Tag Archives: writing

Misadventures in Podcasting?!

Posted on by under Misadventures in Fiction

Or “I meant to include this in my This Week in Misadventures post, but I’m forgetful and was tired, so I forgot” with hints of “This is a title for a thing that will probably never happen”.

This is an idea that, at some point or another, materialized in my brain. It started as a whisper. Hey. Podcasts are neat. You like doing neat things. Huh? Why not? I jokingly suggested this possibility on Twitter and Facebook, where a few people made the terrible decision of encouraging such an idea. By that I mean they said I should do a podcast while very drunk.

Not helpful, people. Not even a little.

Here’s what I do know about podcasts: they’re available on iTunes, they can be free, and a lot of people make really entertaining ones (Hey there, Welcome to Nightvale).

I don’t know what I’d talk about, who I’d talk with, or even how I’d go about a podcast.

That all aside, I like the sound of Misadventures in Podcasting because, I mean, it goes with my Misadventures in everything else.

Thoughts?

This week in my brain turning to gelatin

Posted on by under This Week in Misadventures

William Shakespeare provided a quote that accurately summarizes how I feel after this past week. It’s one of great wisdom and power, and it channels every fiber of my spirit in its present state.

“O, I am slain.” – Polonius (Hamlet).

That, coincidentally, is also my favorite quote from Shakespeare…which says a lot about my capacity to enjoy his works, I fear.

My week in misadventures was a busy one, and my brain has been rendered into a slimy, disappointing blob of gelatin. I write this in the haze of post-nap dreariness, knowing I need to get to bed soon because I open at work tomorrow.

That’s not important, though. It is, however, my justification for any verbal missteps. Moving on. Continue reading →

Why misadventures in fiction?

Posted on by under Misadventures in Fiction, Misadventures in Non-Fiction

Once upon a time, not particularly long ago in the bigger scheme of things, I started a WordPress blog named Phil’s Misadventures in Fiction. It happened because I had an idea for a story, which would eventually (still very tentatively) end up named Joshua’s Nightmares. In moments of pride, I would insist on calling it my web site and not my blog. I would post frequently, and then I would drop off of the planet because of other obligations. And then I would do absurd things like force myself to keep active while binge-writing a novel in under three months. I even shelled out some money so my WordPress could be listed as misadventuresinfiction.com (a fact that will never fail to make me smile for some reason).

Why misadventures, though? Why not adventures? Quests? Journeys, even? This is something I failed to consider, largely choosing misadventures because it felt right. It had that little bit of silly humor to it, and Misadventures in Fiction just sort of rolls off the tongue (or, perhaps, it awkwardly clunks off of the tongue). The title happened, it stuck, and I grew to love it as time marched along, as any creator often does (while spending much time in self-loathing for other things). Continue reading →

The publishing house I’d love to call home

Posted on by under Misadventures in Fiction

As a writer, I have all sorts of goals and dreams, blended neatly with what I can only assume are powerful delusions of grandeur. I dream of becoming published. I dream of finding a decent-sized audience and having tremendously fun interactions with them. And so on. I could go the rest of my life without such luck, and I’d actually be perfectly content still writing. I have an established group of readers. Some of them may (definitely, most certainly) be biased, but they’re all wonderful to me.

However, there’s that one thing that will gnaw at me no matter how well or poorly I do as a writer. I, like many writers, have a dream home. I’m not talking about the sort of home you need a mortgage for, of course. Getting to the obvious point here (unless you bypassed the title): I’m talking about the publishing house I dream of calling home. Continue reading →

The horror of meeting your heroes

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Or “This is a second post in less than a day because I feel guilty for putting these posts off”.

My last post may have been a little self-indulgent, and I’m okay with that. Now back to things to do with writing. I have my fair share of people I consider heroes. I’m not just talking celebrities, by the way, though there will be a fair few of those mentioned here (hence the title). The people who have succeeded in accomplishing things I fear I could only manage in my wildest dreams. Their works and success are driving factors in my own writing, as I want to eventually reach an audience through publication. I’m not saying, by any means, I think I’ll ever reach such tremendous audiences as, say, Neil Gaiman, Christopher Moore, Terry Pratchett, or Douglas Adams (to name only a few).

However, as much as I love to read their works and enjoy them as these sorts of pillars of an art I hold in the highest regards, I think I would probably have a severe mental breakdown of sorts if I ever met one of them. It’s a very weird concept to me, and a very real fear with my occasional trips to conventions (far less now than when I was younger).

