OMG...It's a blog post!

Yup. It's a blog post. Been a while, I know. I've been busy (and playing video games and shoveling snow and stuff and more stuff...)

Anyway, enough with the wasting time because I'm getting nothing done. Ok, I'm getting lots done, just not a whole lot of writing done. At least creative writing.

For those who haven't heard by now, I started grad school. Something I never thought I would do. After 20 years (yes, I'm old) of working in libraries, I've finally decided to get my Masters degree. Thankfully, there is a good college nearby that offers classes within 10 minutes of my house.

I've been doing a lot of reading. Some grad school related and some fun related. And I have an awesome new plot bunny nibbling at my brain that I am trying to ignore because I have to finish the newest revision of Hate Jacket as well as finish up Romeo and Juliet. Both of these take priority over shiny new librarian novel.

Despite that, I have been sneaking in some time to think about it. My excuse is that it's related to librarians and library stuff and all of my readings can be used as research for it. It's a really cool idea. It's a bit of a dystopia, but I think the idea is different enough to stand out. We'll see. As slow as I write, it could be a long time before it's done anyway.

In my "copious" free time, I wrote a little story for my friend, Gina Denny. My prompt was a line from the book Oh the Thinks You Can Think! by Dr. Seuss. Mine was "A race on a horse on a ball with a fish". Mine is one of many. I encourage you all to hope over there and read a few.

Writing Goals:

1. Continue revising HJ based on feedback. Chapter 1 and 2 are revised, but I need to do some tweaking on chapter 2 before starting on 3.
2. Blog weekly. Technically, I blogged last week, but not on my updates.
3. Visit at least 1 #writemotivation blog a week. Errr...need to do this.
4. Cheer on my #writemotivation buddies on twitter. Have been. Lots of awesome goal butt-kicking going on there. People are doing awesome.
5. Continue working on the helpful links section of the Writemotivation website (currently hidden). I've got it planned out, just need to start filling with links.

Grad School Goals:

1. Read my grad school textbooks (need to catch up). I've been reading! Slowly catching up. Some are more interesting than others.
2. Work on my reflection journal (for grad school). Did my first journal entry. It was somewhat babbly.

Well, that's all I have.

'Till next time

Thursday's Children: Inspired by Twitter...again...

I should call this post "Revenge of the Plot Bunnies" or "Why Andrew Shouldn't Pay Attention To Other People's Conversations on Twitter".

Unfortunately, I'm a slow learner because that's exactly what happened. And now, like Hate Jacket before it, I have a GINORMOUS plot bunny sitting on my head.

I would love to blame Trisha Leigh, author of The Last Year series, and Jennifer Iacopalli, author of Game Set Match. Because it was their conversation that I jumped into. It started with Trisha asking if the app SnapChat was designed for sexting. I'm guessing she had heard about it on the news or the internet and was asking. I had heard about it on a local radio station a few months ago. Anyway, Jennifer responded with yes and then one of them made the comment that the owners of the app will probably post all the pictures somewhere (conspiracy theory!).

It was then that the fateful words were spoken. "There's a YA story in this somewhere..." At which point, my overly active imagination latched onto it and the plot bunny landed on my head.

I'm supposed to be working on my NA Paranormal story. Julius' story (and any spin-offs/sequels) was supposed be my only foray into the world of YA Contemporary stories. I am supposed to be a SciFi/Horror/Paranormal/Thriller/Fantasy type writer. Hell, just look at my bookshelves. 99% of the books on there are SciFi, Fantasy, or Paranormal. My kindle is the same way.

So why?! Why is my brain wanting to write this story?!

I would blame Jennifer and Trisha, but they are both really sweet and nice people. I'll blame the universe. It's to blame for everything.

I'm actually a little frustrated by this story idea. Not because it isn't good or that I can't pull it off, it just isn't what I imagined myself writing.

This isn't the first time my preferences were trumped by what I was creating.

When I was in college, I studied music. Specifically, music theory. At one point I was taking composition classes. I had grand ideas (as are all college students). I loved the classic masters (Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Mozart, Mendelssohn, etc.). I wanted to write in that style. It was the music I loved to listen to (and still do). Unfortunately the one piece of music I wrote that actually sounded good, did not mimic these masters' styles. In fact, it sounded like Aaron Coplan.

I'm not a big fan of Aaron Coplan. It's not that I don't like his music, it just isn't what I reach for when I'm in the mood for some classical music. It sounds too American. Cowboys and Beef commercials (his song Rodeo was used in commercials for several years).

My piano piece, River Fanfare, is a fun piece. It's fast, sounds awesome, but it also doesn't sound like Beethoven. A part of me hated it. Not the music, but the fact that I couldn't write the music I wanted. It's probably part of the reason I have a degree in Music Theory and not Composition.

This new YA story is the same thing. It isn't what I envision myself writing. There's a part of me that hates the idea of it. Rails against the concept, even.

However, I also know that I can't force myself to write something. I have to let it exist. I can't become bitter and angry about what is coming out of my head. Writing this story doesn't mean I've failed, it just means that's what is coming out. So yes, I will write this story. I don't know if it will trump the NA or what, but I do have a lot of ideas for it. Names, places, events, actions, consequences, mistakes, redemption.

Yeah, it's a loud one.

'Till Next Time.

Thursday's Children: Dream-spiration

It's one of those days when you just need a little extra coffee...also, I like to show off my self stirring mug. It's really handy and cuts down on spoons. Which is a good thing because the number of spoon trees in the world are dwindling.

