Distractions Part 2

I have talked before about distractions. I listed the different types of them that I face on a day to day basis. Today I am going to talk to you all about writing times, protecting the writing times and routine in regards to distractions.

I write best when I develop a routine with my writing. I push all of the distractions aside and set the time aside and I write. With having kids, I usually write after they go to bed. That means that I have a lot of late nights.

I also make sure that my wife knows that I am writing and what my word goal for that day is. She knows that if I get my goal done, then I may have time to do other things. I write best when I write at the same time each day.

What does that mean for you? What type of distractions do you have to deal with each day? Write them down in a list if it’ll help you. The develop strategies to get the word count done. If the internet is distracting, but you like to listen to random music when you write, then go down to your local music store and buy some CD’s. Do you remember what a CD looks like? If not, google it. It’ll blow your mind. While you are at it, google 8-track, record player, Beta Tapes and the VHS. Just saying.

I have heard of some writers that have to take there laptop out of the house cause there family is too distracting. They act like it is a real job (cause it is you fools) and they go to an ‘office’. If you are like me and can’t afford to rent out a brick and mortar office to go to, then there are other options. I do like to go to coffee shops occasionally, but the cost of the coffee is sometimes prohibitive. There is other options as well.

The author that I mentioned before went to a friends house where he ‘rented’ out a small room and wrote there. He found that he could write without distractions there and get his word count down.

What you need to do to get the words done will be differently than me. I find that it is different from project to project. What works for one project, is different for a different one. I find that having a set goal, like NaNoWriMo works really well for me.

As of this writing, I am trying to get back into working on my Felix books. It is hard for me to do and I don’t really know why. I am trying a website called write track. http://writetrack.davidsgale.com/ It is a small website that I don’t think is supported by anyone anymore. But it gives me the ability to calculate my word count daily like the NaNoWriMo tracker. This one gives you more details in the program. It is working, but I gave myself too long to do my project. But that’s okay. It is Christmas after all.

That’s all that I wanted to talk about today.

Until next time.

N.A.Pedde

Ideas Part 3

Ideas. I just got one. Is it going to cause a rash? Or is it fatal? What do I do with it now that I have it? Oh noes, I just got a bad idea, how do I get rid of it?

First. How do I get my ideas?

I will usually get a single idea or a scene or a character.

In Felix the Swift, it was the idea of a thief coming back out of retirement to do one last job.

In The Long Journey Home, it was the idea of a guy coming back to his hometown five years after a society collapsing disaster. The idea was of how does conflict and trauma change a person.

Are these ideas run of the mill standard bullshit.

My one word answer.

Maybe.

Those ideas are so broad and vast in nature that they can go any which way. If you give that initial idea to a hundred authors, you would have a hundred different stories.

Once that idea pops into your head. You must incubate it. I say ‘must’ as it has to happen. If you start writing an idea before you incubate it, then there is a distinct possibility that it might be crap.

Incubating is how you sort the good and from the bad.

In medicine, when you get certain diseases, they must take a sample of the disease and grow it in a lab. Once disease has grown, they can tell what it is. The small sample is not enough to determine anything.

Translating that into the realm of story ideas, the little idea that pops into your head has to be grow. You have to use brain cycles on it. You need to expand on the idea, add details in you head, ask questions about it. Fill in holes. See how it forms.

You can either write it all down in note form or just keep it in your head. It depends on how well you remember stuff. I can keep multiple story ideas in my head at once, some people can’t. If you can’t keep it together in your head, write it down. You are big people. you decide what works best with you.

I do, however, have a story idea thresh hold. Once that story idea has a passed that thresh hold without me determining that it is utter shite, then I will write it into once of my hundred of 80 page cheap note books. I will write down all of the info that I can so that it is saved.

If you start to incubate it and then you realize that it is very similar to a TV show or a movie, or you determine that it is utter shite from another way, the best thing to do is to realize that it is shite and tell yourself that. Get it out of your head, put the notebook away.

You may find that that story idea will come back to you at a later date in a different form. It may or may not be any good. It is for you to decide.

Anyways, lots more to talk about, but it’ll have to wait until later.

Cheers

N.A. Pedde

Ideas Part 2

Ideas. Where do they come from? How do you get them? Are the contagious?

In basic, plan speaking. Ideas are like going to the liquor store and shopping for scotch. There are shelves and shelves and shelves of utter crap cheap scotch that will make you drunk and probably feel like shit the next day. However, there is that good scotch that sits in a corner of the shelf. The price tag is a touch heavy for most people and they stay away from it.

Where was I going with that analogy?

I am not sure. Anyway.

Ideas are like vacation hot spots. There are the standard run of the mill spots that are filled with slobby tourists. They might even be fun to go visit and to check out one day, but they tend to leave a bad taste in your mouth. There are those great vacation spots out there. Those hidden gems. Those spots that are not highly known about and are wonders to see and to experience.

That is a good analogy of book ideas.

