speaking out my ass in these blog posts and on facebook. I read the novel, and while there was and is some plot holes, weak dialogue and over all spelling errors that need to be filled and fixed. The story itself is not bad. It is interesting. I am excited.

Until next time.

Ramblings: New writers, help, and old writers

So I am apart of a couple Facebook writing groups and I have been apart of other groups in the past. From what I have seen there are two types of group out there. The ones that help out new writers and those that don’t. This generally goes along for other creative things like photography and drawing etc.

I am not sure what the differences are between the different groups as a lot of time they have the same members in the groups. But the good groups give real help to those that need help. The bad ones troll the newbies and make them feel bad for not knowing things that only time, experience and burning through a shit ton of words will get the author.

I think that helping new writers is all well and good, but is it something that an experienced author should worry about? Is it something that I should worry about? Is it something that I should spend my time on those Facebook groups helping noobs with there questions?

There is arguments that can be made against helping out new writers. The argument goes that the amount of money to be made is finite and by encouraging new writers, you are taking the potential amount from your piece of that and making that smaller. More writers equal less money. So if you are going to try to do that for a living, then why would you spend the time helping someone out that can take money from your pocket?

Years ago I used to work in the film industry in Vancouver before I got a family and got a job that paid the bills better. (That is a story for a later date.) Anyways, in that industry the film crew is very departmentalized. The sound guys are separate from the lighting guys. The grips are separate from the set decorators. Some departments, like sound, do not like training up new people.

They argue that they don’t want more people stealing there work. And I understand there point of view. I was in the lighting department, well a permittee. And during one of the mad rushes of insane amount of work, they brought in members from affiliated unions to help fill the positions. It kept me from getting my hours needed to become a full member. The way I understand it is if they didn’t bring in those other members, I could have gotten my hours needed. I would have gotten work. By making it harder for new workers to get in, they protect the workers that they have. It kinda makes sense. Kinda.

Does that make any sense in the writing context? The answer is no. There isn’t a finite number of units sold each month. The number fluctuates wildly and a single consumer is going to buy multiple books from a wide ranging authors. And ebooks are so cheap in comparison to traditional books. Today the consumer is able to buy 3 or 4 ebooks per traditional book bought just 10 years before. He is more likely to splurge on another book because of the price.

So now that I have shot down the argument of finite book sales, is there a reason that you should help new authors?

The answer is simple. As you develop as an author, you get tunnel vision. If you look at some of the main stream, household name authors, they can get to the point where they are able to publish anything. Doesn’t matter what it is about or how good it is. There name alone will sell it like hot cakes. They can get away with stuff that most indies cannot. (I am sure you know the authors that I am talking about.)

As an author who has been writing for a decade, I know that I still have a lot to learn. Hell, I am not even published yet. Helping out new authors is a step on that learning process. Teaching noobs, even if it is only by blog posts and Facebook replies, can help you from getting tunnel vision. They get you to think outside of the box and look at your craft in different ways. Those ways can help you learn in more ways than you know.

As a final point, my 6 year old is interested in everything space, and science. I like looking at space, but it wasn’t and isn’t as big of interest as it is to my son. He loves it so much that he is asking questions about everything. He knows what a bloody black hole is. I had to look it up to get the non-movie version of it. He is like a sponge.

To help him learn, as a good parent, it is up to me to make sure that if his able to ask the question, than I need to be able to give him a sufficient answer for his intelligence level. (Some things will confuse him. He is 6 after all.) But in order to do that, sometimes (more than I care to admit to him yet) I have to spend some time on Wikipedia to learn it first so I can teach him.

That is what teaching new people does to the older ones. It helps the older ones learn more as they teach them. And I think that it is a good thing. I think that all authors, no matter what the experience level is at should be willing to help others as they ask for it. It is also of my opinion that those troll writing groups should be shut down from lack of members.

Ramblings: Writing for a living, Debt management, and You

So I have been thinking a lot about becoming a full time author and the things that I need to accomplish to get to that point.

