Tag Archives: Writing

Monthly Update

October Update

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After a couple of disappointing months, September was fantastically productive. I’ve gotten a full Beta draft of the SciFi novel done, I’ve knocked a number of things off my to-watch list, and I made good progress on vide games and other projects.

Writing

First off, fantastic news. I finished a Beta Draft of my untitled Science Fiction novel. There’s still a lot of work ahead of my, but I’m within shouting distance of publishing. My goals for the month are to iron the book out and get it to some Beta readers, and work on the supporting work I need to do to get it ready for a Kickstarter campaign and publishing.

I got some work done on The Colonel Lieutenant, but most of my focus was on the Sci-Fi novel. I am printing off the chapters I’ve written so I can start processing and working out what I need to do to get it ready for its own publication.

I’ve picked at the other projects on my list, mostly doing research or building up the background and world building. The sort of things I should be doing before I get to writing. The idea is that when I get to writing the projects, I’ll have most of the support work done and I won’t stop and start so much.

October Goals

  • Iron Sci-Fi novel, get it to Beta Reader
  • Work out plan for The Colonel Lieutenant
  • Add 5,000 words to Fantasy novel
  • Keep plugging away at other projects

Movies and TV Shows

I continue to watch through the Ahsoka series with excitement. I’ll admit it is a more subtle show than I was expecting, especially when it comes to Ahsoka’s part in the story. But they obviously respect the elements they’re bringing together for the show (the characters from Rebels and Thrawn) and they’re telling a fun story. I’m excited to see the last episode.

I started and finished Ted Lasso this month. I’d heard good things about the show, and I was not disappointed. It was a hilarious show that had a lot of good character growth across all three seasons. Although I would say the last season may had a lot of missteps before it found its way.

Next I decided to re-start The Expanse, which I started some time ago but wasn’t able to finish because I don’t have Amazon Prime. Luckily my library has the discs I need to start and get through the series. I’ve read the first book, and several of my friends really like the show. This time I mean to finish it.

October Goals

  • Finish two TV shows off to-watch list
  • Watch one missing Best Picture Winner
  • Watch one movie off to-watch list

Books

I read through the Queen’s Fool, book 12 in Philippa Gregory’s historical fiction series. Following a fictional character through the tumult of Queen Mary’s reign, i found this book to be very exciting and a fun read. I’ll have the book report up sometime this month.

I then started the second of Timothy Zahn’s original Thrawn series, Dark Force Rising. This follows the same plotlines of the first book, with the Grand Admiral plotting the destruction of the Republic and the heroes investigating and responding to the threat. I’m maybe half-way through right now, so we’ll see how it goes.

And if we’re talking books, I’m going to add the audiobook I’m listening to right now, which is the classic Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. I chose this one because the 1992 movie is my favorite movie and I wanted to listen to the book. It is rough to listen to. Not only does the story meander a lot (a product of two-centuries of changes in story expectations), but the representation of native culture can be painful to listen to. I had to find a synopsis website to help me understand what I was reading.

October Goals

  • Finish one library book
  • Finish one book I own
  • Read one research book

Games

Not much to report in terms of videos games. I’ve continued working through both Gears of War: Tactics and FarCry 6, but I didn’t finish either of them. It’s odd to think that I have to work to find time to play video games, but I have a lot of other things I’m working on.

The RPG games are going well. We did start a new Pathfinder 2E game set in a world we played in back in high school, so that’s fun. My characters are sill alive for all my active campaigns. And I’m picking at the various campaigns I want to run, just so that I’m ready if and when I get to run them.

October Goals

  • Finish Gear of War Tactics
  • Keep trying at FarCry 6.
  • Start another computer story game

What’s Next

October will be all about getting my SciFi book ready for publishing, and pushing my other writing projects forward. And I’d like to get a bead on some good events to get into next year. But mostly, the publishing thing.

Cheers!

Michael

Monthly Update

June Update

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May turned into a pretty decent month in terms of writing everything except the blog posts I swore I was going to post, and slow in almost every other aspect. And that’s okay. I can use a slow month every now and then.

