Blog Post No. 503
My first love of books came from reading Philip K. Dick short stories in high school. I loved the creative ideas and the tight prose. I had an idea that I wanted to tell stories before discovering those collections, but after reading them, I started to see the possibility of becoming a writer.
My first foray into writing was to finish some short stories over on Adventure Worlds Press. They were terrible, but full of ideas that had been brewing in the back of my mind for years. Taking the best of what I was writing at the time, Christian and I put together my first book (his second) No Light Tomorrow. It’s just a little short story collection and I’m a much better writer now, but I’m still proud of that book. Continue reading “Short Stories or How the Hell do I Write That?”
It may not be a record for the most words written in the shortest amount of time (I’d have to do math to verify it) but it is a record for the fastest first draft I’ve ever written. In 29 days I managed to write just under 40 000 words and somehow managed to stop writing any more. That is to say, the last three installments in this novella series all went longer that I had intended (some much longer than others). But now it’s early September (
The first draft of the new novella is done. I finished on Friday with a big push and took the weekend off. It’s way too big and not just because it’s longer than I wanted it to be, there is a lot of fat to trim. For the first time in close to 70 days, I’m not writing. To be clear, I only spent 56 days on Break/Interrupt (the other days were finishing the Invasion Novel) but that’s 25 days longer than I had hoped and longer than the marathon writing I did last year for 
I’m nowhere near finished the first draft of the Invasion Novel and a lot of that has to do with my lack of effort over the last few days. My sleep is still all over the place and after a few bad nights I failed to reach my minimums. It’s not uncommon for me to have one or two completely sleepless nights in a month, but seeing as I haven’t had a particularly good sleep in a while, I felt like a zombie the last few days. That’s my excuse at least. With that in mind, I have reached a new personal best. The Invasion Novel is now the largest story I’ve written (and I’m not finished, yet). 
Here we are again, dear reader. It’s a new week and if I’ve been able to continue as well as I started, I’ll be feeling good about my progress (remember I write these on Tuesday even now that I’m at home and really I have all the time in the world to write posts on Thursday or even Wednesday night, but I don’t want to break my habit). Not just with the writing, either. After a less than productive weekend, I had a bit of a reset. It happens from time to time. I’ll do well, keeping on top of things, then I’ll hit a wall or get worn out and then things fall apart for a few days. Then I pick myself back up and try again. Sometimes it’s a matter of days and weeks, sometimes months. It’s the same kind of thing I’ve been struggling with over the years with the summer slump. 
Over the last few months, I found myself in a situation where I had to push my writing in order to reach my goal. It was my fifth (or eighth?) goal of the year for the same project, but I was determined to get the first draft of Pilot done before 2017 started. The result was a continued increase in my writing productivity. I was feeling pretty good about it. I went from churning out a pathetic five to eight thousand words over the previous few months to a respectable ten thousand (plus) words in October, November, and December. I even made a last day thirty-five hundred word push to get the first draft done. It was the icing on the cake, even thought it was way over my initial plan (in time and word count). The consistency and increase in volume, even at the end of the year, helped get me on the right path. then January happened. Cliff Hanger! 
I don’t want to jump the gun with that title. I don’t expect to have another update until January, but if you’ve spent any time reading this blog, you know I can’t be trusted. The fact is, I’m getting so close to finishing the first draft of Pilot that I don’t know if I it would be worth doing another update of it. While I’ll be thrilled that I finished (long than planned, but here we are) and I’m sure I’ll want to share it with the world, if it’s too close to now, it would feel weird. Maybe? But I’ve been holding off on an update and I don’t think I can’t wait much longer, so I don’t want to just wait until I’m done. (Even thought I probably just should). I’ve gone too far now anyway, so I’ll just keep plugging forward! Tally Ho! 
Last week’s post got to least amount of views of all my posts in the last three years. I suspect it was the title. It felt wrong as I was typing it, but I couldn’t manage to get anything better. Maybe a generic title would have done the trick, or maybe that wasn’t the issue at all. Either way, that was a disappointment. Thankfully, the same info is available under the events tab. So, when you’re done here, you should go check that out. Also, while last week’s post was about events, I failed to mention the slew of events I am eagerly anticipating that have nothing to do with me (other than me attending). 
Ben Van Dongen 