Set Specific Goals
Tag: writing goals
Hey It’s the FREAKING weekend
Okay so, first this is my first blog post I’m writing with dictation, so I’m writing without my hands right now which I think is pretty cool; if there are any mistakes in this blog I blame technology so this is going to be awesome because I can say whatever I want and if it’s terrible I’m holding my computer responsible.
So I’m reading a lot of reviews and synopses of books about total badass crews. It got me thinking, why don’t I just write a book about some of these cliché plots and make the protagonist completely incompetent? I don’t know if I would write this under R.K. Gold or Q.T Pi yet but I think I can have a lot of fun with an incompetent assassins series.
Since I mentioned Q.T. Pi in the above paragraph I thought I would announce once again that iLaugh iCry is out on Amazon. There will be a free promotion starting tomorrow and ending March 1st so anyone who wants to read it for free can download it directly from Amazon for free instead of just emailing me. As you know my philosophy with my books is pretty much just give away as many for free as possible because I’d rather people read my work than have a couple extra bucks in my pocket.
Currently I am working on a Monster Hunter series for Q.T. Pi, Which is cool because the first book takes place in DC, I think the rest of the series is going to take place in New Orleans. As for R.K. Gold, I’m still working on the impossible task of turning a horrible rough draft into a decent second draft. The Absolute has simultaneously outperformed and underperformed my expectations because as I said before in earlier posts I thought this would be an easy first edit and it turned into a complete rewrite so I’m writing it ahead of schedule, I just passed the 50,000 word mark two days ago and I think I only have six chapters left. The downside is it still reads a bit like a rough draft; it’s a much better rough draft than what I had before but it’s still a rough draft so I have to edit that again before I send it out to beta readers. I am really looking forward to editing The Pathetic Tycoon once I finish this. And I am really happy that I have a second pen name now because I would go insane just editing all year with no new material.
I mentioned I was going to start a new blog series called Workshop This. The first story should be done either today or tomorrow. So feel free to workshop it just try not to be a dick, And as I mentioned in the original post, anyone who offers helpful feedback will be mentioned by name if that story ends up in a collection of short stories.
Finally, this was a fun post to write. I feel like ending it with look mom no hands. I am happy I have a Grammarly. I am looking up at what I “wrote” and see a lot of redlines so that app will help me out.
As always thanks for reading.
Food for Food. . . I mean thought. . . no actually I just mean food. Food > Thought
Yeah, enjoy reading that title! In all seriousness, why are the best foods so “unhealthy”? I put unhealthy in quotes because I want to justify my love of cheese and bread until the very end but seriously, why can’t we just fast all day and then eat 1000 calories of fresh bread and cheese every night? It tastes so good! It makes you so happy! And you still stay under that 2000 calorie boogeyman that haunts your subconscious every time you debate taking a handful of almonds.
This isn’t the point of this post, but as you can tell, food is on my mind. I just downed an avocado so I’m full of energy.
Anyway, I just published my first story under my second pen name. For those of you with KU you can enjoy the title for free by clicking here.
As for my main writing projects let’s talk about The Absolute.
This book is being so rude to me. In a matter of 3 hours, it has filled me with crippling self-doubt, mild self-loathing then renewed self-confidence. It’s strange re-writing a book because it carries all the weight of editing but all the crappiness of a rough draft.
My main complaint with it is tension. There are times it fills me with emotion, and there is plenty of engaging dialogue, but holy shit what is actually going on in this book? I was half tempted to scrap it at 2 in the morning when I was writing a scene between Peter and Father Shine.
I’m so focused on giving every character a purpose, I sorta forgot the main character needs to give the reader a reason to care. Heres his story so far in a nutshell. Peter’s parents died five years before the book starts. His Fiancee died four years before the book starts. He is in a slump, unable to paint because all he can see when he tries to tap into his imagination all he sees is a pack of butterflies leading him to a low stone wall. Behind the wall is a garden, and behind that a forest.
He can never reach the garden though, his mind won’t let him cross over the wall so he’s in a creative block because all he can put on a canvas is a half-completed painting of butterflies.
