Right before crap hit the fan in my life, I was writing every day. It felt good. There were days, weeks and months when I was at the hospital and found myself missing writing.

I tried bringing a spiral notebook/legalpad/3-ring binder along to handwrite some chapters.

I tried printing out chapters to edit by hand.

But the hospital room was unforgivingly uncomfortable.

The wooden arms on the seats insisted on digging into my sides, while my legs would fall asleep if I left them up or down for too long. The seat itself was hard, leaving my butt sore. I just couldn’t win.

Which sounds like nothing but excuses, I realize. But there were also important things constantly on my mind, such as my wife’s health and well-being.

But I really wish I would’ve had a working laptop during that time period….

I couldn’t afford one without a job, though. I was at an impass.

But, oddity of oddities, I did manage to fully work out my calendar. Today, for instance, I can tell you that November 23rd is equivalent to Eighth of Tower in Lura, and the farmoon is going to be a New Moon by nightfall, therefore the Crimson moon will be full.

Which makes me sound like a worldbuilder who wants to be a writer, I realize. My only excuse for this is that the calendar was easy to write on. And I was comfy.

Once my new job got easier and I pretty much knew my child was going to pull through and be safe, the keyboard beckoned again.

I’ve been writing—a little during work when inspiration strikes and much more at home during the later hours. I hope to carry that momentum over into the next Novel-Push Initiative.

(By the way, NPI is going to be a one-on-one affair unless somebody else fancies joining up….)

Now more than ever, I want to know how it will feel to complete this project. One novel. Several revisions. It must be done.

The Tower of Babel (Etemananki) has made life that much more difficult for us story lovers. We miss out on a lot of great books that never get translated overseas. We have to get our own works translated to see the broader world market. And us writers, depending on the scale of our stories, are forced to consider that people in different countries often speak different languages and use region-based dialects.

[The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Šin'âr, and they dwelt there. (…)

And they said, "Come, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."] Read the rest of this entry »

I know I haven’t posted in a moon or two, and I wish I could tell you I’ve been editing this whole time. But let’s just say slow and not-so-steady isn’t working very well.

I’ve gone through the conceptualization of Five Rings and two sequel novels, designed outlines, wrote the entire first book, and now all that’s left is the editing/re-writing.

I thought things would be easy from here. I have the weight of all those steps behind me just crushing me to get finished… but…

What I need is a way to inspire myself to commit to sitting down and editing more often. It’s harder for me to sit down and edit than it has been for me to write. I didn’t expect it to be so difficult. Maybe it’s because the changes I make feel more permanent this time around. I more or less have to get it right this time, you know? Or maybe it’s because a few of my author friends seem to have stopped writing altogether, which is a thought that has depressed me quite a bit.

It’s not that I haven’t been working on Five Rings at all, but, too regularly, I’ve been letting other things distract me. My usual method is to try and get distractions out of my system through oversaturation, but this time I’m starting to feel guilty.

I know there’s a lot of great writers sitting down right now editing. Some of which conceptualized, outlined, wrote, edited, and rewrote all in the time it took me to write my first draft. And that’s what I’ve been telling myself lately to keep my damn butt in this chair. Maybe if I can channel the energies of all these wonderfully dedicated writers and feel some sort of virtual kinship to them, it’ll encourage me to sit down and edit, too. 

But any further advice is welcome.

All over the interwebs, it’s “What was it like writing your first novel?”

And the canned answer is: “It was like having a baby.”

Is writing a novel really like having a baby? Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the finish line—You’ve made it!

Without further ado, the final statistics:

1.

Joseph Lewis: Read the rest of this entry »

Yo, yo, yo peeps. Not only is it FRIDAY, (yeah, it’s freaking Friday, party people!) but you’ve managed click on another wondrous (read: long-winded) pseudo-weekly progress report of the Novel-Push Initiative.

N

P

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YEAH BABY!!! Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago, I was heavily discouraged by certain recent books and movies that are socially embraced and loved even though they have what I may consider bad writing.

In the end, I decided to just move on and be a little upset. And after packsister’s comments, I think we both agreed that we can only write for ourselves and not sweat the luck some of those authors seem to have.

But…I’m going to reiterate something I’ve heard recently that strikes the very core of the issue I’m having.

Gimmicks ultimately can’t compensate for bad writing.

And, with that, I’m at peace with all of this.

But what does that mean, exactly? Read the rest of this entry »