A Writer Without Words

Between vertigo and breaking a molar in half, I’ve hit a few roadblocks in working on yon novel. It’s interesting, though, when pain helps and when it hinders.

See, I suffer from depression. It paralyzes me when it hits. I can’t get out of bed. I can’t deal with people. Any kind of social interaction drains me. My hollow heart swallows any emotion; only desperation claws its way out of that shaft.

Yet, when I’m feeling down, that’s when I often do some of my best writing. I spill that desperation onto the page. Black feelings become dark jottings become anxiety-ridden fictions.

Look, depression sucks. I don’t recommend you look into renting space in the depression apartments. But at least for me, I’ve been able to harness those dark times, even while combating them through self-care and medication.

But for about the last week, I’ve been able to do little-to-no writing. Why? Oh, vertigo. Continue reading “A Writer Without Words”

How long does this have to be?

“How long does this have to be?”

Remember asking that in school? When you had to (ugh!) write out a full three sentences? Teachers were demanding too much! And then you get older, and you have to write papers. And they had to be two whole pages? Or five entire pages?

You learned the tricks, didn’t you? Maybe you were someone honest and you didn’t use them, but you knew them. Make the margins just a little larger. Scale up the font juuuuuust enough, but not so much that the teacher notices. You knew what the larger fonts were, didn’t you? You knew how to replace short words with longer words.

But… that doesn’t work when you’re writing novels. Not if you want to give your readers value. Continue reading “How long does this have to be?”

A Small Matter of Money…

We looked at going to another con this weekend.

That’s… kinda crazy, really, but my son and I had so much fun about a month ago that I’m eager to see another. Considering how jealous the rest of the family was, it would make sense to go to another, especially as it’s so close by. And as opposed to the last con which focused on comics and geek culture in general, this one’s a lit con, focusing on authors and books.

So basically this thing is like catnip for me.

There’s two problems, though. Continue reading “A Small Matter of Money…”

Going on a Sprint

Sometimes you just need more words.

About five nights a week I’m able to set aside about an hour to write on average. And an hour of concentrated writing often nets me between 1000 and 1500 words. That’s not a terrible number of words, really.

But if I’m really trying to write, if I’m trying to produce things that people will pay me for, I need to up that word count dramatically. I’ve been attempting to do that by simply writing harder. Sometimes that works. I can get up to 1800 words in an hour.

But if I’m going to be tackling a novel in November (which is my plan), I’m going to need a lot more. Continue reading “Going on a Sprint”