Fionn Jameson's Blog, page 2

I now have EIGHT keyboards.

Woke up a few minutes before 5…and decided that I’d just stay up because I didn’t want to risk waking up later feeling groggy and heavy. I still have a hint of the headache I had last night that I suspect might be from eyestrain. Drinking some lime with hot water, mostly to hydrate me and so I can drink coffee later without my stomach doing somersaults and twisting inside out.

Red sent me a link about deep POV so that’ll be something to check out during my breaks. I also got some books on Kindle:



Deep Point of View by Marcy Kennedy
Writing Deep Point of View by Rayne Hall
Deep Point of View (Worksheet) by Camy Tang

I need to check out the Camy Tang book because it says it’s a worksheet…? Wonder how that works. I tried to see if there was a companion book on Amazon, but it was just the worksheet…maybe I should just open the book and see what it’s all about.

Got a new keyboard (think I’m working on #6 now) off Taobao and it supposed arrived in HZ yesterday morning, which means that I would’ve gotten it delivered by yesterday afternoon, but that was not the case. Obsessively checking Taobao to see if there’s an update and maybe it got held up at the Fuyang post office, like my box of coconut water. Now, that’s a confusing situation if I ever saw one. (Seriously, you deliver to my apartment building, but then you change your mind, take it back to the post office, and THEN bring it back at 7PM? Wtf, China?)

I haven’t written any substantial words in a few days, so I’m raring to go. I need to check out the POV books for some input before I start. Maybe I can glean something useful in the next half hour.

Speaking of which, I’m supposed to get the Thinkpad today, so I guess it came just in time. Crossing my fingers in hopes it won’t get held up at the post office like the keyboard. Assuming the keyboard is still at the post office and didn’t get snatched…

So, today’s looking like a pretty busy day.

Writing from 7-9, breakfast from 9-10 (will do the microwaved “fried” eggs, again, maybe put plastic wrap over it to keep it from exploding all over the microwave), editing from 10-12, lunch and a power nap, and then writing again from 2-4. Dunno what I’m going to have for dinner. I’ve kind of reached the point where I don’t really live for food anymore, it’s just something that’s kind of annoyingly in the way. I might just make some rice and then heat up some packaged curry and eat that with benishoga. Dinner, we might go out and get BBQ.

Okay, got my coffee and I’m ready to dig into the writing for the day. This’ll be weird. I’m hitting the “rough patch” of SUMMER LOVER, but it just means I’m going up the hill and it’s going to be a battle. I hope I can close the day out with 4.8k…but we shall see!

UPDATE:

The time right now is 11:14 and I’ve got around 2.4k to my name. But I also did some editing, and even if I don’t get any more writing done, I think I’ll be okay with that. Did some promo work, did some art, had a small dinner date with husband…I think everything is okay today. Tomorrow, hopefully, it will be sunny so I can hang the laundry outside.

Got my new keyboard and I like it a lot! It’s definitely quiet, but I also got the new Thinkpad too, so now I have no excuse NOT to do some form of work no matter where I am or what I’m doing.

My life is boring. But good.

Starting to think I need to buy another cushion, since the one I bought seems to have been claimed by the cats. Sigh. I get the feeling that no matter how many cushions I buy, they will simply requisition them until I am left with sitting on newspapers.

Reorganized my writing space, which always makes me feel good and planted my herbs. Today, I’m going to plant the perilla/shiso and see if I get anything this year. I’ve already told David that I probably won’t go to Chicago this year. Got way too much to do. I can’t play if I don’t work and so far, I haven’t really worked.

Yesterday, no extra words, but I blame my really shitty sleep schedule then. Today, though, I only woke up at 5:30AM, so maybe I got around 5-6 hours of sleep, woohoo. That’s not too bad. I might take a power nap around 2 or 3, depending on how much work I get done.

I’m trying to get SUMMER LOVER finished by this weekend, but I’m apparently not trying too hard if I’m skipping days without any words. Today, I’d love to get another 6k again…I guess I should just get to it instead of procrastinating by posting here. I need to go to miniso tonight and pick up some more wall hooks to correspond with my new writing space. I have another class today and we’re going to do the rpg thing again, which I thought worked out really, really well. I decided to bring the candy back home and I’ll just be taking a bit every class because I have the sneaking suspicion someone keeps sneaking candy from my stash. Which normally I wouldn’t mind, but most people aren’t considerate enough to refill it when they can.

