The ever prolific Chris Miller a new site dedicated to learning by doing. That initial post resonated with me. I’ve felt that rush he’s talking about, and I’m thankful to Chris for allowing me to contribute.
My first contribution covers one of the many ways I use Python to bend iTunes to my will. Check it outeverywhere. He’s just stealthy about it. If he were ninja we’d all be dead by now. I could easily see him becoming some kind of evil genius.
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Yikes! It’s September and I never posted my “Writing Update” for July. I’ve been busy, and one of the things I’ve been busy doing is taking Holly Lisle‘s new online course: How to Think Sideways. I’m really enjoying the course, and I’m amazed at how well some of the techniques are working for me.
The first section of the course is all about ideas. If you write anything like me, sometimes you get ideas that seem to almost write themselves. In my case a lot of these had themes of objects that seemed to pop up in multiple otherwise unrelated stories. One of the first things I got out of this course was a much fuller understanding of what this means, how to map out the things that set off my imagination, and how to use this understanding to tap into story ideas in a more “on demand” fashion. It’s like finally having the address for that P.O. Box in Schenectady.
One of my biggest problem with ideas is that I do get a lot of themTalyn, three as examples of what not to do, and the version that sold to Tor (that’s about 150 pages of examples for one lesson).
The second section (which I’m getting into now) is about planning. What to plan. What not to plan. How to avoid over-planning. How to plan and still allow things to grow organically. This is something I’ve struggled with over numerous short stories and three novels, and I welcome any help in making sense of my experiences.
The first run of this course (300 seats) sold out fast. Holly has opened up sign ups between now and September 8th, at 9am EDT on an invitation only basis. If it’s sounds at all interesting, consider yourself invited.
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I’m incredibly excited to announce that I’m now an official contributor to MINE. MINE, a pop-culture blog that digs a bit deeper, is the brain child of author/podcaster JC Hutchins, and I’m honored to listed amongst all the other great folks on board.
MINE is your one-stop shop for entertainment news, crazy rumors, Internet memes, whimsical news bites, music, gossip … you name it. We’ve amassed a small army of savvy, slightly-snarky writers — we call them “MINERS” — dedicated to extracting the most fun and interesting stuff from the webscape.
We dig bubblegum pop, video games, TV, podcasts and vidcasts, rock ‘n roll and R&B, movies (if they’ve got fireballs and giant robots, we’re so there), celeb gossip, nutty YouTube videos, the list goes on. Like you, our interests are all over the place, and we’re gunning to be the first online place you visit for the fantastical, fascinating and frivolous.
So far I’ve MINED up something truly evil, and truly awesome, and some incredible new software that will let you walk through your photos. I hope you’ll enjoy my contributions, and be sure to check out all the great content MINE has to offer.
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Here we go again. By now you should know the drill. I wonder where the time went, then blab on about my writing this month. I think I’ve been letting these posts take on too much weight so I’m going to try and breeze through this one1. I apologize for the lack of variety in my postings, but I’ve been using what free time I can on my writing.
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June is here, so it’s time to post my monthly writing update1. My concerted effort to try and hit at least 550 words a day in May paid off, and I often found myself blowing past 1000 words some days when things really got going. I was able to build good momentum that carried me from day to day2.
I managed at least 13,697 words this month. I’m not sure what the exact number is because I’ve become accustomed to pulling my totals from my twitter archive and I found that a few tweets I thought had gone out either didn’t or were lost3. Even without my full number of words I did better this month than last, and that’s what matters. Of course, since I finished the big project, the question now is “What’s next?”
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Just a quick post to note that yesterday I finally typed “THE END” on the first draft of this latest novel. I’ll post about it in more detail soon, but I wanted to thank all the folks who offered encouragement and support throughout the process. You know who you are. I’d list you all, but I’m sure I’d leave someone out 1(but if you can always list yourselves by leaving comments).
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May already? I feel like I just posted one of these. Sorry for the lack of other content around here, but I’ve been pretty much spending any and all time I carved out to write on the novel. How did I do on the “write every day” front? Well, I missed two days in April: my eldest daughter’s birthday, and my wife’s birthday. I’m happy to excuse myself in those cases1.
I cranked out 12,926 words, making April an improvement on last month. While I did miss two days I was more consistent in my output I’m pretty sure this comes down to having a daily goal of 550 words, which I didn’t always make, but it seemed to work better than “some words”. Read on for the breakdown
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March was not a great month for me. I got pretty sick, and on March 24th I was too out of it to write. But I did manage to go eighty three days straight without missing a day. I’ve also been working long hours, which caused me to somehow miss another day as well. I’m still not feeling 100%, but I’m getting there. I wrote 11,781 words this month, making it my worst so far this year.
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