My Writing Life - an update

What have I not been writing?

• I haven't been writing in my blogs
  
• I stopped writing on Nanowrimo after 500 words
• I haven't been writing Ballard
• In forums
  

What have I been writing?

• Letters to Family
• Journal Pieces
• E-mails to friends and family

What do I want to write more of in the coming year?

• More exploratory pieces about faith, GTD, prayer, Productivity, Life, what is important, friends, prioritization, family, and love.
• Blog posts - writing in my blogs regardless (and because of) resistance. Bold posts with no worry about what people will do or think.
• Some pieces in Ballard
• More words in Nanowrimo
• Letters to family
  

What do I want to write less of in the coming year?

I don't want less writing but I do want more focus. I would like to finish a piece.

First 366 words of Nanowrimo project

Samuel woke up, “What was the point?” he wondered. “No job to go to, no jobs to find, and him and his girlfriend Ana were living with his mom again. Seriously, what is the point of even getting up, this sucked!” In frustration Sam, threw a pillow, it seemed to move in slow motion as his eyes adjusted to the light, there was a loud clang as it nailed one of the swords hanging on the wall above the various brickabrack on cabinets and shelves.

Ana woke up beside him exclaiming “What the…”. “Sam explained, “oh, it’s nothing I just tripped when I was trying to get up.” “How do you trip a pillow into the wall?’

“Oh, you saw that huh?” , Sam smiled.

“Yeah, I saw that”.

The room filled with a sound of metal scraping on plaster, Ana and Sam looked in horror as the end of the sword cut loose from the wall. It swung through the book shelves and cabinets carving a path of carnage and destruction through the various action figures, Fantasy art, and role playing books. The sword which was originally designed to be wielded by a Samurai to carve through legions of Mongol hordes was now carving through legions of Wookies from Star Wars, Orcs from World of Warcraft, and splitting a spiderman figure right in two. At the end of its path the sword released from the wall. The sword sailed through air, towards Ana’s collection of stuffed animals, a piercing scream filled the room as the sword found its destination, impaled through the head of a stuffed Koala Ana had owned since she was 3.

“Shit”, Sam exclaimed.

Ana’s screaming didn’t cease as she began to beat on Sam with pillows, sheets, blankets, other stuffed animals, and her fists. “What the hell is wrong with you!”, she screamed at him.

“It was an accident”, Sam yelled as he retreated from the room, tripping over laundry, the remains of the koala and casualties from the Wookie massacre.

“Thank God Mom isn’t home”, Sam thought. “I have been getting enough grief from her already about finding work and working on around the house, I can’t use any more.”

Nanowrimo Plan

I have started a Nanowrimo journal and have built an outline which includes the first chapter of the book. The novel is well on its way to completion and I haven't even started writing yet! Awesome.

Things I have found that are really working:

• Work on the outline or journal about the book a little bit every day
• Talk to someone about the story every day
• Base the characters and personalities on people I know - this really helps with preparation. The characters are still mine but I can base them on aspects of personalities I really understand rather then having to create them myself.
  

How will this help me with Ballard?
A friend asked me if taking Nanowrimo will de-rail me from Ballard. That danger is real, I have enjoyed the break from Ballard but I fully plan on finishing it so I need to plan for a return once Nanowrimo is over. What will help me with Ballard is the writing practice. I was writing Ballard in a completely non-linear way that was making the story confusing even to me, by practicing some outlining structure I can order some of that mess and build some stories behind it. Plus since my friend challenged me to complete it I have to return to it. :) Thank you Augusto.

Planning new story for Nanowrimo

I am putting the breaks on Ballard until 12/1 but I am working on a new story for National Write a Novel month. Why? I care a lot about Ballard and I am not giving up but the purpose of Nanorwrimo is to finish a novel in November; while I could finish Ballard quickly but that wasn't the original purpose of writing it, I wanted something that I would be writing over the period of a few years in a nonlinear format, this just won't work for Nanowrimo.

