Writing, Time, Excuses and Writer's Block

Blame Writer's Block, procrastination, or maybe even fear.
Getting back to writing after vacations, holidays, or any other thing that blips your writer's radar can be hard. In the past four months I've had many blips and can't seem to get back on schedule.

Writer's block?
Not sure this is really my problem. To blast past writer's block I believe a person simply has to give themselves permission to just write. Write bad, write crap, write out of your normal genre or just blast out some fan fiction. But just keep writing without ego and without care. Write.

Vacation?
Yeah, two weeks in Florida and driving there and back kind of depleted my energy. It was a great vacation, but totally knocked me off schedule. On vacation there is no schedule. You do things because you want to go and see and you do things because you're there with others and you want to spend time with them. The better the vacation, the harder it is to get back to work.

Holidays?
Always a schedule breaker. Instead of spending days working, you're now rushing around trying to get things done, shopping, cooking (okay, maybe I lied about cooking), cleaning. Writing is the first thing to take a backseat.

Emo blips?
I lost my brother in October. He was the sweetest, most gentlest soul you would ever meet. He was kind to everyone, determined and dedicated to family and friends. He was sick for a while but when he went it was still a surprise. We thought he was getting better and then -suddenly- CRASH! And he was gone too soon. :( It still seems unreal. Like a bad dream you hope isn't real. You see something and think, "I gotta share this with Mike." But Mike is gone. I still talk to him, hoping his spirit hears me and knows I care and miss him. This also slowed the writing and determination to finish things to a halt. I think it just needs time. Five stages and all that.

Another blip?
Unemployment ran out. :( And I live in NJ. A place with the highest unemployment in the land and no real jobs program. If you look to the State for help they offer classes to help you get employed. Too bad their classes are decades behind what employers are looking for in today's computer age. Even the people I spoke to at Unemployment know this, but are powerless to help. So every morning I send out resumes and then think about writing. I need to be more of a producer. Get things written and put them out there. I know this. What I don't know is why I can't.

School?
Last semester an HTML/CSS/XHTML class kicked my *ss. I would spend days working on assignments and often had to go to the computer lab for help. I scored a B- in that class and almost fell off my chair when I read that grade.

So does any of this excuse not writing? No, of course not. I have to nail down a schedule and stick to it. Help! What's your schedule and how do you stick to it? Any advice?

Short Story Sales

Investigating short story venues and finding a lot of places to submit these babies, too. However, in reading about the volume of submissions they get, I  have to wonder if collecting these stories and publishing them as a book of shorts on Amazon would be more lucrative.

I'm seeing some writers who sell them on other websites that specialize in shorts and considering submitting to them, too. Nokblok is a new one, (the editor responded to one of my posts here) there's a Sci-fi one that sends me emails with a new story every week. I'm sure there's more that I'm just not thinking of right now.

I crashed on Constant Content this week. :(
Over two years ago I sold a few articles there and did okay. Had one rejected.  Then got a new job and stopped using them. Last month I resubmitted my rewritten rejection and it was rejected again. Then submitted two and both were accepted. Yay! Both those were on cooking. My next submission was a How-to art project. It was rejected so fast I don't think the editor had time to actually read it. The reason for rejection was grammar/punctuation. A blanket response I've seen other's complain about on the CC forum. Its like the editor's lazy response for "I found a mistake/don't like the subject/its 1 a.m. and I'm tired" excuse. That doesn't sound like "editing" to me. It really upset me at first because I work hard on these articles. Then I went into the forum and found a lot of questioning about the editor's responses. Mostly it seemed they just had cut and paste responses that they tossed out haphazardly. Some even questioned if there was a new editor on staff that wielded a reckless sword even on writer's who had 100's of accepted articles. After the third rejection in over two years they suspended my account. Three strikes you're out. Blah.

That experience got me thinking. Do I really want to write that stuff? Sure, it's money and I can find another place to sell, but really? Is that what my soul wants to write?

No.
Simply, no.

I want to write stories. Which brings me back to the short story questions. Where and how to sell.
I also thought of another idea which might be toooooo ego driven, but hear me out.
What about a blog to post these stories with a note; If you liked this story please help keep the stories flowing. Contribute $5 via paypal here.

