In my less-than-famous opinion

Posted on January 31, 2015 by fictionalpenguin under General Writing-Related Posts, One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0, Posts of a Rant-like Nature

Before this continues, I want to point out that this isn’t today’s installment towards One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0, which should sound a touch insane as that means I’m deliberately making it a point to force myself to write two posts today. Few people have accused me of having particularly good ideas, however, so this makes sense. Moving along.

Actually, I lied. I think I will use this for today’s post and follow with the other, thematically appropriate idea anyway. Not sorry.

Something I can state as purely fact, with neither pride nor disappointment, is that I haven’t really read much of A Song of Ice and Fire. I usually hit a point in Game of Thrones where, despite loving fantasy novels and having read other titanic titles such as the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (plus The Hobbit, before it became a trilogy), I become so supremely bored that reading another page borders on self-inflicted torture. There are plenty of people I know who absolutely love George R.R. Martin’s behemoth heptalogy, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The point I’m meandering toward here is that the most common complaint I hear from these A Song of Ice and Fire fans is that Martin is writing too slowly. That he’ll probably die before he finishes the series, given his advanced age and larger-than-average stature. Fans of Robert Jordan’s works who also enjoy A Song of Ice and Fire are probably already bracing for the worst. Oh, and then there’s the small matter of the Game of Thrones series on HBO having a strong chance of completing the series before the books can.

These criticisms aren’t exactly isolated, and apparently they aren’t welcomed by George R.R. Martin, especially those regarding his death.

Pictured: George R.R. Martin’s response to suggestions he’ll die before his books are finished. Or one very angry Santa Claus.

Continue reading →

Misadventures in writing a second novel

Posted on January 20, 2015 by fictionalpenguin under General Writing-Related Posts

Oh, wow. How far is it into January again? I’m pretty sure the year just started yesterday.

Unless I’m actually a time-traveler who doesn’t realize he’s a time-traveler…

It goes without saying that I’m a little dazed and confused. I’d like to shift the blame to being a time-traveler, but I think this gloomy, post-Christmas gray-and-frozen weather is to blame for my inability to remember what day it is. What I do know, however, is in this haze of work and naps and new things brought along with the changing over to a new year (or a New Year) has also got me working on something new and exciting, and that’s lead to an interesting couple of revelations.

The something new is a new novel-project-mess, which I may have mentioned. It’s another new novel. I lose track because I start too many projects only to let them wander around My Documents, alone and bored until I remember they exist. All of this is especially worth talking about now because it was around this time last year that I went absolutely crazy in terms of cranking out new pages of material for Joshua Harkin and the Wicked Nightmare King, a title I have grown to regret as it might as well read Joshua Harkin and the Paragraph-Long Title.

Progress is a bit more slow than with Joshua’s Nightmares (I’m aiming for brevity here, people), taking into consideration I have a different job than I had this time last year, complete with different hours, responsibilities, and so on. I am also, I’ve found, more prone to taking naps. That’s something I still need to work on.

What I’m also noticing, however, is that this novel has already taken on enough of a life of its own that it’s impossible to really compare it to its predecessor in any real, meaningful way. Joshua’s Nightmares was general fiction in the broadest sense. It features elements of sci-fi, fantasy, humor, horror, and so on. Current Novel Without a Name (the file name, which doesn’t really betray much in terms of plot, is currently The Princess, The Lich, and Some Murders) is more restricted in that it’s a blend of humor and fantasy, skipping out on sci-fi (read as “this will be lacking in epic battles between space pirates”).

The plot itself is taking more time to unfold, as I don’t want to rush getting the major players where they need to be. Events need to unfold over the right amount of time, and getting that figured out is taking up…well, more time.

Fortunately, I can say I’m starting the year off with plenty of writing instead of plenty of slacking, as even on my worst days I’m still adding to this project’s word count.

Of course, there’s always Joshua Harkin and the Wicked Nightmare King to keep busy with until this book is finished (and eventually published, I hope). Definitely just a little proud of having a four-point-three star rating for my first novel. Please check it out and, if you’re feeling extra generous, write a review once you’re done. I’ll be donating 50% of the money I earn from book sales to the American Cancer Society via Relay for Life.

Wherever you are, whatever you’re creating, and no matter how many days you forgot just what point in the week it is, I hope you’re all having a good start to this new year so far.

Today’s writing tools and companions

Posted on January 7, 2015 by fictionalpenguin under General Writing-Related Posts

While I am not overly fond of handwritten notes and so on, as typing has always been the far more effective method for me, I’m trying to see if using a means of writing that lacks internet access will help or hinder my usual productivity (or lack of productivity, as it seems to be at times).

The notebooks and pen. Not pictured: access to millions of pictures featuring cats doing silly things.

And, of course, I need some company…which is where these come into play, I guess.

Confession: I may have just gotten bored and picture-happy.

Without further delay, I’m off to hopeful productivity. Ignoring, of course, that I have just been chosen as Marceline’s snoozing spot. Happy writing, folks. Try to stay warm.

