The Four Hundred and Fifty-fourth Post: The One Where The Cat in the Box is Reading My Novel…

I can haz review?

Apologies for the lateness, but I had finished the book as far as word count goes – wrote 60,000 words in about 22 days – but as far as the story goes, I need to finish one chapter and then I am completely done. It’s turning into quite the Schrödinger’s Novel – both done and undone. There are a couple of chapters that I might pad, but there is definitely one chapter I need to finish. I don’t know if I want to pad them or not. I might bring them it up to the writer’s group. So far, it looks like the whole novel is going to end up with a fist draft of 62-63,ooo words. After that I need to trim off 10% and then bring it to another group (if it’s still there). I am leaning towards getting trying tradpublishing this so I really want to get the word count down to something that is appealing.

On other news, I think I have a werewolf story to round out the four for the year. I was

going to do something along the lines of “My 300-lb Conjoined Twin” to throw in some body horror and a light poking fun of reality shows. However, this werewolf idea is too good to pass up. The title (taken from lyrics to a Soulfly song called “Tribe”) is Your Tribe, My Tribe. I hope I’m breaking some sort of new ground…because I am bored with shifter romance. I want to bring some sense of madness back to werewolves. We’ll see what happens.

There’s not a whole lot going on here to be honest. I’m just trying to finish this book before the end of the month, and me being the procrastinating type will probably not get it done until 11:59:59.99 PM April 30^th. Here’s to writing while one’s hair is on fire!

The Four Hundredth and Fortieth Post: The One Where I Pop In To Say ‘Hi!’

Posted by Seething With Apathy

Hello, everyone! I’m sorry I’ve been gone for so long, but I decided to step away from the keyboard after Nanowrimo just to recharge my batteries. I’m hoping that I can re-capture the energy of Nanowrimo and make it last a little longer (19 books longer to be exact). I won Nanowrimo as in I wrote 50,000 words in 22 days. It was a matter of getting few done during the morning, afternoon and after work. On the weekends and write-a-thons is when I could pull down some big numbers. I’m going to try to keep this schedule up with the help of caffeine.

Shown: Nanowrimo Energy

The book is coming along well, with the characters surprising me at almost every turn, but sticking (kinda) to the outline I wrote. I’m not a hardcore outliner. I’ll just have something to keep me going, and some note of good lines to fold in at appropriate times. I haven’t had a lot of writer’s block this go around. Mostly, if I got stuck, I would just skip ahead to another scene and figure it out later. This rarely happened, so I got most of the story done. Right now, I’m trying to write a convincing speech for the characters to rally behind and outlining the second book.

I’m feeling really good about this one. I’ve got a model for monetizing it, hopefully to get some breathing room and get this out of the ‘fervent hobbyist’ level. Most of the other things that I had I could only monetize when I was done with them. With this, I can submit it a chapter at a time and give out various short stories (provided I can write them. Short stories aren’t my strong suit) and build a subscription model through Patreon. At the end, I can gather all the chapters together and sell it as a complete book. I might even do that with Dirt Elf – once I get rid of the lame character aspect. I’ve got on already in the current work and I really don’t like repeating myself.

Well, other than that – everything is good here. I’m going to put up another posting soon, then take two weeks off for the holidays. Again, sorry for the spotty posting, but with Nanowrimo and December there really isn’t going to be much time for me. First of the year, however, I am going to go back to regular Thursday posting. Hope you all have a good holiday season and look forward to seeing you in the first of the year with good news!

The Four Hundred and Thirty-Ninth Post: The One Where I Raise the Black Flag…

Posted by Seething With Apathy

I am working on Nanowrimo this year and I’ve got to say it is pleasantly exhausting this time. I’m managing to average two thousand words a day (in spite of skipping a day) and I’m back to waking up at 4 AM to get a majority of my writing done. I have a good feeling about this one. I really think I could hit the 50,000-word goal by the end of the month. I’m working on the series I am going to put on Royal Road, so I’m not really working very hard on this as it’s really a boiler-plate fantasy setting.

I’ve decided to live by the words of Charles Bukowski: ‘Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover’. I love writing. I love the process. I love sitting in front of a computer or sitting at a table with an open notebook and feeling the possibilities rattle in my head like eager dice in a cup. I love giving an idea of a person the breath of life and seeing them do amazing things.

It’s taken me a major milestone to say ‘fuck it’ and go for it. To let everything go as best I can and reach for the sun as my wax wings melt. I know I’ve said this so many times, but there is some sort of energy behind this. Most of the time, I say it all the time, but it sounds hollow in my ears – like I need to sell the idea to myself first before I can sell it to others. Maybe it’s the success I’ve had with Nano so far. Maybe reconnecting with the Nano community has warmed some long cold ashes in me.

Maybe it’s because I didn’t win the Powerball and I need to do something else with my life. Who knows? I just need to get something done and I am definitely not getting any younger sitting here and fiddling around. So, my advice is to go for it – whatever that ‘it’ is. Kiss that girl, write that novel, make that film. Live the life you know you were meant to live.