We are all hunting for that great idea, but all we get are the standard run of the mill book ideas that have been done a gabazillon times and will be done another gabazillon more before this year is out.

If you get one of those ideas, should you use it to write with?

In a one word answer. Yes.

Just because you get an idea that has been done to death, it doesn’t mean that you should not use it. Use it up. Enjoy it.

Going back to the three answers, ideas are everywhere. They fill the muti-verse, the universe and Narnia. They are everywhere. Ideas can be found under rocks, inside cabinets and usually come to me while I am squeezing out a deuce or singing in the shower.

Usually makes for a funny sight of me scrambling to get a note pad to write that shit down.

I will pause to let you get that image of me out of your head. Or back in. Your choice.

However, like the cheap bottles of scotch and the cheap vacation hotspots, or bad porn on the interwebs, over-done ideas are everywhere and they fill up hollywood. It is our job as writers, novilists and authors to recognize the good ideas from the bad, and to throw the bad ones back into the verse like the cheap crap that they are.

I do have more thoughts on this subject, but they will have to be for a later time.

Cheers.

N. A. Pedde

Third Post

So I am writing one more for the day. This one is about the distractions that we must navigate past. I only have written 600 words tonight due to having a cat and a lazer pointer. Endless entertainment. For me, I am not sure about the cat. I think that he was having a blast. Maybe…

My standard distractions that I must fight through.

Youtube. I find funny video’s and movie clips entertaining and distracting. I do, however, use youtube for the different types of music as I tend to write to music. I wrote Dark Ages to Johnny Cash music. I got my first draft of Long Journey done to Mumford and Sons. Sometimes I get distracted on the way to the youtube music channels.

Kids. I have two kids and they can get distracting. Ballet, Piano. It can get pretty busy in the house.

Christmas. It is December. Need I say more?

Wifey. She needs time too. I understand.

Renos. Luckily I own my own home and I am currently in the middle of some renovations. Actually I bought a fixer upper and it is taking me a long time to finish them.

Day Job. 9 to 5 jobs suck. But necessary. Not going into any more of this.

Video games. I have 98 games in my steam account. I have a problem okay. I know I have a problem, but when steam has megasales, I just can’t help myself. Stop judging me!

Until next time.

NAPedde

 

 

Different Stories

So I know that I said that I would only be posting blog posts every few days or something, so this one is a freebee. (Not like you have to pay for this.)

I am going to tell you about some of the different story ideas that I have. But before I do, I have to say one thing.

Am I afraid of someone ‘stealing’ my ideas. In a one word answer.

No.

Ideas are just that. Ideas. You can tell a group of a hundred writers to write a story using a single idea and the hundred different writers will each come up with a different and unique story.

I will start with the Trunk novels that I have actually not destroyed due to there great suckage.

Dark Ages 2.0. It is the story of what would happen if all of a sudden that a solar storm knocks out power to the entire globe. Bam. No power. Think about all of the stuff that you would loose. Look it up. It is scary.

Felix the Swift. Thief extraordinaire is a thorn in the side of the local nobility. What happens when he is brought low due to his crimes. Forced to work in a dark, damp mine. Will he earn his freedom? Will he find revenge to the wrongs that were done to him? Will he ever see daylight again?

The Long Journey Home. Darren is visiting his father in Tokyo Japan. At age sixteen, he is looking to move to live with his father. During a visit over spring break, Yellowstone Volcano blows it top setting off a chain of earthquakes and tsunami’s. How will he survive living in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet with out rule of law of even the basic of services left intact?

Those kinda turned into book blurbs, didn’t they?

I will be posting more about ideas, how to get them, how to nurture them in the coming days and weeks.

Cheers.

N.A.Pedde

 

 

First blog post

This is my very first blog post at WordPress. I am intending this to be a daily or a near daily blog post of a couple hundred words each day of my thoughts and feelings for that day. It will not be edited from when I wrote it and it may have inconsistencies and speeling errors in it. I apologize to all the gramanazi’s out there that may be offended by my lack of caring about my spelling or lack thereof.

I am an amateur author and I am currently working on my fourth, maybe it’ll turn into my fifth trunk novel. What do I mean by a trunk novel? It is a novel that an author writes when he is first starting out. They are usually sub-par and are generally weak books. An author can have up to a couple dozen of these works before they start getting novels accepted.

Now what do I mean by my ambiguous trunk novel count? The first complete novel was very bad. It was 100k words of utter crap. I deleted it. Novel number two was my Dark Ages 2.0 book. My third is my Felix the Swift book, which may or may not turn into two books. My fourth is my Long Journey Home book.

Now you see why it is ambiguous?

Now granted that Felix the Swift and The Long Journey Home are only at the first draft complete stage, I am not sure that if they count completely. So I am not sure if that counts or not.

But then again, who is counting? Or is all of that me just trying to stoke my own ego? Do I even have an ego? I am not sure.

All of which will be a subject for a much later date.

N. A. Pedde