Okay, got to get the rice started, brb…

Okay, cleaned up the kitchen a bit, have kimchi stew bubbling on the stove and the rice is going to be done soon, so after I eat, I’m going to get to my writing. Also finished the rest of the gardening, so that’s good. The next major task will be the laundry, so I’ll probably hang that up outside, since it’s so bright out and hopefully it’ll be done by tonight.

And yes, my life really is this boring

Took a short break

Hello, all!

It’s been a stupid crazy September. October has been a little less nuts, but that’s only because I made a conscientious effort to relax a little bit and have some “me” time. Especially since I expended a great deal of creative energy editing DARK MOON RISING and getting it to my dev editor. (Just so glad it’s done and I don’t have to think about it for another week or two)

I watched a lot of X-Files, read some comic books, listened to music and did a lot of art. A LOT of art. I recently purchased an UGEE UD-10, which is an embedded LCD tablet. The UD-10 is a mini (10 inches) Chinese version of the Wacom Cintiq and I love it. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to regular graphic tablets. In fact, I am seriously contemplating springing for the larger 19 or 21 inch versions.

Luckily, I’m in a country where these devices are quite cheap. A Wacom 21-inch Cintiq is going for $1800 on Amazon, while I can get a Chinese alternative from $200 – $350 USD.  As a hobbyist, I can’t justify spending the better part of $2000, but under $500? That’s very affordable, so I’m thinking of asking my husband to get me this for Christmas.

Now, the only problem is waiting until December 25th…

My Experiences with Dictating

I meant to title this blog as “HOW TO DICTATE LIKE A PRO” but there’s about a thousand books on Amazon that promises the same thing, some of them even free, so…yeah…

…where was I going with this?

>_>

Right.

So, instead of giving you tips on how to dictate like a pro, I’d like to talk about my experiences with dictating, which so far, have turned out pretty darn well. I’ve been getting a consistant 3-4k an hour from dictating, but there are others who can get 5k+ so that’s why I’m not really a pro.

But I digress.

I’m not sure if I talked about this before, but the act of dictating my books has always been a bit of a love/hate thing for me.

For one thing, I love writing over 3k an hour without having to worry about carpal tunnel syndrome. For another, I’m fascinated with the idea that I can just say whatever’s on my mind and the computer will capture all of my words without judging me. (Stenographers, I know you’re judging those criminals all the way from here to Arkansas. If you don’t, you’re a saint.)

Here’s the thing though.

The truth about dictating?

It’s actually not that easy. Actually, it’s pretty hard.

To go from typing completely stream of conscious to “And then he said, comma, open quote gee period close quote next paragraph is…really mind-boggling.

I have to admit, it really takes me out of the story when I have to concentrate on getting the punctuation in there. There are some dictating gurus who say that you can just add all the punctuation in later, but that didn’t work for me. I tried that once and almost tore out my hair because, to me, those commas and quotation marks were really important to me. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of what I had just said ten minutes ago.

Another thing, when you’re dictating nowadays, you usually do it for several reasons as are listed below:

1. You don’t want to sit down. Sitting down is not good for you and unfortunately, most people write sitting down (I’ll cover treadmill desks on a different day)

2. You’re trying to keep the cartilage in your wrists and arms from disentigrating before you hit fifty.

3. You’re trying to save your eyesight, so you don’t go blind before you hit fifty (might be a little too late for me though, I’m like Velma without my glasses)

4. You want to write faster.

The problem I had when dictating was this:

I got comfortable. Really comfortable. Like, put my feet up on the table and lean back in my seat, wearing a comfy headset/mic combo. A lot of times I would cushion my head on my arms and stare up at the ceiling.

Unfortunately for me, this put me really far from the computer screen. When I was typing my stories, I would frequently refer back to my previous passages, just to make sure I didn’t repeat points and also because I have the memory of a goldfish. But when I was dictating my stories, I couldn’t see the screen, didn’t have a very good idea of what I had said five minutes ago, so there are times where my characters are basically have the same conversation twice, like they had simultaneously suffered short term memory loss.

It sounds funny, but that’s something that I found rather frustrating. Of course, I could always look at the screen while I’m dictating, but I feel like it kind of defeats the purpose of dictating. (Also, I have really bad posture so leaning back in my seat was good for me. I haven’t had any shoulder/back pain since I started dictating woohoo!)

To combat this, I now use notes that I hold in one hand and I frequently refer to it to make sure I hit the beats and don’t backtrack.