At the moment I make all of my money from my day job. That is what pays the bills. I spent 40 plus hours there working to be able to keep my roof over my head and food on my table.

In the future I want to be able to make all of my money from my writing. That means that I am going to have to sell a lot of books to be able to do that. The problem is debt load.

Everyone has some sort of debt. If you are lucky that you don’t have any debt, then you are a lucky one, and not the norm. Me, I have lots. Credit cards, mortgage, car payments. I also have bills that come with owning my own home. House insurance, utility payments, property taxes. Throw life insurance, cell phone bills and internet payments and my expenses are quiet high.

And the home owner stuff isn’t that bad. It is the debt part that throws me off. I have a plan to get rid of my bad debt, but it’ll take the sale of my house to do it. Don’t worry, I bought a fixer upper and I have been fixing it up. The sale should be good enough to not only get rid of my debt load, but to be able to have a down-payment for another house as well.

As someone that is seeking to become self employed, I believe that it is imperative that getting rid of the bad debt and unwanted expenses is necessary. Imagine how many books that you must sell to cover the credit card payments of $500. That is a lot of units per month. Easiest way is to get rid of the payments.

So, to all of those that seek to become self-employed like me. Get a financial planner. Get a plan. Get your expenses down. The less units of books that you must sell to be able to live off of your creative outlets the better.

Figure out a way to spend less with still having the same standard of living. I am not advocating you to live in a cardboard box to be able to be self-employed. But I am sure that your family will think that you are when you tell them that you are self-employed.

Diets

So tonight I am going to talk about something completely different than normal. I am going to talk to you guys about keeping healthy while doing a sedentary job like writing a novel.

I spend my days sitting at a computer hacking away at work. Essentially I fly a desk. No field work for me. Which was how I kept in shape before I got out of field work.

I am 6 ft tall. According to the infamous Body Mass Index, I need to weigh in at 183 lbs. I normally weighed in on average 225lbs when I was in the field. It fluctuated wildly depending on what I was doing that week.

When I started flying desk at work I quickly went from the average 225lbs and then in two years I topped out at 275lbs. Ouch. Stretch marks and a big gut.

I started exercising and played around with my diet. But not much. I dropped to 269lbs in 4 months time. I eventually gave up and stopped going to the gym. My diet went back to what it was before.

So Feb. 1st of this year, my wife and I started what is called a Paleo Diet. Which, in a nut shell is cutting gluten, dairy, and additional sugar. We did it as a 28 day challenge.

That essentially means that we became vegetable loving carnivores for the month of February.

No sugar moved a lot of our staple foods out of our diet. Gluten did the same. Dairy was the easiest as I didn’t drink much milk before hand. I went a month without going to a fast food joint.

The results was amazing. I am now under 250lbs. Today I weighed in at 248 lbs. That is a change of 21lbs in a month. I look trimmer, have more energy than I did before. And I now drink my coffee black. That’s right. I have joined the crazy insane club of black coffee drinkers. A month of no sugar has essentially turned off my sweet tooth. I don’t crave pop or candy anymore. I may indulge one day, but it is one candy. I don’t pig out and drink an entire 2L of pop in a single sitting.

I added no exercise to my daily routine. The only thing that changed was my diet. That is it.

Am I a health professional? No. Far from it. This is just my experience. I got results. You may not. If you experience changes to your body as you write, you may have to make a lifestyle change. I did. I am happy for it.

Ramblings: Anxieties, Readers and Talent

So I have bought the bullet and have done it. I have sent one of my novels to be torn apart. Ripped to shreds. Eaten alive and spat out….

I am running out of metaphors.

