Vegabonding
My wife and I have made a huge decision. We’re finally pursuing our longtime dream of becoming vagabonds. What does that mean exactly? We’re getting rid of most of our stuff, storing the rest, and heading out on the road with no plan to settle down any time soon.
Also in the last year or so we’ve gone vegan and plan to stay with that while traveling. Vegan + vagabond= vegabond. Thus, the title of this post. We also plan on doing a vegan travel blog of the same name.
It’s all going to be pretty epic and I can’t wait to get going. Right now the plan is to leave on June 1st when our apartment lease is up. We’ll take a couple of months to make our way down the west coast and then east through the southern US. After touring the US for about a year we plan to head abroad.
There are a million more things I could say, but I am striving for brevity. Will it be easy? No. Will it be easier than most people think? Absolutely. Will it be as amazing as we think it’s going to be? I don’t know, but I surely intend to find out. If there’s anything you want to ask, I’ll do my best, so hit up the comments.
Happy Valentine’s Day
My Dearest Faith,
I know gifts and food are the typical way people spend Valentine’s Day, but I’ve never been that great at those sorts of things. So, I thought I would make you a modern day version of a mix tape. I hope you like it.
I know we’ve had some rough times in the not too distant past, but I thought I would let you know that I’m doing my best to make sure they are behind us.
I know this video always makes you sad, but I have to include it anyway. You always tell me that I have to be the one to die first because you couldn’t live without me. This is to let you know that I’ll be right behind you because I can’t live without you either and I don’t want you to be alone.
I chose this song because I know you love April Smith and this song makes you feel happy and bouncy and there’s nothing I love more than to see you happy.
The next song is because it’s one of our favorite parts in “Love Actually” and because no mix for you would be complete without The Beatles.
And finally I leave you with our song. It’s even more appropriate now than ever before given the adventure we’re about to set out on. I love you more than anything, my adorable Kitten. I can’t imagine life without you in it and I hope I never have to find out what it will be like. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Mental health is a strange beast
Gah. I’ve tried writing this post several times, but I can’t find a way to express myself that won’t be confusing or half-assed. Let’s just call it good by saying that some of my emotions are running quite a bit higher lately. The types of emotions that make me nearly cry after hearing certain songs and make me want to strive to be a more social being. I yearn and ache and long with much more intensity. I miss these feelings. They are who I was all the time, once upon a time and I feel like life and conventional society have stripped them away from me day after day. I won’t say that it’s not hard. It is. It’s hard when you can’t be jaded about random shooting sprees and genocide and the disintegration of our educational system. It’s hard, but I don’t want to be like that. I want to care about everything and everyone. I just hope I can hold onto these feelings for a longer stretch this time.
Ukulele’s Rock!
I’m going to tell you a secret and you can’t laugh. Actually, it’s not a secret, but it seems that way because so few people know it. Please feel free to tell anyone you meet in an exuberant manner so you can spread the joy. Alright, now remember, I said not to laugh. Are you ready? Got your game face on? Good. Ukuleles rock!
Yep, you heard that right. Ukuleles are awesome. They are not a joke or a toy; they are a serious musical instrument, capable of beautiful sound. They are starting to gain a bit of prominence in the current music scene, but mostly they are still just considered by the public as toy guitars. Let me show you a few things that may change your mind.
First I have to give a shout out to the local uke players. P.U.P., the Portland Ukulele Project. I haven’t gotten out to see these guys live yet because I just heard about them two days ago, but I can’t wait! Here’s a cover of “Two of Us” by The Beatles.
Then there is the glorious Amanda Palmer. Fair warning, I love Amanda Palmer and may gush a bit here. While she may not be a ukulele virtuoso, she is doing a lot to show that the ukulele is a great way to bring music with you wherever you go. Oh, and she fucking rocks for playing her “ninja” gigs wherever she goes. Her ninja gigs are free mini shows that take place in random spots that she happens to be. They are usually announced with only a few hours notice via her Twitter feed. Here’s what I think is her finest ninja gig to date. It is a cover of the Cat Stevens song “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out”. This music video was put together using fans who follow her Twitter with two days notice and conceived and filmed in 20 minutes, as it states at the end of the video.
