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Outlines, Deadlines, And Lying To Yourself

I haven’t written anything on the blog this week. Instead, I’ve been working on outlining a series of stories, which as it turns out, is very hard for me to do.

But outlines are important, for the same reason that having lines on a highway is important. When you start drifting, you can look over, see the line, and prevent yourself from plummeting off a cliff (or in my case, plunging into a swamp).

Similarly, deadlines are a necessary evil. If left to my own schedule, I would toodle around on a couple of scenes for months, and never get anything completed. I need a deadline to move forward, because it causes me to push aside the perfectionism and distractions long enough to start moving forward again.

But Outlines and Deadlines?

Ouch.

I’ll admit it, I use every trick in the book (pun intended) to get through writing something. In order to edit a book, it has to actually be written, and so without the two “lines” I would go nowhere.

You have to embrace them. Continue reading “Outlines, Deadlines, And Lying To Yourself”

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The Plot Thickens

I’ve been a fan of multi-book series since I started reading novels. There’s something magical about reading story after story with the same characters developing, following along with them, seeing them overcome struggles and hardship. After reading a whole series with the same protagonists, you get attached to them.

But for the writer, stretching out a story across multiple books get increasingly harder the further you go. At least, if you want to keep it interesting.

When I decided I wanted to write a book series, part of me said “Yeah! Let’s do this!” and the other part of me said “Oh geez, now I have to write plots for all those books!”

And plotting is something I am loath to do. Yes, I know it’s critical, but my brain often spews forth ideas faster than I can capture them. And when I do come up with a great story idea, I tend to not know when to quit, and I hammer it to death, or let it fall apart because I want to cram more stuff in there.

There’s a fine balance between “really good story” and “mind-bending psychological train wreck.” I want to get as close to that line as I can get without going overboard. And of course, there’s the fact that each book needs to be a story in and of itself, and yet still be coherent and open-ended enough to make a broad-reaching story arc. Continue reading “The Plot Thickens”

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America, the Gullible

In the last few days, there’s been a story exploding all over the internet about a kid who was arrested. There were a lot of speculations going around as to how and why, but in the end, it turns out it was probably a PR stunt initiated by the kid’s dad.

We’re told that everything is hazardous. We’re told that everyone’s a potential terrorist, or rapist, or criminal, or whatever. We’re told that killing babies is protecting freedom. We’re told that America is the greatest country in the world that has ever existed, and ever will.

And the funny thing is, people believe it. Continue reading “America, the Gullible”

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Seeing The Big Picture

Part of working creatively is learning what to do when things don’t go as planned. In my case, I tend to put deadlines or challenges on myself, and I get rather irate when I can’t reach them.

But it’s mostly my own ego making me feel that way. I tend to put extremely difficult standards on myself, so high that even *I* can’t reach them all the time.

This is both good and bad.

When I make a statement like “I pledge to write on my blog every weekday” and I actually do it, I feel awesome. But if I don’t, I feel like a failure… even if I only missed one day in 6 weeks.

The good side is that sometimes, my ridiculous goals can push me to actually do something I honestly didn’t think I could do. The bad side is, nobody bats 1000. So when I say things like “I’m going to write on my novels every single day!” that’s a *huge* goal, and I need to accept the fact that I’m not going to actually be able to write every single day.

To that end, I’m going to set up a daily writing progress tracker written by Jamie Rubin, whom I’ve linked to before as his Evernote posts are fantastic.

This will allow me to see how much I’ve written over a broad span of time, as opposed to panicking over missing one day. It’s much easier to see the big picture… when you can see the big picture.

(Write Or Die also has a word progress tracker, but I’m not going to be able to write with it all the time.)

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Writing, Busyness, and Chasing a Dream

First, I’d like to apologize (to all 5 of my readers) for not posting anything yesterday. I know it didn’t affect you in any way, shape or form that I didn’t, but you know, I promised myself I would write every weekday, and I have, for several weeks. But you’re about to find out why.

For a long time, I’ve dreamed about living a creative life, and spending my days working on writing novels and music. I say “dream” because I didn’t think it was something I could do while I was awake. But every day that I go to work and get micromanaged, or work on things I’m not passionate about, I get more and more frustrated.