Also, dictating is not perfect. I know there’s a lot of people who vaunt their 98%+ accuracy rate, but I’m not sure if that includes fiction writers. I know for a fact that I am no where near 98%. Maybe not even 95% percent and I have a very clear voice and an excellent mic/sound card. So that’s one more checkmark against dictating.

On the other hand, though, you do talk much quicker than you write, so by the time you’re done editing the mess that showed up on your screen, it’s more likely than not that you’d still finish faster than just typing the whole thing out from start to finish.

TLDR; if you are patient and don’t expect miracles but want to write more in less time, then dictating is totally the way to go. It’s been a rough path getting to where I am now, but I am comfortable and I will probably keep on dictating in the future as well.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go and pack. I’ve got a plane to catch tomorrow morning.

So see you folks later!

I’m back, Baby!

Hi, all!

I am back from my very tiring three month long travel “vacation”. It was a lot of fun and very expensive, but, yes, lots of fun.

I arrived back home on the 19th and I have pretty much started working the day after I came back from Taiwan.

What am I working on right now?

1. The Handsome Devil 2 – A One Night Affair (edits)

2. Blood Martyr 5 – Dark Moon Rising (going into edits on the 19th, but I finished the first draft a few days ago, woohoo!)

3. A 10k short featuring Dorian from the Centennial City series! This’ll be coming out this winter as part of an anthology (more on this as we get closer to the holidays)

4. The Immortals 2 – Evolution (currently writing 1st draft: 23,879/85,000)

5. Her Master’s Mistress 2 – Only Hers (currently writing 1st draft: 12,757/25,000)

Yeah. That’s a lot of stuff. I spent so much of my vacation doing nothing. Needless to say, I felt so rested that I think I can work straight for the next 2 years…which I’ve already planned! (because I’m kind of nuts about planning)

Needless to say, I’ve been SUUUUPER busy these past few weeks to make my very ambitious goals for the next 1.5 years. I’ve been writing a consistent 5k a day, all in about 1.5 hours a day.

More on this in the next entry that is tentatively entitled: HOW TO DICTATE LIKE A PRO (or feel like one, anyways.)

On Hiatus until the 20th

Hi, all! What with traveling, spending time with family I probably won’t be able to see for another year, I am going on a writing/blogging hiatus until the 20th, so…

The Importance of Being PC

Hi! For today’s blog entry, I wanted to talk about something more relevant to my writing as opposed to the DNC convention(Stephen Colbert trolling the DNC security is a must-watch) or whatever the weather is like outside (very hot, let’s just leave it at that).

Since ASURA NIGHT has been out for a few months, and the reviews continue to roll in through various methods and sites, I noticed that most of the reviewers touched upon something that never really occurred to me before.

The lack of Japanese “flavor” in the story.

They have noted that my version of Tokyo doesn’t seem that much different from their cities, that I don’t mention a lot about Japan nor do I talk about their customs, food, people, etc.

My reason for that is this:

If you have read the book, you will know that the main character is Japanese and has lived in Tokyo for all her life. Whatever she sees or experiences is not that strange to her. Everything is normal, so she’s not going to go to a izakaya and think “My, this little alley bar is great! I need more sake!” and etc. If I was writing about a character who was new to Japan, I certainly would have touched upon the various aspects of Japanese culture that differed from my character’s place of origin.  ((Besides, for a lot of Japanese people, it’s somewhat of a complex that they be as Western as possible. I’m not saying they go out of their way to ignore their culture, but they enjoy Starbucks Coffee, they like to go to whiskey bars if they can afford it, they like to be considered cosmopolitan. For example, it is uncommon to see a woman walking around in a kimono, although you will see this during the summer festival times, when they wear a yukata. This, wanting to be more Western/cosmopolitan, is something you see in Korea and China as well. They love anything imported and consider something from their culture to be rather outdated and old-fashioned.))

Mostly, I just wanted to write about a woman who, despite her location, could have had that incident anywhere. The location is not important to the story, it is incidental. The story could have taken place in Chicago, London or Seoul, but I chose Japan, mostly because of the whole “Asian woman” legend. Asian women being in the workforce is actually a pretty recent thing. For the longest time in Tokyo, most of the women were considered “coffee ladies”, meant to serve coffee/tea, tidy up the office space, look pretty, and…that was about it. I’m sure there are companies around where this is still prevalent. I wanted to put a woman who was fiercely competent, very dedicated to her life as a businesswoman, and make her go through all sorts of hell.