Very recently, Amanda also put out an album that was all covers of Radiohead songs which is amazingly wonderful. You can listen to it, and buy it, here for as little as $.84. Please do consider paying more as the $.84 is just what it costs to sell the record. Now, onto one of the real masters of the ukulele, Jake Shimabukuro. He is from Hawaii, birthplace of the ukulele; though he doesn’t sing, he seriously shows you the power of the tiny four stringed instrument. While he does make quite a bit of original music for the ukulele, I can’t resist showing you something that most people are familiar with because it is an amazing piece of complex music. Here he is playing “While My Guitar (Ukulele) Gently Weeps” by The Beatles. It is a bit long, but I suggest you wait it out as the playing gets really wild toward the end.
Lastly, for those of you that really must have the cute and kitschy ukulele that you are used to seeing portrayed in movies and on television, I give you another version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. This one is played by a three-year-old! Aww, who am I kidding, this kid rocks it. Enjoy!
This is just the surface of all the ukulele awesomeness there is in the world. Please, go out and explore the Interwebs and soak it all in. You might even consider buying a beginner’s uke for yourself to learn to play. Decent ukulele’s start at low as $50. And if you’re feeling really generous and want to pay for some entertainment, you could buy ME a ukulele as I desperately want one, but can’t really justify the expense. If I do come into possession of a uke I will do my best to learn to play it and post my progress in video/audio form on this blog! Well, that’s all I have to say for today. If you want more recommendations have some of your own, or want to donate to my ukulele fund, hit up the comments.
It’s been too long.
It’s been far too long since I’ve written anything and it’s starting to take its toll on my sanity. I feel out of sorts all the time. I don’t really process anything unless I’ve written about it. That means I’ve got months of issues just sitting in piles in the corners of my brain. I feel like I should call one of those shows on HGTV to come and help me clean out the clutter.
All kinds of shit has changed since my last post on here. A couple of weeks after I wrote my last post I decided to pull up stakes and move down to Portland. There wasn’t a lot of thought about it. Faith and I visiited once or twice and we packed up our shit and got out of dodge. There are tons of reasons that we moved, but the simplest is that we were tired fo working/living at the retirement home. It was a great deal not having to pay rent, but the management there really had no idea what it was like being us living there. We were constantly told that we were doing one thing or another that was interfering with the business. The most ludicrous was that our food smelled too strongly when we cooked. Fuck that. We’re out.
It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. We love Portland way more than we ever loved Seattle and we’ve only been here for a few months. I think a good amount of our happiness here has stemmed from how much easier it is to meet and befriend people here. People are much less pretentious and elitist. Another thing that is wonderful here is the vegan community. Shortly after moving here we decided to go completely vegan again and I feel much better about myself and my health. I don’t think I could have managed it without all the great vegan meetups and potlucks that we’ve been to. Also, the huge number of vegan restaurants and vegan options at omni places doesn’t hurt.
So, there are some great things about being in Portland, but there is one thing about moving here that isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. When we were lliving in Seattle I had quit my regular 9-5 job and we were living off the small amount of money we made at the retirement community since we didn’t really have any bills. In moving here I had to pick up a regular job again. It’s not a bad job, but having any full time job takes away from time that I would like to use to write and do other things to keep me sane. It was a trade off I was willing to make because we couldn’t stand being at the retirement community any more. Now I just need to find a way to keep up with my newly rediscovered passion, writing.
This is dragging on far too long and I still feel like I have tons of things to say, but it will have to wait until a later date. If you managed to make it through all of this, I thank you for your dedication. Hopefully the next post won’t be several months down the road. Hell, maybe it will even be soon enough that I won’t forget how to log in and have to ask Faith…
Redditor finds happiness and helps me find focus.
Wil Wheaton tweeted and blogged about an awesome article on Reddit this morning. I thought I would take a page from his book because I was inspired to actually comment on his blog for the the first time because of this article. (I’m a compulsive comment reader, but I never actually post any myself.) Here’s the snippet from the article that I was adding on to and the comment I left on Wil’s Blog.
Finding something you are passionate about in life should be one of your first priorities.