One of the problems with where I live is that there isn’t a large community of writers to connect with. Those that are here tend to lie more on the literary side of the fiction writing spectrum. I am not on that side. To be more specific, I am so far away from it that it is like a couple of those shots from one of the many space probes. You know, the ones that passed by Jupiter. Anyways, they turned around and took a photo of the sun from Jupiter. The sun was a tiny speck in the distance.  It looked just like a bright star in the night sky if you were looking on earth. I am the space probe, the literary fiction writers are the sun.

That outlines the issue that I face. It is also one that faces many writers out there new. Getting your work edited and looked at to find any glaring errors. Finding Beta Readers. Or the want to find Beta Readers.

New writers have a hard time for various reasons. New writers tend to have anxiety on other people reading there work. They are afraid that the help that they may receive will be less than pleasant. That it will be overly harsh and critical. Many that do receive such advice get deflated and defeated and stop writing. They think that there work sucks, therefore they suck. That they are not going to be an overnight success.

I fell into that camp at one point. I thought my work was good. It wasn’t. I burned it. Poof. Gone. I didn’t write for years afterwards. To this day I do not know why I even write now. I just do. It is one of those things that I have accepted.

The reason that happens to many young writers out there has to do with our view of the word ‘Talent’. Or the phrase ‘To Be Talented’. What does it mean? I think that the words first definition sums it up. From Dictionary.com.

talent

[tal–uh nt]

noun

1. a special natural ability or aptitude

That says it right there. A special natural ability or aptitude. Meaning that to be talented means that the ability to write a story, or draw a picture, or sing a song and win whatever gameshow of the week you are on. It comes to you easily and naturally and that you don’t have to work for it. Or at least to those that do not have any ‘Talent’.

There are some, me included, that have realized the truth. The truth that has been staring the creative work in the face. A truth that will change it, probably for the better.

Like Neo and the spoon, there is no Talent. None. Burn the definition from the dictionary and re-write it. Why? Because people see Talent as a sudden thing. I, who have never played a Piano in my life can, if I am Talented enough, sit down at the Piano and play like Mozart. No practice. No training. Just bang. Mozart.

To those that think that, I cry bullshit. Talent is nothing more than the byproduct of hard work determination and will power to stick with something no matter what. Like extreme flatulence is the byproduct of beans and corn. As an example, my six year old son loves playing Piano. He, plays quiet well for a six year old and is a sight to see.

Is he talented? No. He has been interested in music since he was a baby. Since he loved drumming his fingers on the coffee table. I threw fuel on that fire. I kept him interested in drumming fingers. In making sounds that sound good. He kept his interest up. I started his lessons in September and now in March, he has finished his first book. I am told that his progress has been fast. Is he Talented? No. He practices hours every day cause he loves playing it. He puts the work in. That is not Talent. That is hard work and I love it.

Back to these young writers. They get in the belief that there work is special cause others have been. JK Rowlings, Steven King, etc all exploded in the spot light. They can too. right? Wrong. These big name authors spent years writing utter and complete crap until they were an over night success.

So my novel, that I wrote ten years ago is now with the Beta readers. I feel anxious, excited and nervous. I keep reminding myself that the novel is ten years old. It is a turd and even though I am giving it a polish, it is still a turd. That gives a new meaning to a couple of those metaphors from the beginning.

Late Night Preview

During November I wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo. For those that don’t know, it is the National November Writing Month. I was successful.

With me completing my edits to When The Lights Go Out and waiting for beta readers to give some form of feedback, I have now turned my attention back to my son’s middle grade fiction serial and to editing Culture Shock. My NaNoWriMo book.

In my personal writing process, I like to print out the novel and read it on paper to do the necessary edits. This time, instead of getting staples to do it, I bought a really nice printer and I am able to print it for about an eighth of the cost. With the amount of novels that I plan on writing, I am sure my investment will pay for itself in no time.

My novel Culture Shock is post-apocalypse book, set in a separate would from When the Lights Go Out. Here is a short preview from my work in progress novel. I hope that you enjoy.

