To Write A Novel #NaNoWriMo #HalfwayMark #TMOTR

To Write A Novel #NaNoWriMo #HalfwayMark #TMOTR

This picture courtesy of the NaNoWriMo commission

Writing a novel can be pretty hard, y’all. Like... yeah! For those that don’t know or who have never tried, writing a full-length novel is very difficult and can be not only taxing on you mentally but quite a pain physically. And that’s even if you’re writing something you enjoy writing, something wonderful, something light and free and fluffy and lovey-dovey! Piecing everything together to create an easy, memorable and enjoyable reading experience for those future readers you one day hope to have is no easy task, but it is sometimes in this difficulty that we stumble upon (mental stumble upon. Wait, what do you call that...? Thunk upon! That sounds right) brilliance. The one drawback to brilliance is that you never quite know if it counts as such until it’s out there for others to see and consume. But that doesn’t mean you have to fret. I believe that all writing, even the fairly bad stuff, contains nuggets of greatness. That means that for you NaNoWriMo’ers this month, even if you struggle to get to your goal, even if you end the month without having completed your task, remember that you most likely have written something great.

Remembering back two years ago, I embarked on my first official (that’s very important) NaNoWriMo in November of 2015. It was a helluva month as I also decided to take on the unnecessary added challenge of NaNoBloPoMo or, wait... Is that what it is? That doesn’t sound right. NaBlo...? National Blog Post Month (NaBloPoMo! Ha!). For those that are unfamiliar with it or don’t blog, NaBloPoMo is where you post at least one blog post everyday for an entire month. Now, if you’ve read anything else on my blog, you’ll know that it is not like me to not be very verbose. Trying to both do my writing on my novel while also doing the whole blogging thing was extremely hectic and nearly pushed me over the edge. Somehow I managed to accomplish both in a whirlwind that saw me complete the month with at least 30 (don’t know the actual number. Would have to look back to check and I’m rather lazy and too busy to do that right now) blog posts and a 118,000 word first-draft mystery novel.

That novel is TMOTR (#TMOTR for social media) but you can call it by its god-given name The Man On The Roof. It was only the second mystery novel I had ever written, yet all the while writing it I felt a surge of energy that continued to push me forward each day and make me cognizant of its weightiness. I felt I was writing something that would be amazing. Now, granted, I am quite often delusional according to my therapist Bert the trash man who absolutely swears he’s just a trash man but is older, black, always has great nuggets of wisdom and totally fits the archetype of the magical negro (I swear that brotha went to Hogwarts or somethin’). But even with that I still couldn’t fight the feeling that I had created something great, which is one of the biggest reasons that kept me pushing through the project, pushing through the small snippets of writer’s block (though I find it insanely difficult to actually get writer’s block when you’re constantly writing and working on at least two different projects at once. I know it sounds crazy hard, but try it. It frees your mind) and the mental fatigue of crafting a story; pushing through the emotional roller coaster that was (and still is) my relationship with each of the characters and growing to love and loathe them as the time went on; charging forward through the quandaries and quagmires of questions that came up in the plot and how to get from point A to point C while making point B the most dramatic; creating a world and setting for not just my characters to live in but creating enough empty space for the reader to slot his or her thoughts and feelings into the setting too, in order to fill out the rest of the environment; battling to create not just narrative but atmospheric narrative; making sure each voice was right, each character just distinct enough; and figuring out a way to lure the reader deeper and deeper into the mysterious darkness while keeping them hooked on every word, every sentence, every idea put forth in the book. It’s a heck of a lot.

Now, two years after having written it, I finally am ready to release it and am looking for reviewers of this book that I think is similar to Gone Girl, The Girl On The Train, Big Little Lies, In A Dark, Dark Wood and the like. No, I wasn’t editing this the whole time. I worked on the editing for three weeks after I finished it and haven’t touched it since but only now do I think the timing for the book is right.

That’s neither here nor there. What is important is that I know your plight dear NaNoWriMo’er and for all you first-timers, I can say that it is wholly doable. Is it a challenge? Of course. And no, nobody expects you to finish over 100,000 words (which is only an achievement if the book is actually good). But push yourself further and harder than you ever have before.