In an episode of Lost Desmond finds out that Penny is his constant, after watching this episode I wanted to find my “constant”. I looked through old journals, photos and asked friends. The only consistency in my life was gaming. It made sense. Its the only thing that has stuck with me throughout life. I make game art, keep up on game culture and play games constantly. But I never thought of gaming as a passion. So I for a month I set gaming goals. I found myself happier than ever before. I have now given in and am constantly happy.
I would add just a bit to the part about finding your passion.
Just because you find your passion it doesn’t mean you’re done.
It doesn’t matter if you find your passion if you keep avoiding it. You’d think that if you’re passionate about something it would be so much easier to stay dedicated to it, but you’d be wrong, at least in the beginning. In the beginning you are in love with the idealized version of what you think a project will be. When reality sets in it’s hard to keep going, but nothing will be more rewarding than pushing through the hard parts to finish something you love. Just ask any writer.
Please, do follow the link and read the rest of that article. There’s a lot of goodness in there. It helped me remember why I love writing so much and helped me get back to updating this blog.
Lessons NaNoWriMo Has Taught Me
So, I’ve decided to do NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve obviously been tweeting too much about it because I had the almost irresistible urge to put a hashtag in front of it. I’ve been tweeting because I’m trying to motivate myself. I’ve had an unbearable time trying to get motivated lately. I’m not really sure what the problem is. I guess it’s because I don’t really know what process works best for me.
I’ve been trying to outline this week because I can’t imagine a world where it’s possible to bang out 1667 words a day flying by the seat of your pants. I also can’t seem to find a world in which it’s possible for my to feel at all creative trying to outline. It’s like trying to draw a realistic representation of the world using only stick figures. I’m sure there are people out there that can do it. I’m just not one of them.
I really think the best thing for me to do would be writing some character sheets for my characters. I just don’t seem to be able to figure out what should go in them without a better idea for where my story is going to go. Yay for catch-22s. I’m really tempted to pants for Nano, but I’m afraid I will just sit there and stare blankly at my computer for 30 days and feel even more depressed by the end because I have so few words.
I feel so lost. November is going to be a crazy month. I really hope this turns out to be a positive experience. I don’t think I can take another negative writing experience right now. I really want to write this story. It’s strange that it isn’t fantasy. I only tend to read fantasy, but now that I think about it, most of my projects that I wrote in school were Sci-fi. The story was inspired by an awesome song from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Here’s a link to the video. And here’s a snippet of the lyrics.
Zero
Shake it like a ladder to the sun
Makes me feel like a madman on the run
Find me never never far gone
So get your leather, leather
leather on on on on
You’re zero
What’s your name?
No one’s gonna ask you
Better find out where they want you to go
Try and hit the spot
Get to know it in the dark
Get to know it whether you’re
Crying, crying, crying oh oh
Can you climb, climb, climb higher
Shake it like a ladder to the sun
Makes me feel like a madman on the run
Now you’re never, never far gone
So get your leather leather
leather on on on on
I just love the whole feeling of the song and I want to write something that feels like this. I love this song, but even if it’s not your thing, I think the general feeling will make for some good reading. What do you think?
Oh, Nook, how I do love thee.
I know it’s just another e-book reader, but Barnes and Noble has my fanboy squee dialed up to OMG. I really liked the idea of the Kindle when it hit the market. It had quite a few things that the Sony reader didn’t have, but there were still quite a few things that it didn’t have. Yesterday Barnes and Noble officially announced the Nook e-book reader and addressed almost all the concerns I have with the Kindle. Let me break down some of my favorite things about the Nook for you as compared with the Kindle.
ePub support: Openness FTW.
WiFi: Being a former slave in the wireless industry with a company that hated on WiFi I know that despite their claims cell coverage is not ubiquitous and I know that AT&T has a crappy signal where I live.
Expandable Memory: Kindle 1.0 had it, but 2.0 does not. Most users may never need it, but the ones that do need it will kill you in the media for not putting it in. I love finding ways to use my gadgets to their full potential and putting a limit on that potential is just plain silly in my book.
Looks/design: The Nook is preeeetty. Kindle may have taken a play from Apple’s book when it comes to openness, but they didn’t take not of their plays for dodging the fugly stick.