Writing

Working hard on Book 3, getting closer to having a rough draft ready for review. It’s not really a question of word counts right now, it’s a question of linking up the scenes I have and making the story coherent. I’m pretty sure I’ll be dropping the tertiary storyline as it’s not adding too much to the book and will save me a goods chunk of words that I’ll need to shape the ending I want. Could I have a rough draft by the end of the month? It’s possible, if I can stay focused.

My SciFi novel is nearest to completion, but I’ve had a hard time getting into the last big battle. I need it to be a lot of things. What I need to remember is that I just need to get this draft down and then revise it.

The fantasy novel is my middle project, and I’ve had some nice breakthroughs on this project in May. For the main character, I worked out some of the philosophy and meta-physiology of his fantasy race, and how that will apply to the story. And for the secondary character, I realized a few things that I can use to make her part of the story much more interesting and influential.

I did pick at a few other projects over the month. There are so many things I want to write.

  • June Goals:
    • Finish current draft of the SciFi novel
    • Get Book 3 to the point I have a continuous story from beginning to end
    • Add 10,000 words to fantasy novel

Movies/TV

Only watched two new things in June.

Star Trek: Prodigy, the animated kid’s Star Trek show, was surprisingly fun. The adult in me could nitpick the hell out of it, since there’s a lot of things about the show that don’t make sense if I think about it too much. But it is a fun show. The characters are interesting, especially how they come to want to join the Federation, and how they deal with the threats of the story. Now, for a kids show, it does get somewhat dark, but most kids shows do, don’t they?

The movie I managed to watch in May was Antman and Wasp: Quantumania. I’d heard it was a disappointing moving, but I have to say I liked it. It was definitely a different tone from the first two Antman movies: much more serious, much darker. But seeing Antman’s daughter as an up and coming superhero was fun. And holy cow, Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror was amazing. I’d love to see him come back again. (Unless the assault allegations turn out to have substance to them, then I’d hope to see someone else who can pull off that level of intensity.)

  • June Goals:
    • Start a new TV show
    • Watch two new movies

Books

I finished two books and started a third this weekend. All three are part of the Burton House saga.

The first two, The DeFacto Duchess and Rejection and Romance, follow Allison Burton and James Byrnes as they navigate courtship, romance, and the politics of 1815 Europe. They’re really two halves of the same story, with a cliffhanger end to Book 1 that made me immediately start Book 2. I would have been really frustrated to have to wait between books.

Book 3, Double the Trouble, shifts focus away from Allison and James to Allison’s younger twin sisters, Beatrice and Cecelia. The musically inclined twins come out into society, with Cecelia going through a battery of terrible dates with suitors and callers. I haven’t finished it yet, but I can tell you this book is far more amusing than the first two. This book also has a more musical theme to its structure and chapter headings, where the first two books were more literary.

  • June Goals
    • Finish two books
    • Post one book review

Games

Did not play a lot of video games in June, for whatever reason. I played through maybe one or two missions of Gears of War: Tactics, which is still fun if not exactly engrossing. I started to focus more one Last of Us 2 to get that game done, and I hit a fun section I’m excited to play through. Maybe I’ll knock that out this month.

My RPG games slowed down in May, between holidays and time-off. Known World Book X is taking a short break so the GM can prep the next chapter, and we’re in a Delta Green Interlude. Still playing the same Hot Springs Island character, and hoping to keep him going for a while.

We did play the first adventure of Quest for the Frozen Flame, where I’m playing the barbarian hunter Morgar. I ended up changing his character from the initial concept. Instead of a moody teenager with a chip on his shoulder who gets angry at everything, he’s now a son from a loving family who gets excited instead of angry. It involves a lot more roleplaying and involvement, but this is a playing group that is well suited for that.

Also, as an aside, one of my Saturday morning prompts gave me an idea for a Scifi adventure, so I spent a few days working out the framework for a Cypher one-shot, roughly eight to ten adventures long. I’d like to run it at some point, maybe get it into rotation for the Sunday or Monday night games. We’ll see if anything comes of it, but it was fun to work on.

