Damn you Warner Brothers for pushing the release date to next year!
October 27, 2008
October 25, 2008
October Blogroll Roundup!
Good things come and go and so has this month blogroll. This one started with a lot of wine but no cheese. So with a little help from my friends from the Absolute Writer’s Forums I got back on my feet and working in no time.
Unfocused Me shared the pain of juggling life and art. He is not looking forward to that rewrite but I’m sure that he will managed to squeeze it in between court appearances and family life.
Sassee diagnosed my malady and offered some cures. Like any medicine it comes down to taking it as prescribed on a daily basis. So far it seems to be working.
The next stop was the Headdesk. Not the help desk, the Headdesk. Good thing to because she punched me in the face and told me to drop and give her twenty. You are either a maggot or a writer, son, so get to it! Yes ma’am!
Colby ,who is never shy when it comes to kicking ass and taking names, open fired with both barrels. No inspiration, just perspiration! A real writer works past his problems, pushes ahead and does what needs to be done.
Over at Scribbletown, Freshhell sat me down and gave me a good talking too. No matter how long it takes (in her case nine years), you got to get it done. She just did and has a fresh new novel in her hands. I left as the kids came in asking for their juiceboxes. Wow, what a lady!
ChaosTitan (cool name) sad beside me on a bench in front of the Scribbletown airport and patted me in the back. I was not alone she said, other suffer from the same malady. The best cure is to write everyday. Just write. I thanked her for the advice but by that time Heroes was on a nearby TV. Oh well….
My plane landed somewhere in South Central Asia. Lovely place, if a bit hot, but then coming from the Caribbean I am used to hot and humid. Razibahmed gave me a lovely tour of his corner of the world. He had his own problems to deal with which in turn showed me that mine where not as bad as I thought. If he can do it, so can I.
On the flight back a stranger slipped me a MP3 player. It had but one file on it called SpyNotes. Strange because it sounded like a self-help audiobook. But it made sense that the core of my problems laid within. Do or do not, there is no try. Then I heard the message “this file will self-destruct in 30 seconds”. At the 00:00 mark the little device belched thick gray smoke. You have no idea what it took to talk my way out of that airplane without a full cavity search!
While waiting for a taxi to take me home I noticed a gentleman putting the finishing touches to a beautiful painting of a wolf. We talked for a bit and he said that he was a a baby boomer with a severe case of Fifties Nostalgia, but from time to time he also dabbled in nature painting. Unable to even draw a stick figure to save my life I asked him how he did it. He said that the hardest part was starting. After that he had to fight of his inner perfectionist and let the painting take a life of his own. Let the work speak for itself.
I got home and found an email from Rosemerrie, who knowing of my plight, sent me a few Bible verses to put everything into perspective. With that bit of divine inspiration I sat down in front of the computer and got back to work.
Now I am off to NaNoLand!
October 1, 2008
Of Anxieties, Frustrations and Self Imposed Deadlines
Another month, another blogroll. Welcome fellow scribes and members of the AW Forums to my humble site. Before we begin, here are the rules of this thing we call a blogroll (paraphrased from the original):
The first person (in this case, me) just makes a post on their blog. The person following (Unfocused Me) will take some element from the previous blogger and make their own post, including that element. Then link back to the previous post and add a link to the next blog on the chain. Thus tying their post to the first poster and the previous poster. Last but not least please post the links of all participants in the blogroll.
Enough with the procrastination. Sounds like a great idea, except that overcoming procrastination is what got me into my current state of mind. Right now I am mired in the middle of my second draft. Writing the first one was a joy. No worries about spelling, grammar or even story. Just sat down and wrote. I did not intend to write a novel for publication. Three months and about 46k words later I had something. Sure it was a short, garble mess of a thing, choking on to many adverbs, sloughing through the Mire of Passive Tense and swallowing entire armies of apostrophes whole. Yet the elation of writing my first work overpowered me. Dreams of best seller lists, television appearances and even the seed of an award winning movie dance before my eyes.
Then I took a break, started work on something else. The prerequisite three months passed (the typical “cool down” period according to the “experts”). Now all I had to do was sweep away the detritus, polish my work into a sparkling gem and send it to the world. Problem is, I am still polishing away. Well, no. More like blasting whole chunks from the side of mountain in hopes of leaving something worth seeing. Writing the second draft is as frustrating as writing the first one was exiting. First I have to overcome procrastination. The cure for that is a deadline. But then the deadline comes and I am not finished so enter frustration. And those dreams of publishing gold? They become the hunting shadows of self-doubt.
What if, after all this work I end up with nothing?
Is it too short?
To shallow?
Total garbage?
On top of that word has spread among friends and relatives who are now clamoring to read it. So, my fellow writers, how do you overcome these hurdles. Do you simply plow through? Use unusual tactics to defeat the chattering naysayers squawking in the back of your mind? Does the joy ever come back?
I know this is something worth pursuing. I have a story and I want to publish it. I just have to muddle through.
Now back to Unfocused Me, who by the looks of it, knows exactly what I am talking about!
Unfocused Me
Sassee
Feathers
colbymarshall1
FreshHell
ChaosTitan
razibahmed
harri3tspy
mbroadway
rosemerry
