P.C. Haring's Blog, page 13

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#WritingWednesday – March Madness

For the Weeks of 2/25/13-3/3/13 and 3/4/13-3/10/13

Have you ever been out with friends or a loved one, had a great night, looked at the clock and suddenly realized that things have one on much later than they were supposed to?  You know that whole “where did the time go” moment?

Welcome to the past two weeks.

Lets start with the word counts-

2/25/13-3/3/13: 4,938

3/4/13-3/10/13: 5,291

For a total word count of 10,229 words in 14 days, an average of 730 words per day.

Truth be told, I haven’t decided if I like this number or not.  I had secretly been hoping for an average of 1,000 words per day so in that regard I’ve fallen short.  Yet at the same time, when I look back and I see the level that ‘life’ encroached on my writing, I’m pretty damn impressed.

I took delivery of new furniture in my home on Sunday the 3rd.  Which required me to empty out my entire bedroom, and break down the couch in my living room in order to accomodate the movers.  Everything got moved into Off The Deep End Studios which turned that normally productive zone into a do not enter lest you trip, fall and kill yourself zone.  Then it took a day and a half to put the place back together.

Last week found itself mired by last minute tickets to the Chicago Blackhawks game, severe weather that closed my office and cancelled classes, family commitments that stretched beyond my anticipated schedules, and previous commitments to see friends.  Oh… yeah… and the start of CPA review, the first class of which was cancelled by the afore mentioned severe weather, so I had to redirect home time to the tasks I would have accomplished in the classroom.

And 10,000 words in 14 days.

How?  Time Management



ORGANIZE was one of my Three words for this year and I am very happy to see that it’s paying off already.  The Magic spreadsheet has much to do with that, as the drive to keep the streak alive has found me sitting in bed writing at 11:30PM when I need to sleep instead, just so I can make my quota for the day.  But there’s more to it than that.

With all the craziness of last week, I found myself behind already in the pace I need to maintain for the review classes.  The move of the furniture has uncovered, and in some cases caused the need for some minor household repairs- nothing major mind you I can do them all myself and for less than $50 total at my local hardware store.  But they need to be attended to.  I have other commitments that need to be maintained in my music, in my freelance accounting work and… well my own personal life in terms of commitments to myself.  How the hell am I going to get all of this work done?

Time Management.

Sunday night, I sat down and did a time inventory.  In my rough calculations I figured I had 21 hours worth of work to do before March 18, and 37 un scheduled, non sleeping hours in which to do it.  Almost immediately, I felt better.  Obviously my estimates are going to be off, but with a 16 hour buffer… there should be plenty of time.

Does this mean I’ll be playing my 3rd play through of Mass Effect 3, or picking up the next Starcraft 2 title any time soon?  No.  Does this mean I’ll be able to sit and spend a night just catching up on the DVR?  No.  But it does mean that enough hours exist in the day to get me to where I want and need to be.  Enough time exists to do the things I have to do so I can come back to writing and socializing and doing the things I want to do.

It’s an old old lesson.  But sometimes it needs to be re-taught.

So… what is on tap for next week?

In the writing realm, I don’t honestly know.  I’ve put a lot of words down on Virtuality and have crossed the 103,500 word mark in it.  It’s well on it’s way through the third act and the explosive finale to the story is taking shape.  But with the work I’ve pulled on it over the past 14 days, I’ve been writing ahead of my outline and while I have a general outline of the entire book, I do need to pull back and break down the scenes a bit more to choreograph the finish.  I have 6 main or secondary characters actively involved, of which 4 or POV characters in the third act.  There is one main plot line, and two side plots to tie out plus I need to plant the seeds and set the pieces in place for the bridge to the inevitable book 3.  So there’s a lot of work to there and as such the word count for the manuscript this week will be a bit lower.

I’ll still be writing every day, to keep my habit going and my streak alive on the magic spreadsheet, but as I write this post on Tuesday the 12th, todays word count on the spreadsheet will be coming from this blog post.  It’s still writing.

So… March is here and the madness has already started.  Looks like it’ll be here for a while.  But I’ll be here too and I hope you all will as well.

Until next time!

Keep writing!

 

 

 

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#Writing Wednesday????

Yeah… I missed the Weekly update.  Apologies.

