Blog Award!

Thank you to Colene @ The Journey for giving me the I'm a Literacy Builder Blog Award.

Colene is my crit partner's other crit partner and was one of my first followers. She is an awesome blogger and has been a huge support for me as I have really gotten serious about this whole writing thing.

So thank you Colene you are awesome!

Day 3 #NaNoWriMo Update

I am happy to announce that I wrote 1797 words today making me 3 for 3 so far with NaNoWriMo. As you can see on the left side of your screen that brings me up to 5383 words. I am a bit mystified by my success thus far, granted being home sick with the flu has helped a little. Not actually with writing because I have written very little during the time that I would have been at work, but with getting the dogs to get thier energy out during the day so that I can write at night.

I think I am so motivated to do this for several reasons:

I want to see if I could,
I needed some time away from my adult fantasy project,
I knew I wanted to do a YA project as well and I already had a story in mind,
My wife and I have a bet going to see if I can really do it,
My critique partner is bored and needs more writing from me so that she will have something to keep herself busy,
I find that I am having an easier time writing in first person (NaNoWriMo YA Fantasy) and I am in third person omniscient (Adult YA Fantasy),
I am enjoying telling a more simple story (my adult fantasy is very complex with four main storylines that weave around each other, two of which are not in chronological order)
My YA Fantasy is set in the same world that I created for my adult fantasy project and actually fits into the adult project's storyline.

So if you are doing NaNoWriMo how are you doing with it? Is it easier or harder? Where do you draw your motivation to keep up the relatively torrid pace?

#NaNoWriMo

After much encouragement from my wife and my critique partner, I have decided to engage in NaNoWriMo this year.

I have spent the morning signing up on the NaNoWriMo site, and I have decided to work exclusively on the YA Fantasy series that I have planned. This means that everyday I will have to crank out 1667 words, which is going to be extremely difficult due to my long writing process.

I will complete 50000 words this month, so please leave any encouragement that you possess because I will need it.

My Great Critique Partner

I have the greatest ever critique partner. Sure, she is nice and sweet whenever I talk with her, and she wades through my drivel and somehow comes up with useful writing suggestions. She has a great blog. But those are the characteristics of a good critique partner, so what makes her great? She visits me in my dreams and kicks my butt.

Two nights ago I had a dream where Abby was beating me over the head with a published copy of my own book. As she beat me around my headparts, she was yelling, "WRITE!, WRITE!, WRITE!" Then as if in frustration that I did not immediately jump out of bed and start writing, she opened the book towards the back and shouts, "If you don't write, you will never get to this part, and you have not even thought of this yet!"

Yesterday, I confronted Abby about her nighttime foray into my head and her subsequent buttkicking of my brain. She laughed when I told her the story and then said that it was future her come back to tell me that I need to write more. I thought this was appropriate considering today's re release of Back to the Future. So to current and future Abby, thanks for being a great critique partner, and for believing in me and my writing, but please don't feel the need to come back and abuse me in my sleep. I got the point.

Time Travel

My friend and critique partner Abby at Above Water was talking about time travel and it got me thinking.

How do you choose to portray time travel in books.

I think there are three different methods: Time accounts for any time travel and so time travel is irrelevant, time travel creates a new time space continuum and so each timeline is possible and different, or time is not an active force and so travelling time allows the traveler to change the past and future.

Which time travel theory do you use in your writing? Why?

My First Blog Award

A huge thank you to my Critique Partner, Abby Minard at Above Water for giving me my first blog award. She may think the blog award is girly but it is the thought that counts! I will happily put it on my blog.



Now the rule is that you have this blog award on to 5 others, and here are the five I have chosen.

First, I want to give this to back to Abby! So definitely check her blog out.
Second, I want to give it to my wife Sarah at GreenBeanTeenQueen she has an awesome blog and I do not say that just because she is my wife.
Third, to my brother who is blogging about his life and faith. You can find him at God, Love, Life, Joy.
Fourth, to my good friends The Lundgrens who blog about the struggles and triumphs that their family has had due to the difficulties that face their twin sons who were born two and a half months early. You can find them at Life With The Lundgrens.
Fifth, goes to Colene Murphy at The Journey. She is an aspiring YA author who has an extremely entertaining and beautiful blog.

Interview

My wonderful critique partner Abby interviewed me on her blog. Check it out and follow her:
http://abbyminard.blogspot.com/2010/09/interview-with-aspiring-author-andy.html

Follow Abby!