I am working on a simple fantasy novel involving a character who is drawn into another world after going to sleep. You can read more about it on my nanowrimo page here.

Nanowrimo

This last weekend I spent some time at a men's retreat and had some time to think. My committment to National Write a Novel month will consist of two pages a day on a new story about being lost in a fantasy world. This will not be connected to Ballard but will be a simple story based on some ideas I have been playing with for a while now on dreams and interdimensional travel involving the imagination.

The big question the story will answer is "What if the boundries between imagination and reality came upart unlocking another world?"

National Novel Writing Month

I have made the committment to write a novel in November. 50,000 words! This is for National Novel Writing month.

I am pretty intimidated by this committment but it is only 2 pages a day and I have plenty of time to prepare. I will do my best.

Affirmation: Let it write itself

Let your story write itself, sit down in front of the typewriter, notepad, or computer, close your eyes, take a deep breath and let it out as words. Your story is written on your very bones and you can write it by breathing out those words.

The Void and the Darkness

Yesterday after analysing my resistance to writing I dialed back my committment and added Ballard to my daily list to appear every two days. My Ballard writing will be a vague committment; the item on the list is just titled Ballard with no explanation.
When reviewing the list this morning around 5:00, I came upon Ballard, hesitated for a moment, and opened a word document and started typing. Here is what the story revealed today:

I often wondered what was down there. I had been to the bridge uncountable times throughout my youth and looked down into the crevice between the two points of Macan Mount and thought to myself, “What lurks in darkness like that? What lurks in places where mist mingled with darkness creates a feeling of dread that that would cause one to hesitate, to linger on the wood and metal lattice known as Acrocia cross.

I thought about the void, the void in my mind seemed to grow bigger every day and I became aware of it more and more often. Today, while crossing, the horses grew nervous as they often did, which caused the carriage to slow. I lifted my head from my doze and peered out the window into the dark expanse and thought about the void. While the depths of the crevice were black and filled with smoky mist the void was bright and barren, while no light source existed there, it was still bright, bright as light. And the biggest difference, was the longing; while the dread pushes me farther and farther away from the darkness, the light of the void calls to me, pulling me in to the comfort; the comfort of…nothing.

My current writing status

I haven't written any of Ballard in 6 days. Is this a failure? No, I had tried to write every day but it was never a committment and never a bair mininum. Now it is time to pull back a little bit, write about some other things and keep the ball rolling, I am just in the phase where I am slowly rolling the ball down the hill from the front keeping it from going crazy down the hill and crashing something and trying not to let it roll over me at the same time.

What do you do when you are slowing down a bit? Not quite a block but more of a lull.

Just another old house

The Acrocia Estate is old, from the outside it seems like a relatively normal mansion; a lavish and well designed mansion yes but normal. On the inside…ooooh boy, on the inside it feels like it goes on forever. Don’t get me wrong it isn’t mystical or anything…well I don’t think it is anyway but the tiny looking ancient house has long lush corridors, winding staircases that feel like they can reach to the stars and ancient catacomb like tunnels that reach deep into the earth. Well, it felt that way when I was six anyway, now it was just a old house with sky rocketing bills and more work to be done then my miserable old grandfather and myself can handle.

The Bargain

Emily looked out into the darkness. They were finished here tonight but what would happen? Would it work? And more importantly would they get caught?

She looked back to the South end of the bridge which they had come from hoping that no one was out tonight, that no one had seen them.

“We are alone sweetie.” Tracy’s voice said from behind her. Emily turned around to see Tracy bent far over the edge of the bridge as if to make sure he was gone for good. “Don’t worry pet, we won’t have to worry about his type no more.”

Emily digested the words and formed a smile. “No more”. She couldn’t believe it had finally happened; were they finally rid of him? She looked to her companion; she stared as Tracy pulled herself up from the edge of the bridge and threw her nest of hair behind her. She watched intently as Tracy adjusted her clothes and brought herself up into a stance of authority.