First Mystery Suspense Thriller

Coming In 

December

OK, now it’s that cringe-worthy time where I give you unsolicited advice. I know. I hate getting that kind of advice because it seems to almost always come from some smart-butt who thinks he or she knows everything or knows something that I don’t, and just wants to rub it in. If you don’t want to take it that’s totally fine, but I do find that sometimes this stuff helps. Sometimes it helps to hear something you already know from someone else to sure-up your own confidence and sometimes there truly are things that you didn’t think of that another person has thought of and that can be helpful to you. So, here it goes, my tips on getting through the month.

First, I know that this month, for many, is so often not really about finishing the novel but about word counts and lengths, and as we get deeper into this thing, we’re gonna start seeing more and more people posting about how many words they’ve written in one day or one week, or how close they are to the minimum goal of 50,000 words. Ignore it! Ignore it all. Is it good to keep track of just how much you’ve done, you’ve accomplished? Of course. And taking a peek at how many words you’ve logged in a day or over a week does help you to gauge your productivity level, but don’t let this sidetrack you. In fact, don’t let the word count get you down at all. This is totally gonna sound like bragging but I assure you it is not and it’s truthful (you can go back through my blog and check if you’d like). So don’t judge.

Anyways, as I was doing the posts and the novel writing, and we did have the Thanksgiving holiday on which I am always the primary cook for my family, I still also had yardwork to do. As some of my long-time readers may know, I am a vegetable gardener and all-around environmentalist (Go #CaptainPlanet) so I am really big into composting. Well, that year I foolishly, for the first (but not last) time requested a truckload of leaves be delivered to my house. Leaves which I would use both for mulching all of my aesthetic gardening beds, as well as mixing with coffee grounds, lawn clippings and food scraps to set as the base for my compost pile. The picture below is of the leaf pile.

The pile was taller than me, as long as a full-sized Sedan (maybe longer), and made of the driest, most compact assortment of leaves you can get. Most were maple leaves and they smelled amazing, like warm maple syrup. We had 70 degree temps that week in November which is unseasonably warm but pretty great because it would get dark hella early and it was the week of Thanksgiving so everybody was home and off. Moving the leaves alone, it took me four days to get them all moved from the front of my yard to all around the property where they needed to be. That was four days of not writing at all on my novel.

Whatever time I did get at the end of the night went directly to my blogging and sleep. And another full day of Thanksgiving-ing (uh... That should totally be a word. Yes, I know that thanksgiving in and of itself is technically a verb. Don’t bother me with minutia, reader) where I also hardly wrote anything. So out of 30 days I only wrote for about 25 of them. My point is that if I had stressed over word count and how much I got done during those days (I may have blogged about stressing a little), I would have volunteered my brain for writer’s block and never achieved my goal. How many words you have doesn’t matter as much as how complete the story is and how good those words are. Granted, there is some importance to the word count if all you’ve previously done is write short stories, but even then, I’d say don’t look at the word count until you are satisfactorily finished with the story, then hopefully you still have a week of time left at the end of the month to make some changes or additions within the story.

The Writer Seasons 1-3 Out NOW

on Amazon Kindle

With that point made, I feel everything else should flow easily. Remember, while this month is certainly focused on finishing a full novel, it’s not really about finishing a full novel, but telling a story as best you can in a way that pleases both you and a potential reader one day. Have fun with this thing. Remember that the writing is supposed to be the fun part, even if you are purging anger, resentment, depression or the like out onto the blank page (The Man On The Roof #TMOTR was written in a rage-fueled miasma that stemmed from continuing to be a failure at writing and all-around, and having poor timing in my life). Don’t stress over words. Take risks with your writing, try new things, let the story take you where it wants to venture and be willing to make mistakes. But—this is something that most other authors won’t tell you because everyone is a huge worshipper of the editing and revisions process—make your first draft as near to perfect as possible. Yes, you’ll have plenty of time to go back and tinker and fix and add and subtract, but one of the reasons why this month is so challenging is not because of the word counts or things of that nature, but because it wants you to challenge yourself to write a novel and not just slop together some pretty words that occasionally make sense. If you’re gonna stress over anything, stress over the tightness of the narrative and the believability of the characters (not even so much the relatability as each reader will pick and choose who they relate to based on their own biases).