Would something like that work? Would it make more or less than the few bucks a short story place would pay?
Pros;
I could write what I want. Any genre, any time.
Blogs are timeless. You can write something three years ago and it's still crawling around the internet today.
$5 isn't much so people might think, sure, why not.
Blogs are free...where's the risk?
Adsense could be added to this blog (not that Adsense ever made me much anyway, but hey, a nickle is still a nickle.)

Cons;
Nothing could happen. No readers, no income. Readers without income. (so what? I just take the blog down)
How do you tax this? Pay taxes?
I'm not a well established enough writer to bring in the crowd.
It's on honor system...does that ever work?
If it doesn't work and I want to sell these stories to magazines, some won't touch previously pub stories. Even on blogs.

Still thinking about this idea. I have several stories in different genres, some love stories, some mayhem, some paranormal so I'm not sure if I have enough to fit one genre collection.
And I'll probably start sending to the True's again. They pay slow but pretty good. I generally score about $150 a story there depending on word count.

Where do you sell? What do you think of the Story Blog idea? Am I crazy? (or desperate...that's understandable too. :)

Story Layout, Outlining, or Writer's Scribbling

I was in a writer's group the other day and someone asked me about how I outline my stories. I had to think about that as I'm not really an out-liner. Mostly I scribble a few notes on the first page and just take off.

Which made me wonder about other writers. In Stephen King's On Writing, he said he just takes two ideas and melds them together. Teen girl puberty + telekinesis, Haunted hotel + alcoholic with issues, Mother with broken car + Rabid dog, Nerdy teen boy + evil car.
I think he's got something there, the possibilities are endless!
Sparkley vampires + miserable teen girl, Boy wizard + strange school, Nerdy college girl + man with bondage issues.... all best sellers.

Mostly I go by the "what if's" and reach into my old Catholic issues. When I was a kid I was constantly questioning the rules of the Catholic church. This upset my Irish Catholic parents to no end. "Just believe," they'd say. "Have faith." I'd answer, "That makes no sense."
I mean if God is everywhere that means he's at my house, too, so why do I have to go to church on Sundays? At what point did Jesus say we needed to eat body and blood? It was something he did once in reference to a peek into his future. Isn't it kind of gross we mimic that? And why did he hang out with 12 guys? Okay, we won't go there. My experience in the Catholic church was not a good one. We had a bad priest who constantly screamed, yelled and embarrassed kids and adults alike. I never felt good there, just scared. Then he made my mother cry and there was no way I was going back.

So now I wonder about reincarnation. Isn't it kind of limiting that this is it? One life? One experience? Wouldn't' the grand scheme of things seem more complete if we could experience many types of lives? That got me to thinking if we do reincarnate we could come back as any gender and race. What if we can come back as animals? Then came Soul Mates. Which I would have given a different name if I had just searched that name on Amazon first.

The phrase, "A child shall lead them" got me thinking in what universe would any adult let a child lead? How old a child? A seven year old? Younger? Then came Threshold to Midnight which is not yet Amazon-ed. Coming soon.

Any of these stories began with a blurb. Just a bunch of sentences of what i wanted to write about, but no where near an outline.

So do you outline? Scribble? Or is there another way to layout a story?

Book Baby? KindleDirect? Promotion?

Now that our congress has cut off the unemployment benefits I fear I might have to return to the cube farm.

Panic sets in.

I remember the cube cage and how grey and ugly it could be. Day after day dragging my ass to work, that sinking feeling in my heart as the car drew closer and closer. Bracing myself mentally to enter that moldy old building and then sinking into a cube and feeling the creativity cells in my brain shrink back in horror. I fear the cube. New Jersey has one of the highest unemployment rates in the county. Even getting back in  a cube might be hard to do. Retail? Yuk! Truthfully, I've never had a job I loved. Only ones i could stand more than others.

So I've got some stuff ready for Constant Content, will be sending again to the Trues (although their payments are slow, its like an account for the future), and I've signed up for Demand Studios again. Also looking at random freelance jobs. It's a little scary but now I have to see if I'm more afraid of the cube, or putting myself out there to freelance.