If you’ll bear with me I think I’m going to skip this week’s and give you all a two week update  in next Wednesday’s posting.  Things are moving… very fast right now.

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#Writing Wednesday Update

For the Week of 2/18/13-2/24/13

So yeah, it’s been a busy week and as I write this it’s Wednesday morning and I’m within minutes of having to leave for work so this is going to be necessarily brief.  The week proved productive with a 3,682 word addition to the count of Virtuality.  It’s also seen some progress made on other fronts that remain secret projects for the time being.

This coming week looks to be just as busy as the last, especially since it’s the last full week  I have before I begin review and study for the CPA exam.  I’m projecting another 3500 word week and I’ll try to have something a little more insightful to say than just this fast and quick check in.

 

 

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#WritingWednesday Update – Finding The Groove

For the Week of 2/11/13 – 2/17/13

There is something to be said about finding a grove and sticking with it.  But it’s something else when you find that groove.  It has been such a long time since I fell into the groove and I think the 6,133 words written speak for themselves.  Some of that attributes to getting to a point in the manuscript that I had been looking forward to writing since day 1, soo the words flowed a little more freely than they might otherwise have.  But some of that also attributes to finding a good schedule and sticking with it.

Sticking with it, will prove to be a much more difficult task.  As I look forward into next week, I can already see that my schedule will make it very difficult to find the next 6,000 words over the next seven days.  Not only that, but I’m also through that section of the book I’ve been looking forward to so I find myself looking at the start of the third act of the book with a far less clarity of thought than I had as I wrote the end of act 2.

That’s going to be the trick as I move forward.  I am not a binge writer, I just often act like it… at least until I found the Magic Spreadsheet.  In the past weeks it’s become progressively easier to make the time to in a word count.  But I’d like to find a better, more consistent, stream of thought so that the time I do spend writing remains efficient and useful.

So, for next week I’m targeting for 3,500 words.  Who knows.  Maybe I’ll surprise myself and find that I’m still in the groove after all.

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#WritingWednesday Update – Stay On Target… Stay on target…

For the week of 2/4/13-2/10/13

Whirlwind.

If I had to describe this past week in just one word, ‘whirlwind’ would be that one word.  Aside from the typical seasonal crazy at my office, which seems to have hit its peak and will be settling down for the next few weeks, I’ve made some significant progress on the road to the CPA.  Well fine, I don’t know if you, dear reader, would call it ‘significant’, but for me, applying to take two of the four sections of the exam in the next 6 months and signing up for the review courses feels like a very very big thing to me.

Without going into excessive detail, I’ve found this week to be both physically and emotionally exhausting, and for more than a few nights I came very close to breaking my streak on the magic spreadsheet and simply taking the day off from writing.  But the streak has become a point of pride for me and so I’ve managed to make word count every day this week.

Last week I had projected for a 4,000 word minimum and I’m pleased to report that I broke that threshold and turned in just under 5,200 words in the past week.

Virtuality continues to be my main focus of the new words and as I continue writing in it, I’m finding that I’ve inadvertently fallen behind the pace of the outline so I’ve gone in and added another chapter to the outline’s plan.  That chapter may come out once I see where the scenes break down and actually get to look at a completely drafted manuscript.  We will have to see.

I also spent a bit of this week working with my new partner in writing crimes, Veronica Giguere on our collaboration, tentatively titled Prospect.  We haven’t started writing quite yet as we both have projects to finish up, but we’ve been revisiting the preliminary work we did late last year and getting the outlines cleaned up and some details ironed out.

And well, that’s been the week in brief.  This week has been a firm reminder that the plans and goals I set out for myself last year, most of which I’ve reaffirmed for this year since last year was…well… what it was, are longer term plans.  There is no instant gratification for me right now which, for someone as impatient as I am, a very difficult concept to adhere too.  I’ve found myself quite tempted to give knee jerk responses to certain things and throw all caution to the wind.

Sometimes that is the only way to get anything done, but for right now it would be foolhardy for me to do so.  This week has proven to be a strong reminder that the plans and targets I have set for myself are still out there as long as I don’t lose sight of them.

Stay on target….