          La Garita Caldera, San Jaun, USA. Approx date: 25 Million BCE
Atana Ignimbrite, Chile. Approx date: 3.8 Million BCE
Yellowstone, Idaho, USA. Approx date: 1.9 Million BCE
Lake Taba, North Sumatra, Indonesia. Approx date: 72 Thousand BCE
Orumana Taupo, North Island, New Zealand. Approx Date: 24 Thousand BCE
Mount Tambora, Sumbawa Island, Indonesia Date: 1815 CE

These Supervocanos have erupted before. Each time that they have, there eruptions have changed the Earth’s climate. Some have brought on ices ages, while some have created years with no sun.
The Mount Tambora supervocanic eruption changed the global climate for an entire year. It spewed 120 cubic kilometers of ash and debris into the atmosphere. It turned 1816 CE into the Year without a Summer.
The list above is only some of the world’s known supervolcanos and there last major eruption. Those eruptions were 20 to 50 times larger than the Mount Tombaro eruption.
Scientists claim that many of the supervolcanos of the world are overdue to erupt.
They also claim that many of them are not as dormant as one would hope.

I hope that you have enjoyed the small snippet below and I promise to post more teases in the future with some more of my work.

Keep it shiny.

Nathan Pedde

State of Pedde- Jan. 2nd, 2017

So it has been too long since my last post and I do not have time to post much on here at the moment. Every moment that I spend writing on this blog, is one moment that I am not working on one of my many projects.

So Christmas happened which is distracting enough. The family got sick with some type of flu.

Now that Christmas is now packed back into boxes, I have more time to get my projects done.

But what do I mean by my projects? And what are my plans for all of my work?

My plan is to self-publish what I had deemed my truck novels onto Amazon or another type website. Am I going to put them there cause I think that my work has no quality and self=publishing seems like the solution that I need?

Not really. I want to self-publish for many reasons. It cuts out the elitist middle-man. It gives me more say in my work. I get to chose the covers for my work, I will have to pay for them, but they aren’t that expensive. I may be able to make one as my wife runs Pedde and Pedde Photography.

So that is the plan. Self-publish my work. Get them out there with out having someone tell me that my work is bad. I just need to get my work vetted and workshopped by some beta readers.

And that brings us to the projects that I have on the go.

I have five projects at some form of work. I brought all of the trunk novels and I am now going to go through them and I will be getting them ready to be published. I am only going to do a couple editing passes on them before I publish.

1. Dark Ages 2.0. Project is in the most complete state. I have done four editing passes on it before I tucked it away. I have given it to my First Reader (my loving wife) to read it though with a red pen. She is taking creative writing in College, so it works out. Once she is done with it, I will make some edits based on her notes and then it’ll go to my Beta Readers. I’ll make some more edits to tweek it more and then it’ll be ready. I have a cover that is mostly done.
2. Felix the Swift Part 1. This one I am fixing the story/ part way through the first draft I decided to take it in a different direction and turned it into two parts. Once I am done, it’ll go through the vetting process like Dark Ages. This project I am actively working on.
3. Felix the Swift Part 2. This is the second part to the story.. It is the original story actually. I had gotten about half way through the story before I changed it. I will need to do an extensive edit to what had written to the first part before I get finishing the second part.
4. Culture Shock. I wrote this project during the 2016 NaNoWriMo. It is currently steeping as the first draft is complete. Once I am done with Felix the Swift I will be picking this one up to do a couple editing passes.
5. Space Courier. This project is a joint project between my six year old and myself. It is going to be in the Middle Grade age group so that means that the word count is going to be much lower. Like to top out by 55k words. About half or even a third of what my adult fiction comes in at. I am writing this story along with my current project. I don’t think that it will hamper the process of the other projects as it is a much lighter of a story.

Those are the projects that I am working on, on top of all the other distractions of a 9 to 5, and kids and a wife and renos to my house.

Wish me luck?

Cheers.

Listening to the Past

So I have found the series of podcasts called Dead Robot Society. It is a group of writers that do podcasts about writing. It is apparently weekly, but they haven’t posted since early December.