You’ll see a lot more of her transformation as a person in the next book EVOLUTION and her acceptance to the fate laid out for her in the last book REVOLUTION, both of which are plotted out. There is a 1/4 written draft of EVOLUTION floating around in my Dropbox account somewhere and I will get to it after I finish with the 1st draft of DARK MOON RISING and it is with my dev editor.

So, that’s it. The reason why I don’t go into detail about Japanese life, because it doesn’t matter, not for ASURA NIGHT. In the future, I may write a book about a woman who goes into Japan for the first time, but it probably won’t happen for quite some time.

I still have about a hundred other books to finish first.

Eek.

Music and/or the Lack of

(I might have already written a post like this, but I don’t have much to talk about…heck, I wrote an entry yesterday about how I had nothing to write about…now, that’s pathetic)

As a writer and a so-called artist, music is very important. Either that or Netflix.

(but I’m not talking about Netflix, so that’s a subject for tomorrow, woohoo! Don’t have to worry about what to blog for tomorrow, yeah!)

Anyways, up until last year, I used to not be able to write without music. Music was my crutch and I used to not be able to write without it. There were times when I would go to the coffeeshop for a few hours, find out that I didn’t bring any earphones and I would try to type out a few words, give up, and then Facebook/Twitter until I got bored and went home. I’ve even run home and come back (good thing I lived close by!) with earphones, just so I could escape the constant hum of background noise.

Luckily, this has changed. I find that I no longer need music to write. Maybe I’m just shaping up, bucking up, whatever. Or maybe it’s a part of me that knows I’m probably going to go deaf if I continue to listening to music at ear-blasting decibels for around eight hour a day. Whatever it is, I am now proud to say that all I need to bring to the coffeehouse is just my laptop and some cash for something to drink.

Anyways, I’m getting off track. This is really a blog post about what I’m listening to right now, so…

With no more ado, I present to you the tracks that have seen the most play in the month of July, year 2016!

Paramore – Misery Business

Miyavi – I love you, I love you, I love you

A Perfect Circle – Passive

PERFUME – Enter the Sphere

In This Moment – Big Bad Wolf

Flyleaf – All Around Me (Acoustic)

Dragon Age OST – Dragon Age Inquisition Theme

The Fray – Never Say Never

Amaranthe – Unreal

Halestorm – Beautiful With You

Gavin DeGraw – Not Over You

I don’t know what to say.

So, today is Saturday and Chicago is seeing some of the hottest weather in years. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here with my coffee, everyone’s still in bed because hah, it’s Saturday morning, and all I can do is this.

I told myself I was going to blog every day, just to keep this site going, but quite frankly, this morning, when I opened up a text file to start typing out an entry, I had absolutely no idea what to write about.

I mean, sure if I pushed hard enough, I could probably squeeze something out. (Oi, let’s keep the poo jokes to a minimum, eh?) I suppose I could talk about the RNC, Trump as President, how much I love my new laptop, how much I love coffee, how my Japanese studies are going (it has been a long-standing shame of mine that I am pretty much illiterate. I had to ask waiters what was on the menu, as opposed to reading it. FOR SHAME, AH THE SHAME!!!), blah blah, yadda yadda.

On second thought, I guess I can make a blog post about how I have nothing to blog about.

Hm…

New Laptop!

Got my new laptop today. I found it on Groupon for $100 and I was blown away by the estimated battery time the machine boasted.

See what I mean?

Don’t get me wrong. It’s no powerhouse. With only 2gb of ram and a 32 SSD, of which only 6-7 gigs were available, the Acer 14 inch Cloudbook should not be considered a main laptop, but as a writer who yearned to go outside and write and was tethered to a laptop with a bare 2 hours of battery time, this laptop is more than adequate for me. Weighing in just a little under 3lb, the keyboard feels good to type on and it doesn’t run very hot, which is fantastic. All I need is my synced Dropbox, Spotify and Scrivener and I am so good to go.

Of course, knowing my luck, the day after I bought it, it was lowered another 10 bucks, bah humbug. Still, for the price I am very satisfied. I had to do some tweaking (ie: delete unnecessary items, adjust settings, etc etc) but who uses a laptop straight out of the box? (Don’t even think about mentioning Macbook…)

The new laptop will be absolutely fabulous to take with me while traveling, which was the reason why I purchased it, since I knew hunting around the airport for a spare outlet is not the funniest thing to do.

Still. 100 bucks. Can’t believe my luck.

Here’s to hoping this’ll last a while. *fingers crossed*