David R. Michael's Blog, page 11

A Word From Our Sponsor: The Journal 6 is Now Available!

 
The Journal 6 is now available!
 
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More!

Improved printing, exporting, and importing!
New Entry Report Wizard (on the Tools menu), with new and improved reports!
Improved topic support and reporting!
Improved international character support, including Insert Symbol (on the Insert menu)!
More options for categories, including specifying the day the week starts and sorting options for loose-leaf entries.
New entry editor options like hot-linking images, a running word count on the status bar, format painter

 
The Journal has a 45-day free trial, so check it out today!
 
-David
 
PS I expect to be able to devote more time to writing again soon.
 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, July 2, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday








Tuesday








Wednesday








Thursday


Gunwitch2


232




Friday








Saturday








Sunday


















Total



232




YTD Total: 69406
Project Total: 71782
 
Reading List

Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham.

 
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I Got Lost Trying to Find the Proper Path

 
I don’t remember exactly when I decided I was going to be a writer. Before I was a teenager, I’m sure, because I was already a writer as a teenager. I wrote a handful of short stories and had an ever-growing, novel-length work in progress before I was 18. Even wrote a few songs (lyrics only) and had rough outlines of a series (or three) of fantasy novels. I was well on my way to becoming a “real writer”.
 
Then … nothing. For most of the next two decades I made no progress on my writing at all, or at best very little progress, despite still having the dream/goal of becoming a writer.
 
I used to think it was my first encounter with computer programming, followed by college and a Computer Science degree, that took over my life and pushed the writing aside. But that’s not it. Throughout college and afterward, I would think about writing, and think about stories to write, and read about writing. Damn little actual writing, though.
 
Now, with some accumulated hindsight, I think I know what the real problem was: I was trying to go about writing The Only Right Way.
 
I constantly read books and articles and (eventually) Web pages about How to Write and How to Get Published.
 
Of course, I did. I’ve always been a voracious reader. That’s how I learned to do almost everything related to computers. That’s how I taught myself computer programming and video game programming and object-oriented programming (ah, those were the days) and more. I found books on those topics, and I read them and learned from them.
 
There were all those books out there about writing and getting published, so, of course, I devoured them. I read them one after the other, looking for The Only Right Way.
 
This is, I’m sure, at least partially an artifact of my computer programming education and experience. There is (or can be) a real elegance to programming software. I came of age in a period when programmers were still fighting against constraints of memory and processor speed. As a programmer, you wanted to have the fastest, smallest code that achieved the most impressive result. I embraced this to an extreme degree. I wanted my programs to do everything Right. And I wanted them to be Absolutely Perfect the First Time.
 
I spent most of the late 1990′s and early 2000′s fighting past this self-imposed limitation/insanity in my software development. I had to learn how to get past searching for the Right Way, and go with “Good Enough For Now (I’ll Fix It Later, But Only If It Needs Fixing)”.
 
It wasn’t until 2002 or so that I realized a similar mindset had stalled my writing. I finally saw that I had been trying to plot and populate and write my stories and novels The Right Way. Since there is no “right way”, nothing ever made it past a few pages of notes before seizing up and grinding to a halt. I had spent so much time trying to find the Right And Proper Path of Writing, that I had gotten lost and gotten nowhere.
 
It wasn’t until I stopped trying to be “right” that I started making any progress. In the years since then I’ve experimented with a number of approaches to writing stories and novels, and I’ve learned a lot about myself and how I work (and how I don’t work). I’m still experimenting. Not sure I’ll ever stop experimenting.
 
I still have to remind myself that there is no “right way” (in programming and in writing both), but not so frequently as I used to. Which is probably the best I’m going be able to manage. But that’s good enough for now (I’ll fix it later, but only if it needs it).
 
-David
 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, June 25, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday








Tuesday








Wednesday








Thursday








Friday








Saturday


Gunwitch2


704




Sunday


















Total



704




YTD Total: 69174
Project Total: 71550
 
Reading List

“Wool” by Hugh Howey.
“Dreams of Earth” by Mark Fassett.

 
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The Pique of Efficiency

 
As soon as touch-typing and on-screen, WYSIWYG word processors became common, the peak of writing efficiently was reached. There’s really nowhere else to go. Writing is now as efficient a process of stringing words together as it will ever be.
 
You can fire up your word processor of choice, and type away for as long as you can. We’ll call it 99% efficiency. There’s room for some improvement, but so little that the Law of Diminishing Returns will make the attempt ridiculously expensive. You are now getting the words down just about as fast they will ever be put down.
 
No additional software can make this process more efficient. Not dictation. Not character worksheets nor chapter templates.
 
How you organize your writing projects has an impact, of course, but not as much as you might think/hope. Because no amount of organizing will ever substitute for doing the actual writing. In fact, I would say most creative writing “systems” and specialized software created to “help” you write actually gets in your way. You spend time “researching” and “organizing” the results of research that would be better spent writing.
 