So I have been going back to the beginning blog posts to listen to older podcasts. While I wait for new posts to be uploaded.

The problem is that the podcast is 8 years old. With completely different hosts. I don’t see anyone from the beginning that is currently active with the podcast.

The have been talking about topics like genre and ideas and such.The problem with it is that I disagree with most of there talking points and with the blog being 8 years old, I have no way to have a discussion with them to tell them that they are wrong.

Normally, I have no issue with listening to there 8 year old pod cast. It re-affirms my point of view on writing and how it is supposed to be done.

Now, is there a different way to write books? Yes. There is. Will they be wildly different from each other? Yes. I know of many authors that write there fiction differently than me. It is okay.

The thing is that I can gleam some type of truth from there podcast. Sometimes, there is a piece that teaches me a little on writing that I didn’t know before.

This podcast, however, was particularly bad. It was so bad that it was almost hypocritical. It talked in circles, saying things that conflict with each other.

This podcast was about intellectual property. It didn’t get into the topic of plagiarism or actual stealing. It talked about the idea that you can steal ideas. That if I go and tell people my story ideas, that I should feel bad if someone takes that idea and makes a better story out of it.

I call bull on that concept. That concept is coming from someone who doesn’t understand the concept of copyright. If someone lifts passages from one of my books and puts it in theirs, then that is stealing.

If my main character is a samurai sword welding woman who wears a black duster in a science fiction story and someone takes that idea of her and runs with it, that is not stealing.

If I call the location of my setting, “Lucy’s Pub”, and someones takes that. It is not stealing.

If some one takes my idea that the samurai sword talks to her and is very bitter at being a sword. It is not stealing.

If someone took all three of those ideas and put them into a book. Then that could be called stealing. Maybe.

But if all three of those ideas originally found from three or more places, books or not. It is not stealing.

You see, there are no new original ideas out there. Everything has been done before and often. Even that grand idea that you have that is, like so original.

To help prove my point, I will break down James Cameron’s Avatar. More specifically where some of the ideas and concepts may have came from. Now I won’t do the whole movie as it is a long movie, but I will a couple few ideas and concepts.

First. The story is roughly from the story of Pocahontas and the story of Moses. Main character is brought into a different society to eventually decide to join that society and to fight against the society of his childhood.

Second. The concept of having the rider control the animal that you are riding mentally. It can be found in David Eddings Belgarion books. Not a new idea.

Third. Alien planet that air can kill you. Not a new idea. Standard science-fiction trope.

Fourth. Evil corporation that only wants there product and damn the consequences for anything that gets in its way. Another standard trope. You can find it anywhere from the Umbrella Corp of Resident Evil to the Company of Aliens. It is not anything new.

Every idea and concept of Avatar can be found elsewhere. No single idea of the movie is original.

Should the authors and writers of those ideas start claiming plagiarism to James Cameron? No. Unless a vast majority of the movie has been done in a single source, then it is not stealing.

Is there the possibility that something may be close and is so by dumb luck? Possibly.

Should an author be afraid that someone might steal his work? Work, yes. You have to be careful. Don’t put the full work online without taking steps to justify your copyright. Keep original drafts of the work on your computer. That sort of thing. Talk to a copyright lawyer or visit there websites if you want some real advice on copyright law in your jurisdiction.

Should an author be afraid that someone may lift your story idea? No. A single idea taken from a book is inspiration. Not theft. By being inspired by single ideas all over the place, you create a single work that together as a whole is original. Even if the building blocks are not. Like the kid building a Lego masterpiece. (With out instructions of course) Each block and piece are not original and are a dime a dozen. The masterpiece together is original and unique.

If you are so disheartened that you can’t stand the thought of someone using an idea of yours in there work that you throw the fiction away in disgust, then you need to rethink some of your choices that you have made. Maybe get into something less creative.

Just a though.

Cheers.

N. A. Pedde