  • June Goals:
    • Finish Last of Us 2
    • Don’t Buy Another Game
    • Don’t lose an PRG character

What’s Next

This month I’m focusing on writing and prepping for publishing. I want to put some effort into getting another Books and Beer event going, and keep an eye out for some events if I can get my table up. But the writing is first and foremost. I’ll let you all know how that goes.

Cheers!

Michael

Writing

How is it October already?

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2020. Man, who thought this year would turn out the way it has. All the conventions cancelled, Books and Beer on hiatus, plans disrupted, then burned, then buried in a bog. Just…wow.

Earlier this year, when I found myself facing furlough, I promised myself I wouldn’t just let it pass me by. It was going to be an opportunity to get stuff done. I was going to write so many books, and lose so much weight, and just get so much done.

Of course, that’s not what happened. I got some writing done, but no where near the tsunami of publishable materials I thought I might get done. I actually did a NANOWRIMO challenge in July to write a science fiction novel, a way to force myself to relearn how to write at home. And as I’m back to work, I can get some writing done there. My coffee shop is still pick-up only, but I’m hopeful for the future.

What I’m Writing

I’ve got a couple of projects going. The main one is re-writing a fantasy novel to prepare it for publishing. I’ve got some good feedback on the story from some alpha readers, and I might make it a November Writing Challenge to rewrite the thing.

I’ve got the July SciFi story, which is a very rough draft. It’ll need some significant work to get it ready, but it’s doable. Book 3 of the Renaissance Army series is getting picked at; I’ve worked out some timeline and story concerns that were bugging me, now I’m writing some scenes, storyboarding and researching. Always researching.

Working on short stories. Have a couple it might be fun to send to magazines or the like. We’ll see if that works.

What I’m Reading

Right now I’m working through ‘The Complete Novels of Jane Austen’, which is one ebook with nine Jane Austen books. Before I’d seen the movies of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice¸ and I really enjoyed reading those stories. Whomever made the movies did a good job of consolidating characters and trimming the plotlines. The confusion I found in the books weren’t in the films.

The rest of the stories I’m reading cold, which makes for a bit of a challenge as I’m two centuries removed from Jane Austen’s time. I’m sure there are things I’m missing. But I’m still enjoying the dialogue. It on a level all of its own.

Fini

I don’t know how 2021 will look. I’m guessing it’ll be a slow slog back to normal, or what will pass for normal after all this. I won’t have a book out this year, that’s for sure, but next year I hope to publish at least one.

Of course, that’s still a lifetime away.

Cheers!

Michael

Publishing, Short Story, Uncategorized

Tales of the Templars

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The Templar Badge from ‘Templar Scholar’

The Tales of the Templars is a collection of short stories I’m working on. The idea comes from my second book, Templar Scholar, in which Sasha Small joins the Templar Project, a group of young men and women being trained by the Renaissance Army as leaders of the new Renaissance. Including Sasha, there are twelve Templars, each with their own stories and backgrounds.

The Tales of the Templars will include stories that follow Templars other than Sasha. It will allow me to explore not only new characters, but aspects of the world that Sasha has not experienced. One character grew up stealing to survive; how did he end up a Templar? Another character fought in a battle Sasha only watched from afar. What was that battle like to those involved?

I have sixteen potential stories, with each of the eleven Templars involved in at least one. Some of them are pre-Templar Stories, which is to say they occur before the beginning of Templar Scholar, some of them during the events of Renaissance Calling. Others are Templar Stories, which take place during Templar Scholar.

Will Tales of the Templars include all sixteen stories? No. And here’s where my readers come in. I have a page on my website (linked here) where readers can vote for their favorite story ideas. Each of the sixteen stories is listed with a synopsis, and at the bottom you can vote for up to five of the stories you want to read.

If you’ve read Templar Scholar you’ll know the characters and some of the events, and you’ll probably have characters you want to know more about. If you haven’t read the book, then hopefully some of the stories sound good anyway. And if you want to buy the book, you can do so here.

So take a look and let me know what you think.

Cheers!

-Michael

Publishing, Revising, Uncategorized

Accepting Imperfection

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When I was younger, I heard someone say that an artist is never satisfied with their work. They know what was in their mind when they began, and they see the final project, and it always falls flat in one aspect or another. It’s just something that all artists feel.