I'm also ready to open up an Etsy account. I never really felt my art was anything more than therapy, but in searching Etsy for abstract paintings....I figured what the hell. I'm better than some but no where near others. Maybe I can land in the middle.  I'll have that shop opened in January. Its doubtful it will return any great amount but between that and the Cafe Press T-shirt shop, I might get gas money.

Now that classes are over I have to decide where to go and what to do. Another class? Finish the half finished degree in English? Maybe switch it to Creative Writing... its almost the same thing, right?  If I sign up for day classes am I going to have to drop them if I get a job?

An email from Book Baby popped into my email box and after looking over the site I wonder if I'd sell more books by using them? I still have to research the facts there, but it might be a possibility if it will sell more books. Anyone use Book Baby???  Use any other book promotion businesses?

The times they are a changin'......

Check out pre://do.o.mai.n for a great new read!

Need a good read?

Check out Christopher's Godsoe's new book:

pre://do.o.mai.n

Twenty-two year old Miles Torvalds doesn't need to cure cancer to save his mother's life, he just needs to find a way to steal one and a half million dollars to pay for it.

In 2037, cancer isn't an automatic death sentence if you can come up with the cash, but what is certain is that Miles will spend the rest of his life in prison if he's caught.

A chance encounter with an old flame introduces him to an enigmatic man named Atlas, and he just may be the answer to Miles' prayers. Out of options, Miles accepts his offer of assistance, and Atlas promptly delivers a powerful tool-DJINN, an artificial intelligence crafted by the hacker collective Anonymous before the turn of the millennium.

To a sexually frustrated loner like Miles, the fact that they designed her as a flirtatious twenty-something only complicates matters. Together they will weave their way through the augmented reality darknet while eluding Tobin Maldovan, a former Black Ops operative and the FBI's newest agent in the war on cyber crime, to save his mother.

Miles will learn that in a future where appearances are often misleading, trusting yourself is the only hope you have.

Happy reading!

Writing Jobs and Nokbok?

In searching the web for writing jobs I found Nokbok, a site where people put their books/stories and take a 60% cut each time someone reads their work. Pretty good cut but how much will they sell for? And in this world of Kindle and Nook how many will pay for this? Are the books downloadable? Or read online?
Not sure how I feel about this. . . I need to research more. Could be a possibility.
How is this different from Amazon?
Would it be a good place to put those shorter stories that I'm not sure will fly on Amazon?

Then there's Amazon's KDP. I've been on it and I've been off it. I don't sell a lot of books anyway so I'm no judge of the program. Do you KDP? Was it worth it?

I see a lot of freelance jobs floating around and hesitate right now due to unemployment. New Jersey has weird unemployment rules and its real easy to lose it. If I apply for a freelance job getting paid is always the hard part. I've done some of it and have seen #$%*&% people punk out on payment. Like in painting works of art the money is great one day and not so good the next. Its hard to count on it. Is it worth chancing losing unemployment for? I mean, there are bills to be paid and NJ has some of the highest unemployment in the country. Scary high right now.

I'm pushing through the nano and part two of Blood Aversionsnow named Blood Conflicts. The nano isn't exciting me yet so I guess I need to let something shocking happen. Murder, mayhem, angels and demons.....here they come.

See you in the pages...

Life Unexpected

Still trying to Nano and keep up with other writing. Attempting to find a place to sell my artwork and thinking about an Esty shop for that stuff. (Anyone have any luck with Esty?) And then there's life stuff that totally sends my brain into the nowhere-zone. A place where the thought processes are stalled and creativity won't flow.
:(
My brother passed away two weeks ago. Although he had been sick for awhile, we thought he was moving toward recovery and then bam! A downhill spiral and he's gone. Just like that, sudden but not really so sudden. Just unexpected.

Some people channel their hurt and pain into their art and writing and produce great stuff. I think Poe did this in his poetry. His pain is musical in Annabel Lee and we feel the sorrow in his soul. I'm having trouble doing that. I think it's some strange magical gift that you can push your pain out in your art. Me? I hide in pain.

. I think it's something I have to let work itself out. I write best in happiness. I paint in frustration.

