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Flashback to exactly one year ago. I sat at my desk, staring at one of the blank pages in my notebook. I had just refilled the ink on my fountain pen (yeah, I’m that type of writer) and needed to s… Source: Writing that first draft – Plotting
Writing that first draft – Plotting
It’s September 27. That means that means November is just around the corner…and if you’re a writer who lives inside the internet—I pretty much exist only on the internet—there’s a big chance the wo… Source: NaNoWriMo is just around the corner!
NaNoWriMo is just around the corner!
Source: Not Writing Advice – A Writer’s Advice on Writing I guess I should get this out of the way first since this is the first post in the series…What the hell is this series? – A while back, I sat in a writing class and tried to take in as much knowledge as I could. After the class, I’d pop up my phone and load up the newest episodes in writing podcasts. I’d listen to that as I drove back home, and then I’d read more on my computer once I got there. I felt like Jake Gyllenhaal’s character in the movie Nightcrawler. Yeah. I had issues. Anyway. The point is, I went through way too much advice on writing, and read over many different techniques. And as I did, I started noticing one thing. So much advice contradicts other advice or even itself. On top of that, every […]
Not Writing Advice – A Writer’s Advice on Writing
For my last big writing projects I’ve been using a software called Scrivener (which you can get here) and it’s proven to be extremely useful to me. Now, I know this will sound like an ad, but I swear I’m not getting paid for it (although I wouldn’t be opposed to it). I doubt I have the out reach to warrant ad payment for this. But I digress. Turns out this little software is crazy useful when writing projects that are long and have multiple scenes. In fact, I don’t think I could ever go back to just a word document and hoping to come up with something. It’s just awesome as it has everything from organization features and other little writing tools that make it much easier to write, outline, draft, and even revise. More importantly though, I feel it has been a game changer for my writing. I […]
Scrivener and Writing
I couldn’t actually come up with a title for this one, but it’s all because of this: I guess I’m graduating… A few days ago, both of my readers signed off my thesis. I’ve been in a very strange mood ever since. Part disbelief, part relief, and part catatonic bliss, this feeling is hard to put into words beyond: I just finished an MFA in Fiction… I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s insane to me. Going back a whole decade ago, teenager me did not even think he was good enough for college (and I still don’t think I’m good enough, so I don’t know how I made it through). When I got into college and got to participate in a creative writing class, I couldn’t believe it. It was amazing. Somehow being there gave writing a sort of legitimacy. I wasn’t just some dude mashing keys on his laptop […]
June 9, 2016
On Friday, I posted a little reading I performed on my school’s radio…and I must admit, hearing it again…ah. I can hear all of the mistakes! Reading is hard for me. I really don’t know why. I actually have a drama background. I’ve acted in, written, and directed plays. Yet, every time I read anything I’ve written, I freeze. There’s something about reading your own creative work or performing it that I find extremely nerve wrecking. I’m sure the nervousness can be heard in the recording. I sure can hear it myself. Funny enough, I would normally say that maybe it’s the fear of messing up that makes me shake, but I don’t think it is. I actually mess up royally at the end (you can compare the story I have on HERE with the reading HERE). However, I doubt you’d notice unless you were reading along. At least, people […]
Readings and the Week’s Overview
Okay, so I wanted to add this for a while, but I had some work to do on this website before I could…First, some quick context: A while back (last December, if I remember right), I read as part of my MFA class on the school’s radio. For it, I read Knock Knock Knock, a short “horror” story (I put it in quotes because I’m not 100% it hits all the horror check boxes). Back when I did the recording, this website was still in its old version, so I had all of my old flash fiction pieces up (which I’m slowly restoring, though revising them before putting them up). That’s why the host mentions over 300 samples free of charge. Sadly, as of the date of this post, there’s only three…But, I do plan on getting those up soon! On a side note, I will actually do a proper […]
Coyote Radio – MFA Reading (Knock Knock Knock)
My eyes burned, and I felt as if I had too much alcohol before bed. I pulled the watch from my nightstand, and muttered the words to myself, “3:33am,” a part of me hoping that the time would be different. I cursed. It was the same time I’ve seen every night for over a month. Tossing the watch back on the nightstand, I turned around to face away from the damn clock, and stared at the wall. The threes floated around in my head, my mind drifting back to sleep, part of my consciousness already in that surreal world. Yet, the threes came back and ripped my eyes open again. *** When it first began, I did not think much of it. I thought it was just something strange, a coincidence. And like most of the weird things in life, I reasoned that with time it would pass and I […]
Knock Knock Knock
When I set out at the beginning of the month, I chose the 50k word goal because I knew I had about that much to “re-write” for my novel’s revision (and because it was a nice comfortable number I knew I could hit in one month); but sadly, that goal doesn’t actually cover the entire revision. I still need somewhere around 40k words more to go over and make sure they work within the confines of this new draft. So where does that put me? Well, I actually hit the 50k word goal at some point in the last week, but it seemed that wasn’t enough to cover all the re-writes necessary to “complete” the draft. This is when I get very specific about the novel… So, at the beginning, I crafted a plot map of about 22 chapters (give or take one for further development if I were to need […]