Book Sharing: While I don’t like the 2 week limit on the sharing a book (most libraries give you 3 weeks), I applaud B&N for putting this feature in. No other e-reader has allowed anything of the sort as far as I know.
Availability: Nook will be available in B&N retail stores! I don’t know anyone in close proximity that owns a Kindle and if I’m going to drop close to $300 on something I want to be able to touch it and test it out first.
Name: It may be silly, but I don’t think that something that is used for reading books should be in anyway associated with fire. Nook just makes me think of curling up somewhere cozy with a nice book.
Price: Yay, let’s all run to their website and pre-order one! Oh, wait, I don’t have $259 plus tax to spend on anything right now, let alone a dedicated e-reader. *sigh* This is the one place that Nook doesn’t beat Kindle. I’m glad the prices are starting to come down, but they still have a long way to go. If I were still a cell phone slave I may have decided to pick one of these up for Christmas, but that’s not going to happen this year and I’m sure there are quite a few other people in the same boat.
So, is the Nook perfect? No. There are things other than the price that could be better, but it is a step in the right direction. Maybe by the time I can afford a shiny new gadget there will be an even better solution on the market. Any of you have reasons you’d prefer to have the Kindle or another e-reader entirely or just want to share in the Nook love? To the comments!
Celebrity Loyalty and Twitter
I’ve never been one to get really hung up on celebrities. Yes, I will follow actors careers and watch other works they are in if I like them, but I don’t obsess over reading every single mention of them on the interwebz. A big part of this is not wanting to have thoughts on their performances changed by who they are in their personal lives. Sure, I’ll talk about how awesome So-and-So is, or I’ll make sure to watch anything That Guy is in. But I don’t really know anything about them personally and for the most part I like to keep it that way. There are, however, some rather notable exceptions to this rule.
Those exceptions are Wil Wheaton, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, Neil Gaiman, and Amanda Palmer. What do all of these people have in common other than being awesome? They are all on Twitter. They are @wilw, @nathanfillion, @feliciaday, @neilhimself, and @amandapalmer respectively. Now, the incredible thing about my interest in all of these people is that it wasn’t particularly high before I joined Twitter. Here’s a little bit about how Twitter showed me who was worth paying attention to.
Wil Wheaton: I knew Wil Wheaton became a blogger at some point after leaving Star Trek, but I didn’t know he was a geek god and author of some amazing books. Even when I found out how awesome he was I didn’t really keep up with what he was doing on a weekly or even a monthly basis. His hilarious and informative tweets drew me in and now I know every time he blogs and read all the time. I even went to a convention mainly to see him. I even got an autograph and a picture with him. That’s something I’ve never done with any other celeb.
Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day: Every hardcore geek knows Nathan Fillion from Firefly and Dr. Horrible. I knew nothing about Felicia Day until Dr. Horrible. Now I follow them both on Twitter because they connect with fans constantly at conventions and in the public and talk about it in their tweets. They are both great and geeky people who I feel like I could be friends with. Without Twitter I would have had no idea. Now I’m constantly up to date on their current projects and will do whatever I can to support them.
Neil Gaiman: I’d heard quite a bit about Neil Gaiman, but I’d never gotten around to reading any of his work. Even after loving Stardust in the movie theater. Now I know that he is hilarious and cares deeply about his fans and his interactions with them. He is constantly Twittering back and forth with his followers and signing books for hours on end.
Amanda Palmer: I was introduced to Amanda Palmer by her boyfriend Neil Gaiman. I generally ignored his tweets about her up until a few weeks ago. I’d never listened to the Dresden Dolls or her solo work so all the mentions of her kinda blurred together. It wasn’t until I read her blog post about not being afraid to take money for her art that I really started paying attention. I followed her on Twitter right after that and I’ve been obsessed since then. Her music took a little while to grow on me, but I was willing to give her much more of a chance because of her interactions with fans. Her fans feel like Amanda is their friend. She interacts with them on an unprecedented level and the real time aspect of Twitter makes it all possible. I’m proof that this strategy works because I knew nothing about her music until after I read her Twitter and her blog.
