Monday, June 11, 2012

Chapter A Day - Finale

Well, here we are again, fair readers.

Six weeks ago, I set up a personal writing challenge bigger than I have ever tried to accomplish:

One chapter every weekday for six weeks. This boils down through basic math to thirty chapters. I could have cheated and claimed twenty nine, considering the holiday but that wasn't in my original stipulation.

In that six weeks, I managed to take a three day vacation, contact fifteen agents, attend a graduation, find out and deal with the fact that my daughter has partial deafness, and walk twenty miles to fight cancer.

All of these things have pushed my writing pretty far away from my priority list and here I am on the other side of this personal challenge, looking back at the marathon of words asking myself, "How well did I do?" 

Just the other night, I was nearing the end of the line and only had twenty seven chapters of the thirty complete. Early into the challenge I fell behind. I fought against that struggle and I pulled a chapter ahead. Of course, though I tried, I couldn't maintain that lead. Just over a week ago, I fell very far behind and my determination pushed me to double my workload, putting me closer to being on the right track but I couldn't reach that point, no matter how hard I reached.

The last few hours ticked by and my keyboard was beginning to develop friction burns, wearing off the letters while I pounded out chapter after chapter. It was very strenuous but here I am, Officially on day thirty-one.

And I am here with thirty glorious chapters under my belt. These thirty chapters are for the second book in my SALAGIA chronicles which means the second book in my series is nearly complete. 

I'm not going to lie, I feel pretty damned accomplished right now. I look along the story I spent the last month crafting and I see a strong improvement in writing and in storytelling. This gives me hope. 

Hope that soon, an agent will find value enough in my books to help me share my tales with the rest of the world.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

About deadlines.

So, as my faithful readers know, I am trying to write a chapter a day for 6 weeks. This boils down to one chapter for every weekday totaling 30 chapters. Well, last week, I ran into a huge SNAFU and shorted myself two days of writing.
This week, the holiday put me off and work put me off and so on.
This sounds bad and I am obviously falling behind. FAR behind. Tonight, I should have finished chapter 24 but just barely polished off number 18.

As I said, this sounds bad, but I've learned something interesting through this experience.
How to deal with deadlines. I know that, in the writing world, there will be times when you must achieve a specific quota to be successful and this challenge has put me in the mindset of having to complete a set amount of material in a specific period of time.

I'm not promising that I can complete this challenge but I am promising that I'll do my damnedest to make it. Now I need to stack on a few chapters so I can still win this fight.
Until next time-

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Stranger than fiction

My recent posts have been more of a "behind the scenes" look of my writing travels and less on the actual fiction. With that in mind, I have been bombarded by friends and fans alike on some real life news that has recently started circulating.
One of two reasons I am sharing this news is because, as the title of this post states, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
The other reason is, news like this inspires me.

With that said, here is the link to a man throwing his own intestines at cops.

And here is a link that strongly suggests zombie behavior. It goes just a touch beyond cannibalism by the manner of primal growling the attacker was doing while confronting the cop on the scene.


Check it out.

It brings me back to my manuscript; Contagion Protocol in which, a zombie outbreak destroys a small Washington town. (Check out chapter samples here.)

It also makes me recall the chapters I have written for my current manuscript; The SALAGIA Chronicles- Gluttony where signs of one of the seven deadly sins shakes the foundations of another small town, this one in the heart of Wyoming. (You can get a sample of this story here and here as well.)

Thursday, May 24, 2012

CAD / TWWINAA - Tripped up.

Hey there, faithful incisions.

Here it is, Thursday night.

I wanted to update my status on the "Chapter A Day / Writer Who Is Not An Author" string of blogs.

On Tuesday, my boss (yeah, at the job that pays the bills) kept me chained to work for fourteen hours.
Yesterday, My family was given some life changing medical news which put EVERYTHING on hold.

Today, I am trying to wrap my head around our future and how to work with our daughter to get a brighter tomorrow.

What that means is I have fallen behind on my challenge. A couple chapters behind. That isn't going to stop me, though. I killed a chapter today so I gotta get two more done (or three by the end of Friday), then I'll be back on track.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Chapter a Day - Working on the Weekend

Greetings my friends.

When I set up my chapter a day challenge to supplement my 'Writer Who Is Not An Author' string of blogging, I set up the chance to take weekends off. 

Well, that's not working so well. The second book in The Salagia Chronicles is coming along fantastically with this chapter a day bit but my story has deviated from the outline I prepared. Well, maybe deviated is a bad choice of words.

It turns out that my story is becoming more full and rich than I originally anticipated. This new volume has forced me to elaborate on things in the story I wasn't going to elaborate upon and because of this, I find myself unable to brush along my outline without encountering knots or split ends.

Thankfully, I have the weekend to condition my outline to repair the damaged ends and make the story silky smooth before Monday demands another chapter from me.

Well, it looks like I've got some teasing to do so I better head off and get that taken care of before my thoughts get all dry and frizzy.

(Oh yeah, I originally decided to post just to share the picture below with you.)