Norman Christof's Blog, page 3

Morning Pages Entry – June 28, 2014

Whew! So nice to me up at the boat by myself for a few hours, before the girls all invade. I went out and paddle boarded for a few hours this morning. Could have gotten up a little earlier, but I was out between about 8 and 10, which was ok. The power boats were coming out, which create a bit more of a challenge later. I’m sure, if I got out there earlier though, they wouldn’t be an issue. I do need, to remember my life jacket when I go. I went out the last couple of times without it, and...

Morning Pages Entry – June 27, 2014

So, I did a bit more outlining with Scrivener yesterday, and I was getting a bit of the hang of it. It’s still a bit of a process at this point, and not totally 100% natural, but it’s like anything else you know, the more you do, the easier it gets. I think it’s a good process though, and I like the way I’ve got Scrivener setup to capture some of the meta data related to scenes and sequels with POV, goal, conflict, disaster for the scenes and then reaction, dilemma, decision for the scene...

Morning Pages Entry – June 26, 2014

Started brainstorming a bit yesterday, using the corkboard screen on Scrivener, it worked pretty good. Had some good new ideas springing up. It’s the first step in the outlining process I think. I’m trying actually to take parts of the ending of the first book, and use it as the start for the third book in the series. It should work pretty well, based on some of the ideas I came up with. Some, are the suggestions that Emily made, which were a number of plot points that I had sort of left...

Morning Pages Entry – June 25, 2014

Yesterday was pretty good, and kind of annoying all at the same time. Stupid kitchen sink wasn’t draining, so I spent half the day trying to fix that. I did learn how to snake a drain properly, which was an interesting thing. Always good to have another skill to add to the tool box. And I actually have another physical tool in the toolbox, that being an actual 25 foot snake. Of which I ran pretty much the entire 25 feet through our pipes, with no problem, mainly because there was nothing...

Morning Pages Entry – June 24, 2014

So, where do we go the writing today. Simple. Today, we need to do some editing of book two, do some formatting, and then publish. We have a cover, so that’s cool. I think, I like the first book cover better, but that’s ok. We’ll start with what we have for now. Oh, and after we have the second book out, we should update the first book, so it has links to the second book. Of course. I should likely do a bit of research on better blurb writing as well. I don’t think the one you have for th...

Morning Pages Entry – June 23, 2014

It’s a whole new world out there for me if feels like today. I knew, that putting a book out there, finally in a published form would mean something different for me, and would give me something new to focus on, but it was still a struggle to get there. Now that it’s out there, I want so much, to have another one out there. I want there to be more books to watch, and monitor, and see how they do. It’s definitely going to be a motivating factor. I need today, to make a cover for the next b...

Morning Pages Entry – June 22, 2014

Hmmmf! Well, what do you do, I actually sold a book. One book. A single copy. It’s both insignificant, and incredibly exciting all at the same time. Sure, my Amazon authors account is now credited with a whopping 35 cents, because the book is priced at 99 cents, and I get a 33% percent comission at that price, but it’s still pretty darn exciting. Actually, it pretty god damn fucking exciting !!! I’m now a selling author. This is so friggin cool. It reminds me of the very first time, that...

Morning Pages Entry – June 21, 2014

I did it! I really fucking did it! Yesterday, on day 200 of my morning journal, I finally published a book. It may not be a great book, and it may not be perfect, and it may be a lot of things, but the damn thing is finally published. It’s really fucking published. I banished the demons from the day before, that had me paralyzed with the thought of actually putting the book out there, and I really put the thing out there. I even setup a blog normanchristof.com for my author pen name … tha...

Morning Pages Entry – June 20, 2014

Today, is going to be cool for a couple of reasons. 1, I’m hitting 200 days in a row of doing my morning journal, and 2, I’m going to publish my first short novel. I’ve decided, that I will publish the novel I have written so far in 2.5 parts. The .5 is because the last part, has only about 17K words, and will need at least another 25K words, to make it complete. I will have to write more for the third part before I can publish it. But, doing it this way, should give me three titles on th...

Morning Pages Entry – June 19, 2014

Well, today is number 199 in a row … only one more till a new plateau. This is the one piece of work I do that seems to be the most successful. If only, I could do so well with my other pieces of work. This one has become easy. For a lot of reasons I suppose. It is a habit. It is simple and clearly defined. It’s small and manageable. I don’t think of it as being something big, even though, after doing it every day, it has become quite big in terms of total word count. It’s at least the si...