———-
So, as you can see, Twitter offers artists a great way to interact with fans that builds incredible dedication. Even someone like myself who doesn’t usually obsess over celebs was inspired to write a whole blog post about these people. I will probably even write a whole separate post about the awesomeness that is Amanda Palmer.
Are there other celebrities on Twitter whose work I love? Yep. Am I going to mention them here? Nope. They don’t really give you a great Twitter experience. Yes, this is all my own opinion, but I think that other celebs could learn a lot from this group. I hope that if my novels generate a buzz that I can be half as awesome to my fans as these folks.
Are Senior Citizens the New Teenagers?
Let me preface this post by saying that I do not hate old people. I live at a retirement community where my wife and I are the night managers and take care of anything that is necessary from 5pm to 9am. We love our old people, even when they are totally ridiculous or difficult. I call them my old people as a term of endearment. When we lose one it is heartbreaking. Now, understanding how much we care for seniors I will now tell you how much it sucks being stuck in a theater with them. Seriously.
Today my wife and I went to The Hangover at a second run theater. We go there almost every week on Tuesday because there is $1 popcorn and that’s awesome. What isn’t awesome is the groups of octogenarians that decided that The Hangover sounded like a delightful film for them to hang out and chat in. The Hangover? Seriously!? Did they not see a trailer or read a synopsis in the newspaper? I’m pretty sure they still put those in there don’t they? Anyway, let me break down this experience for you.
We arrived at the theater about 30 minutes early because we’re neurotic like that and like to get the best seats. Just as the trailers start a group of four seniors make their way into the theater and sit in the back row, a couple of rows behind us, but off to the side. Thankfully most old people seem to sit near the ends of the rows. Probably so they have less to stumble over during the inevitable bathroom breaks midway through the film. At least those were my thoughts at the time. Apparently these old folks had bladders of steel, bionic mouths and suffered from myopia. Their seats in the back row weren’t good enough. They decided to sit right behind us instead.
A couple of months ago we would have ignored this as it was still during the trailers. Now we no longer give them the benefit of the doubt. We move almost immediately a couple of rows closer to the screen and to the opposite side of center from the old folks. As the movie progresses our change in location was quickly proved to be a smashing idea. The grumpy bastards never shut up. Thankfully we were far enough away that it didn’t bother me too much. Crisis averted. Or was it???
One would think that 20 minutes into the film and having moved away from the obnoxious old chatterboxes that things would be smooth sailing from there. One would be wrong. Twenty minutes into the film another old couple stumbles in loudly and sits at the end of our row. I let out a sigh of relieve as they should be far enough away that they shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Everything was great for about 10 minutes. They didn’t seem inclined to be that chatty type and I sipped my soda and laughed my ass off at the movie. Then the old man started to snore…loudly.
I’ve never wanted to bludgeon someone to death with a 54 ounce soda cup before, but I started to seriously consider it at that point. Anyone who’s seen Firefly knows there is a special Hell reserved for people who talk in the theater. I’m pretty sure that snoring is on par with talking in the eyes of Shepherd Book’s God. As I’m hefting my soda cup the old lady wakes him up and I feel the urge to kill slowly drain away. He dozes off a couple more times throughout the film, but his wife is on top of it for the most part. The movie draws to a close and I manage to make it through without a criminal record.
Now, I could understand having an experience similar to this one where the annoying patrons are teenagers. That’s something I expect at a crude comedy. I may not like it, but it’s expected at this type of movie. Much like screaming children are expected at an animated film.
The sad thing is that now my wife and I have come to expect this complete lack of etiquette from seniors in movie theaters. I don’t even bother to give them the benefit of the doubt any more. Whenever I see a gray/blue head of hair pop into the theater I cringe and start scouting for alternate seats to move to. It happens at every movie we go to at this theater because it’s cheap and the old people love them a cheap movie ticket, but even at other theaters it’s routinely the seniors that ruin the experience.
Am I overreacting? Are we alone here? Please, if you have had a similar experience tell me about it in the comments. I need to know I’m not the only one that’s thought about strangling a senior citizen with a knotted together string of Twizzlers.