Meeting my heroes is terrifying to me because these are people who have done these amazing, fantastic things, and so I can’t help but feel like a mote of dust by comparison. I acknowledge, and accept, that this is a completely ridiculous line of thinking, and it’s worse because it’s not limited to the heroes I have who I’ve never met. People like Onezumi and Harknell, the founders of Interventioncon and personal heroes of mine, are easy to talk to and wonderful overall. I still get a bit anxious around them. Ridiculous! But it’s one of those things where it’s a matter of wanting to not look like such a failure by comparison, where these people are absolute rock stars of what they do.

And then there’s the fear of building them up so much only to be disappointed with what I meet. I realize that may be a bit shocking, especially after the last paragraph. This bit applies to the heroes I’ve not met as opposed to the ones I know. I can honestly say I would probably weep if I met Neil Gaiman (or Terry Pratchett or Christopher Moore). These are people whose books have treasured spots in my library and have made me want to become a better writer. I want to create amazing worlds, filled with all sorts of diverse and terrific characters, and it’s because of these authors. However, there’s always the small problem that the work doesn’t equal the person and so I could very well be setting myself up for disappointment.

Let me end with a couple questions: how do you, dear readers, feel about meeting your heroes? Who do you idolize, and why? How quickly would you melt into a puddle of fanatical goo if you met one of those heroes?

This Week in Misadventures…and procrastination

Posted on by under This Week in Misadventures

Or “Let’s try this again from my laptop so it doesn’t keep breaking WordPress,” and “there was a topically appropriate subtitle but backspace kept deleting everything on my Surface”.

This week has spanned the good, the bad, and the ugly in terms of motivation and productivity. I could easily say I accomplished a lot of what I’d wanted to, but the comparison of completed planned things versus completed unplanned ones is a bit askew in favor of the unplanned. Hooray, things got done. Boo, lack of discipline and being easily distracted. In light of this post being “This Week in Misadventures…and procrastination” (we’ll get to the procrastination part because I’m not letting myself off the hook there), I suppose I should get to the actual misadventures from my week. Continue reading →

This Week in Misadventures

Posted on by under This Week in Misadventures

Or “This week in not really accomplishing a whole lot.”

I’ve got plenty of inner turmoil going on right now in regards to writing (I almost put “write now” by complete accident, and the self-loathing I feel is incredible). Joshua’s Nightmares, book one, is still hanging out on my laptop. It’s just kind of sitting there presently, a nearly three hundred page blob of potential that’s got nowhere to go just yet, and it’s a little vexing. Maybe a lot vexing. A lottle vexing? If I ever use that word again, someone please call me out on it in the comments because that’s just awful.

My conundrum is now the mix of “I have no idea how publishing works and how do I reach out to publishers to try getting this published” versus “Is self-publishing really so bad in this case or is it really just lazy, quick self-gratification”. Both of those thoughts have effectively prevented me from actually accomplishing much (we’ll get to what I did accomplish this week, which is a whole lot of nothing, shortly). If nothing else, I’ve reached a point where I would just like to make this story available for other people to enjoy (or hate, to be fair, because even if someone hates it they still ended up having to read a bit of it, and that’s okay with me). However, I also know that self-publishing is still sort of looked down upon these days, and I’d rather not be burned as a heretic or whatever actual, legitimate authors do to self-published sorts. Continue reading →

Go check out this blog.

Posted on by under Shameless Shilling

I couldn’t think of anything particularly witty to put for a title, and I’m not sorry.

Tonight, while meandering around the internet like I always do (because I am the most productive person alive, of course), I happened upon a new-ish WordPress blog simply titled frozenpeasblog. It wasn’t the title that caught my eye, however, so much as the little post snippet that was available. There are only two posts so far, both of which personal essays, and they left me wanting more. There’s a very David Sedaris quality to the humor, which should be a strong enough selling point to at least merit checking out the link above (which, by the way, is http://frozenpeasblog.wordpress.com/ in case any of you are too lazy to go back a couple sentences).

Also, the blog references Edinboro and so I’m obligated, by that alone, to share this link.

Go share some WordPress love, give frozenpeasblog a follow, and enjoy some high quality writing. Share it with your friends, because it’s great stuff and deserves to be seen. Or, if you’re the sort who likes to live life on the contrary side, don’t you dare click that link and enjoy the essays posted therein.

