Split Attention

Happy Monday!

Well the 50k in 30 days didn’t go so well. I got 11 K done in a little over a week and then suddenly my brain wanted to write something else. This is part of why I don’t complete things that are more than 20K without a lot of starts and stops.

So now I have a paranormal hockey story based of the song Tam Lin that is sitting at around 11 K. I am right at the point where he goes missing and Janet has to go off and save him. Oh and my Janet is a minister who hunts vampires. 

And story that is set in an America that has survived a second Civil war. This war was between people who dealt in Faith and people who dealt in Magic - neither side realizing that they were using the same power, they were just focusing it differently. The hero in that one is a young man working for an alliance of people with faith and people with magic trying to get things back to some semblance of normality after a war that both sides think they have won. While out on a job the boy, Zeke, gets followed home by a woman in wolf form. She’s not like the werewolves that Zeke knows.

The first story is something that is all set up and I can just write if I can force myself to focus on it.

The second story I would need to spend time setting up the world and the characters and then I have to write it, but that is where I am being drawn right now. I may have to give it a shot, I mean you can’t know what is going to work until you give it a try, right?

 

Maybe I can balance the two.

How about you? What are you guys up to?

New Year - New Goals

Well the new year is here and it is time to put my goals out there. It’s sort of odd doing this every year, I’ve never been one to set goals for each year, but for the past few years I have been. So here we go!

 

100000 words of creative writing this year: this goal has been flat for the past few years. I’d up it, but Real Life is always crazy. If I get my second goal done I’ll up it.

I want to do a Nano type thing. Fifty K in 30 days - starting today. We’ll see about this, I hope I don’t lose focus in the middle. The story is something I’ve had in my head for a few years now. It involves Unitarians, Vampires and the old song Tam Lin. I may not have the skill to make it work, but I need to at least try.

Make a point of posting on my l/j. Also posting blog, twitter and facebook (the ones under my proper name), and doing PR stuff.

Start reviewing the books I read (I have 15 books on my ‘already read, still needs review’ pile)

I want to lose 10 pounds and do my PT exercises every other day (I’m shooting a little low there)

Last one is the hardest:

 

I want to try to keep my life in some sort of balance, not all work.

Wish me luck! And have a stellar new year!

It’s all about the Zamboni

Not that long ago I finished my first historical short story, Accrocher Ses Patins, set in 1927 Nova Scotia.  The story deals with an original six era ice hockey team, that is made up of immortal hyena shape shifters.  I spent a huge amount of time researching.  I work at a historic site, but had never tried my hand at writing anything set before my date of birth and I was nervous about it.

There is a lot of good information out there about that period of hockey; rules and equipment changes, not to mention the spread of the league into the US, caused upheavals in the game.  

 But I was left with a question.  How was ice resurfaced before 1953, when the Zamboni was patented?   The only thing I could find was that it was a three man job. 

I finished the story before I found the answer, but I did find the answer.  One man scraped the ice with a shovel, one man rolled something like a giant bucket on wheels that sprinkled water and the last man evened the ice surface with a broom.  The process could take up to ninety minutes.  I haven’t used that piece of information in my fiction.  I probably won’t but I know that my characters would know.

I am very thankful for the Zamboni.  And I bet my characters are to.

One lucky commenter will win a PDF of, Accrocher Ses Patins (hanging ‘em up) and a hockey or wolf themed charm bracelet.

Shooting Low

I signed up for a mini-nano. The stated goal is 250 words a day. I know that the writers reading this blog are thinking something along the lines of ‘that’s it?’

But it is November and shooting low is the best I can do. I travel for work in November and when I travel for work I’m on the go from 7:30 am to about 11 pm, that doesn’t leave time for a real stab at nano.

 

The past few months I’ve been pushing hard both as a writer and as a person. I’ve finished the final edits on the novel during a month that I worked 29 days straight. I’ve worked my way right into writers block.

It happens from time to time. You can see the characters and maybe even the plot, but you can’t get it to move onto the page.

If I push hard for a long time when I stop, I stop dead.

For the past few days I’ve been looking at a blinking cursor, trying to wish the ideas out of my head and onto the paper. Over the years I’ve learned that to re-start myself I need to start slow and shoot low.

So for the next month I’m going to be shooting low. Hopeing that low word count will get me back in the habbit of meating goals in my extreamly limited free time.

How about you? How do you get back in the swing of things after time away?

The devil is in the details

I read quite a bit and I watch television.  I guess we all do.  But I have a problem; I can’t watch or read without being pulled out of the story by little things. 

I work in a living history museum on the weekends, so sometimes even my favorite shows can drive me crazy.  Fantasy, historical and post-apocalyptic things are the ones most likely to have things that drive me nuts in them.   You have to understand that I have ridden horses, raised, killed and dressed my own food, loaded and shot a flintlock.  Oh yeah, and we use a water powered grist mill.

It takes me right out of the story to see things done wrong – or weirdly or whatever.  The image sticks in my head for days and days.  Or the image of the words in the case of a book where a woman took off a bra in the about 600 years before the bra was invented.

So if you are writing, try to make the details as right as possible.  After all, if I notice, others will.   

I wish I had a good excuse for dropping off the map the way I have.  Most of my time has been taken up with work, but I also worked through the edits on my novel.  It was a lot of work and I’m still not as happy with it as I had hoped to be.

 

When I was done with it I turned around and wrote a 10 K Christmas story.  It was fun creating something again.

 

My new short story is out http://www.bookstogonow.com/page127.html

 

So what has everyone else been up to?  

Short or Long?

I have conversations about this pretty often.  I write a lot of short stories, some of them are linked.  I just finished a four story series for my publisher.  I don’t write many novels.  I guess that makes me an oddity. 

My friends often point to the novel I sold and say, “Look that proves you can write a novel.”

I’ve known I can write a novel for a long time, I just don’t like writing them.  I don’t write very quickly and to write a whole novel I have to set aside everything else I want to do.  I know that sounds selfish.

I take my writing very seriously; I may spend months researching for a short story.  I’ve spent a lot of time reading about the last few years of the NHA and the transfer to the NHL, and the shift in goalie styles (until 1918 goalies were not allowed to leave their feet to make a save) and I can tell you how ice was resurfaced before the Zamboni.  So it’s not a lack of seriousness that keeps me from writing novels. 

Like every writer I know, I am compelled to write.  I don’t feel like I have a choice in it, but at this point I don’t see myself making a living at writing.  So writing is just a very important hobby of mine.  That isn’t to say I don’t get paid for my shorts, I do, and I will be paid for my upcoming novel as well.   

But will I write another novel soon?

Probably not. 

Since this is a hobby what I do should be fun.  I don’t find novels fun.  Maybe someday I will change my mind.  Maybe not.  I can’t know the future.

Do you like to write long pieces, or short pieces?