You might remember the great Abby Minard who did a guest post for me a couple of months ago. Well she has now started her own blog which like her writing is much better than my own. But her launching a blog and her dicipline to updated it several times a week has inspired and motivated me to make this blog a once a week blog and to reopen my sports blog. So you can catch me here once a week and you can catch my sports blog at http://thecognitivecacophony.blogspot.com/ everyday.

But if you want a great read you need to go to http://abbyminard.blogspot.com/ that is where the good stuff is.

See you next week!

Guest Post! Finding the Time by Abby "I rock at writing" Minard

Hey guys,

It is my honor to introduce you to my friend Abby who, as I have mentioned on this blog before, is an aspiring young adult author and my critique partner. I asked her recently to do a guest post and she took the time out of her very busy schedule to do it. She is a great writer and a good friend, and your lives will be better for having read her guest post.

Finding the Time

As I sit here, surfing the net for bedding sets instead of writing, it made me think of this post I’m supposed to be writing for Andy. So, I thought I’d start it now. What a better time to write a blog post about time management when I am wasting my time as we speak! Well, not anymore since technically now I am not wasting my time since I am writing a post I told Andy I’d do.

Anyway, we all have different ways of managing our time. Some of us are great at it, and get everything done on their “to-do” lists and then some. I like to call those people “overachievers”. Then, there are those that procrastinate and do everything other than what is on their to-do list. I call those people…well, me. Okay, I’m not that bad I guess. But let me tell you, trying to juggle a “day job”, a 4year old, a house, writing a novel, a social life, and oh, did I mention a husband in there somewhere?…is just plain hard!

I just read a really great blog post by Maggie Stiefvater about time management, and she really hits the nail on the head for me. She talked about having children, and making time to write when you are just starting out. It’s what I am going through now, as well. The number one thing for me, is that I need to carve out specific times during the day or week that is “my writing time”. If I designate a time to do it, it’s like going to my job. It’s on my calendar-in pen- so I have to do it. If I dedicate myself to that, then most of the time it gets done (with a little bit of procrastination on the side).

But the big question for those of us with children is, when exactly do I have time to write? My answer- if you love it, you’ll find time. I love my daughter, and I love spending time with her, as well as my husband. But my Little Monster (I call her that because she is obsessed with Lady Gaga, and she calls her fans her “Little Monsters” so, she is her Littlest Monster) is not my WHOLE life. I am not her slave. I do not wait on her hand and foot. I know some people whose children are what they live for. They are their whole lives, and they know nothing else. They don’t know what’s going on in the world, they don’t keep up with the latest trends in whatever, and they don’t have much interaction with adults. If my life was like that, I think I’d explode. No one would like mama, then.

So, I make time for myself. Little Monster has quiet times during the day, and I utilize that time to work on what I need to, be it writing, reading, keeping up with blogs, or keeping up with My Shows (I have to have My Shows, people!). I am trying to narrow that down to mostly writing right now, so I can get this first novel up and running, but it takes time to adjust (the procrastination thing really gets me some days). I also have Monday nights as my night to write. Little Monster goes to bed early, and then after that I just write until I’m dizzy and the screen’s all fuzzy. Hubs is at work, so I have no distractions.

And that is how it has to be for now. Hopefully, once I can get my first novel published, the goal is to be able to write full time. That will open up a whole new slew of time management issues. But for now, I deal with the reality of my situation and do what I need to do. Because I love to write. I love telling stories, and yes, it’s very hard and sometimes I just want to give up. But in the end, I come back to it and coax it back to life. Because it’s what I want to do, and it’s who I want to be, and it makes me happy.

Thanks Andy, for letting me invade your blog to drone on and on about making time to write! Seriously people, if you love it, stop making excuses and just sit down and do it! Now to listen to my own advice…wait, Old Navy’s having a sale? Let me just check on their website…

Facing my First Major Writing Slump

I suppose it happens to every author. You hit a writing slump. I have been in a bad one for the last month and a half. Every line of dialogue has felt stale, every story twist seems contrived. Part of this has been that I have been very busy in my work and personal life, but the real reason for my slump has been a combination of several things.

First, I started (and finished) reading a new series. (For more on this see www.greenbeanteenqueen.com) When I am reading I am not writing, one because I fear that I will unintentionally steal ideas and two because when I actually find a series that I really like I dive into it.

Second, I do not like where I am in the story. My main characters are both in a transition period which is really difficult to write and even more difficult to make interesting.

Third, I think my series is going to run longer than I origionally planned, which to my ADD mind is very hard to deal with until I restructure how I think about the series.

Finally, I am worried about the quality of my work and so it makes me try to avoid working on my story.