Pushing though Nano is hard, but is it worth it? Will something good come of it?

I think the soul knows when it's going to leave. I believe its planned out before we come and can be changed at any time. I mean, we are our souls after all, right? Did this soul come, do what needed to be done and then by some other-worldly knowledge know it was time to move on?

My Nano is based on a writer who wrote a book about a curse. When a man shows up at her door asking for her help because he's a victim of the curse she's frightened. The curse was just something she made up so she knows she can't help this man. Is he really a victim of a curse or just some crazy fan?

Oh great spirit of the Nano....where are you when I need you?

What do you do when you can't write?

Nano November Challenge

Everyone loves a good challenge! Especially at that time of year when the holidays are approaching and life is getting busier. I mean what's a little more stress in a stressful season?

So what do I do???

Accept the challenge, of course!  I'm taking a fiction writing course in hopes of improving my skills and the professor issued the challenge. Instead of turning in whatever the assignment of the week is, we can turn in a few pages of our Nano. Sounded like a good deal to me.

To make it even more fun I'm going to take the Hero's Journey the prof gave us and outline the story right there on the papers.

I've heard that Faulkner sometimes outlined his work on the walls of his home. I so want to do that! To see all your notes all over the walls would be inspiring. Of course, my dh doesn't understand these needs. He's patient enough with the mural of Diamond Head and parrots I painted on the wall in the spare room and that tiger I painted on the wall in one of the bedrooms. I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't push my luck.

So? Are you Nano-ing? Have you ever? If so, how did it go? Great American novel or another 500 page paperweight for the edge of your desk?







Unfinished...do not judge. Perhaps I needs a Nano for painting...

Can't Stop Painting...

Old Chairs blooms again!

Old Table now strutting it's stuff!

Old kid chairs Out of this world

Old bar stool Roars to life!

Chance Video Final

Writing Time...where did you go????

My writing has slacked way off and I'm sad to say I let other priorities get in the way. I'm unemployed at the moment and the books and short story I have up on Amazon aren't generating enough to buy me a new pair of Cowboy boots. So when I heard about an artist consortium starting one town over I took my paint brushes and went over to say hey.
This place, Artfully Repurposed, is all about artists taking old worn out stuff and recreating it into useful household items or works of art. One of the best things; I get to paint of on stuff. Something I always loved to do. Chairs, rocks, feathers, boxes, old benches, if its not moving, I'll paint pictures on it. The way this place works is they sell, artists get a cut.
Yeah, i can do this and maybe make some bucks. It would take time to get this new store up and running and draw customers in, I figure there's some potential here.
So I was dividing my time between writing and painting. Then the Art shop decided it was going to do a show and therein lied my dilemma. Write or paint like crazy to get more of my stuff entered in the show?

These are just a few thing I painted. The show was fun and after all the work I sold an owl rock. Disappointed?
Eh. Not really. I've sold enough of my artwork to know its a hot & cold business. In the art world you're either rolling in it or scraping by. Its the reason I ended up with a boring, mind draining, office job.

Now I need to get back to writing. Schedule writing time in like I did before. My only problem....the paint brushes are in there on my bench...calling to me...

Plotting a Great Story

\

They say every great story follows the same plot line. When I see a new movie there's something inside me that makes me compare it to the basic Star Wars Synopsis. I've seen this done with The Wizard of Oz, Back to the Future and other really popular movies. 

Too bad I don't consider this when writing my own books. I always see it after the fact. Then I'm too tired of the story (writing and rewriting, editing and reediting) that I just move on. Usually I have more than one book going at a time and that's my worst habit. 

Today I painted rocks all day. Tomorrow I shall write! 

(I do have that vampire to torture. It's time for her call to adventure. )

Paperback Worth $30...??? What is this?

In checking my numbers on Amazon, I look at my book, Soul Mates and find a used paperback for sale for $30. Really? I list the paperback for $5.39 and there haven't been a lot of sales. So where did anyone get 3 used paperbacks to sell for the ridicules amount of $30. I smell a scam and wonder if I should report this to Amazon?

Anyone ever seen this before?  What's going on here?