That saying has been on my mind as I’m working through the final stages of Book 2. As publishing gets closer and closer, I find myself battling anxiety about what is in the book and what is not. Have I stressed this point enough? Does this relationship get enough space? Will the reader take away what I want them to, or am I too vague?

There’s no way to get rid of these anxieties. They can even be helpful. The anxiety forces me as a writer to keep working, to pay attention to what is bothering me. Rewrite, research, revise, and continue.

Accepting the imperfection of my work is a part of the process. I really like Book 2. There are plenty of things I wish I could put in, but size constraints and the flow of the story keep me from doing so, and that’s okay. No story tells everything.

And when the anxiety and worry starts to grow, I remind myself that I’ve had six people read through the various drafts. All of them said they liked the book. If I trust them to advise me on editorial matters, I should trust them to tell me the truth on the quality of the book. An outside viewpoint carries weight against an inside doubt.

Ultimately, I will always feel that anything I’ve written is imperfect, and I’m okay with that. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be good enough that I feel comfortable with other people reading it. The stories I tell are of imperfect people in an imperfect world. Imperfection is part of the game.

Cheers!

-Michael

Creative Practice

Creative Practice: Inspiration

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No idea if this is going to be more than a once in a while thing, but we’ll see.

Creative Cal has shown up in pictures before, usually with his giant quill. He represents the creative aspect of writing, the imagination and the inspiration.

Logical Lou (with the mustache) represents the logical aspects of writing. The planning, the determination, the grind.

Writing

500 words a day

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As a resolution for New Years, I challenged myself to record at least 500 words day in writing. I could have gone for more, but I wanted a nice, comfortable goal, since there are days when I have little time to actually write, and there are days where I don’t feel like writing. So, I set the goal at 500 words.

It turns out its usually a bit easier than I worried. I’m at a coffee shop most morning a little after 6 AM, starting my day off hitting the goal. Some days, I exceed a thousand words, and sometimes even two thousand.

There are off days, of course. There have been days where I’ve just pushed myself to get 500 words total, writing obvious crap, saying ‘a rough draft is just words on the page’ and I’ll fix it when I revise. But I’ve made the 500 words every day.

A benefit during revisions

It’s come in handy. As Book 2 of the Renaissance Army series has gone through revisions and out to some Alpha readers, writing 500 words a day on other projects has kept my creative juices flowing while I’ve been dealing with the mechanical and stylistic issues that revisions include. And it’s advanced a few projects from ‘neat idea’ to ‘words are on the page’. I’ve got a lot of stories to tell, and it’s good that I’m getting to them, even if they are of secondary or tertiary importance.

So, even as I get stuck on some matter in the revision, I at least make some headway on another project. So I feel I’ve gotten something done every day.

Some Math

Out of curiosity, I took a look at the words I’ve recorded in yWriter. Now, there are things I’ve written that aren’t recorded in yWriter, but I didn’t want to spend hours finding every single word I’d typed and adding it, so this is just a rough, quick calculation.

Since New Years, I have written 98,909 words in eight different projects. The vast majority went to Book 2 (58,000+), and with a fantasy book taking second place (29,000+). Book 3 was begun, with just shy of 3,500 words. Which means, over 106 days (as of writing), I’ve averaged 933.1 words a day. Well above my goal.

Try it!

If you’re a writer, try it out! Setting a simple, low goal and sticking to it is the way to accomplish a lot of goals, and with writing it helps to bull rush your way through the writers block and doubts and just get words on the page. Because once they’re on there, they mean something.

Review, Writing

Non-sequential writing

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This last weekend I finished a rough, rough draft of Book 2, my sequel to Renaissance Calling. It took a lot longer to finish than I expected, in part because I had to learn how to write a book in a  non-sequential fashion. Between the length of time Book 2 covers (a year as opposed to two and a half months) and the need to fit fourteen backer-created characters into the story, writing the story from start to finish wouldn’t work, unless I was willing to write out a 300,000 word monster of a rough draft. So I started jumping around, writing scenes as I had them and working from both ends towards the middle.

Like a pyramid being built without finishing the foundation.