As a modern writer, all you need is a way to put your story into written form–and the willpower to take the time to do that.
 
It’s almost too easy.
 
We’re a tool-using species. We want to use tools. We look for tools–especially specialized tools–that will make everything easier, even when there’s little or no demonstrable benefit to the tools.
 
These days, writers don’t even have to sharpen a pencil or worry about their pen running out of ink. They just have to type and the words appear–and when they type, they no longer have to hit the carriage return and slide the drum back to the first position. The words just wrap. All by themselves. And the ribbon never runs out of ink or needs replacing.
 
The only thing standing between a writer and what he has yet to write is … nothing. A blank space as empty as a fresh piece of white paper, but thinner. Not even a molecule thick.
 
Amazing, isn’t it? A wall of tissue paper would be more substantial than the barrier between us and writing, but that wall of Nothing manages to stop all of us at one time or other. We desperately seek a new tool that will enable us to punch through, at once ignoring all the tools that already exist and how little we need even those tools.
 
We’ve reached the pinnacle of writing efficiency.
 
Enjoy it!
 
-David
 
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Break Out Like Wool

 
In a conversation yesterday, a friend of mine used the phrase “break out like wool”. All I could think of was, “Wool sweaters are kinda itchy, sure, but ‘break out like wool’…?” I had no idea what that even meant.
 
Now I know. But I don’t care.
 
From now on, everything “breaks out like wool”.
 
Examples:

That superflu epidemic broke out like wool and now it’s just you and me, baby.
Jimmy’s rash broke out like wool. He’s already scratched through three layers of skin.
The prisoners broke out like wool and disappeared into the storm.
The horde of ravenous, undead sheep hit the gate and broke out like wool.

 
Feel free to make up your own events/characters that “break out like wool”.
 
-David
 
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$2.99 for a Short Story?

 
Been a lot of chatter lately about charging $2.99 for a short story ebook.
 
Sounds fun. Sign me up.
 
I’ll try anything (ish) once. So I’ve raised the price of two of my short stories to $2.99. I expect I’ll leave them that price through the summer, to get 2-3 months “data”.
 
Get ‘em while they’re hot!
 
“A Fine Mess”
 
Kenneth is the best gatherer among the survivors. Only a few can gather Strings, the floating, Frayed remnants of what was once the edible vegetation of the world. Which is why there are a lot fewer people now than Kenneth remembers when he was younger. He might be only ten, but even Kenneth knows that if you can’t catch Strings, you can’t eat. And if you can’t eat, you starve and you die… (2300-word short story)
 

 
“Baptism”
 
Drunk on mojitos, high on love, and smelling of sex just consummated on the beach, Myra Acevedo went swimming for the last time. When she came out of the clear water of the Yucatan peninsula, she was no longer just Myra. She had become the end of the world. (My version of the 2012 Mayan Apocalypse.) (6000-word short story)
 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, June 18, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Gunwitch2


738




Tuesday


Gunwitch2


920




Wednesday


Gunwitch2


932




Thursday


Gunwitch2


744




Friday


Gunwitch2


710




Saturday








Sunday


















Total



4044




Project Total: 70616
YTD Total: 68470
 








Publishing/Marketing




Monday


Announced GoSH1 giveway on blog and FB, KB, MR, NB.




Tuesday





Wednesday





Thursday





Friday





Saturday





Sunday





 
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Middles

 
That part of the story between the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end.
 
AKA, “the hard part”. For me, anyway.
 
I never second-guess myself or doubt my outline (or second-guess my outline and doubt myself) so much as while I’m slogging through and/or building a bridge across the yawning, swamp-filled chasm that is the middle.
 
Middles are work. Hard work. And only worth it because on the other side of the middle is the ending.
 
I’m really looking forward to writing the ending.
 
Just gotta get through the middle first.
 
-David
 
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Win a FREE Signed Copy of NEW FAIRY MOON!

 
Enter by 30 June to win a FREE signed copy of New Fairy Moon .
 
1 FREE signed copy of New Fairy Moon in trade paperback will be given away.
 
Click here to enter.
 
Faye Woods, 11, and her little brother, Flub, are the newest residents of quirky, beautiful Spring Hollow, a neighborhood where the houses have names like Hawk Briar and Jack Rabbit Run–and where a hole in a park fence leads to Spring Hollow’s magical Other Side.
 
Brenna Guin and Lupe Garcia have lived in Spring Hollow all their lives, though on opposite sides, but they have never seen anything like what they find when they follow Faye and Flub through the hole in the fence.
 
When an evil shadow from Spring Hollow’s past emerges from the Other Side, Faye and Brenna and Lupe must work together to rescue Flub before the sun rises.
 
Keywords: tween, modern, fantasy, fairy, adventure, girls, thriller
 
Click here to enter.
 
-David
 
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