Short Stories on Amazon

     I have lots of short stories or stories that just never went any further than they did (if that makes sense). These are stories I feel are good and always wanted to do something with them. Now I see short stories up on Amazon so I'm thinking of going for it.
     The first one I want to put up is a vampire story. I've been working on it a while and I'm hoping it goes up this week. So now I second guess myself? Are vampires over? Am I wasting my time on this while I should be working on something more timely? Then I think, are vampires ever over?
     My daughter tells me to go back to the zombie story because they're popular right now, but my zombie story is really long and will take a long time to get ready. Because it's so long I needed a break and that's why I started poking around at the shorts.
     The one thing I did do with this story is I left an opening at the end. Meaning I can write a part two to the story if: 1. It sells well and I see readers might be interested in reading more about the character. 2. I get bored with another book and want to take a break.
     I like this vampire I created so the chance to write her again will be strong. I kind of want to know where she goes from here. How does she handle her new life as a vampire? What does she do about her maker's strange sense of humor?
     Do you do shorts on Amazon? How do we price these things? I really wish we could price by size or something because every piece of advice I read on pricing contradicts the other. I'm thinking 99 cents. It's about 60 pages.
     If you have shorts, how do they sell? Will you do more?

I Hate Editing...is that so bad?

      Working on Threshold to Midnight. I wrote this 500+ page book a few years ago and since going Indie I decided to break this into two books, part one and part two.
      When I look for a book one of the things I look for is length. I read a lot so I love a long book that takes me away. I think longer books take you further into the world the author was building and you get to know the characters better. I loved King's Under the Dome and read it before I got my Kindle. It was a b*tch to lug around but worth the read. Now with Kindles big books get easier.
     Unfortunately, I hear a lot of people don't like to commit to a long book. I really don't understand this at all, but it is what it is. So that's what led me to chop this book in half. As an Indie I also have to wonder if this would be more profitable? Getting the reader to come back for more?
      After cutting the thing up, I suddenly got an idea for book three and a 10 page outline popped out of my head. One problem...I already wrote books 1 & 2 and want to dive into writing 3, but I'm trying to restrain myself to get 1 & 2 edited and up on Amazon.
     I hate editing! I so want to just move forward. I'm all excited about the ideas for number 3 and getting the rest of this story out of my head.

     Then there's the break for playing with book covers.... MaWahhahahahaha! I don't know if I'm any good at it, but I'm having fun.

Any input on covers if greatly appreciated.

 Book One;

     Diana sat down to breakfast with a madman. 

     Eggshells, she thought. This is what they mean when they say walking on eggshells. This edge of your seat fear that the wrong move, the wrong word, will set him off.

     She chanced a glance toward her husband and saw it. Right there in those Robert Redford blue eyes was the mania. That touch of insanity that crawled into their lives a few months ago was shimmering in her husband’s eyes. Like a gleam of another dimension. A place where madness grew like wild flowers. Or maybe weeds. Weeds that set their roots down deep in Luke’s brain and mangled his thoughts. Tightening on his brain cells and twisting them with fear, anger and confusion. She knew if she could get him to some kind of mental hospital they would tell her the fruit loops in his box were doing the jig right now, trying to escape. 

Alternate Universes in a Writing Career

Since the damn Sequester has but a sizable dent in my unemployment income (22.5% cut!)and the job hunt in New Jersey is like banging your head against the wall (one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation), I'm searching for other writing venues while I wait for my books to hit the best seller list.

8-)~

In my web wanderings I found this site; http://writingcareer.com/

One of the places I found here is; http://pseudopod.org/guidelines/ Which accepts the darker side of writing; horror, Poe-esq stuff and the weirder side of our brain train. (Charles? Would some of your stuff fit here?)

I mostly write spiritual, light stuff but every once in a while something dark and evil falls out of my head and I just have to get it down on paper. I think the way the human brain functions will always fascinate me. I wonder what drives people to do things or why a seemingly nice person would suddenly bat a complete stranger over the head with a shovel?
How can you not wonder about this stuff? The newspapers and evening news are full of these weird happenings. And sometimes stories form and just beg to jump onto the page.