She sometimes wondered where Tracy’s strength came from. Especially now, after what they did, she was a panicky wreck, looking around, tapping her feet; her heart was beating with the force of an elephant hitting the ground from a fall from the top of the grand canyon.

But Tracy, Tracy was calm. Calm as she straightened up. Calm as she lit her cigarette. Calm as she stood and smoked; each breath making her taller and more powerful filling her with the strength Emily sorely needed throughout her life. She even remained calm as she got ready to put out her cigarette on Emily’s arm.

Organizing my book with Microsoft OneNote

I fired up Microsoft Onenote this morning after I realized I was keeping a lot of files for notes. I had found my self with 3 documents with segments of the book, 2 documents with notes, 2 documents with descriptions of settings, one document was a bit of a journal about the piece and 1 mind map. It was my first contact with the program so I took the time to walk through the tutorial and I am glad I did because I learned a ton and am totally convinced that this is the right way for me to organize a novel in progress.

OneNote allowed me to create a table of contents I could embed all the documents in, On other pages I could build up notes, and in it's own tab I could build the chapters page by page.

Why was this a wild success?

• The thoughts of the book are organized to be seen in a pleasant way that encourages creativity
• I can see a representation of where the chapters will be cutting out many resistance fostering unknowns.
• I wrote my first plot description due to finally being able to see how my elements related to each other. This may not be the final plot but it will definitely help me move forward because I have a direction I can go.
• I also enjoyed that I could draw in one note with my wacom table.

One of the qualities I have liked about this book is that it is alive. It is writing itself more than I am writing it. Organizing it into compartments with Onenote just makes sense in that Onenote allows me to create organic notes as quick as I can think and organize them using an intuitive interface which makes as much sense as a school notebook without the resistance caused by actually having to write and note being able to move things around. I can even draw notes, doodles, storyboards, etc! and all of my hand drawn notes are searchable.

Next part in Ballard - Introducing Tracy

I am enjoying writing these smatterings of story on the blog; I hope it is an interesting format and I will definitely consider requests so please leave comments.

“Tracy, wake up!” said Emily with a panicked tone. My mother will be furious if she finds you napping down her. Tracy pulled her face up from the felt chair in front of her.

“How long was I asleep?” she said groggily as she felt the imprint the fabric had left on her face. Tracy let her eyes adjust to the light and surveyed the old theatre. From this perspective the open theatre with its red chairs and red ceiling looked like a grotesque toothless mouth threatening to chomp down on her at any time; she felt the imprint on her face again and decided that it already tried to while she was asleep.

“I have no idea” explained Tracy “but it had to have been a while for you to get kissed by that chair the way you did. You look like a mess!”

“Thanks” Tracy uttered in an annoyed tone. She felt like her body had been pushed between two rollers and got jammed up somewhere along the way but she did find the will to stand. She did her best to fix her long, tangled, black hair but as usual nothing she did seemed to help so she threw it behind her as one long stream of tangled curls.

“You have to get out of here!” yelled Emily. “My mom will be home soon and if she finds you here I will end up looking worse than you."

“Listen here you little bitch” Tracy said through clenched teeth “Don’t think for a second I care what your Mom does to you and don't forget, you owe me”

Defeated, Emily shifted her gaze to the ground and shuffled her feet, she couldn’t win against Tracy this time but on the bright side, at least she didn’t have to deal with Ballard today.

Experiences with Writing Ballard

It is nice to finally be regularly writing something whether this piece will end up a book or not is a good question but not one that I feel that I need to answer right now. The purpose of writing Ballard is to flex my creative muscles by writing something creating.

What has my experience given me:

• It is shown me that the story is already in my head, I just have to write it.
• That there aren't any rules to how I have to write this thing.
• That I enjoy sharing bits of it as I go, almost like interactive fiction.

I will continue to work on Ballard and maybe eventually make some progress on Cooking with Scissors.