It was interesting and frustrating, with a lot of false starts and dead ends, but ultimately it got me to the end of the rough draft and into revisions. As I move on with both this book and other projects, I want to take a moment and share with you some lessons about non-sequential writing I’ve taken from the experience.

Start at both ends and work to the middle

Starting at both ends and working towards the middle was the first thing I started doing. It made sense, since I knew how the story began and ended. Working from both directions, I can approach any problem I came across from either the front or the back. Sometimes I had to solve problems by writing the solution first, and building up to it.

Keep an eye out for lessons the protagonist needs to learn

By writing the end I gained a huge advantage; I figured out what the character needs to experience to have the impact I need her to have at the climax of the story. That helped me figure out what I needed to show the reader, versus what I could tell the reader. It’s a huge benefit to non-sequential writing to know what you don’t have to write.

Write scenes independently; don’t worry about flow

By flow, I mean the attention of the reader as they go from one chapter to another. I quickly stopped paying attention to flow for my rough draft. Scenes begin and end rather abruptly. Annoying, yes, but finishing the overall story was the main goal. Working on the flow is for the revision phase.

Don’t describe a secondary character when you first write him/her:

Jumping back and forth, I had no idea when this character or that character was going to be introduced. The first few times I wrote a character I included a description, but several times I later wrote them in an earlier scene. So I stopped writing descriptions. Instead, I’m saving the description until afterwards, then I’ll add them when I know where their first appearance is.

Keep a list of ‘Bits to Add’

Instead of jumping around to fix things every time they come up, I’ve been keeping a separate document where I write down the ideas I want to return to. The point is to get the side-thoughts out of the way without interrupting the work on whichever scene I’m focusing on at the time. There will be enough time to fix everything later.

 

I’ve already started applying these lessons to other projects. It’s really helpful to get things moving when something is getting stuck, or simply to just get words down and counted. One project in particular covers almost a decade of time, and already I’m making huge strides in it because of these lessons.

Have any thoughts or tips of you own? Feel free to let me know.

And as always, keep on writing.

Combat

Writing Combat: Introduction

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In my recently published book, Renaissance Calling, I have no less than ten fights. These range from one-on-one fisticuffs to small battles. Fighting of one sort or another is prominent in most of the stories I’m working on, so I’ve got some experience in planning and writing fighting and combat scenes.

I’ve been meaning to write an article on this for some time, but there’s so many thoughts and concepts floating around that it’s been hard to organize, so I’m switching playbooks.

Instead of one long article, I’m going to write several, with no expected number planned. I might write about something I’m currently working on, or something I’ve done. One post will be about planning battles from the eyes of the generals, another about what a character might be feeling during combat.

The idea is, instead of trying to shove everything into one article, to focus on one idea per post, and really get into it, allowing each idea to be entertained in depth.

Why Combat? – Because I know it

For a first article, I figured I would discuss the obvious first question: why so much fighting?

I’m a military historian by education, growing up with access to my dad’s Civil War books. I grew from looking at pictures to reading the stories, evolving into an interest in both personal accounts and primary sources on one hand, and the overall philosophy and culture of war on the other.

And of course, I consume a significant amount of fictional media on the subject. Books, movies and video games are plentiful, though I can find as much fault with a lot of them (both in terms of combat and in terms of story-telling) as I can enjoy them. Roleplaying games are also heavily combat oriented, which means on game night, we’re probably going to fight.

So for better or worse, fighting is something that features in almost all of my stories.

Also – Excitement

As a last minute addition to this article, I wanted to say one more thing about writing combat. As I’m working on book two, I’ve had to contend with worrying about keeping the book exciting. Yes, not all drama in a book has to come from battle, but it helps to have the option, if only to vary the source of the drama.

Being in a situation where fighting can happen for various reasons (as I had in Renaissance Calling) allowed me to use combat to control the excitement. A bandit here, a betrayal there, I could count on fighting to give me control over the story. In most of my planned projects this is possible, though I do not want to make it the soul source of excitement.

***

Anyway, I know this is a short article, but I didn’t want to make it long just for the sake of making it long. This is only an introduction, after all.