I often wonder about a pen name. If I write about God, dogs and angels, should I put my vampire, bat-crazy-shit, and evil dark stuff under a different name so my readers are warned about the dark side of the brain?

Write on, my friends...I'll see you in the pages....

Book Review; Key Death by Jude Hardin

Just finished reading Key Death by Jude Hardin. I love detective/crime type books and usually I can figure it all out before the end, but Jude stumped me with this one. I had no idea what was going to happen next and this definitely kept me turning pages.

Nicholas Colt is the kind of smart, witty character you just gotta love. He doesn't always make the wisest decisions but the drive and determination of this disenfranchised private detective has you rooting for him right from the start.

Called into service by a woman desperate for answers from her past, Nicholas Colt goes the extra mile to get the answers and in the process unearths a serial killer's secrets. We read enough graphic details to send chills down our spine as the author moves us through the story at a fast pace.

I liked Key Death so much I'm giving it *****5 STARS*****
and I already bought Jude's Hardin's first book in this series; COLT

Fonts! Spacing! So many details in an ebook

On Kindle my book, Soul Mates, was an easy read. Now attempting to send it to Create Space for a paperback copy.

I have a ...what do they call it? Sample copy? Anyway I hate the font! Its very light and that alone makes it hard to read. So I know I have to change this. Do I make it Arial rounded? Times New Roman? Courier? Do I bold it?

What about spacing? I think it might be better double spaced or am I only thinking that because of the font issue?

Decisions, decisions....

A friend spotted an error in the ebook, so I'm reading it backwards (brain-drain!) to try and catch the typo. I wish she had noted the page number, but she said "next time" so that will help for the next book. I do see I sometimes miss little words like "an" or "the" when I'm editing my own work. I think my brain knows it so it tells me it sees things that aren't there. Weird.   Do they teach copywriter classes?

Still watching Zimmerman trial....It's addictive!

Favorite fonts? Do you bold?

The devil is truly in the details...

Editing, Time, and Zimmerman

Time...such an illusive thing.
The Zimmerman trial is eating up my time.
I love court room stuff in movies, books and Judge Judy. Now there's a real life drama being played out in Florida and its eating up my time.
I lack discipline! I know!
I should be ...ewww... yuk....editing. My main prob in my WIP is missing little words like "the", "to", "and". I know this but unfortunately there's no search for this in Word. A word I use too much of is "just", but that's an easy fix. I just search for that word in the doc and edit it out. But to try and find one of the little missing words you have to either read the manuscript backwards (mind-bending) or read the entire book out loud like a robot, enunciating each word carefully. I sometimes do this on the back deck, pacing back and forth--I'm sure the neighbors think I'm bonkers.

I think the reason I'm so caught up in the Zimmerman trial is because of the odd law in Florida for Stand Your Ground and the fact that it could go either way. Guilty? Maybe. It seems he stalked this boy and, although he's trying to fall back on the neighborhood watch thing, he didn't follow those rules. Innocent? If he started the altercation by stalking this kid, could he still be found innocent? The outcome could go either way so I'm interested. And ...maybe addicted.

I have to wonder if I'm so interested in this trial because, psychologically, I don't want to edit.
Today I have to remember writing is my job and get to my work. Sometimes working from home, I forget that this is my job and I must go to it or I'll go nowhere in this world.

Anyone else watching the trial?

Indie Book Cover Trama

 Now that I've finished the manuscript and I'm waiting for the edits to come back, I'm playing with book covers. At this point as an unemployed, starving writer I have to do this myself. If any of my books actually take off, i'd definitely hire a cover artist, because I'm at a loss here.

Two covers ideas so far;
First the fire represents a fire the main character accidentally causes  that burns down the police station. The dog is a dog she finds that offers some comedy relief in the story.
The woman...well I really didn't want a yoga type woman but needed something to represent the main character.

Cover two; Depicts a scene from the beginning of the book. You'd have to read it to know but I thought it might entice readers to find out what it means. The "Not for Sale" tag relates to the human trafficking problem the main character encounters in the story.

Still not sure if I'm done figuring this out. But that's all I have so far.

Any preferences? I'm taking votes.

Back to the drawing board....