Tracy Describes Ballard

Tracy describes Ballard:

Ballard stands tall, I am not going to state an exact height because that is meaningless to your perspective, instead I am going to describe him as tall. He is taller then you but not as tall as the tallest person you know. He dresses flashier then you but in a tasteful way that denotes his confidence. I have often catch him staring into space and wonder what great thoughts could be important enough to capture his attention for that long. I hate him and will see him dead some day.

Have I been writing?

Have I been writing?
no
Is this true? Absolutely not! but it is my first answer. Why? If I told anyone who knows me well that I haven't been writing they would disagree with me right away. They would say, "What do you mean you aren't writing?", and would be probably wave there hands up in frustration as they said it. They would continue with, "you have been writing regularly in your blogs, your journals, your e-mails, and who knows what else but you say you aren't writing! why on earth would you say something as ridiculous as that?"
"Because I am not", would be my quick answer but the truth is sometimes I feel like I am not. Is this true? no, it comes from my lack of confidence, faith in my self, and lack of knowledge in what I really want. It comes from resistance, and the idea that in order to be happy I need to be working on my book, which I haven't been but why?
Without thinking about it I would say that it is a writers block or I have have been procrastinating because of fear of the unknown, critisism, self expression, self awareness etc but all of that is bull.
It is because I don't have clear next actions set, I don't have structures in place to make working on my book automatic as I do for my blogs, journals, e-mails etc so it is time. Ballard (my main character in my current novel) is being added to my !daily list. The goal will be to write at least 1 sentence about Ballard or about his activity.

How often do I journal?

I keep 3 journals right now. I write these as notes to tasks on www.rememberthemilk.com

• Gratitude
  Here I list up to 5 things that I am grateful for either that day or the day before depending on if i do it in the evening or the morning. I find this helpful in that it gives me a perspective on my life that things that I wasn't grateful for in the past I wouldn't live without now.
  
• Daily affirmation
  This is my daily congratulation to myself for what I will accomplish. I note here how awesome I feel for the accomplishments that will happen.
• Habit Journal
  this is my record of how I am doing building do habits. This is to encourage me to improve my life, one habit at a time.

Journals I have written in the past include:

• Meaning
  What is meaning? What I have I done to create meaning, what will I do to create meaning? This journal which I keep off and on (Put it aside for a while when I get numb to it) is a detail about how I feel about meaning and what meaning is.
• Purpose
  What is my purpose? How do I define purpose?
  This is one I will be relaunching soon to explorer the purpose statement I developed before.
  
• Daily Record
  This is one I have done off and on but not because it goes numb. I have procrastinated and argued with this journal since I discovered it. I did not have my !daily list last time I kept a daily record. I will add it to !daily right now. The first entries will consist of defining the purpose of the journal.
  

A new excerpt - A near trip into the void.

It felt good to get a small bit of writing done tonight. Just a clip of something new but it is interesting to me so I will write into it every onece in a while.

Ballard opened the wooden door to the study hoping to see the one he would ultimately marry but unfortunately it was bare. Bare wasn’t the word, as it was gone; completely absent from the world, from the universe. He looked out upon a blank slate as if the world were erased leaving nothing but blank canvas. Canvas might not have been the best word as this area of space where the study of the Acrocia mansion was, was now completely empty, he looked out thorough the doorway to a barren field of white as if he was looking out through a portal into another world.

He closed his eyes and prepared to step into the void when he felt a hand upon his shoulder. “Ballard old boy!” the voice exclaimed. Ballard opened his eyes only to see the view of the study before him, him with one foot in the entryway and one foot into what was...nothing. He shook his head around only to see the jolly mustachioed grin of Elden Acrocia.

“Ballard it is good to see you!” exclaimed Elden. “Are you here to see Emily?”
Ballard, still jostled by his experience with the nothingness he was about to step into merely nodded and grunted a “uhhuh”. Emily was the reason he came here, the only reason he would ever come to this place.