 

Time to revisit some of my goals

Posted on by under General Bloggity Stuff

Or “Oh god oh god I’m writing this in IE on my Surface and it feels so wrong.”

This past week, and I’m okay with saying this past week because I have no concept of day at this point, has had more than its fair share of reflection (or, rather, I’ve spent much of it reflecting; whatever). Back in January, as some of you may recall, I set some pretty lofty writing goals for myself. And then, because I never half-ass things (I either whole-ass them or go all over-achiever), I ended up writing an entire first draft of a novel by the time the Oscars aired. Since then, my writing has still been pretty consistent, and yet I’m not happy. I’ve not always made it a point to write every night, and I could very easily say the other difficulties in my life were to blame.

However, that sounds too much like an easy excuse. As a solution to this, I’m outlining some revised goals for myself here as a WordPress guilt-trip in the event I start slacking again.

Writing

I need to write at least one short story a week. Flash fiction, regular variety, or oh-shit-this-might-become-a-novel varieties all apply here, so long as I create some work of fiction that isn’t just a couple words strung together. Unless those words turn out to be really good, like those two sentence horror stories. I also want to write at least one post for Screen Robot or Magific (my latest writing gig), and at least three for Misadventures in Fiction. I realize the three post minimum on here may seem a bit lofty, but it’s a lot easier for me to vomit out my thoughts on here than it is to write a story sometimes. Also, I love my site so I have to give it plenty of attention so it doesn’t do what all neglect blogs do (take up a life of criminal inactivity).

Cutting back on pop

Before I even go any further, I was born near, and lived around, Pittsburgh most of my life, so it’s pop. You can disagree, but you’re wrong and also a jagoff*. I drink entirely too much pop for my own good, which is something of a difficult realization. I mean, I’m not saying I enjoy Mountain Dew more than the average consumer, but I am saying if someone were to try drawing blood there are days it would probably come out green and carbonated, and with fine print reading “Property of Pepsi-Co”. Tonight was a last hooray of sorts at Olive Garden, where I indulged in three glasses of Coke. I am a bit ashamed to admit that after not drinking pop yesterday and most of today, I already was able to savor the way the carbonation tickled at my tongue and the roof of my mouth or the taste and texture. When I go without pop for long enough, it might as well be the Nectar of the Gods as far as I’m concerned (save for diet varieties, which is the Sewer Water of the Gods).

However, and I make no efforts to hide this, I think I need to lose some weight. I’m a bit on the rotund side, in that some smaller people mistake me for a planet (I played Melancholia in the not-so-great movie-with-the-same-name). Cutting out sugary beverages, among other things, will help me shed a few pounds and maybe join Pluto in the League of Former Planets.

I’d also like to announce, before I forget again, that I will be posting live from Interventioncon this August (the 22nd through 24th). Preregistration prices are still available at http://www.interventioncon.com, so check it out.

There was more I wanted to say, but I’m distracted by the horrifying black clouds and too-close-for-comfort lightning strikes.

Celebrating E3 by dwelling on dream jobs

Posted on by under Moleskine Musings

Or “This is the first year I’m not particularly excited about E3, and I’m not sure how I feel about that so here’s some semi-related, but mostly not related, shit instead.”

Quick preface here. I’m not writing about E3. What I’m seeing on Twitter, which is a little limited, tells me it’s a lot of the old reworked into quasi-new things, or just out-and-out remakes. Also, I’ve got no business blogging about video game current events here, so I’m going to just blog about old news relating to video games instead. I’m made of bullshit and hypocrisy tonight.

As long as I can remember, which isn’t always a tremendous deal, I’ve loved video games. Before I became so enamored with writing, they went quite nicely with my love of reading and generally being a hermit. The sort of escapism they offered, the way I could save the day despite otherwise unbeatable odds, was, and remains, something I will always enjoy.

Going along with this, I’ve got a small couple confessions. Back before I wanted to be a writer, but after I’d decided I couldn’t quite figure out how to make it as a mad scientist (and anyone who knew me for a good few years of my childhood can attest to my wanting to be a mad scientist), I wanted to become an actor. A voice actor, in fact, who worked on video games. I didn’t want to be the hero, though. Being the voice of saving the day and rescuing princesses from dragons or warlocks or whatever sinister forces had appeared from the shadows. Continue reading →