I Reject Your Holidays and Substitute My Own
I’ve not been blogging on here much because it feels like everything here needs to be a masterpiece about my experiences as a writer. Well, I haven’t been doing much writing lately so I haven’t been doing much blogging. I think it’s high time that I started blogging anyway.
Today I would like to talk about holidays. I haven’t been much of a holiday person since the magic wore off of Christmas and Thanksgiving. That happened about the time I realized that nobody understood me well enough to get me something I really wanted for Christmas and that Thanksgiving was just a reason for my family to get together and fight. I was probably about 10 or so at the time.
It was shortly after those enlightening times that I figured out that Christianity was bullshit* and pretty much all remaining feelings I had for the holidays drained away. Yes, there were still a time of some excitement because I was still optimistic that someone would figure out a way to not make them suck, but they never did. I always felt like an outsider that nobody really cared about or understood.
When I grew up and got out on my own I still came back for holidays because it was expected, but I feel more like an outsider than ever. Everybody knew I was smart, but I was still working at McDonald’s and I had dropped out of college. They had no idea what to say to me and I didn’t want to talk to them about the backwoods hick things they wanted to talk about.
Some time later I met my lovely wife on the interwebs and I moved away to the lovely city of Seattle. I found a good deal of acceptance there and my wife loved the holidays. She’d never let her optimism die, though she too knew the religious aspects to be bullshit*. So, for the last few years we’ve celebrated with gusto and it’s been great fun, but I’ve never been able to shed those old feelings. I still feel like an outsider around those times and I hate all the marketing. Why should I be seeing Christmas decorations in the middle of September?!
Anyway, what I’m really trying to say is that I don’t want those stupid holidays any more. I don’t want the feelings of guilt. I don’t want the loneliness and depression that they bring me. So, I’ve decided to celebrate my own set of holidays which are yet to be determined. I will also be making a real effort to celebrate those “made up” holidays that I already think are awesome. I think my knew high holiday will be Towel Day. I celebrate others such as Star Wars Day and Pi Day as well, but Towel Day has a special place in my heart and I think it deserves the highest rank among the holidays. For those of you who don’t know what Towel Day is or who Douglas Adams is, I suggest you hit up Wikipedia immediately. It could change your life.
I sadly didn’t know the work of Douglas Adams until he had already passed. I believe it was a discussion of his passing that got me introduced to Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy. Now to this day I am saddened that the world is without a man that brought so much into my life with a few thousand words on paper. I’ve never truly celebrated Towel Day with any real fervor, but that will change. I don’t believe in Jesus, but I do believe in Douglas Adams. He helped shape my life in ways I can barely articulate. So, I will mark May 25th on my calendar and celebrate intelligence and laughter with a holiday that encourages you to carry a towel wherever you go. I don’t care if that makes me an outsider from the world at large; my wife understands it and that’s all I need.
If I haven’t offended you too greatly, please stay tuned for more posts about the holidays I will be celebrating in my life and how I intend to do so. I think it will be a fun ride and I encourage all of you to join me. I will probably even make up some brand new holidays that some of you might enjoy.
*I thought about editing myself there and making it sound politically correct, but that would not be how I feel and this is my fucking blog so I will not edit myself like that. I need to be ME here. If that offends you I am truly sorry, but please feel free to not read my stuff.
Mystical Creative Hotspot, or Ordinary Shower?
So, I was in the shower today as I am wont to do from time to time and I began to think about how much better I think when I’m in the shower. Yes, even thinking about thinking is enhanced by the mystical powers of my shower. I began to wonder if I was alone in this and decided to take a look on the web when I got out. (Note to computer industry: make a water proof computer. It’s a gold mine! Well, at least I would buy one…)
Anyway, my internet search reminded me that I’m in good company when it comes to thinking better in the shower (or bath as the case may be). The internets pointed me to the story of Archimedes and The Golden Crown. I’m sure most of you heard this story in one science class or another when you were young because it involves him running through the streets naked shouting “Eureka!”.
Now, I’m sure many of you may be saying that his epiphany wasn’t due to the profound thought enhancing qualities of the bath but instead it was inspired by the actual properties of water. And you may be right, but how does that explain my sharp rise in creativity whenever I get in the shower? How about you folks, any of you have many more of those eureka moments in the shower than you do elsewhere? Have any keen insights into the cause of this phenomenon?
