“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” – Samuel Johnson
Posts tagged Writing
Project Update: Developmental Hell
Mar 8th
So there wasn’t much a secret that I’m writing a novel that I wanted to get finished by March 21, so I can spend the endless summer editing and cleaning it up for publishing in the Christmas season.
In the words of The Hangover, “Yeah, we fucked up. … That’s not going to happen.”
I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve reached the dreaded developmental hell. I don’t know if it’s writer’s block or if it’s just a lack of passion or desire to complete the project, but it’s truly dragging. The funny thing is I’ve sworn not to work on JMP’s first major project until I finish this one.
So what can I do to respark this project? Well I’ve had a long break from the thing, and I’m just itching to get back to it.
Maybe the basketball season had a lot to do with the distraction, and now I’m paying for it. Basketball season is less than five weeks away from finishing (NCAA Division I that is). Leaving me with the energy to re-up my creative and mixed martial arts endeavors.
I guess it’ll figure itself out.
So I’m making a promise right here, I’m finishing this book (at least the first draft) by this year. I will have it published. Bank on it.
It’s 3:06 a.m.
Dec 4th
And I’m pretty tired, but I just wanted to post a short blog because I can before I pass out.
Today was by far the busiest day I’ve had in a while because of everything that I had to do in a short time span.
Now, here’s what I had to do.
- 11:30 a.m. — Wake up and do a conference call immediately with Roy Nelson, Kimbo Slice, Brenden Schaub and Houston Alexander.
- 1 p.m. — Immediately, after I chatted with Yahoo Sports’ Kevin Iole about Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. That was an informative and fun conversation, which should make a fun little column.
- 2 p.m. — Immediately after, go to work to start my page shift AND write the preview capsule for the Dixie State Classic happening today (Friday Dec. 4).
- 3 p.m. — Hold a 10-minute interview Rashad Evans.
- 6:30 p.m. — Finish up page shift before driving 15 miles to cover a girls high school basketball game.
- 7:30 p.m. — Watch said Basketball game
- 10 p.m. — Return to office, write story, edit pages and then go home.
- 12:45 a.m. — Upon arriving at home, I sit down and watch the latest episode of Friday Night Lights, had a guy cry moment. While helping my friend Andi with her soc paper.
And that timeline brings us to now (3:12 a.m.), and I’m freaking tired. Combine that with the fact that I didn’t have the best night of sleep given the text messages and phone calls I was receiving late at night. Either way, I know it sounds like I’m complaining, but I really am not. I just figured, I have nothing else to do at 3:06 a.m. (Now it’s 3:14 a.m.) other than to write my blog.
So there it is, and now it’s 3:15 a.m. and I’m going to bed. I’ll blog again soon.
NaNoWriMo — Home Stretch
Nov 23rd
There are seven days left in November, meaning I have seven days to finish this novel of 50,000 words. I’m sitting at 35,000 words and I expect myself to finish by Wednesday because I’m going to make sure of it. I’m going for broke in the next three days.
I’ve been telling people what my novel is about and the thing is, I haven’t been telling people what it’s really about. Most of the people think it’s about pirate ninjas. It’s not really about that, but I like telling people what the idea should be. Maybe, I’ll write the children’s book concerning the pirates and ninjas one day, but I’m not in any hurry.
As for that the story is really about? I’m not really at liberty to say because I’m still fleshing it out in terms of being a workable plot. The major thing is I’m just trying to get the words on the page and advance through 50,000 words, so if and when the time comes to edit it and make it better, I have the general idea and all I need to do is clean it up.
It’s been crazy because I got off to a ridiculously slow start. Then things changed, when I decided to take my writing to Starbucks where the sounds of coffee makers and green tea (and peppermint mochas) make it seemingly easy to write. One day I swore I wrote 5,000 words in a day. I want to finish and start working on the next project I have, which I’ll keep to myself again.
All I can say is it involves more writing.
It’s been an interesting 23 days, and it can only get more entertaining, especially about another reason why I like Starbucks. I’ll take about it in another blog post. Maybe.
Check back. I’m going to start blogging more. I promise.