You see, deep down, I know I can write books for a living. I don’t think so, I know so. But the problem is  that it takes time to write and edit books. And with working, being a dad/husband/scoutmaster/supervillain and everything else I have going on, writing a book just doesn’t seem like something I can fit into my schedule.

But I need to make this happen. I don’t need to “fit” in time to write: I need to make it my singular goal if I’m going to ever break free of working for a corporation. Can I actually write enough to quit my day job? Is it even possible? Continue reading “Writing, Busyness, and Chasing a Dream”

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Retro Game Spotlight: Whiplash

Sometimes, old games are just more fun to play than fancy graphics make up for. Whiplash (also know in the UK as Fatal Racing) from 1995 is one of those games.

It featured a CD soundtrack (Redbook audio, remember that?), split-screen multiplayer, and networked multiplayer, which was pretty big for any game in 1995, much less a racing game.

It’s made to run in DOS… that’s right, MS-DOS, i.e. before Windows. Thankfully, through the awesomeness that is DOSBox, one can still play games like this on modern computers. Continue reading “Retro Game Spotlight: Whiplash”

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Creativity Brain Hacks

A few days ago, I wrote about my reasoning and motivation for diving into deep projects. I didn’t really get into how those things happen, though, and so I figured I’d give you a glimpse into what my creative process looks like.

I developed a few things I’ve begun doing to make it easier to dive into big projects. Some of these aren’t exactly revelatory. Some of them I got from Cal Newport’s “Deep Habits” study hacks blog, some of them I just figured out.

So, here’s my suggestions for Creativity Brain Hacks: Continue reading “Creativity Brain Hacks”

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Storytelling 101: Sintel

Yesterday I wrote about diving deep into projects, but after thinking through the problem and finding my motivations, I didn’t really post much on how to go about making that happen. While I’m working on putting that list together, here’s an awesome video I discovered a while back. Fantastic animation and storytelling. It’s basically a 15-minute master class on how to tell a story.

 

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Diving Deep, Coming Up For Air

I enjoyed having a day off yesterday (it was Labor Day here in the States). I ended up doing yard work, fixing things around the house, and getting a bad sinus headache. Thankfully, my awesome wife knows all about headaches and how to get rid of them!

But there will be more work to do when I get to work, and even more to do when I get back home. The pile of work never seems to end, even though I’m plowing through it at record pace.

I bemoan the fact that I don’t have time to write more, or make music, or whatever. The truth is, I just don’t have time to do everything. This is a recurring theme in my life, and I write about it often because I’m still struggling with it.

Deep down, I know what I have time to do. But I want to do more. But why?

Is it because I want to impress people? That’s not really it.
Is it because I’m looking for acceptance? Part of me does.
Is it because I’m trying to prove I can do it to doubters? Sometimes.
Is it because I have amazing ideas and I’m the only one who will bring them to life? This happens frequently.
Is it because I feel useful when I’m doing things, and useless when I’m not? Yeah, that’s definitely part of it.
Is it because most of my crazy ideas would be ridiculously fun? Yup. Definitely part of it.

So what happens when your own drive to do things short-circuits your ability to do simple, necessary things, like study, play with your family, and mentor your children? Continue reading “Diving Deep, Coming Up For Air”

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Down The Rabbit Hole

Looking at my blog traffic stats, I’ve discovered that almost 50% of my traffic was due to Google linking to a single article I had written (about installing Adobe Air in Ubuntu, strangely enough). I know this, because the very day they removed it from search results (due to a wrongly submitted DMCA takedown, I might add), my traffic dropped that much and has remained there.

For me to provide interesting and useful information here, I need to write what people want to read. But I also need to write about what I know. Are there really avant-guard ADD’ers out there who think like me? Are there people interested in what I know, and what I’ve experienced? Does anybody really know what time it is?

I guess I’ll just keep writing about what’s engaging to me, and hope that somebody, somewhere, is getting something out of it. I’ve got some interesting thoughts on this to share for “Outside The Box” tomorrow. Hope you like them.

If you have something you’d like for me to write more on, let me know in the comments section.