Merry Christmas

Looks like Santa's reindeer have been upgraded this year.

No updates this week due to Christmas spirit.

An Unfulfilled Promise

I am way behind schedule. Back when I was a kid I thought that by the time I was as old as I am now I'd be a published author. Oh how I've let the little guy down.

This trip down memory lane makes me ponder the reason of why I actually write.

The year was 1993 and I was in elementary school. To say that I did not enjoy school would be an understatement. I wanted out, and I was desperate to find some way, any way, to quit school. Little me hatched what he thought was an ingenious scheme. For whenever he balked about going to school and asked the grown ups why they almost inevitably responded that I would need school to get a job.
"Why do I need a job?" I would ask.
"To make money."
Money, I found out at an early age, was the be all and end all of life. If I had it I could do anything, without it I had to play by the world's rules.

My dad had told me about this kid who collected stamps. He got so good at buying and selling them that left school. He was rich and got driven around by a chauffeur all day, he never even got his licence.

So my brilliant plan was to find something that I could do that would make me money. Just like the stamp kid. Little did I know (oh how ominous those words are) the path that this plan would set me upon.

How was I a mere grade school kid supposed to make money. I wasn't even old enough for a paper route. The answer came to me rather quickly. I would write. It was something that I already liked to do so I figured I could use it to get out of school. It all seemed so simple. But I had to make sure that my parents would let me quit school once I made my millions. Parents can be obnoxious about things like this. "Sorry son we don't care if you can afford to buy yourself a small island your still going to attend school."

And so I made them sign this:

They signed it. A sort of promissory note. Oh I had them now.

Or so I thought.

It was my promise that never got fulfilled. A promise I made to myself to get out of school.

Sometimes I wonder if I write because I really want to or if I have just hardwired it into myself because of my desperate need to escape school. Even now that I'm out of school that need to write is still there. I can't help but wonder if it's genuine.

But then I remember that I did indeed write a book. Way back before the promissory note. Back before I knew how to write. It was an illustrated story about a presidential election between Fire and Water. I still have it somewhere, I'll have to dig it up one day. Remembering it makes me think that maybe I really am a born storyteller. I mean if I was telling stories before I knew words that should count for something right?

At any rate both these events get to the heart of the question of why I write. They aren't the whole answer. I don't know if I can put the whole answer into words. It is something that is felt and thought and spoken. But this is part of it.

Progress Report

So to explain about my Progress report

Pages Transcribed is the amount of pages I've transferred from my hand written text onto the Computer.

Pages On Word refers to the grand total page number on my Word file. I have from time to time made some effort to get my story onto the computer. I took all these files and dumped them into one document. Also on this document are the pages that I've transcribed.

And just to give you a visual of the work cut out for me.

The stack on the left is what I've transferred into the computer. The Stack on the right is what I have left. And making it's second appearance on this blog, the the lovely flower print couch.

An Update

So first off shame on me for not posting something sooner.

Second off I think I'm going to start posting over on the side there, a notice on how many pages I have gotten onto the computer. I'm trying to get my story which is spread over heaps of handwritten pages onto a word program. I got about twenty pages so far using my handy Dragon software.

So that's about all for now. I plan to update my page count every Monday. Hopefully this deadline will help me stay on track. If I don't make any progress then feel free to virtually kick me.

Writing is hard

A while back Lynners had a post on her blog which had some advice for bloggers (blogers?) It was very good advice. One point was about posting on schedule. This is a feat I've never been able to accomplish.
Oh I dream and wish, and I even told myself, "Self, when you write this blog make sure you post at least once a week."
Well once a week turns into once a month, if I'm lucky.

Writing is just so darn hard. People who don't do it think it's easy. I have from time to time shared my desire to write a book with people and they have flippantly responded,
"Oh I think I'll write a book too someday."
Now if they really mean to write a book I got nothing against that. It's just the vibe I get from them is that they seem to be saying that once they have some free time, like a weekend or something, they'll just sit down and write whatever they've got in their heads. Bam, instant book.

IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!

Or at least not for me, and near as I can tell not for anyone else. Writing, if done well, is not something done on a whim. It takes skill and work.

It's so hard it scares me. Scares me to the point of avoidance. Yeah that's right. This writing thing that I am supposed to be so passionate about terrifies me. And the mountain of work set ahead of me is so daunting I find excuses not to attempt the climb.

So I need to do better. I'm telling myself to forget about the worry and the weight of the work. Just enjoy it and make an effort. It will still be hard but nothing worth doing is ever easy. (I hate it when platitudes are right. They just sit there and are so smug about it too. Grumble grumble grumble.)

Writing Excuses

To say that this is my favorite podcast would not be fair. It is the only podcast I listen to. I've tried others but they all miss the mark. What mark is that you ask, well I'll tell you.

When perusing the vast expanse of itunes I sought out writing podcasts. Specifically a pod cast with a emphasis on fantasy writing. It was pretty slim pickins I'll tell you that much. I tried listening to Grammar Girl. Which isn't to bad except her show is really short, and it deals with the actual nuts and bolts of English, you know the mechanical stuff. All that is very important but it wasn't really what I was looking for.

A bunch of other podcasts that had a fantasy orientation seemed to focus on the casters story. I didn't really feel like listening to someone talk about their story and why it worked or didn't work.

Then I found Writing Excuses. It was nearly everything I could have hoped for. It consists of three hosts, all of which are established professionals. Brandon Sanderson is a fantasy writer, Howard Tayler is a web cartoonist, and Dan Wells is a horror writer. They get together once a week and produce a fifteen minute program about writing. They specifically target genre fiction. That includes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and the like. It's a really great show, though sometimes I wish it was longer than just fifteen minutes. I happily recommend their podcast to anyone interested in genre writing and even fiction writing in general. It can be downloaded from itunes for free.

Hope Fulfilled

So a while ago I bought the Dragon Naturally Speaking program. I must say that I am rather happy with it. In fact I am using it right now to write this post. It has made transferring my handwriting into the computer much quicker.

It does seem to have problems with proper names. Also it messes up when you mean to say "two" instead it comes out "to." But all those problems are not insurmountable. Working with the Naturally Speaking program and a keyboard I am able to write several paragraphs in a matter of minutes.

Where before it would take me hours to get a single page of a handwritten story on to the computer it now only takes me an hour to get three pages. So all in all was a good buy for me.