Category Archives: On Writing

5min – Word Counts

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It’s August, and I thought it was time to take a look at my writing for the year. It’s easier now, right after I’ve finished a big writing project, (YAY, completed book one in Half Blood Sorceress Series) to look back and see what I’ve been doing.

I keep stats of every days writing, and I keep track of actual story word count separate from things like blogs, newsletters, and other writing media that I do. I don’t keep track of every word I write, because I love social media, but I do keep track of things that matter to me.

So how does this year stack up to previous years? Well, it’s now the 8th month of the year and I have only written 50,000 words. For the past four years I have written about 230k each year, which includes the NaNoWriMo 50k write in Nov. So if I manage to get through NaNo this year I’ll be a lot closer to my usual yearly goal, but still much farther behind then usual.

Why did this happen?

If we take a look at my monthly word count for just this year we see that I started okay in January, then in February everything went down hill, and didn’t pick up again till July. That’s because I was going through a bunch of changes at the end of last year, beginning of this year. Mostly moving to a much more involved, and stress filled job. I couldn’t write at work like I use to and had to make sure I took time out at home to actually write. I also had to make sure I made time with Gregg, who now works from home.

Overall, it feels like I’ve finally sorted that all out, and I’m able to work on my next novel with a bit more confidence, but still, I shouldn’t take my writing for granted.

And that’s my five.

 

5min- Finished! 

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Back in April of 2015 I got a fantastic idea for a story by looking at a lonely piece of art. The art was looking for a book to be a cover for, and it would be a fantastic cover. Unfortunately it was a pro artist and I can’t afford his rates. But that didn’t stop me from writing the story. 

So in. May of 2016, a year later, I started outlining the series. Five books. Five complete stories, each one with a valuable part to play in making one girl, Sybel, who she needs to be to save everyone from an unknown danger. I started writing  it during NaNoWriMo 2016. 

And tonight I’ve completed the first novel in that series! 

It feels so good to be done. I wrote the first draft, went through line by line to clean up any plot holes and add descriptions to some areas, and I’m finally satisfied that it’s ready to go to the editor. 

So happy! And I  can’t wait to share it with all of you. 

And that’s my five. 

5min – The goal is right there!

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It’s 3:30 in the morning and I just finished editing a few more chapters of Dragons’s Flame. That leaves one more chapter, and the epilogue, to finish. Once I’m done I can send it off to the editor. I almost finished it tonight, almost, but when I started editing the final chapter my brain started rebelling.

Writing is so much different than editing. For writing it’s often helpful to be slightly tired because then it’s easier to let go of that editor trying to fix things all the time, and just write. Sometimes I write my best words while slightly tired at the end of the night. Other times I write the worst. I think it depends on how sleepy I am. Just slightly sleepy with a cup of coffee, great. Ready to fall over on the keyboard? Not so much.

I’m so happy with how the novel has come out. It is currently 49,500 words long. After editing this last chapter I’m pretty sure it will be 50k. That’s perfect. I wasn’t trying to hit that number, but it is a nice number in instead. And the second book is already 40k words long and only about half finished so it will likely be longer. That’s about how the Witch’s Trilogy worked out as well.

Last month, and this month so far, has been the best writing months I’ve had all year. I think this five minute writing page has helped a lot. It’s gotten me to get out of my head, and get onto the paper. It’s also been very good at getting me to write instead of just thinking about writing.

But that’s my five.

5min – Veganisim

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I got into a conversation the other day on YouTube about veganism. My original point had been about coffee: If I, a coffee drinker, sit next to someone in a restaurant that finds coffee offensive, should I apologize for liking coffee? Or should that person just deal with the fact that other people like thing that they don’t and the world is not a safe space?

A few people said coffee wasn’t that great an example, how can anyone be offended by coffee. But I’ve met them. They are out there. My ex MIL tried convincing me to switch to tea, and while I do like tea it does not do it for me. Have to have my coffee.

So I decided I’d add veganism to the argument. If I want to eat a cheese burger at a restaurant should I apologize to the vegan next to me because they are offended? Is it okay for them to call me a murderer? And of course I got a lot of responses from vegans about how much better veganism is, and how I should try it.

I did try it. In fact as of now we have a freezer with a little hamburger, and a lot of chicken in it. But mostly burritos. And that freezer of meat will last us a few months because we don’t eat meat very often. We don’t have steak anymore, and pork has been off the menu for years unless we get it at a restaurant occasionally. Mostly I subsist off eggs. I eat tons of eggs. Eggs are the best thing in life because if I have an egg every morning I don’t feel sick later that morning.

And that’s the problem I had with veganism. It made me feel sick. I often got the shakes, felt weak and tired, couldn’t concentrate. My mind would wander more then usual, and I even started having some blurry vision. As soon as I started eating meat again I was fine.

