A Share Over Coffee

I'm sitting in one of my not so local Starbucks, enjoying some coffee, black.  Typing, anything away from home, isn't something that I really get to do too much of but it is somethng that I think that would be great.  The atmosphere is good, and so is the coffee.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my writing and which way to go.  I have a desire to start putting things out, but honestly, I'm not sure how I want to do it.  There are several routes to take.

Submitting short stories to publications is one thing that I want to do.  I've done some of that before, but I seem to have just stopped.  Not from discouragement or anything though.  I stopped more from the side of just being busy and not wanting to take the time to jump through the hoops.  It is a poor excuse.  Really it is.

I've looked at making a new site.  I like this one okay, but the domain name is tied to another account and I would love to have it separate.  Google is less than helpful with this.  It's frustrating as, well you know, that I can't do anything with something I already own.  One day it will return I think, whenever the credit card that pays for the renewal runs out.  Hopefully soon, but not before January.

Wordpress looks like a great platform, and getting my name with a .wordpress on the end of it is probably possible.  Sitting here, sipping coffee, that idea is starting to look a little better.  If for nothing else than to experiement with it.  Blogger is easy, but it feels limiting sometimes.

The perfect thing would be a full blown Wordpress site, but alas, I do not have the funds for that.  For a minute I thought I did, but then looking further, no.  Not right now anyway.  That may be the end-goal though, so getting a .wordpress site may be the best move.

I'll take any input that anyone out there has.

Anyway, on this new site, I would like to post one short story a month, along with a semi-regular blog for a start.  Having that deadline, may just give me the kick in the butt I need.  It's a plan anyway.  More than what I have now.

Just got the call, and it's time to go eat.  This was fun, we should do it more often.  Have a great day out there!

A Bad Blogger

I'm not a good blogger.  Not at all.  Try as I might to post here every Tuesday, all I can claim is inconsistency.  Sometimes I have something on my mind, and that's easy.  Those post fly from my fingers but then other times, when there isn't something particular that I feel needs to be addressed, I flounder and miss not just the day, but the whole week.

Honestly, I don't think that will change.  At least not anytime soon.  It's not that I don't want to post, but if there's nothing really going on or nothing to say, why bother.

Sometimes though, I just want to say hi.  Say that I'm still out here, writing every day, plugging away, and trying to get better.  That's what today is.

So here goes:

I've been in a funk all week.  Not sure why.  We are on long hours at work, but not really that long.  Just two more hours a day than normal, but for some reason, it is wearing on me.  I'm tired which leads to grumpy and general unhappiness for all involved.  But I'll get through it.  The past couple of nights I was in bed early, and that didn't really help, so I'm thinking of staying up a little later tonight and maybe spending a little time with a pencil and sketchpad.  Introvert that I am, that may be just what the doctor ordered.

As for writing, that's going well enough.  It's kind of scattered right now as I'm doing short stories mostly in an attempt to stave off editing.  Eventually though, I'll have to bite the bullet and bear down on that editing that's waiting.  Maybe next week.

I'm almost done reading "The Martian."  It's been really good up to this point.  Hope the ending doesn't let me down.  Most of it has been read thirty minutes at a time while on lunch break at work.  I didn't want to rush through it.  I want everything to be as fresh as possible when the movie comes out.

I guess that's about all.  Maybe I'll break out of this funk soon and get back to normal.  Anyway, hope you all are doing good out there.  I've got to go, there's a pencil calling my name.

Weekly Update and Making Writing a Habit

It's Tuesday again.  Another week gone by and time for another blog post.  I'm doing my best to post every Tuesday.  Considering that I missed last week, well let's just say that there's some issues for me to work through.

Random Final Fantasy guy!

So I'm deep into "The Martian" now.  At least halfway, and it is really good.  The chapters are a convenient length, allowing me to get through one or a little better everyday on my lunch break.  I try not to read it too much at home, but it's hard to resist at times.  While at home, I'm reading "Words of Radiance" whenever I get the chance.  I wish I had it in e-book.  If it was, it would be finished by now.  As it stands, I'm about halfway through it as well.  "The Martian" will get finished first as it is a much smaller book, and it's easier to carry around.

Besides reading, I've managed to write everyday.  No real shock there though.  Writing is a compulsion now, guilt falls over me whenever the thought of skipping a day crosses my mind.  Yesterday, the writing got finished a little early, and there was time to draw a little something.  That's it right there!  He's a character from a Final Fantasy manga that's laying on my desk.  I don't know who, but I hope I did him justice.

I wanted to talk a little about making a habit today.  They say it takes 21 days to form a habit.  That may be true, but you can't let your guard down after that if it's a habit you want to keep.  You have to fight to keep your new habit lest you slip back to the old ways.

I've managed to do it with writing, but let me tell you, it's not easy.  Even now, approaching 900 days, I have some really bad days.  Just today as a matter of fact, there was some stuff going on that made me want to not put anything down.  Just forget writing and everything else, but remember that compulsion that we talked about above?  That guilt?  That's what keeps me going.  That may not be healthy, but anyway.

What you have to figure out for you is what keeps you going.  There are some things out there that can help you out too.  The first is The Magic Spreadsheet.  With it, you have a minimum 250 words to write a day.  Every consecutive day adds to your chain and you receive points.  You eventually level up, write more words, get more points, so on and so forth.  It's a great tool.  I use it myself and have for almost 900 days now.  It's part of the compulsion.  I need my points!

The second is the Writing Challenge group.  They started on Twitter, and your challenge is to write 500 words a day.  They have a great group of writers over there and though I haven't been around much lately, September may be my month to get back in it.

Check both of these tools out.  They may be just what you need to get and stay motivated and form that habit that you've been wanting.  There's nothing to it but to do it.  So why wait?  Go ahead and get started now, and be sure to let me know how it goes.