 

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#WritingWednesday – When Worlds Collide

For the Week of 1/28/13-2/3/13

It’s been a very very busy week for me, though not necessarily for the obvious (Superbowl) reasons.  Things have stepped up quite a bit at my office, and some personal drama from the previous weeks has re-surfaced a bit.  That alone killed any writing output I had on Thursday, save for the 250 word minimum to make the magic spreadsheet.

Things are still busy so I’m going to keep this short.  The magic spreadsheet continues to be a good motivator and while my 3,635 words this past week did fall short of the 4,000 I had targeted, I’m still happy with the progress.  Work in Virtuality continues apace and I’m coming to the closing chapters of the second act of the book.  I’m very excited about the progress of the draft and can’t wait to get it out to my first readers.

Okay, much to do, much to do so I’m keeping this short.  I’m keeping my bar set at 4,000 words for the coming week, and with the things on the horizion (which I’ll talk about next week), Must go and do work.

Until next time!

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#WritingWednesday – Consistency and accountability

For the Week of  1/21/13-1/27/13

So, a lot of last week was spent catching up.  Catching up at home.  Catching up at work. Catching up with friends.  Catching up on drama.  Catching up on podcasts.

Despite my best intentions the 20 hours of air travel I experienced two weeks ago did not afford me as much opportunity as I would have liked to catch up on my podcast listening.  This despite the fact that my queue currently holds almost 6 hours of back log from a new feed to which I had only recently subscribed.

But as I worked to catch up, I came upon Mur Lafferty’s mini cast about the Magic Spreadsheet.  This had me intrigued and I was not prepared for the power and motivation it would provide me.

Last week I projected a 2,500 word week.  But as I look over the totals I am pleased to say I passed that mark and hit 4,349 words on the week.

Thank you Magic Spreadsheet.  Thats it for the update, but if you’re interested in some further discussion about this, please…

I suppose it’s odd that I should be thanking a shared google document on which people (many many many people) post their daily word count.  No big deal right?

Oh… yeah!  I can score points!  POINTS I TELL YOU!

Every day you write 250 words you score a point.  Up that to 500 and you get two.  1,000 gives you three and 2000 gives you four.  But more importantly, you also get points for every consecutive day you have written at least 250 words.  So if I have written 250 today, and written at least that many for each of the past 8 days, I just scored nine whole points!

Now the points are meaningless mind you.  They don’t give me an award when I hit a certain level and I can’t cash them in for free airline miles.  But POINTS!

It’s like my favorite nanny once said -

 In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and – SNAP – the job’s a game!

If anyone tells you that writing is not a job, they have clearly never written anything in their life.  Whether it’s a simple five paragraph composition for middle school, a term paper, masters thesis, or a full length novel, writing is hard.  Writing is tedious, especially in those moments when you’re just plowing through the word count even though the muse is being a fickle bitch.

But when something like the magic spreadsheet comes around and brings a different community angle to the writing habit, things change.  First, there as a certain level of accountability.  With the word count being shared on a daily basis, everyone can see what you did and did not do and there is a certain level of… pride… to be had in continuing the streak… because you know… if Mur Lafferty can carry a streak over 52 days then I sure as hell can carry a streak into a second week.  Then it becomes fun to see how long I can maintain it.

Oh and POINTS!

For as arbitrary as the point system is, it’s a neat way to track and quickly distill how sucessful you’ve been and while the only prize is a lot of words written and a completed manuscript, it still becomes competitive.  Because damn…If I write 250 words and score my one point… I can easily write another 250 and get that second point.  And after that it’s only 500 more words to the third point!   And I’d better maintain a daily writing chain because once I break that chain… all those chain points I have?  Well that tally restarts to 0… and while I won’t lose the ones I’ve already earned… I will have to spend the next X days rebuilding that chain to where it was and look at all those points I could have earned that I wont.

POINTS!

So yeah… I’m liking the Daily Writing Challenge and the magic spreadsheet.  It’s proving to be a great motivator and I see good things coming down in the future.

And speaking of the future… I’m going to call for a 4,000 word week coming up.

Lets see if I hit it!

 

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#CyborgFriday – The Next Big Thing

So Veronica Giguere tagged me on Facebook in the latest writing meme – The Next Big Thing.  This meme is intended to reveal a little about the next Work in Process we writers are working on.  So if you’re interested in a little sneak peek and some inside information on the new manuscript, read on.