Another big nugget of advice: DON’T TRY TO EDIT ANYTHING DURING THE MONTH!! It’s tempting, I know. And some people will tell you that it pays to be a perfectionist and if you just go back and tweak things, it’s OK. No. Stop before you do that and remember this thought: there is more brilliance deleted by authors than ever makes it into their novels. Quote from me. Michael Stephenson. If you’re a seasoned writer you should already know that you should never be deleting anything anyway, unless it is a grammatical error like mispalings and such. But sentences that don’t sound right in the flow of things, dialogue that you don’t particularly care for and even entire scenes that you think can be cut—keep all of it in your first draft. And if you want to make an edit later, then mark it as something you want to take a look at, then write whatever you wanted to edit it to be (if you already have something in mind) just below your note, but don’t delete it. And don’t slow down your mind’s conscious stream of thought to go back and question yourself if this one particular word is the right particular word in that sentence, because you could come back to the novel in a month or two and realize that your first choice was the best choice but you can’t remember what it was.

As for outlining and framework construction, I will leave it up to you. I will tell you that while I had been thinking of TMOTR for a while, I hadn’t had a proper outline and, in fact, the original idea I had for the story was drastically different than what the novel ended up becoming. Sometimes I have an outline but sometimes I simply leave prompts for myself, something which I recommend all writers do. The prompts are generally questions or brief synopses about what I want or think should happen either next in the story or what I am comfortable writing next. Again, this month should be about getting into a particular groove of comfort that allows you to open your most creative mindset. Some good questions are: what a particular character learned from what you wrote that day, when you want a crucial event to happen, how you see the characters interacting with each other at the end, and et cetera. Those are just examples, but it is important to think like a reader would which is going to actually drive your narrative. If you can get into the mind of your reader before they are in their own mind, and anticipate what they will think when reading your work, then you can reward them by fulfilling their expectations or yank them deeper into the story by throwing an unexpected twist at them. And yes, sometimes the best thing to do is to let yourself fall into a bout of writer’s block because right after that is usually when the magic happens, but never get concerned about not being able to get any words down on the page.

Extraordinary Season One Out NOW!

This month’s pursuit is solely to make you a better writer, make you a faster thinker and more agile wordsmith. It is meant to challenge your perspective on how you write from start to finish, including the planning process. So get messy, make mistakes, and most of all, have fun! And some of the best times you’ll have during this process will come, surprisingly, not from the writing, though that will be pretty amazing. Some of the best times might very well come from social media and any other offline/real-life socializing groups that you have where you can get together and talk about either writing or reading or both. NaNoWriMo is one of the few months where you don’t have to be or feel alone in the writing process. Yes, writing is often solitary but it doesn’t have to be this month. Go to wherever other writers are and share your stories of what you are doing. Give updates on what you are writing, what characters you’ve fallen in love with, which ones you absolutely loathe, or how the plot has changed from what you thought it was originally. And don’t just share triumphs, share failures, the mundane, the quirky, the questionable and the like. If you’re struggling with a particular section, don’t agonize in silence, take it to Twitter or Facebook or Goodreads or wherever and ask questions about that situation there. Yes, while there is always a bit of paranoia about idea theft, there are still tons of authors out there willing to help you solve your writing problems. And sometimes it’s just good to commiserate with others trying to achieve the same thing. Make friendships and more importantly, make enemies, too. Seriously, haven’t you always wanted a nemesis? You could totally have one and have that person be a writer just like you. It’s perfect!

Anyway, that’s my two cents. To all my fellow writers and authors who dare to participate in the 2017 November NaNoWriMo, I wish you good luck and happy writing. And for anyone interested in reviewing my novel The Man On The Roof, I would love it if you did. Here’s a description:

“There was a man on your roof.” And so starts the psychological intrigue. A small, quiet, Northeast Ohio suburb plays host to a murder when the body of a teenage ne'er-do-well is found hanging from a street banner on a summer morning. At the end of the lane where the murder took place, live five different couples and one old man. Neighbors make for convenient friends as all five couples consider themselves one collective group. But someone here is a murderer. Lies, betrayal and twisted deeds come to light as fingers point and eyes narrow. Who's lying? Who can be trusted? Who has a secret worth killing for? As spouses turn against each other but one thing is for sure: The boy's murderer was trying to send a message. The murderer will kill again.

A psychological mystery thriller in the vein of Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, and Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies, The Man on the Roof is told in 10 distinct voices that dig into the inner marrow of the lives and secrets that the people at the end of Shady Lane hold. Designed to be re-readable and keep readers on their toes, it will keep you up at night and have you second and third-guessing every theory about who done it and why. You might want to take notes on this one because you'll surely be talking about The Man on the Roof (#TMOTR) all year long! If you'd like to review it, let me know in the comments below and we can set something up. Currently, it will only be an ebook but hopefully within six months I will have hard copies.