Anyway, a while back, I rambled about dream inspired story ideas. See it here.

I've had several dream inspired story ideas since that post, and I have dutifully entered them into my ever expanding word document titled, appropriately, "Story Ideas". It's now four pages long and has blurbs on 26 stories (three of them are part of a trilogy idea) and three of them I've written first drafts for. In reality, I probably won't write all of them, but they popped into my head and I wrote them down.

Anyway, Tuesday night was another one of those cool dreams that decided to turn into a plot-bunny. And yes, I had to write it down.

The dream was pretty weird, and at one point I was saving the life of someone who was supposed to be some sort of savior person. As with all dreams, it was convoluted, but here is what popped out with later pondering.

It has a title, but I still need to build the world. Not sure if it is paranormal, fantasy, scifi, dystopian, or a combination of those. It's pretty loud, but I'm still in the middle of Hate Jacket and can't do anything else until I finish that.

Knots
What if your best friend was destined to save the world?
What if you were destined to destroy it?
What if you were in love with your best friend?
Duty
Honor
Betrayal
Love

'Till Next Time

Story Soup

My friend, Jamie Dement, has a really interesting blog post titled Compartmentalizing: the Way I Write. In it she talks about how she can work on multiple projects at once. It's really interesting. Learning how people process and think is one of my favorite things to do (I should have been a psychologist!). Anyway, as I was reading her post, I realized that I have a similar process. It's not the same, but the basic concept is the same. So here it goes:

The last time I did a count, I had about 3-4 story ideas floating in the back of my head.  This doesn't include the various short things (short stories and poetry) that I write for my Creative Writing class.  That also doesn't count blog ideas either.

Things just float around back there "percolating" (as I call it). In my comments on Jamie's blog, I referred to it as a soup. When an idea is ready for me to look at it just floats out and I take a look. If I get stuck, I toss it back until it's done "cooking". I can fairly easily jump between ideas as I have as they are in a "fluid state". It does take a second for my brain to reconfigure when an idea decides it is ready, but after that initial 'WTF?' moment, I'm off to the races.  Luckily, I haven't run into any bleed-over between ideas.

So, if you use the 'soup' idea, I guess you could say that all of these ideas are the meat, vegetables, and noodles floating around. If I want to check on them, I just spoon out some soup and take a sniff. If it isn't ready, I can just dump it back in the pot and move onto the next spoonful. If you use the 'coffee' metaphor...well, let's just not think of what those 'chunks' might be...it's better that way.

I do, on occasion, get an intrusive Plot Bunny that will rear its ugly head and take a bite out of my jugular, but luckily they are easy to slay. I just have to take a moment and write what they are telling me. Then I can get back to my regularly scheduled obsession (WIP#1). I expect these to happen more often as I get totally consumed by writing, but at the moment it has only happened once in the last two weeks of writing every day.

Hopefully this explains how my brain works, at least a little bit, without the all the repulsive, icky stuff that will occasional float up.

For the record, I could, if I was in the mood, to work on multiple projects at the same time. However, I don't know if I want to go completely insane just yet, so I'll stick to the way I am.

'Till next time.

Attack of the Rabid Plot Bunnies

So, I've fallen in with a bad crowd. In addition to convincing me to forsake my responsibilities as husband, father, and a contributing member of society, they have also been really encouraging me to write...every day...This is a new thing for me as I have NEVER written everyday for any length of time. Ever. Even when I was writing my angst filled poetry of my teenage years, I never written every day. So, it was with some trepidation that I signed up with this group.

They weren't a bad sort. I'd met a few in person at a local writer's group started by the beautiful and talented Tessa Gratton and Natalie Parker. About 20 of us descended on quiet bar, in a nice hotel, and hung out for a couple hours.  Names, email addresses, story ideas, and twitter addresses were swapped. Having never "tweeted" before in my life, I decided to try it out. This was my first tweet. I think it was funny.

Anyway, I loaded up my follow list with all of the people that I had met or had attended that first meeting. I started watching and learning (which is the best way to start). I started seeing the hashtag #writemotivation. Two of the people from the writing group seemed to be using it a lot. I checked it out. If you are a writer, so should you. It's a great idea. The idea is that you make goals and then try to keep up with them. Your twitter-friends and such help you, encourage you, and say pithy things to cheer you up. It's a win-win situation in my book.

So, what does this have to do with "rabid plot bunnies"? Well, two of the #writemotivation people (KT Hanna and Becca C.) started encouraging me to write more. I started off slow with a whopping 150 words one night. That was a week and a half ago. Yesterday, I wrote 1600 words. Tonight? Who knows. I hope to finish with Chapter 2 of my Work in Progress #1, but it may end up being tomorrow (I have homework to do for my Creative Writing class that I'm taking).

So, here is where the "plot bunnies" come in. I woke up yesterday and was hit with a really awesome scene that had NOTHING to do with what I had been writing up until that point. Naturally, I freaked. I got on twitter and made a plea for help. Luckily, my friends were there to calm me down and give me this advice: "Take a day and write it down. Then go back to your original story." Over lunch that day, I wrote it, all 600+ words of it. I had slain the evil plot bunny. That night I was able to go back and continue on Chapter 2 of my first WIP. Since my scene was so awesome (to me!), I listed it as my WIP #2.

So, if you are writing an awesome story and something unrelated shows up, don't panic. Write it down or it will bite you with its big, nasty teeth.

'Till next time.

P.S. You can follow me on Twitter. There is also a link somewhere on the right side of the page. Also, check out my link to the #writemotivation movement.