So how have a I broken out of this slump? Well credit goes to two people. First to my wife who has been an encouragement to keep writing. She provides me with motivation everyday and is so supportive my my dream to become a professional writer. Second to my critique partner who is a much more talented author than I am, but still takes time to work with me, encourage me, and kick my butt when I need it. (On a side note, when her work gets published you are all in for a real treat!)

But most of all, what has broken this slump is actually writing. Forcing myself to sit down and write. Yesterday I did a guest post on www.greenbeanteenqueen.com. The last night I had a terrible nightmare, the plot of which I am hoping to make into an amazing short story. I am charged up again to write, and I hope that I get to show you some fruit this renewed passion soon.

I would, as always, LOVE to hear your thoughts! My next post will be about what I have gotten done since my first major writing slump.

A History of Writing

I promised last post that I would give you my history of writing and here it is.

I have never thought of myself as a writer, I have always seen myself as a storyteller. I like telling stories and I like conveying the power of those stories to an audience. I have, for the most part, always communicated my stories orally because I hated the physical act of writing. I am very long winded but my writings are usually very short and to the point.

Recently, my wife Sarah and I traveled to visit my parents and I uncovered the scrapbook that my mom made of my early childhood. Inside were perhaps a hundred stories that I had written in school. Most of them were four sentences long and nearly every one of them was about me becoming either a famous basketball player, a famous football player, or about one of my favorite sports teams winning in some unbelievable fashion. (ie 99999 to -2)

As I got older I kept writing about sports but I started writing 2 page stories that were modeled after the Matt Christopher books that I loved so much growing up. His books were simple, there was an average player on an average team, the kid had some personal problem that was in some way tied to a flaw in his game on the field. The kids figures out his personal problem with the help of a parent or coach and the team goes on to win the big game. So I took on that story and wrote with me as the main character. I believe that one eventually made it to about 8 pages but it was lost when our very old, second hand, barely functioning when we got it, computer crashed. I know it was a great loss to the literary community but we must press on.

Then I fell in love with fantasy. Well that is not entirely true because I have always loved Disney movies, and two Rankin/Bass animated fantasy movies (Flight of Dragons and The Hobbit) But I fell in love with reading and then writing fantasy. The reading started with the Dragonlance series, which I believe that I have read at least the first three books over 100 times. And my love of writing fantasy started at the computer playing Warcraft II The Tides of Darkness.

I LOVED Warcraft and I still play it today. (but sadly not with the same passion) After beating the game I decided that I could not let it go, and so I wrote a story about it. Of course I was the main character. This was a masterpiece of literature. It was around 17 pages long and had 30 chapters. It was not even close to finished and had what may be my wife's favorite line in any book ever.

Here is what happened: My character was tied to a pole and is about to be executed, and suddenly this beautiful woman who my character (aka me) had never met (but who was based on someone who I had a crush on in real life), and who was the leader of the group walks up to make the final decision as to what is going to be my fate. Ok here is the line, "And then she kissed me!" (DRAMATIC PAUSE)

I know, I know, it makes no sense that she would kiss me without any preamble or without knowing my character at all but I was twelve and I had never really kissed a girl and so I was working with what I had. (and my wife loves it because she says she can see me as a dorky tween sitting at the computer and writing it) Fortunately, I still have this manuscript and maybe someday I will go back and turn it into a real story.

That ended a my major writing periods until I discovered that I really was ready to delve into romance myself when I was in high school.

Romance is one of my major driving factors in my writing. The adult fantasy series that I am writing truly began when I was in high school. I started writing this series to help me figure out my romantic entanglements. When I wrote out my feelings I often felt better about my life. Of course I never wrote them out as I felt them, I put them in stories set in this fantasy world and I populated the world with my friends, crushes, and even people who I did not like. I did destroy all of these stories (and I can assure you that all of those real people have been taken out of the current story and I have not included any of my current friends family or acquaintances in the stories that I write today.) because they were about my real feeling about my real friends, but I think these stories helped me realize that i would like to write. I always felt better after I wrote. So since that time I have been working on building my fantasy world and perfecting the story arc that I have in my mind.

And that is it really. I am now a writer and this is the history that I have to pull from. I think it will be hard from me not having much to draw from. I mean in these stories I am not the main character and none of my friends are in the story either. Everyone must be made from scratch. On top of that my writing skills probably are not great, as I have not been honing my craft for years like so many writers. But the advantages I do have are that this world that I am writing about is entirely my own so it can be what I want it to be. And I have been crafting my story and my world for a decade. Maybe through the help of my friends,my editors, my critique partner, and my wife, we can work together to turn what has been forming in my head into a beautifully written story.

Thanks for reading and your COMMENTS are more than welcome. See you next week when I will talk about expectations.