Otherwise, I wish you all as much success as you can stand this month and beyond. Write something cool, and if it isn’t cool don’t fret, nobody actually reads books anymore anyway ;).

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, (looks at book on coffee table) “Wow! Have you read that book?”

‘Uh... Yeah, totally.’

“I love the part when she takes the paddle and starts spanking the guy and he turns into a dragon and—”

‘Well, actually, I haven’t read it at all. I’ve just been using it as a coaster for my tea mug. Dat tea be hot and delicious!’

(exasperated head shakes)

P.S. Yes, I know that was a long sign-off. Don’t judge me. I should be judging you, reader. You totally know that you have at least one or two books that you have been meaning to read but is now serving as a cup coaster somewhere or is sitting somewhere in plain sight to make you look well-read. For shame! Well, at least drink a cup of tea for me. Cheers! I’ll think of a better, shorter sign-off line next time.

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Spring Comeback And Writer's Apathy #amwriting #amediting #TheWriter

Spring Comeback And Writer's Apathy #amwriting #amediting #TheWriter

Picture courtesy of google, drawn by Eleanor Davis 

Well, people, I'm back! I know, it was a very long time since last I've been here and given you guys and gals all the feels and the funnys but I have finally returned. What have I been doing you ask? What...? Oh, you didn't ask that? Wow! Pretty inconsiderate, but I'll tell you anyway.

Copyright Hallmark Channel and company 2016

My hiatus wasn't meant to be this long. I work and write every single day of the year for roughly 16 hours a day. Little sleep, and not much time to myself to relax, so I take a break from work and writing at the end of the year during the holidays. My holiday started December 20th, 2015 and lasted until January 18th--longer than usual. Doing nothing gets addictive. Gorging on Lifetime Movie Network and Hallmark Channel movies like they were a nacho cheese/cool ranch Doritos mix did not help me to get out of my "awww! That's sweet"-coma (by the way, does Doritos have the nacho/cool ranch mix? If not, it's a missed opportunity). I developed not only a few food recipes (the greatest Hot Chocolate in the World recipe), I also fell ill and realized I have a disease. Don't worry, it's nothing for now.

Once I finally climbed my way out of the mud-boggy den of pleasure that is laziness, I got back to work, fully intending to start blogging again about a few of the midseason replacement shows like: The X-Files, Galavant (You don't know Galavant? Well... Way back in days of old, there was a story told, about a--oh, you don't want me to sing? OK), American Idol's final season, The Bachelor and a ton of other stuff including the Super Bowl and the NBA (sigh! David Blatt, Cavs Nation hardly knew ye!). However, I just didn't have the time nor the brain power to tackle both the blog and other projects.

What, you ask, was I working on? First off, thanks for asking this time. You get brownie points for caring, but since you weren't considerate enough to care about where I went in the first place, you're just back to zero. Anyway, the other project happened to be my NaNoWriMo (#NaNoWriMo) project. Yes, scroll down and you'll see that 2015 was the first year I participated in NaNo, finishing an 118,000 word mystery in November. As some of you writers know, the initial writing process and the editing process are, or can be, two different things (side note: I rarely suggest trying to edit your work while still in the middle of writing it. It slows the process, can lead to over-thinking the story and can possibly ruin the magic. Just my opinion). Frankly, I would petition the NaNoWriMo people or any writer willing to participate, to declare January either as National Novel Editing Month or National Novel Brainstorming Month. That way writers would have opened a new year by not only having written a book in the last two months, but having actually followed through to edit/revise that book, or come up with new ideas and an outline/plot/3-act story arc for another book to be written next NaNoWriMo. I know, it's such a crazy idea. I'm a crazy guy!

Back to my own editing process, which saw me adding a total of three more chapters, and 7,000 more words, yet, ending with a crisp manuscript of 112,000 words (do the math). As a self-pub author, I have always tried to put out the best quality I possibly can, however, quite a few of my books have never been submitted to traditional publishers just because I didn't feel like it. But once every two years I choose one book to take through the arduous task of querying and blah blah blah! The NaNoWriMo novel is that book this year. Yes, it is a FUTURE BESTSELLER!! I know, some will say that the contest is really more of an exercise and no way anybody produces something of real merit and worth in that short amount of time, but I also believe that those people lack imagination and don't fully understand the basic tenant of storytelling--Anything Is Possible! I am telling you TMOTR (#TMOTR; remember those letters as they are the initials of the book) is going to be a future bestseller. Sadly, I failed to remember how long the process takes so it probably won't be this year, but very soon.