And I tried it all. I tried tofu, eating all the nuts, lots of peanut butter because I LOVE peanut butter. I tried fake meats, and beans. I tried everything. Nothing helped as much as having an egg, or a piece of chicken, in the morning.

Things are a bit more complicated for me because I can’t have much rice or pasta since I’m also pre-diabetic and I’m trying to not go full diabetic. Eating only veggies and some meat with the occasional pasta dish is what’s working for me to be healthy.

But I’m still a murderer according to some vegans. My health isn’t important. I was doing it wrong. What about the animals?

It’s just another instance of “my beliefs are better than yours, and if you disagree then you are worse then Hitler.” I respect vegans for following their beliefs, and I wish them well. But I do wish respect went both ways.

And that’s well past my five.

5min – Half Blood Sorceress

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Today has been a good day. I’m writing this at the end of the day, instead of the beginning, because I’ve been doing a lot of writing and editing. Mostly editing of the first book so I can get it to the editor.

I hate estimating these things. I’m almost always wrong. I have these big ideas that I can just ‘edit one chapter a day and get it done” but something else comes up. And I know some of it is excuses, and other times it’s legitimate things. Like being sick for the last week because there are forest fires going on and my asthma is not making life easy.

Regardless, I have grand ideas that I don’t end up doing it. Another big reason is that I end up spending time on other things instead of the main project. I have been trying to get the editing done for this book, but I admit that I hate editing. I have taken a lot of “breaks” to write major plots for the third book so that I can start on it soon. On the plus side I have a lot of that story already figured out. On the minus side…book one isn’t finished yet!

But after this second pass I’m actually happy with the story. I had been thinking the main character was too ‘whiny” when I first wrote her. But no, she isn’t. She’s the right amount of upset that a large portion of her life goes south really fast, and nothing she seems can fix it. And it’s okay to be upset when that happens. That’s life, and that’s how it works. We can’t control everything around us, even when we really want to.

I guess I should take a note from my characters at this point.

And that’s my five.

Does Gender Matter? – 5min

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If you’ve been on social media lately you’ve probably heard about the man from Google who just got fired for an “anti-diversity manifesto.”

If you watch the main stream media you’re probably convinced that he didn’t site his sources, his sources were mostly Wikipedia, and that his entire goal was to make it look like men are better than women.

Or you could read the document. He does say that men are better at women for some things, but he also said that women are better at some things then men, and that if you want to get the most out of your employees you’ll take into account these differences so that you can get the best people into the best jobs, and they will work their best.

The biggest argument against this manifesto I’ve seen is “men and women are the same” from many people, including Laci Green who was pretty blatant about it. You shouldn’t use stereotype to judge people, they say.

Alright, then here is my question about that. Does gender matter? Is there a difference between men and women? Because I’ve seen plenty of feminists say that men are more violent, and men are rapists. If that is true then would the opposite also be true? That women are less violent and less likely to attack? That’s not called a stereotype (and it isn’t true of course, men aren’t more violent than women they just happen to have higher incidents of different kinds of violence for each gender. And men fail to report it more often.)

Regardless, if gender isn’t important, if there is no difference between men and women, then why are we pushing for transgender rights? Why do we call people male or female for anything other than reproductive purposes? Why are there genders at all?

But maybe that’s where they are going with this argument…

And that’s my five.

 

PS, these five minute writes don’t give a lot of time to go in depth on a subject, just hit the highlights most of the time. But the question is still a valid one. I do want to say that I do believe there is a difference between men and women (with some over lap of course) and that there are specific things that most men and most women do. And 51% is most. But regardless of gender, individuals learn and work better in different ways, so increasing avenues in a work place for those different mentalities to be more comfortable in a space isn’t a bad thing.

5min – Climate Change?

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Someone in my feed said something about Al Gore using climate change as an excuse to make money. Climate change, they said, can’t be impacted by people. And this is a common thing I see among conservatives. Many of them don’t deny that the climate is changing, rather they say that humans aren’t effecting it.

I was reminded of an Ecosphere. Have you ever seen them? It’s a completely sealed environment with brine shrimp, a plant, some water, and a bit of air. That’s it. And the terrarium can live for a few years locked in it’s perpetual cycle.

The literature about a Ecosphere usually says it’s a completely balanced environment. It isn’t, of course. It’s more of a seesaw that rocks back and forth between the plants and the brine shrimp. The plants produce oxygen, which causes the brine shrimp to reproduce more. They then eat the plants, which causes the plants to make less oxygen. Then the brine shrimp start to die off, and the cycle starts over again.

Well, earth is a much larger, much more complex terrarium. We have nothing (save small meteorites) coming into our atmosphere to add to the oxygen that is already here. We have nothing adding to the land we use, or the water we drink. What we have is all we have, and nothing is going to change that unless some scientist finds a way to bring a comet to earth. I wouldn’t recommend that, really, the last one didn’t do very well for the dinosaurs.