First, the Rules-

1. Mention the person who tagged you at the beginning of your post (done)

2. Answer the ten questions about your current WIP (work in progress) and/or new release on your blog (see below).

3. Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them. They’re supposed to answer the questions next Wednesday. (see below the ten questions and yes I’m cheating by making you wait until Friday. ).

Now the Questions-

1. What is the working title of your book?

Virtuality

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

I’ve been noodling around the idea of a Cybrosis sequel for a while now.  A year or so ago a lot of ‘hactivist’ groups were making news all over, groups like Wikileaks and Anonymous were very prominent in the news and it made me wonder what might happen if their activities got put on Agent Ciris’ radar… or what they would do if her activities got put on theirs.  Than I began the brainstorming and outline.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Cyberpunk, Action, Thriller

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

There are quite a few characters in Virtuality, most of which return from Cybrosis so I’m not going to cast the entire story.  But we’ll do hero and villian.  If I had to make a casting call, I’d look to Carly Foulkes of T-mobile commercial fame for Ciris.  Felicia Day has my nod for the villain.  Oh… and  would direct.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When a hacker/terrorist group turns their sights on CNSCP Agent Ciris she finds herself in a struggle to distinguish reality from virtual reality as she fights to bring an end to their threat.  (Yeah it needs work.  The manuscript isn’t finished yet.)

6. If you plan to publish, will your book be self-published or published traditionally?

This will be another podcast & self-published work much like Cybrosis was.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your MS?

Still counting.  I started work on it in March of 2012, but see Part 1 of my 2012 year in review and you’ll see how my attempt at writing got seriously derailed.  I am hoping to have it completed by March 30, 2013, but I honestly don’t know if I’m going to make it.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I think it’s too early to tell.  The manuscript is incomplete and I’m hesitant to start making comparisons until I finish it and get some more reading done on Genre titles.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

As I said earlier a lot of news headlines about the actions of groups like Anonymous and Wikileaks.  I often found myself saying “Damn… I wish I could send Ciris after these guys.”  Eventually the lightbulb clicked on.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

This first draft is very dark.  I think I let in more personal emotion than I had intended given the events of last summer, when the majority of the writing took place.  It also already has a dedication in place, which is not something I try to think about until I’m ready to release the book or podcast in full.

 

Finally the Tags

Abbie Hilton

O.M Grey

Tee Morris and Philippa Ballantine

Paul E. Cooley

Doc Coleman

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#WritingWednesday Update

For the Week of 1/14/13-1/20/13

What a difference a week makes.  As I write this I’m home from my vacation, though I’m not completely settled back in.  Laundry still needs to be done, my home office needs to be cleaned of the mail I accumulated in my absence, and I’ve got a lot of catch up work to do at the office.

The batteries are charged up again, though I don’t feel the same momentum that I often do coming out of a convention such as Balticon.  It’s hard to put into words exactly what I’m taking out of this past week, but if I had to, I would say that I feel…stronger.  Which is good because as I look forward to the coming weeks and months, I realize more and more just how much is on my plate and I realize just how much strength I’m going to need to see this all through.

Now on to the writing side of things.

Depending on how you look at it, the vacation either screwed up my muse or gave her a much needed defibrillation.  I fell short of my 2,500 word goal for this week but at 2,010 new words this week, I’m continuing to build word counts each week and slowly bring myself back to a pace I’d like to maintain.  Many of those words were while I was flying home, but for a bit I found that ‘zen’ where the words were just free flowing and natural.  I’ve not had that in a very long time.  So I’ll call that a win.

I’m not sure what to prognosticate for this week given several variables of my personal and profesional life, so I’ll hold it to the same 2,500 words as last week.

In other news, if you’re not a fan of my Facebook page, you’ve missed out on a small sneak preview of the second Cybrosis novel.  I was tagged in a writing Meme which required me to turn to page 77 of the manuscript, count down 7 lines, and post up the next 7 lines from the book.  They aren’t too spoilery, but they do reveal something about one character’s personal story arc in the novel so I strongly recommend you check it out… and yeah I’m going to say it… like the page.

I’ll be putting other random excerpts and writing snippets from time to time as I work, but I’ve decided that the only place you’ll find them will be my Facebook fan page.  So, if you’re not already there, I strongly encourage you to check that page out.

Until next week!

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