Coming Soon

Finally crawling out of my editing cocoon a few weeks back I was totally ready to start blogging again, and then I remembered that I hadn't filled out my yearly writing agenda and need to work on that baby before it got too far into the year. And boy did that piss me off because I realized just how behind I was in some projects. Things like the second season of The Writer (#TheWriter), which is coming back this summer, needed my attention. I still had yet to write more than three paragraphs on the sequel to A Dangerous Low entitled A New Low (hopefully coming out this Spring). I also hadn't finished editing my short story Cavity. Nor did I finish revising my first self-pub mystery The Knowledge of Fear (also due out this Spring). And I had only just finished the outline for A Negotiation of Sorrows, the sequel to A Negotiation of Wounds. I did, however, get quite a lot of work done last year and have three projects just sitting in my queue waiting to be advertised and published. Why aren't they out there already? Well, that's the subject I want to talk about.

Writer's Apathy. That's right folks, apathy. Not to be confused with writer's block. Writer's block happens when you can't find the proper thing to write or a story twist is undoing your creative process. It's poet's quicksand, a mush of the minds potato. Uh... yeah, the second part of that sentence made sense. Essentially, writer's block is imagination constipation. It is when you can't. Writer's apathy, on the other hand, is when you don't want to.

Trust, I haven't truly had a writer's block in a long while. I freaked in November when I thought I had the early stages of a huge block during the dwindling days of the NaNoWriMo race. However, I didn't and finished on time. My symptoms were the onset of writer's apathy, which can feel the same in early stages.

I've been doing this for a long time now, people, and I've had some successes and some really big failures. I detail some of what happened to me in the epic novel Unrequited due out later this year, but suffice it to say that I have dedicated a lot of time to this and honing the craft and trying to get my stories out there. But sometimes, for every writer--nay, for every dream-chaser there has to come a point in which they stop and take stock of what they're doing and if they've gotten any closer to that dream. Analysis of the journey AND the destination.

The feeling of writer's block; copyright Boardwalk Empire

Dreams are great and, for a writer, they are everything. However, even writers have to be reasonable at some point. Writer's apathy is when that point arrives. When you believe you have this great idea for a story and maybe you even have a bunch of different scenes or scenarios or you know the characters better and better each day, yet you still have to struggle to force yourself to write a brief scene which is so easy to do, you can literally see it happening every time you close your eyes, that's when you have writer's apathy. That's when you'll begin to question whether you can truly push farther.

Now, I'm gonna piss a few people off and break a few hearts, but I'll say this, these people out here who tell you that you should be happy that writing is a thankless job and you're never going to make money off of it but still do it, or you shouldn't give up on writing because it's about the readers or tons of other stuff that they say about writing and the unspoken prestige of being one are really only blowing smoke up your ass. Most of those people either haven't done it long enough themselves, teach it, or have already made their money on it, or even worse, they want you to join in their misery because they're just as pissed off as the hundreds of thousands of other writers yelling for someone to read their dreck. This is when you'll get the conflicting advice of: well, writing should really be for you, you shouldn't expect to make money (true) or for people to even read it (what?), then say "well, you always should write to your audience and consider who you are writing for." Both psuedo-revelations on the actual process and why you write. While I would love to explain why this is a contradiction as I know people will argue against it (you're a negative nanny, Michael. One is about process and the other is about audience), I just don't have the time as this is already longer than I'd like it to be. But I do always say this: decide if you want to be a professional or an amateur before you start writing!!! No professional (or wannabe professional) writer should ever write something and PUBLISH IT thinking "Oh this is just for me. It was just therapy." Just... no. This goes hand-in-hand with other facets of entertain too. Like I literally always say, "There are better ball players than Lebron James and Stephen Curry in this world, but not everyone chooses to go pro." And with that mindset, every writer at some point goes through Writer's Apathy.