Anyway, here we are on our littler terrarium, eating, sleeping, breathing, and drinking water. And we bred and bred until we over populated the plants. Now the plants are dying back, and the o2 we desperately need isn’t as plentiful as it use to be. And there are other things in there, like methane, co2, and radical particles. And we’re starting to die off from cancer, asthma, and other ailments caused by pollution.

I don’t care if climate change, itself, can be averted or changed. What I see as the problem is the air quality slowly suffocating us, just like lead poisoning from leaded gas back in the 70’s slowly poisoned everyone. They got rid of leaded gas and the new generation had fewer health problems.

BUT, my friend on twitter did have a valid point. Al Gore does make money off climate change. And individuals have less impact then huge corporations producing millions of whats-its and spewing toxic fumes into the air. Or countries clear cutting forests.

We are those little brine shrimp, and our plant keeping us alive is getting cut back. Eventually it won’t be able to support us all, and the brine shrimp will die off. Then the plant will regrow. One way or another.

And that’s more than my five.

5 min – Day’s off are worth it.

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I helped my daughter today, and in return she helped me…by shoving my phone in her backpack when I dropped her off at work.

Every time I forget my phone, or something like this happens, I’m struck by how much I use it for. Right now I am doing my five minute writing. I use the phone as a timer for the five minutes. I sometimes use the phone to write my five minute blog post. Other times I just use it to check, and reply to, email. Or catch up on social media when standing in line some where. If all you have is seconds between customers then checking social media, or posting a little bit about a project is often some good use of time since I want to go actually WRITE when I have more f it.

Speaking of writing, I took a three day weekend this weekend. (That would be Wed-Fri because of my off schedule.) I needed a break from the rat race of the day job. I thought I’d get more editing done. That did not happen. Instead, yesterday I spent a good chunk of time just playing a video game and listening to podcasts. Why? Because I wanted to, darn it!

But today I feel so much better after taking that needed health break. And now I’m back to writing.

Care for yourself. Keep in mind the tools you have at your disposal. Use even the small moments to keep write down notes, thoughts, or check in with your followers. And some days just take a day off.

And that’s my five.

5min – Writers Block

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I was listening to an episode of The Creative Penn today and she mentioned that all the pro writers at a recent convention she went to all have the same idea about writers block….it doesn’t exist.

The idea I see is “a plumber can’t have plumbers block, they have to go out and do their job.”

And they are right. Each and every one of them. A pro writer has to be able to get past “blocks” and just write, weather or not they feel like it. I have to go to my day job and do my work, or I don’t get paid. Same with a writer.

But, the idea of writers block is a thing. Perhaps it shouldn’t be called writers block though. Rather it is something causing the writer to spend their energy elsewhere.

For me it’s often bills. I have to pay bills, so I go to a day job, and I spend a lot of time on that day job. It’s a tough, and stressful day job. I often come home with a need to just close the door, and stay away from words for sometimes hours. That’s because my day job is using words. Talking to people. Trying to explain to them how to fix things. Depending on the day that is easier sometimes than others.

Other people might be “blocked” because they have family problems, medical issues or stress going on in their life that they are spending so much time on those things that they just don’t have time (or don’t think they have time) to do something creative.

Then there are the people that actually do sit down and try to write, but end up staring at a blank page for hours instead of writing. Now that, I think, is true. That isn’t a block so much as a lack of confidence. Inability to progress. Or plain don’t know what they are supposed to do.

I think I’ll come back to this idea later. But for now, my 5 min are up, and I need to go finish writing.

5min – Movie review – Split

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I started this morning with checking emails, and going down the rabbit hole of reviews and twitter messages. Not a productive morning. Or maybe it was. I guess it depends on how you look at it. Social media is a necessary evil of trying to get people to notice you, so there is that.

Last night we watched Split finally. It is a movie about three young girls that are kidnapped by a man with multiple personalities. They talk about how a person who has to go between personalities will sometimes have physical differences depending on which personality s/he is in at that time, and they describe it as “taking the light” from the others. being an M Knight Shyamalan story we were waiting for the twist. But there really wasn’t one this time. It lays out the movie from the beginning, and I could see the ending coming. I don’t know if this makes it better or worse for that. The “twist” might have been the cameo at the very end from an earlier movie.

I liked the story, and the ending made sense. I am glad they were very subtle about the abuse of the main character in her past, but you knew it was there. Not good. But integral to the story. Split was a little slow for my taste, taking a very long time to get to certain things. But that’s normal for a Shyamalan story. Signs, the village, and lady in the water were the same way. Slow. Meticulous Calculated. That’s Shyamalan for you.

But overall I enjoyed it.

And that’s my five.