Temporary insanity...?

I um. Can't stop listening to this song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=PLCA58A7E3E967A9DE&v=B_65PioV_Ow

I wish I could explain it. But...

I can't. I really can't. 

I didn't even play Mortal Kombat as a kid. 

I'd like to tell you it's helping my flow of writing, sometimes intense songs get me all pumped up to do some serious key-stroking (that sounds inappropriate, but maybe* I just have a gutter filled mind.) But it's not really. It's not super distracting, but I am randomly starting to dance at my desk, which makes the whole 'typing' thing a bit more challenging. 

I'm hoping I get this out of my system. Relatively soon.

Anyway, got some really nice feedback from new reviewers recently. Which was exciting.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore my regular readers and reviewers, they seriously keep me going. And they definitely bring a smile to my face. But I always start to have those crawling doubts when they're the only ones I hear from. Jerk-like Jiminy Cricket sits on my shoulder and laughs, telling me "These are the only people you'll ever get as an audience. Ever. Sucker."

 

So that's why it's nice to see new people pop up and actually say something.(because jerk Jiminy Cricket has to shut his pie hole. Or grass hole. Aphid hole? What the hell to crickets eat?) The story alerts or favorites are certainly nice, but it's hard for me(and Jiminy) to justify if they really liked it or not. Even I'll do that on something that I just want to get around to reading at some point because it's easier to keep track of that way. 

But feedback! Real live feedback! That's my bread and butter. And the bane of Jiminy's existence. (along with a sturdy flyswatter, or shoe)

Of course, it's hard to remain level headed** when you get one of those fluffy nice reviews. There's that big smile, the warm fuzzies. It's really incredibly a little pathetic. No, it doesn't improve me as a writer, no, it doesn't let me know what I could be doing better.

But did I pump my fist in the air and do a little dork dance?

You betcha.

It also reminds me that I should be better about my reviewing. Because I can make all the excuses in the world about how busy I am with my own procrastinating writing, or how I want to really take the time and give a thoughtful review. But the fact is, I don't do it nearly enough. Which is really shameful, because I know exactly how rewarding and helpful those can be.

There. We started with Mortal Kombat. That, yes, is still playing in the background. And we came around to why I'm a lazy sack of crap who should be shot I should write more reviews.

That's some kind of oblongish, rectangular...full circle. Right?

*Maybe: roughly translated to "There's no 'maybe' about it I totally do. 'Maybe' was just me optimistically hoping I wouldn't have to admit it."

**Level headed: I AM A GOLDEN GOD! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Quotes are Super!

"I could claim any number of high-flown reasons for writing, just as you can explain certain dogs' behavior... But maybe, it's that they're dogs, and that's what dogs do." —Amy Hempel

 I love that quote to bits. It just gives me hope whenever I'm feeling all mopey and doubtful about my own reasons for writing.

I write because I'm a writer! Because I'd explode if I didn't!

Granted, there are plenty of people out there who have...you know. Real reasons for writing. I'm glad for them. And that's not to say I don't have reasons. Or, real reasons, as it were. It's just nice to know there's a fallback. I write because I love writing. And that's grrrrrrreat. (Yes, I'm looking for a frosted flakes endorsement. Please call me, Tony.)

Sometimes I get a little stressed out because I keep thinking about what the end game is. Am I going to be successful? Am I even going to try? (why yes, that is a first draft sitting on your desk, you ever going to edit that sucker and get it out into the world? Coward) Because everything always seems like it needs to be for a purpose. And if it isn't, it has no value.

Which is putting waaaaay more stress on my writing than is necessary.

It also drives me nuts when people ask me what I'm writing. Mostly because I'm such an antisocial hack and I hate talking to people. But, also, because they're never just happy with 'Oh, just a story' or 'A story about Frankenstein as a preteen'. They always ask 'what for?' 'A journal, a novel? Are you working on a paper?' I always feel like I have to justify what I'm doing. And I really don't.

They think it has to be a part of something, I don't know, because people still associate writing with school? Maybe they didn't enjoy it? Hell, I didn't enjoy school writing, but that's just because if you make stuff up, it's frowned upon. Unless you're really really good at it. What? You didn't know Benjamin Franklin posed nude for the French Court in the 18th century? That dude was stacked. Look it up, it's on Wikipedia.

Well, it's not now, but it will be when I edit that sucker in there.