"Do I really want to still do this? Is this story really that important/entertaining for me to tell? Wouldn't my time be better spent somewhere else?" If you ask yourself any of those questions, that's when you know you have it. The biggest and deepest gut punch most writers ever face is when they see another project very similar to theirs already out or releasing in the near future, especially if people already loved it. The onus to be original is often so crushing that it can get to you. Because a regular love story has been told before, but a love story with zombies... that's original, right? That's what you think until you see the film Warm Bodies or read the digital comic Zombie With A Shotgun. The many years I've been doing this, I've seen this countless times, especially within the last decade, and I rarely do this but I'll rattle a few ideas off here:

My Idea: Second--A man dies but then comes back to life in his same body only younger, only to tell others that everyone was wrong and that we actually do get a second chance at life and only now, after every original soul has lived on earth, will each person's second life begin. Conflict occurs when not everyone comes back and the ones that do, find themselves changed by having been dead. Dated treatment submitted 2009. Rejected. I shelved it, thinking I'd one day turn it into a 3-book series.

Competing Ideas: Resurrection (ABC TV series)--people mysteriously return to life in a small town in the US midwest; Life After Life (novel); The Returned (TV series). All within the last ten years.

Picture courtesy of ABC, copyright 2014

My Idea: Blue Moon Station--A drama covering the trials and tribulations of a group of black slaves escaping on a branch-off northern route, aided by abolitionists. Upon their road to freedom, they stop at the abolitionists home where breaks out a firefight between them and the slave trackers under the watchful shine of the Blue moon.

Competing Ideas: While some would say that films like Roots or Harriet Tubman would be strictly against my idea, those films/ideas didn't focus quite on the escape of the slaves. Underground (WGN TV), however, does.

Picture courtesy of WGN 

I could go on but I don't want to keep dwelling on this as I already sound like a whiny little brat, however, I literally have 72 ideas of varying genres that were fully formed, worked on and submitted through traditional channels which never coalesced into anything, but still made it to screen in some form. Again, whiny, I know. My point is that at some point in time, every writer (if they're paying attention hard enough) will come to realize that the story you just knew you had to tell has probably already been told. And if no one or few people are actually reading your junk, and you're spending half of your free time writing stories (because stories take a lot of time to write regardless if they're short or novel-length), you have to at some point think, why the heck am I writing this? Most people will start to bargain with themselves at that point, saying, "Well, because even if people liked the other one, they'll still love mine because mine is so different. And plus, they didn't have a character like this or this one cool thing that happens in mine didn't happen in theirs, so..." And that may all be true, but again, why are you writing? Because at this point, if you've bargained your way through that, you're most likely writing for your ego. In other words, you're writing for legacy, because someday way down the line, someone will read your writing and have it be that brilliant and life-changing that finally your genius will be known to the world. Then you say, no, it's not genius I just want to entertain people. And then you start to think to yourself, how often do I read or watch the non-popular stories that are very similar to that one or two or four stories that it draws from? How often do I dismiss a book or TV show or film as being "a ripoff of [insert beloved piece of fiction]?" Hell, there are still people who feel they must choose sides between Star Trek and Star Wars for... uh... well because they both have aliens, I guess? Not really sure. But you see what I'm getting at here? And both traditional and self-pub writers and readers do it, so don't act like, "oh, I only read Indie stuff," to keep your street library cred.

Writer's apathy is the worst feeling a writer gets because it is the one big time that a writer has to make a very important decision that has nothing to do with the plot or characters. And while a book cover, whether to make a trailer, the price point at which to sell/share your book and etc. can be really tough decisions, there's nothing like wondering if you should continue on or not.

So what does this mean? Am I quitting? No, at least not right now. I'm currently slogging through a novel which I know the first draft won't be much good even for my standards. I will still try to push out The Writer later on this year and I still have feelers out on TMOTR, but I'll have to take this year to examine the worth of writing in my life. Because the funny thing about dreams is sometimes it is OK to give up, contrary to what they say. Sometimes, you're not meant for what you thought.

What do you think? Are you a writer? And if so, have you ever reached the point of writer's apathy? Be honest with yourself, what do you really write for? Because no way someone goes through the struggle of writing a story from start to finish, spending time and energy on trying to perfect it, edit it, revise it, edit it again, try to get it published, study the traditional and indie publishing industry to see which best fits you, research price points and how to gain readers, give pieces away and call themselves an author just for nothing. Hell, everybody knows by now that the internet (and to an even greater extent, the world in general) is not the place to go if you don't want to be seen, if you don't want recognition, even if you're writing fanfiction for free. This ain't a therapy couch either. You're putting yourself out there, opening up to tons of barbs when you really could have just stayed at home and shared stories with your family, friends and other loved ones and never worried about your clicks, views, downloads, buys or if anyone likes your story or not.

