tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71199903555353583312024-03-14T00:05:13.403-04:00Drops of Blood on My ForeheadH Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.comBlogger170125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-32600640579982715872011-03-09T11:16:00.000-05:002011-03-09T11:16:20.663-05:00Prompt ProductionWriterland has been very empty for me lately, the place it usually occupies taken up instead by things of a decidedly more mundane nature. It's hard to be creative when, as I've grown fond of saying, life is being stupid in my general direction.
But I wanted to share a little of what has been happening in my creative brain over the last few weeks, largely in the form of the output from the H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-36554184070735172022011-02-15T10:38:00.000-05:002011-02-15T10:38:34.308-05:00Play for the thrill of itSeth Godin wrote about the "lotteries" of life in his blog recently:
In terms of practical mathematics, whatever lottery you're playing (the marry a millionaire lottery, the get picked to be on Oprah lottery, the get found at Hollywood and Vine and win an Oscar lottery) has no winner.
In other words, your chance of winning is so vanishingly small it's as if, from an investment point of view, H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-243182358964518852011-02-10T07:00:00.022-05:002011-02-10T10:21:22.601-05:00Slow ProgressI'm making some slow progress on "Umbra". I've got all but the tail end of the second manuscript into Scrivener, and though not much new material has been written, having the book all in one place in one application helps me visualise it better. I'm surprised at how linear the second manuscript is, time-wise. I had thought I was all over the place, writing endings of scenes before their H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-11570115885811442082011-02-08T09:46:00.000-05:002011-02-08T09:46:39.624-05:00There's an ace in every deckRecently I've found myself becoming discouraged by other writers' success. People I know or writer friends of people I know have gotten published or are receiving media attention, and it gets me down. I'm happy for them, but it's a reminder of how much I haven't done.
KJ Grigoriadis shared a poignant anecdote with me and I want to pass it along:
At a sales demo, a man invites two women to H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-85223520956154034232011-02-04T09:32:00.000-05:002011-02-04T09:32:38.014-05:00A shift to the leftThis morning I've been distracted by computer troubles once again. Armed with a determination to get in here and write my 500 words before settling in to other tasks that need to be done, I was almost immediately derailed by my laptop misbehaving. I'll spare you the gory and geeky details, but I'm over here, two feet to the left, now typing on Cairns, the most recent acquisition from the local H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-82628285444867510872011-02-03T10:45:00.000-05:002011-02-03T10:45:07.797-05:00Filling in the gapsI'm enjoying this challenge more as time goes on. I'd forgotten how much I love these characters and this setting. As I write each day I'm filling in gaps in my manuscript, places where I'd just had a summary sentence or two to remind me of where I was going during the frenzied writing of NaNoWriMo. It's a bit odd to incorporate setting details I created in the second part of the manuscript H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-56523387770430922962011-02-02T10:10:00.000-05:002011-02-02T10:10:59.515-05:00A Trickle of StonesOkay, so my participation in A River of Stones was not as robust as I'd intended. I've never been more glad to see the back end of a month as I am to see that of January. I'm hoping February is a touch kinder. I could use some breathing room.
I did River posts when I could, sometimes tossed them onto Twitter, but basically didn't kick myself for missing a day. I had my doubts I could produceH Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-54997541954422858502011-02-01T10:30:00.000-05:002011-02-01T10:30:18.915-05:00Well, here we are, on day one of my 500-words-a-day challenge and I don't have a topic. Project. Subject. Whatever. I have a few choices.
Add words to "The Rise of Umbra" while also editing it
Plot out a cohesive story for James Sterling and write that
Dump a heap of words into "Prediction Center" and hope to trim it back to a workable short story size
If I choose "Prediction Center" I'll H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-66985464672538995662011-01-31T10:39:00.000-05:002011-01-31T10:39:42.829-05:00The Empty HeadTime and time again I sit down here to write. Oftentimes I have a subject in mind: a bit of advice or a goofy observaton, perhaps. Today my head is empty. I've got an important meeting coming up today and I expect that's taking away some of my focus. Knowing I have a limited amount of time to get something written in here should spur me to get writing, and it would ... if I had a subject. H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-29530043342936886112011-01-27T10:39:00.000-05:002011-01-27T10:39:11.317-05:00Out of meandering comes... a challenge!
The view out my window
I've gotten off to a late start this morning. My house is full of distractions today, from a problem with my laptop computer to the enticing view of the half a foot of snow or so that was dumped on us last night, I'm struggling to get here and type something that's meaningful.
I haven't been in much of a creative mood lately, so not much work has been done on my writing.H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-69008793937071967852011-01-26T09:59:00.000-05:002011-01-26T09:59:13.511-05:00Scatterbrain and the problem of MotivationI'm writing this from a newly-installed Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat operating system, which won't mean much to many of you, but it's a distraction all its own this morning. I've finally stopped myself from tweaking and playing with it (and stressing the compsitor out to the point I felt it prudent to reboot) so I can settle down to the business of writing.
I read Gary Henderson's most recentH Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-64750269239243300692011-01-25T09:18:00.000-05:002011-01-25T09:18:00.248-05:00Small Stones: 25 Jan 2011
a line of starlings huddle on the power wire
taking refuge from the noisy passage of a car
they await the return of quiet winter stillness
to fly back down, en masse, into the yard
and eat their fill before the storm.