“Well I am sorry my friend but she is not here. She hasn’t been here for a few days.” Said Elden

“What!?”, said Ballard “not here?, that’s impossible I left her here yesterday!”
Elden wrinkled his brow in frustration, “That can’t be my friend, she is visiting her brother and has been absent from the estate since Tuesday. If you like I can ring her for you.”

Ballard shook his head, if this is the case he wouldn’t want anyone to think he was losing it. “Well I must be thinking of last week, the late nights I have been working are taking their toll on me I guess.”

“Well you are always welcome to use the guest bed my friend, will you be staying?”

“No, not tonight Elden I will have to pass, much to do as usual.” Ballard shook Elden’s hand and left to his car.

The warrior artist

Picture a medieval battle with two armies facing each other in a valley. One army, the red army is small, made up of about 100 archers and the other side, the blue army has 1000 fighting men. The sides don't seem evenly matched. If the archers want to win the battle they have to let loose thousands upon thousands of arrows. An individual arrow may be blocked by a shield, deflected by armor, or it may miss entirely. If the arrows come down like rain they will hit home and the battle will be won. 

Art whether it is writing, painting, photography, sculpting, music, dance, is similar. If art is created fierce, often, fearlessly, and without fail it is more likely to succeed. 

Does that mean that any artist can create thousands of works and they are guaranteed to strike it rich on one of them?

No. 

If the archer's in the red army were unskilled, untrained, undisciplined, and ill equipped the arrows wouldn't leave the bows. When a soldier is not fighting, he/she is training.

Because it takes:
• Discipline
• Dedication
• Courage
• Skill
• Proper Equipment

 Art works the same way; you require continued dedication to honing your skills, building confidence, obtaining the proper equipment, and continuing the art that you love! If the artist maintains the discipline of the warrior and practices his medium as a lifelong path, they have succeeded.  
Brian Darnell
darnellster@gmail.com
http://12hourhalfday.blogspot.com
http://www.unvoicedvisions.com
follow me on twitter - http://www.twitter.com/12hourhalfday

Excerpt 01 *gulp* 10-30-2002

Here is an excerpt from the mind of the main character in the novel I have been writing.

Something other than the vague consciousness given to us is destined for us. We are fated for more in this universe of uncreativity, uncertainty, indecisiveness...no, that's not it, let me start over.

I wake up in the morning and think to myself,

"Will I accomplish something today? Learn something? Create? teach? Feel? See? know? achieve? will I?"

I think about a time when life was about... well, skip that. I am not in a mood for great wisdom right now. I will share that another time.

How to Procrastinate through Writing

A friend of mine commented on my writing the other day. She said that I don't have any resistance to writing. Wow, no resistance to writing, I wish that were true. Writing for me is the hardest thing to do, I never write, I have been working on a book for several years and have barely scratched a dent in it, in fact my progress consists of a file drawer full of notebooks filled with scrawl; most of which has nothing to do with the book.

I queried my friend about why she would make a comment like that and she pointed out that I write regularly to my blog, I write long forum posts and responses on the forums I post to, and I write well. Wow, maybe I don't have as much resistance to writing after all.

Another friend of mine told me how Stephen King get's over his writer's block (I don't know how true this is but I think it is a cool story). My friend explained that Stephen King, when asked about how he deals with resistance to writing explained that he writes two books at a time. The interviewer thought this was King saying that he not only isn't affected by writers block, he can handle two books at once which most author's couldn't. When the interviewer confronted King with this idea, King explained that yes, he writes two books:

One book that he wants to write, and one book that he writes when he doesn't want to write the book he wants to write.

The blogs and posts have been like this for me. I enjoy writing to them and they have created value for me, I still have the novel in the background that I do want to finish someday but I am creating value in the meantime and I am grateful for that. My novel, instead of creating stress for me is creating creative energy that Iam funneling into other projects.