Let me know in the comments below (hint: click the no comments button if you see no comments).

Check out my new 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking

If you’re looking for a scare, check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check out #TheWriter. The full first season is out NOW exclusively on Amazon. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, "If there's even a 1% chance that he is our enemy, we have to take it as an absolute certainty."

P.S. A word on my last blog post concerning Batman v. Superman. To start, people whining about spoilers is stupid. Every possible update, rumor or cast interview is a potential spoiler, not to mention the trailers that show everything. I made it clear that while I heard it from a source I know and trust, they could have just been fooling with me, which is fine. Yes, they do work at the WB. And while this is pretty late in the game to do it, movies let little potential spoilers slip all the time before the release to not only gauge fans' interest but to keep the movie in the press cycle. Some of you acted as if the rumor wasn't believable, even knowing that time travel is a big thing for the Flash, Wonder Woman and her main guy are filming during the WWII era and Doomsday does kill Superman in the comics. Some fans whine that DC and WB don't take risks with their properties (hell, they even thought WW was too risky on her own), yet when they're trying to bring something new to the screen but completely in-line with the comics, it's suddenly ridiculous? What? Hogwash! But maybe I'm wrong. That's fine.  

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What Am I Missing? #NaNoWriMo #NaBloPoMo #TMOTR

What Am I Missing? #NaNoWriMo #NaBloPoMo #TMOTR

Banner courtesy of NaNoWriMo Organization.

Three? First... 10... mine? Hmph? Oh, right. I'm supposed to be writing a post right now. The thing is I'm sort of gone in the head. It's late as I write this. It's late on Thanksgiving Day though you won't read this until Friday or a year from now (hello, future fans! Do you know the riddle?). I am almost done with TMOTR 92,000 words and suddenly I've hit a snag.

That horrid and unsettling feeling that all writers get at some point, many times on one project, even multiple times during the day, I now have. That's right, fellow writers, I have reached a point of writer's block. Don't worry, it's mild. I still have a few things I know how I want to write, but I have the sneaking suspicion I'm missing something... but what?

For starters, I rarely get writer's block anymore. I remember back in high school I used to get it all the time, even abandoning projects because it was too hard to think of the next thing to unfold. It is within those times that I think the truly committed (or crazy or both) buckle down and tell their imaginations how it's going to be, not necessarily reinvent their writing style but their process. It wasn't until my late years in high school did I start writing nearly all stories nonlinear-ly. Don't get me wrong, most of them unfold in a linear progression, but as I've said before, I write what I can write when I can write it. Then the multiple stories thing came in during college. Sometimes I would work on up to eight projects at a time. I really hope that doesn't sound like bragging, I'm just saying what works for me. Rarely have I ever broken from this accept for in one recent case while finishing my epic serial novel Unrequited due out sometime next year.

#KnowFear

To be clear, I haven't had writer's block on a novel or screenplay literally in three years. Now? Something is missing I'm sure of it, but I can't figure out what? For the month I pushed aside my usual routine, working only on the novel and the blog to try completing the #NaNoWriMo and #NaBloPoMo challenges. So far, it's slowed my novel progress but I still think I'll finish, but I can't shake that feeling. TMOTR is a mystery. I don't often write straight mysteries. I have one coming out soon entitled The Knowledge Of Fear, but that's not for a few months. So, since I am stuck for the first time in a while, I turn the floor over to you subscribers and casual readers. Leave a comment below or send me a tweet on Twitter and tell me what you think makes a great mystery. Or tell me what you think the basic structure of a mystery even is. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm even writing a mystery at all. I don't know.

Anyway, hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and if you are one of those people who happened to venture beyond your front door into the shopping culture of America for Black Friday deals, you can also leave a comment about what you got or if you really found any deal actually worth the effort. Tomorrow, expect my gardening post finally. I'll be writing that right after this one.

Check out my new 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking

If you’re looking for a scare, check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check out #TheWriter. The full first season is out now NOW exclusively on Amazon. If you like fast action crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, "gobble, baby. Gobble, baby. Gobble, baby, gobble!"

P.S. If you get that dance song reference make yourself forget it so that brain power can be focused into something else like learning a new language or figuring out how to get every last squeeze of meet out of those sausage roll packages. Every single time there's a little bit of meat still left over after I squeeze and squeeze. Eh! I'll think of a better sign-off next time.

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