With his gallery running low on money, his manager/business partner gets him a commissioned gig to paint a mural on the concrete wall connecting the new reformed chapel to the traditional church. They built the wall and the playground between these churches to encourage children of different beliefs to still play together.
Peter feels out of place back home, and gets into some funny adventures, but the overall plot feels so relaxed. I mean he completes the mural around 50k words in and faces another challenge the town and his business partner created for him.
Ultimately, it turned into a story of a big city artist falling in love with his hometown again and I’m worried it doesn’t offer any excitement. It’ll just be like a video camera on the main character’s shoulder, watching him fall in love with his town, then it ends.
I guess I’ve re-entered the self-doubt portion of today’s program.
What do you all think? Is a story about relationships (family, friendship, and romantic) complete or are those just events that are supposed to happen around the plot, not just make up the plot itself?
The Ideal Reader
Let me start this piece by apologizing if it is sloppy, disorganized or rambly. I am in my school’s library because I needed a quiet place, but it has been anything but. Who knew people came to the library to carry on the loudest conversations possible, and set off the alarms of emergency exits, which are clearly marked “Keep Closed Alarm Will Sound.”
Anyway. . .
For those of you somewhat familiar with me and my writing process, you know the book I thump around like my bible is Stephen King’s memoir On Writing
.
One piece of advice he gives, which I always remembered but have never fully implemented is the importance of an ideal reader. For him, his ideal reader has and always will be his wife Tabitha. What this means is he asks himself, while writing, how Tabitha would feel about it. She is always the first person to read his work and, from what I’ve gathered, outside of his editors, her opinion matters the most.
Why is this beneficial? As the old saying goes, if you try to please everyone, you’ll please no one. Think about how exhausting and unproductive it is to write a book that everyone would love. Is something so impossible really worth the effort? It’s important to know your audience. That being said, sometimes, for me anyway, thinking of an intended audience can be overwhelming. When I see an audience as a bunch of faceless readers (well if I’m lucky there will be a bunch of them) my mind naturally assumes they all have different tastes and automatically begins trying to please them all. What I ended up with is a diluted piece of garbage.
Lately, I have been trying to actually follow the advice I’ve been told. Radical I know. I have been focusing on one ideal reader to please because, despite our best efforts to be different, people all around the world share similar experiences. Not everyone, but if you can resonate with just one reader, chances are you are resonating with every reader who has the same nostalgia, same high school experiences, same theories on the afterlife or trust issues etc. You end up reaching a large audience by focusing on just one person. That is a lot more manageable than starting with a large audience and funneling down to a specific channel.
I wanted to share these thoughts because this is something I am personally working on, and that means (based on the above paragraph) chances are there are a lot of other writers out there dealing with the same thing.
Anyway, thank you for reading.
Editing: The Absolute
Well, I’m finally doing it. I’m finally editing what will become my first full length novel. That is not to say I am done with novellas. I am rather fond of how direct I can be with my storytelling in shorter works, but it is exciting to see something a little larger on the horizon.
That being said, I am not sure if I picked the right manuscript to start with. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I hoped to edit four of my manuscripts this year, most of which I wrote the rough drafts for last year.
While I was expecting my 130k word satire to be the one to cause the most headaches, the Absolute has turned out to be no walk in the park. Though just 56k words, most of them are being deleted or completely re-written.
The direction I am taking the novel is much different than the rough draft’s original story. When I wrote the initial draft it was the story of a man seeking a path to god to unleash his wrath. He wanted to kill god and at times read like a fever dream.
The re-writes are turning it more into a crisis of faith. A painter at a crossroads, returning home when he is commissioned to paint a mural next to the new chapel. The painter does not have the best memories of the town, though for the most part it’s not the town’s fault, and when his fiance died (four years before the book takes place) he is more than happy to do his best to try and float through life.
While the initial draft was a more physical fight with supernatural entities, the newer one is more about the conflict of legacy and how one wants to be remembered. If it is too late to change how we are perceived and is it too late to find happiness?
Though it’s tiring, I am happy with the optimism I will be able to include in this new draft and the connections with characters my protagonist will be able to make, whereas in the initial draft it was all about finding a path and characters were seen more as tools to get from point A to point B.
R.K. Gold 