Become your own hero

Posted on December 5, 2014 by fictionalpenguin under General Writing-Related Posts

And other one-sentence platitudes straight from the School of Shallow-Thinking Drivel-Poop.

I jest.

A very big influence in my writing, which is the same very big thing that can be applied to most any artist and their works, is the works of authors I hold in very high regard. Pratchett, Gaiman, Moore, and so on. People who have written works (books, short stories, and anything else) that have left me wanting to create something just as amazing as what I’d just read. Writing with words blended in such a masterful way that I just had to sit down and get to my own creative processes. This is both a wonderful and treacherous thing as it makes creating a balancing act.

On one hand it would be very easy to follow in the footsteps of one or more of the previously mentioned writers, borrowing bits and pieces of their styles and voices as it suited me. I imagine, with the right level of effort and patience, such writing could yield a very strong end result that would read almost entirely (but not quite) like a work of my own hard labors. Continue reading →

The good, the bad, and the ugly of down-time

Posted on September 2, 2014 by fictionalpenguin under General Writing-Related Posts, Misadventures in Fiction, Misadventures in Non-Fiction, One Hundred Days of Blogging

Well-known fact: I have poor time-management skills for someone who works a 40+ hour a week job but also wants to become a relatively well-known writer. Or maybe it’s a little-known fact for some of you, in which case I’ll take a moment and appreciate my good fortune that not all of my readers readily identify me as a terrible, lazy slacker.

Let me ruin that for you. I came home from my first day back at work and napped, off and on, for about two hours. My body doesn’t always appreciate naps, but it seemed like a particularly necessary evil tonight for some reason. Probably because not being at work for eleven days and then returning after a day of furniture shopping makes for a rather tired person who can’t stop thinking “I need a vacation”. During my vacation, which had been filled with plans of creative time while Jason worked and potentially drunken shenanigans while we hung out, I accomplished far less than I had hoped to during my plotting of said vacation. My world-building for the still-unnamed novel project found some good points here and there, and a couple characters were really fleshed out more than I could have hoped. However, this was not nearly what I envisioned myself getting done.

I’m only somewhat okay with calling this more of a success than a failure, if only because failure seems to indicate there was absolutely no movement towards my goals (which included writing multiple short stories, sending them off for consideration, and accomplishing a great deal towards the page count of the previously mentioned novel project). I can’t, even in my magnificent self-loathing, call last week a complete failure, anyway. Continue reading →

Recent short story shenanigans, and other news

Posted on May 20, 2014 by fictionalpenguin under General Writing-Related Posts

Or “What I’ve been up to while I’m not working and sleeping, other than swearing and spending money.”

I really wanted to make this post from my Surface 2, which is a glorious piece of technology that I’ve become quite attached to already. Spoilers: I’ve only taken five pictures with it, and they’re all of my girlfriend and our cats. I live on the wilder side of life. However, the browser of choice on the Surface is (surprise) Internet Explorer. My love of updating my WordPress page clashed with my overwhelming dislike of IE (I accidentally opened it on my laptop recently and it had something about how I should use the best browser for Windows 8; I’m using Chrome, by the way). It did, however, come with a free copy of Office on it, and that’s a damn powerful selling point for me. Years and years of using Microsoft Word have transformed it into my word processor of choice, and I honestly don’t think I could go with anything else (yes, I realize there is plenty of other software out there that’s practically identical to Word in form and function; don’t ruin this for me). I’ve actually been writing on my Surface (using Word), saving it to my cloud storage, and then retrieving it on my laptop for when I send it off for proofreading and the likes. I didn’t mean to turn this into a shameless plug for the Microsoft Surface tablet, but I’m kind of okay that it happened that way. PS: if any kindly folks at Microsoft happen upon this and think, “You know what we like? Publicity and nice things about our products,” and you’re feeling generous, I’m not saying I’d accept a free Surface 3 Pro, but I’m also saying if one showed up in the mail that I wouldn’t reject it by any means.

Moving along.

My brain’s been fixated on normal situations with supernatural/abnormal things dropped into them. Think imaginary friends who can be heard by people other than the individual who imagined them into existence. That sort of thing. It started innocent enough with one short story idea on a rainy, dreary day, and branched off into two ideas. Those two ideas became three ideas, and then a forth one followed while I was at work today. Since I have tomorrow off, the plan is to write the rest of each of those drafts and send them off for proofreading. I’m not sharing those here, though. I don’t mean that in the I-won’t-share-my-toys-with-you-guys way so much as the I-want-to-try-getting-things-published way. Fingers, toes, and other appendages crossed there (if you’re a Lovecraftian horror, take a moment and cross some of your tendrils, tentacles, and other slimy, soul-maiming limbs for me, please; I’m a big supporter of your works, and would appreciate some reciprocity).

The other news: I applied to Screen Robot to be a contributing writer. They liked what they saw of my work and added me on. Now I’m just waiting to hear back before I start writing for them on an irregular basis. I kid, of course. We all know I’m super responsible and great at keeping a schedule. Stop laughing at that. It’s not funny, damn it.