Some people play golf (I'm incapable of golfing). Or angry birds(actually, I suck at this game too). I write! (it's still questionable where my skill level is there. Slightly higher than golf...)

I write because it's fun. No, seriously. Stop looking at me like that.

And while this quote goes completely against my whole 'It doesn't matter if you're successful as long as your happy' since it implies the need to be paid. It still amuses me.

"If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up." —Hunter S. Thompson

Updates Galore!

boo-yah.

That's right, updating. On a consistent basis.  Who da man? I don't care if the Doctor doesn't like it, I'm keeping that phrase. 

A couple of things. I'm still avoiding updating the story that I should be. But I've written almost four chapters after the part I'm stuck on. So once I do finally get around to jumping that enormous insurmountable reasonably sized brick wall, I should have it pretty easy for a while. Unless I completely change my mind. Which is exactly what happened earlier. And why I am now stuck in said location of the story. Drat it.

I've made it my official goal today to at the very least to get a draft done. Do it the ole nanowrimo way. Just write.

Which is why I immediately decided to update my blog. Funny how that whole procrastination bit works. Funny in a distinctly non-haha way.

I have noticed I have a serious problem with post it notes. They're everywhere. On my desk, on my wall, in a halo pattern around my computer screen.

It's insanity.

Instead of having any kind of organization for my thoughts, I just write notes down, and then stick them against the wall somewhere. I have piles that are sort of related, but not always. It's a real tragedy, especially since I've been using scrivener to write and it has a place that you can jot down random notes. Actually, it has several places. And I love it to bits. And yet, here I am. With my lifetime lump of multicolored notes. Ridiculous. Serves me right for loading up when Target put a stack of them on clearance. Oh Target. You get me every time.

I'm also under the impression that the people who read my stories are way more clever than me. Making all sorts of connections that had just never occurred to me. I'm not one of the people who figured out the 6th sense five minutes into the film. So yeah. You're all way ahead of the curve on me there. Hopefully I can still stumble ass backwards into connections that will keep people entertained. And if not? Well, I imagine that's why fanfiction was invented :D

Here I go. I'm really going to work on it. I swear....

Testing testing.

So, I don't have the patience to look up the color I want every time, so I'm trying their post template saver to see if it'll work. Otherwise my blog is going straight back to default and there's going to be lots of white backgrounds, because lord, I shouldn't be wasting my time on html. I'm waaaay out of my league.

Fingers crossed!

Edit: Success! Halloween ALL DAY EVERY DAY! Or the pretty lights in the background. Whichever. 

Thy name is Deadbeat.

Oh, hey! Look, an actual post on the actual day I'm writing it.

Really, I'm going to try and get into this blogging business. Mostly because I have so much going on in my head that if I don't start writing some of it out, it's going to make me crazy.

I had another blog, which I super infrequently (maybe four times) updated. But I decided I like blogger. Blogger doesn't make me feel like I should be important to blog. Tumblr makes me feel like I should be saying something...useful. Or frequently posting. I don't know. I just can't handle the pressure and eventually succumb to my inner madness which just leads me to not post at all.

So here I am. Hoping to improve the odds.

I'm at 393,000 words. So things are going pretty kick ass on that front. Yes, I am still spending too much time looking at excel sheets. But they're so damn...distracting!

Just because I'm making word progress doesn't necessarily count as progress in my book though. I have two Doctor Who fics going right now. Both similar to each other, in the fact that they're going to end up with an original character hooking up with a canon character (I know that makes me the worst kind of fanfic writer in the world, but oh well. I can't help it!) But one is all third person, and the other one, which I'm getting more and more sucked into, switches between third and first.

First person is something I had never tried before, and I have to say, it's really addicting. It's probably because I'm giving her so much of my own voice it feels like a rambling dialogue that might come out of my own head. Which is completely self indulgent. But hey. I'm not a writing saint by any means.

But in addition to that, I'm also finding myself more and more interested into delving into why the Master is the way he is. I went into this fiction just thinking, "The Master's a total bad guy, because he is. Or because he's crazy. Whatever. But I like him as a character...because John Simm is hot... so let's make that happen."

I know, some real inspirational work there.

I can't help that all of my ideas don't actually stem from anything poetical, or...you know. Impressive.

Anyway. So now, instead of writing a chapter for one. And then moseying back to the other story to write a chapter there. I sort of, wrote a chapter, and another, and then more drafts, and a broader outline. All of them on the one story.