In which shit gets real
Feel free to send me lots of vegan dark chocolate to make me feel better in the mean time. If you can’t find said chocolate then please send me your favorite fantasy works, preferably in paper back, because my arms get tired of holding up those heavy hardcover books. You could also make this point moot by sending me your favorite eBook reader with your entire fantasy library on it. And if you really would love to do all that, but actually have a life of your own to be concerned about I’ll take some book recommendations. You can hit up may Writing Page for some ideas on what I like. Now off to try and force out some words…or curl up in a ball in a corner and sing showtunes to myself. Most likely this:
Ballad of Serenity- Themesong from Firefly
Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don’t care, I’m still free
You can’t take the sky from me
Take me out to the black
Tell them I ain’t comin’ back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can’t take the sky from me
There’s no place I can be
Since I found Serenity
But you can’t take the sky from me…
*sniffle*
Writing Goals, Part 1
Sometimes I feel like Dori from Finding Nemo with her “Just keep swimming” mantra, but I’ve found that the only way to actually get a story to novel length is to “Just keep writing”. There’s no amazing tip that will suddenly allow you to pound out thousands of words a day when before you weren’t writing any. It’s as simple as putting your butt in a chair and not getting up until you’ve met your writing goal.
You: I don’t have a writing goal.
Me: Get one. Seriously.
You: I don’t work well with goals. I feel pressured…blah, blah blah.
I used to tell myself those very same things. All the while I was telling myself those things I got almost nothing done. I would poke at a project for a few days when that elusive inspiration hit me and then i wouldn’t do anything with it for months. Setting a writing goal, no matter how meager, helps you keep going.
You: But won’t it feel like a job then?
Me: Writing a novel is a job.
You: No, I have a job. Writing is just a hobby.
Me: Do you intend to one day publish your novel and get paid for it?
You: Of course!
Me: Then it’s a job! You don’t get paid for hobbies.
Now, just because it’s a job, that doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to love it. Get a writing goal and rejoice every time you hit it. Those small successes will feed your ego and help you keep on going. Sit down any time you have a chance and try to bang out a few words. Make sure that you have a chance every day. Yes, every day, at least in the beginning. You may be able to take days off once you have made writing a habit, but you really shouldn’t for quite some time. So, in the beginning your goal should just be to write every day. After you have done that for a little while (about 2 weeks) you should try setting a specific daily or weekly goal.
You: Well, what should my specific writing goal be?
Ah, that’s something for next time. In Part 2 we’ll talk about what I set for my goal and why, and see if we can help you figure out what your goal should be. Until then, keep putting one word in front of the other. If it helps, chant my Dori-esque mantra. “Just keep writing.”
Welcome!
Hey there shiny, happy interenet people. This is my brand new website. I’m not very good at introductions so I’ll keep this short. There is a little about blurb there in the left column and here is a link to my About Me page which is also in the main menu at the top of the page for those of you that are just too good to click on a plain text link. And for those of you like me that always want a little bit more, there are another couple of paragraphs all about the wonderful me after the jump. (See, those “Learn to Love Yourself” seminars do pay off…ok, not really)
I was born and raised in small town Michigan. It is OMG boring out there. No offense to you Michiganders out there. It’s just really not my cup of soda (I don’t really like tea). I am fond of inserting parentheses into blog writing though. Anyway, I met a lovely woman online a few years back while I was living in Michigan and I fell in love. I moved out to the Seattle area, which is much more interesting to a liberal vegetarian who loves pretty mountains, and eventually got married. We’ve been together now for 5 years and she is wonderful. Her name is Faith and without her this website and my novel may never have happened.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I quit my crappy corporate 9-5 job a couple of months ago and shortly after that began work on my very first novel. You can read more about that in my Writing section. I’ll try to keep my blog here somewhat focused on my experiences in writing my novel and what happens when I try to get it published. I may occasionally meander into my thoughts on life, the universe and everything along the way. Whatever ends up here, I will try not to make it boring. Thanks for stopping by.
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