The other other news that happened just today was a brainstorm of sorts while I was driving to an appointment. It’s also something I’ll probably share here, unless it turns out to be awful. I decided it would be fun to write a series of short stories (not necessarily interrelated or anything) around a CD. I’ve been listening to Lindsey Stirling’s new CD, Shatter Me, like it’s my second job. Brilliant, wonderful stuff. Apart from being great travel music, it’s also really easy to get into it and picture worlds forming out of the music notes. We’ll see how this pans out.

Mostly, though, I’ve hit a wall with all of my other projects, I’m still waiting to hear if “Death at Teatime” has been accepted or not (I’m willing to go out on a limb and guess no, but that’s my inner Negative Nancy being a jagoff again).

What sort of inspiration has sneaked up on, or violently struck, any of you lately?

Accepting small failures, and moving on

Posted on May 12, 2014 by fictionalpenguin under General Writing-Related Posts, Posts of a Rant-like Nature

Or “I’ll admit I’m not some sort of superhero, even if I’m an infallible, god-like being who knows no parallels.” As a related point of interest to this sub-title: when I claim to be infallible in front of my Grandma June, she typically responds by calling me a shithead. If that doesn’t merit sharing, I don’t know what does.

This goes back to my last post a little, and by a little I mean a good bit. I’m not sorry. It’s been a long, tiring day, and my internal clock is telling me to go to bed.

My creative process is far from complex, and will probably sound fairly familiar to some of you. There are days when I’ll manage to churn out pages upon pages of material. I won’t take breaks, not even for food or sleep. Sometimes, I end those days feeling immensely proud of the work I’ve done, and other times I’ll go to bed knowing I’ll spend a good deal of the next writing session pressing down the Backspace key. Regardless, those days are full of creativity, and so they make me undeniably happy. Continue reading →

The What-If and Why-Not-Me monsters are out in full-force tonight

Posted on May 10, 2014 by fictionalpenguin under General Writing-Related Posts

Or “I should really be getting some sleep, but drowsy medications (save for Nyquil) have the opposite effect on me,” with just a dash of “I feel guilty for what I perceive as neglecting my writing, and Misadventures in Fiction.”

Let me start by getting this out of the way: I do not handle being sick well at all. I’m a total wimp about illness. Case in point? I have an upper respiratory infection, but my behavior suggests a diagnosis of Ebola, primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM for short. Google it, and be amazed/horrified.), and a dash of bird-swine-fish flu for good measure. I can’t stress enough how I should probably be sleeping right now.

There’s a murky, unpleasant place in my mind, full of generally unpleasant things. Most people have similar places somewhere in their thoughts (I’m fairly confident in this statement, anyway). On nights like this, some of its denizens–covered in sharp spines, and equipped with sharp claws and rotten, twisted fangs–creep out and torment me. There are plenty of different variations on these wee mental beasties. Continue reading →

The conundrum of dividing chapters

Posted on April 27, 2014 by fictionalpenguin under General Writing-Related Posts

Or “At least I didn’t just name this post ‘The chapter conundrum,’ despite my love of all things alliterative (oh god, I did it again)”.

There are plenty of elements to writing that could potentially bug the shit out of me, but only one particular thing consistently irks me. Dialog is easy enough, in a pinch, in terms of making sure characters don’t all sound the same (and in the event little bits of the narrator’s voice bleeds through, there’s always editing to fix that). World-building is time-consuming, and can be a tough, but necessary, evil.

I absolutely hate coming up with the right places to start and end chapters, because I almost never feel like they’re organic (and when I do, it’s because I’ve managed to set up a system of “oh-no-what-now? cliffhangers to be directly followed by the starting point of the previous problem’s resolution). Let’s just get this out of the way now: I’ve started drafting another novel idea I had some time ago (tentatively titled The Devil Made Me Do It), before Joshua’s Nightmares even crept into the creative areas of my brain (the existence of which can be debated, of course), and I find myself butting heads with the very issue of wanting to shift the focus of the story ever so slightly, but not enough that I feel like it’ constitutes a chapter change. This is how I’m choosing to occupy my time between short stories (or, more likely, punctuated by short stories as I work on this) while I wait for the last bits of critiquing to wrap up on Joshua’s Nightmares.

Did I mention it’s only two pages and a paragraph into the story? Because that’s certainly a factor in all of this. Also, I suppose it couldn’t hurt to add a page to the top of Misadventures in Fiction to offer a synopsis of The Devil Made Me Do It.

The story begins focusing on the main character going through his morning routine, focusing on certain aspects of it being entirely unremarkable. I want to shift to another character (consider the title) and focus on his typical morning. The two narratives eventually come together, of course, but I’m really fighting myself on if I want to have a two-page-and-a-paragraph first chapter or not, and how to properly handle this situation. What similar issues do you, fellow writers, run into?

If nothing else, this post should confirm something I already knew: I have a serious writing addiction, and I’m completely okay with that.