Focusing Ideas

Blog Post No. 432

This week’s post may meander a bit. I have an idea in my head and I’ve been turning it over in my head for the last few days—trying to find the right way to express it so that it makes sense to other people. Like, I’m sure if you were inside my head (and not horrified by the stuff going on in the background) it would make total sense. I’m going to try to use words to explain it, though, as the technology to see into another person’s head (thankfully) doesn’t exist. The basic thesis statement is that when you set your brain to focus on one type of thing, the ideas that you create from the things you absorb around you will mostly fit that format. See. It’s not easy to put into words. Let me try to elaborate and clear up what I mean.

Virtual Writing Retreat

Blog Post No. 430

2017 AWP Retreat

If you missed last week’s post, I wouldn’t be surprised because it wasn’t terribly popular. They can’t all be winners. Either way, in that post I mentioned that over the weekend I would be attempting a Virtual Writing Retreat with the Wrecking Writing crew. Starting on the Friday, we had a group chat for about an hour before logging off and getting to work on whatever projects we each had planned for the weekend. We had set a rough goal for 10am to 2pm in the day and 7 to 10pm at night. The general idea was to keep in touch over messenger and be free to take breaks or call the sessions for ourselves when we saw fit. It was as close to a real writers retreat as we could get without being together at a cottage over a weekend.

The Summer Slump

Blog Post No. 408

I’ve been seriously trying to be a writer since 2013 when Adventure Worlds was founded and the group of us wrote bad short stories and tried to edit each others work without really knowing what we were doing. Even back then, I’ve always struggled with writing over the summer. I’ve never been sure exactly why. Other people have offered reasonable suggestions ranging from spending more time outside and/or vacations to the general atmosphere of the season. I’ve never thought those reasons really fit my situation though. I don’t usually go on vacation other than maybe a weekend visiting friends or a day trip to an amusement park and I’m not a big fan of summer because it’s hot and I am a wuss who can’t handle it.

2019

Blog No. 318

So, this is the blog post where I look towards the next year and pretend that all my plans and hopes are within reach and not just the fever dream of a regretful writer who not only fell off the goals he set for himself this time last year, but is constantly and consistently slipping farther behind every week (for the last six or so years). If you’ve been reading this weekly blog post since the beginning (thanks mom and dad) you’ll know that I do my recap post in January as I started weekly writing on January 10th, 2013. (That’s a long time). But the future holds big possibilities. All I have to do is reach out and grab them (and finish a novel for fun’s sake).