Tag: Writing About Writing

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Status Report – April 2016

It’s the first Monday of the month, and that makes it update time.

The first quarter has now come to a close. Three months of self-publishing goals and deadlines have passed and where do we stand? March was the start of a weekly serial fiction. In addition to the Monday/Friday serial fiction we’ve been putting out we’ve kept up this project to par. I say to par because we didn’t get the overflow I wanted for the short fiction. Instead we’re still writing week to week and in some cases missing the Patreon week-a-head-of-time goal. That’s passing but it’s not great. Since we’ve talked grading scale here in the past I think that earns at best a B. Yes, it’s good we’re writing but we’re not taking that extra step we need to accomplish our end goals.

The Novel is somewhere around 15k. It’s nowhere near complete and that’s really my fault. I got distracted, pure and simple and for two weeks now I’ve set a Friday deadline of 20k words. Well, now it’s time to up the ante. I know I can do 3k a day. I did it several times over the last few weeks, days when I wrote both flash fiction and a short story. Those are great things but they’re not my goal. The novel is. So That’s the gauntlet, 3k a day this week. 30k total by the end of Friday. That’s with flash fiction as well out there. It means I need to have between 3.5-5k writing days every day this week to meet my deadline, but this is necessary. I’ve been saying the novel will be done by December, January, February, and March so far. April is the final deadline, and with the current word count and my goals of 70-80k words for the story, I’m going to need 15k a week to get there. Current grade for novel writing: D

So that’s our April goals:

  • 15k for the novel each week.
  • Complete all of April Flash fiction by April 15.
  • Get back to weekly podcasting.
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Status Report – March 2016

It’s the first weekday of the month, and that makes it update time.

We’re about to begin our third and final month of the first quarter in this self-publishing, writing at home, creating business. So where are we in terms of our February goals? The flash fiction has been a success. We missed one day because I thought something was scheduled for the 26th and turns out I was wrong. Really should have checked the spreadsheet on that one because it did show a blank slate for the day. I digress. We didn’t work on nor complete the novel. That needs major adjusting this coming month. We didn’t get out as many podcast episodes as we planned. That’s not cool. So, in general I think the month gets a C, for completing one objective near perfectly, for failing another completely, and partially completing the last one. Let’s hope for an A for March.

Major milestones in February included the official launch of the Patreon. It went up on February 8th, and has garnered 2 supporters in its first 21 days up. It doesn’t help I haven’t been plugging it much but that’s because I wanted to hit the first real goal of why the Patreon is up in the first place: the flash fiction. Supporters get early access to these works and I wanted to make sure I could keep up that project a clean month in the making. I did, and so now I feel more confident about talking about the Patreon more often. Expect to see a few more bumps for that on my social media feeds but not too many.

It’s time for goals for March:

First, continue the flash fiction and keep it going strong. We’ll be introducing the first serial series to the flash fiction (which will run weekly on Wednesdays), premiering tomorrow with the first installment of Hands. You can read this right now on the Patreon supporter feed. Working on a serial series Is heavily inspired by the likes of awesome authors like Christiana Ellis and Andrew Eckhart, and I highly recommend checking out their serial series currently in production and archived on their respective sites. I’ll be linking them tomorrow in the official launch of Hands.

Second, we’re still setting goals for the novel. I’m going to aim for an end of March deadline. Assuming nothing comes up (no family trips planned, no weird schedules, no sickness, etc), I should have nearly five clear weeks to write the story. It’s already outlined so there’s nothing holding me back. This will be the make or break grade for the upcoming month, so I better make it count.

Third, the podcast still needs more activity. I’d like to get into a habit of putting out a recorded piece of flash fiction each week, so expect to hear my complaining about audio editing over the coming weeks as I try my hand at the project. There’s another project related to this I’m working on too, but until that officially launches I want to hold off screaming about that just yet. That should officially launch sometime in June if all goes according to plan.

That’s it, our official Mach update. Let’s see if we can’t make this coming month the strongest of the year to date.

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Status Report – February 2016

It’s the first weekday of the month, and that’s makes it update time!

*steps back as a field of fireworks, excitement, and loud music plays for a moment, until I’m left holding a single unlit sparkler*

Yay, imagination.

It’s been a month since we started this new adventure and I wanted to share with you the highs and lows of that time. Our goal at the end of January was to have a finished book project ready to bake and print. We’re not there. We’re actually quite far from it. I’ve completed the outline and worked heavily on the first chapter but things hit a snag throughout the time we laid out for the project. There’s a myriad of excuses but the biggest falls under health and work performance.

So what did we accomplish writing wise instead? Flash fiction. Today marks the first installment of a three times a week flash fiction project I’m pushing. The stories are meant to serve as writing practice and as a general draw to people new to me. They’re also fun to write and fairly quick on the immediate satisfaction scale. They’re also the lynch pin to the upcoming Patreon, as donors get access to upcoming stories a week earlier than everyone else. I also have plans to include serial fiction as part of this project, but I’m holding off pushing that out until the novel is further along.

I’ve also been really lax with the podcast. It’s meant to be a daily thing but getting sick rather early into its production halted it. We’ll be fixing that this week. Tonight, actually, since I’ve no reason to put off putting out an episode.

That’s really it for now. We’re very early in the process for what I’m creating, and until I’m out there more with production, projects, and connecting with people, these will remain brief. Our goal for February are the completion of the Novel, having the flash fiction out there Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of every week from now until I’m not writing anymore because the bore worms have taken over my brain, have an episode of the podcast out at least 5 days a week and make sure to post when and why episodes aren’t coming so people aren’t in the dark, and finally having the Patreon up and running with something people can dig. Those are reasonable goals.