I did get back to my other story. But well, now I'm writing a few chapters further along than what I should be working on.

I think it's just because I decided that I would put some 'episodes' in from the show, and I convinced myself it would be easy to totally destroy them, because, hey, I'm making things up. But my inner editor is fighting me every step of the way. Yes, yes. I know that's not what happened, but remember when you gave yourself artistic license to change it? You knew it was going to be different, why are you all of the sudden distraught about it?!?

So yeah. I feel a bit stuck. And it's easy to just go back to the writing that I'm enjoying right now(until I hit a tremendous brick wall there as well). Of course, that's the lazy way to go about things. What a coincidence that I'm suuuuuper lazy!

I'll get there. It just seems more fun to whine about it and not push through it. For now, until grown up writer shows up and kicks my ass into gear.

Hey, maybe you'll get to hear about that when I update in the next week? Or, possibly. A year from now. It's always hard to tell with me.

Week one! …and a half.

Originally posted: February...at some point.

Progress!

Not as apparent on the blog front. I swear I’ve been keeping to my daily journal updates, just not so much… on the internet front.

I’ve been making fairly good progress, word count wise. Of course, I spent much of my time making excel spreadsheets showing said progress. Which by any means, is…you know, time I could spend writing. (Lord knows I have plenty of time) But whatever. It’s nice to see which days I did awesome (a really long line between two dates) and which days were more of…a struggle. (little short lines between two dates) If I could just get some sort of auto-smiley or frown function, I’d probably encourage myself to spend more time writing, less time charting. But ah well, I’m a weirdo and we all have our ticks. I hope…
But my excel gives me totally pointless valuable insight into where I’m at in the grand scheme of things. Such as, January, I beat my goal by seven thousand words! And this month I’m on track to beat my goal by about five.
So it’s going swimmingly! Despite the 15 minutes a day I spend analyzing graphs.

Official word count right now is 274,330. I see you three-hundred!

Also, I just recently read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and it was LOVELY! It’s exactly the kind of poetic writing (you know, the wonderful kind, not the ‘I’m a writer, look at all the words I know’ kind) that I would never be capable of. But it’s okay, because it is so COMPLETELY inspiring. For one, if I ever become some kind of freaky eccentric (why would you ever want to be another kind?) millionaire the first thing I’m doing is FUNDING a night circus.

You know, if Disney doesn’t get there first.(That sounds cynical, but I bet with the right team, it would be TREMENDOUS!)

But it also inspires me to create complex and beautiful worlds! And while I know that I’ll never get to the point where I can verbally paint those worlds, if I can create them in my mind, I have more hope that I can at least convey some of their wonder with my own (un-poetic) words.

So seriously. Night Circus. Be there.

Trust me. I’m the writer.

Originally posted: January 1st...ish?

Oh man. Okay, blogs. I can do this.

No, I can’t that’s an utter lie. This is just a blog to chronicle my attempts to get to one million words of writing this year. Because apparently, that’s when you become proficient at it. You know, according to some study someone did with a college degree. And a guy who wrote a book. And then those other people who write books who say the first million is complete crap. And there’s a 10,000 hour rule in there somewhere.

There’s a lot going on there. I briefly glanced at the Wikipedia.

It seems like a frightening number, but to help it seem less frightening, I made a handy little thermometer word count tracker for my wall. You know, like a fundraiser. Except instead of making one million dollars, I’m just writing one million words. Huh, boy that cool million would be real handy. Maybe it’s time to make a second thermometer…

anyway.

Oh, I’m a huge geek too. So in addition to randomly making as many Dr Who references I can, for no real reason. I’m also including Who fan-fiction in my writing! (well, and any other fan-fiction I write. I’m not limited in my geekiness.)

I know, I’m a crap person. Fan-fiction isn’t real writing, it’s dreck, you’re a fool! You’re wasting your time.

I get it. Your opinion has been voiced. Now shut up.

Look, it’s my one million goal, and I’m doing it the way I want. Nanowrimo says you can consider 50,000 words a novel. Do I think I have twenty original novels in me in a year? Jesus christ, I hope not, my head might god damn explode if I did. Do I think I have a few novels and a few ideas that can be applied to other universes? Sure. Otherwise this would be a pretty big waste of my time.

So here I am. Starting up on my goal of insanity one million words for the end of the year.

Allons-y!

I told you I’m a dork.