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document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-77677214805874155662011-01-20T07:00:00.006-05:002011-01-20T07:00:01.801-05:00Video Thursday: How to Grow a MandalaHere's a bit of an art break. Anyone can make a mandala. It's a fun exercise that doesn't require any special tools. You can draw a mandala in your lined notebook with a ball-point pen or in a sketch pad with a felt-tip marker. Follow these simple instructions and you'll be relaxing with a mandala in no time.
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-55441713802779289042011-01-19T07:00:00.002-05:002011-01-19T07:00:02.250-05:00Things Which Are Not WritingThere are a lot of things a writer can do which are not writing. Here's my example list:
browsing Facebook "just for a minute to see what everyone's been up to in the ten or so hours that have elapsed since I went to bed"
checking e-mail
stopping whatever else I might be doing (which might in some rare cases actually be writing) to switch to the e-mail client when it pops up a "new H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-78592990840978175602011-01-18T07:00:00.001-05:002011-01-18T07:00:08.167-05:00How to scramble your documentI've been writing in 750words.com for over a month now and I'm fairly pleased with the site. It suffers from occasional glitches and slowdowns, mostly late at night, typically when I realise I haven't done my words for the day and am in a mad dash to complete them. But generally it's a nice place to write. The owner of the site says your words are completely secure, but for some of us that's H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-40214941565257533532011-01-17T10:22:00.000-05:002011-01-17T10:22:22.818-05:00Writing Weight Loss with TwitterI've discovered that writing Twitter posts has had the effect of tightening up my writing. With only 140 characters at my disposal I'm forced to be very precise with my words. I'm generally unwilling to use textspeak, such as changing 'you' to 'u' or other such nonsense. That just looks uneducated and unprofessional to me. So I gain characters in other ways. It's certainly gotten me to H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-87958845799974993672011-01-14T11:52:00.000-05:002011-01-14T11:52:14.219-05:00Small Stones: A random thoughtAll these famous, well-accomplished people, their lives full of purpose, drive, and hardship. How poorly my own compares; how fortunate have I been.
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var pageTracker = H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-59607478333225398352011-01-12T10:31:00.000-05:002011-01-12T10:31:34.173-05:0012 January 2011: Small Stones UpdateI confess I've not been really very attentive lately. Last week saw a crisis of sorts in my life (don't worry; everyone's fine) and so I lost sight of the small in favour of the big. Throughout it I tried to grasp at small stones, but rarely found them before things whisked me away again.
With my life settling down again I'm reviewing the ones I have found and, naturally, finding them H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-10067155791248309962011-01-04T07:00:00.003-05:002011-01-04T07:00:15.622-05:00A Gaming Interlude
A dwarf
And now a brief interlude: A story spun from a computer game. I play a game called Dwarf Fortress, which is known to have one of the steepest learning curves known to mankind. It took me two weeks to become comfortable with its basics, and after a couple of months I'm still learning things every time I play.
I don't mention this game because it's difficult, as a prelude to some H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-50673653892401342932011-01-03T07:00:00.005-05:002011-01-03T09:58:58.059-05:00Carpe Annum!Seth Godin wrote recently in his blog about the perils of waiting until everything's perfect to take risks and put yourself out there. I've written about this kind of thing myself. Waiting for the Muse doesn't work very well. It does work, but very slowly for many of us. You'll get better results if you go to your Muse and ask her to come round for a cup of tea or the like. Take her out for H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-24781914866174271292010-12-31T07:00:00.001-05:002010-12-31T07:00:02.714-05:00Year In Review: RejectionWhat did you learn about yourself from rejection, and how has it helped your writing, your confidence or your submissions approach develop?
I still haven't submitted any fiction for publication, though the periodic rejections that come from Associated Content helped me focus my pieces. I'm still shaky on confidence as regards submitting to them. Hopefully writing and submitting more this H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-89806314018796175322010-12-30T07:00:00.002-05:002010-12-30T07:00:05.746-05:00Year In Review: Writing RhythmsWhat did you learn about your writing rhythms: time of day to write, managing procrastination, how and when to revise, making use of slim margins of time, etc.?
Having spent the year writing (mostly) every day in this blog, I've learned I'm a morning writer. Setting a schedule and making it rote has helped me keep from procrastinating too much. For my blog, I revise right after I write. Not aH Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-80227806059293768552010-12-29T07:00:00.001-05:002010-12-29T07:00:09.962-05:00Year In Review: On PraiseWho has praised your writing or teaching or facilitating? What did they say and how did it give you a new sense of appreciation for yourself and your work?
A few of the posts I've done in my blog have received positive statements from people. My reminiscence on the approach of fall was praised by a friend, and a micro-fiction piece I did elsewhere got a positive response. The comments I H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-6258363755962148552010-12-28T07:00:00.001-05:002010-12-28T07:00:02.429-05:00Year In Review: Nurturing the SelfHow did you nurture and sustain your well being–in mind, body, spirit?
Perhaps not so well as I'd have liked. I've left off some of the things I used to do that helped center me, such as meditation, yoga, and Morning Pages. I don't read so much any more. I get my head in the computer way too much. But I've tried to do the little things: being aware, noticing things, enjoying individual H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7119990355535358331.post-65528507476468050342010-12-27T07:00:00.002-05:002010-12-27T07:00:10.625-05:00Year In Review: Time StrategiesWhat strategies worked best for being effective with your time?
Making a schedule. Every morning I sit down to write. Well, that's the plan. I do sit down every morning, computer on, tea by my side, and open my text editor. I tend to do the vast majority of my writing in the morning before lunch, though in November I stretched that into the afternoon due to the nature of the marathon. H Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02899899721873979025noreply@blogger.com0