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Flash Fiction: Price To Pay

Today’s story was influenced by a music complication featuring some of the tunes from Shadowrun Returns. The specific track is Blood Hounds. The compilation video is here, and is the same music I listened to for Tuesday’s story.

I touched his forehead. It was warm still, and he squirmed a little in protest. I nodded, then took my dagger and slit his throat. I suppose I could have saved myself the trouble and just tried to kill him immediately but I wasn’t comfortable with the thought of desecrating a body. I know, it doesn’t make sense, but it’s my way. I need you to understand that, as you go through my memories. I need you to know why I’m doing things this way.

Franklin had been the last of the squad, besides me. The bulk of them had died from the fire wave of bugs. Invaders. Look, whatever you want to call them. I’m not clear what they are anymore. They had crawled out of the hatch as soon as we tried to board the vessel. They came fast and began slicing open pressure suits and skin with every touch of their vine like bodies. It was supposed to be a simple recon job, but you bulkhead warriors didn’t bother to tell us what was on board.

The four of us that lived through the attack pulled back, trying to seal the airlink’s hatch and save ourselves. That’s when Jenn died. They wrapped their limbs around her and… I’ve never seen a body taken apart like that before. Look, I used to work at a butchery house on Raekin III. I know what how fast a bovine can be killed, shredded, and cleaned. That’s merciful quick work. She suffered. She suffered as she watched parts of come undone in strips. It was done to hurt, to hurt her and to fuck us out of our minds.

It damn near worked too. Franklin was the one who attacked Hugo when he slipped on the latch. I think Hugo would have had it too, if Franklin hadn’t slammed him head first into the metal door. I managed the handle but another vine already reached in and grabbed Hugo’s limp form. It yanked and yanked until strips of him floated around the room. My knife cut the bug’s limb. Invader. Sorry. Invader’s limb off. The damage was done though.

That’s when I tackled Franklin, slamming him against the bulkhead and knocking him out. He cost Hugo his life. He paid with his. I don’t regret it. I don’t care what you do with me now. I just want you to understand why. I’m no traitor, I’m not infected by those things.

Really? I guess that’s one way for me to pay for a taken life. Yeah, I’ll go back out there. I’ll face them again. I’ve got no one else to lose.

Working in first person direct narrative is a weird experiment for me. I’m used to avoiding the word ‘you’ outside of dialogue boxes, so using it within the context of a direct narrator is a fun experiment. First person limited narratives tend to be my bread and body for longer pieces, which third person narratives representing most of my shorter flash pieces. In the coming weeks I’m going to use these flash pieces to experiment with styles, and see what works, what fails, and what’s worth developing further.

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Foundation: In Which We Begin a New Journey

hidden_node_logoThis post is my official announcement I’m writing full time. I decided to come out swinging instead of trying to find a fancy way of dropping that bomb on the end of this paragraph. It’s a scary ass choice and one my wife and I don’t make lightly. The new year is full of many great opportunities and this is my chance to try and see if I can be that writer guy that’s in my mind. It’s time to start laying down our ‘reasonable’ expectations. First, I’m not expected to fund the family’s coffers all by myself this year. Starting a creative career isn’t that easy and even if we get close to having a decent finical flow we’re still going to be playing it safe with any fiscal choices we make for some time. Second, the idea is to do an all-consuming creative approach. Writing for long form fiction and the blog will become my main focus, but podcasting on the regular and producing weekly (and sometimes daily) short fiction will also be a focus. I’m going to be trying this from as many angles as I can reasonably juggle. First short fiction should be up a few hours after this.

This means a number of changes in terms of my online presence:

This place is one of them. The J Samuel Diehl thing is my main announcement channel for works that are out there. I’ll get a category up with those posts and I’ll associate those with the newsletter (yeah, we’re getting one of those). Other posts such as my reviews of books, games, shows, etc. will also show up here, as well as opinion pieces, but those won’t be as flashy on the main page (At least not once we get a theme rolling). Audio fiction will also show up here, but the audio blog is reserved for the Hiddennode. Hiddennode will also mirror that fiction. Free fiction will show up here as well, and my intentions are to get a Patreon up and running in the coming weeks to post the fiction to early (as well as providing full copies of upcoming works before they become site exclusives).

The Hiddennode site has been archived. The old version is available here but except for fiction I’m bringing to J Samuel Diehl, most of the posts will remain in the archive. The site will be my audio blog, which will be daily, baring health and holidays. Many of the comments I make on blog posts here will be expanded on in that format. I don’t think of the podcast as a super strict thing so expect more casual conversation there.

Beyond my sites, we’ve got a few points to reach me. First, the nulloperations twitter thing isn’t changing. That’s my feed for personal posts, opinions, etc. The J Samuel Diehl account, though, that one is reactivating as my official “here’s stuff coming down the pipe” feed. Basically the writing stuff without the ‘Me’ fluff. It won’t be all of the posts here, just the ones that are about writing updates. Same with Facebook. The nulloperations account is me. The writer page is here. The ‘Me’ page gets the fluff. The author page gets the official announcements and such. I think it’s straight forward. No, I don’t really have much more than that. I mean there is a Tumblr thing but I’ll be honest I still don’t get that site. We’ll explore it more later. Anything else we’ll look at as the year passes through.

I don’t pretend to how things will turn out. I think my writing is pretty rad, and I think people will like it, but I don’t know. We’ve got a year to plan, act on, and then review. Unless something incredible happens beforehand I’ll let you know next year if things worked out. For now, let’s get down to business and defeat the huns. I meant write. I’m going to write. Not be in an animated movie. That would be weird.