Fear of Commitment - One Writer's Block

This is the final day of Spring Break and I made a Spring Break writer's goal, so it's time to review.

How'd I do?

Well, for starters.. I DID join Instagram. I shared a little bit of my research and that I was featured for a short while on Ficlatté dot com. elsha.hawk.

I went back to LinkedIN and Ficlatté to make sure they all linked together with this blog and my Twitter and Facebook and my Amazon author page. I just need CONTENT to share with you guys!




My co-author and I wrote about 5 more pages on our manuscript at the beginning of the week. We wrote through 3 scenes from our outline, but this past weekend we both got derailed. It happens. The scene we are working on is a good one. We just both lost the dialogue. What should the character say? How should the others respond? How do we get them out of this scene and on to the next one? When we both have time, we'll get back to work on it.

I also set up a YouTube and a Twitter account for my co-author stuff. I used this cool free logo maker to work on some logos and I picked one for Twitter, but I'm pretty sure it's not final. @hawkandyoung While my co-author doesn't tweet, I do. I can work on that.

What do you think? Some logos I made are more complex. I kinda think simple is best. And this is most likely not the official one. Now I can't even remember which logo maker I used..

While we don't have videos and I hate to be on camera because I sound silly and am anything BUT photogenic, that is no excuse for me not to write a script and put together a slideshow to share on YouTube some day. This is all groundwork for our future.

Then I looked into a website. I stared. The tab is still open on my browser. I sorta freaked.

Pressing the button to sign up and purchase a subscription with a domain and hosting is a commitment. Anything that involves money kinda feels huge and important as a decision. I know it's not a large amount of money, but it is revolving. I have to keep paying it. It means I have to be committed.


You said, it Abe.

If I create a website for us, we're big time. I want to have graphics and links to videos and all our stuff ready to go.

And I don't.

They say not to worry about that, to just have a website and go for it and make changes as you go. You can add stuff later.

Like email list dumps, about pages, more links...

This is me freaking out.

I don't want to go it alone. This is a combined effort of the two of us. We both need to make this leap.

So I stand at the precipice and stare into the abyss. The landing is promised to be soft. The way down is dark. I can't see the bottom.

I need a push.

Collaboration: How To and Where To

I wrote 2,000 words today!

There is a project that is collaborative in which my husband and I are working to create a serial. I guess you could call it urban fantasy, though it takes place in a very small town. Rural fantasy doesn't seem to be a thing unless in involves woods or giants and beanstalks. :)

Early Concept from 'Jack The Giant Killer' http://www.krop.com/pluckt/#!/view/1786285/

Since I write for others, I decided to write for him. I added 2 short chapters to our piece. I filled in the gaps he left for me. It's been a while since I read the piece so I went back to our notes and refreshed my read of the events I had to write between. It feels so GOOD to flex my writing muscles. 

I'm proud of my accomplishment. The words might not be tweaked yet, but the ideas are out there. I hope he'll throw some more ideas at me so I can flesh out scenes he feels need more volume. That's how collaboration works.

On Ficlatté, I've been looking for a story that inspires me to sequel. This is a great way to strike up a new collaboration. When you jump on a story and add your twist and see where it goes, the original author and you can explore the new storyline together. Protagonize is another great site for collaboration like this. Some stories are closed, but some are open. This site also has forum groups you can join.

Speaking of which.. I just hopped over to my profile which I haven't visited in like 4 years.. and I found a story I want to do something with. Edit. Maybe self publish it. Hmm.. Summer HAS just begun..

Share your collaborative sites or works in comments!


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No Motivation?

I have not had any motivation recently to write. I've been too busy. Then I heard this:

Without incentive, there is no motivation.

Duh. How could I be so stupid?!

This is why writing contests work and get many entries, but books remain unwritten and unpublished in those same author's computers.

Authors like me.

 Without incentive, there is no motivation.

This is why I like to collaborate with others. Not only does it bring out the best in me because I challenge myself to be great, but also because they set a pace for me, a deadline, and encourage me to write something they will be proud of and I will, too.

I write for others. 

Some people write for themselves. I don't. I don't have extra baggage I need to get rid of. I write for others. I want others to feel, dream, laugh, love.

Maybe I have a story inside that needs to get out.

But it won't be for me. It won't be to heal me or solve some mystery of myself. It will be for you.

You are my motivation.

You are my passion.

You are my missing piece.

A to Z - "P" is for Protagonize

If you don't know, Protagonize.com is a website for writing. You can write stories chapters at a time, or a whole anthology of poems.

There are two types of works on Protagonize: standard (linear) and addventure.

• Standard works are made up of a sequence of linear, back-to-back pages, just like a traditional short story, poem, novella or novel. The author of a standard work can decide whether they want contributors to their works to write their own page titles, or if the page title is decided by the author of the preceding page in the work.
• Addventures are structured like a tree, where the very first "root" page acts as the top of the tree. Addventures are comprised of pages that we often refer to as "branches". These work similarly to a page in a standard story, with one major difference. Each page in an addventure can have one-to-three sub-pages of its own, and the titles of these branches are decided on by the author of the page you're currently reading.

 Yes, you can collaborate with others. In fact, it's a good way to make friends and find beta readers. Read the works of those that comment on yours. Or go find some works to comment on. You never know whom you will meet.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Power of Collaboration

Ficly.com and Protagonize.com, as well as a few forums, offer places for writers to collaborate. I prefer sites without messy sidebars and ads, and with easy navigation.

Forums often require lots of clicking and have small print in large quantities making them my least favorite.

Protagonize offers space for long pieces, inspirational groups to join, and the choice to collaborate or keep the work all your own. It can be visually cluttered.

Ficly limits you to 1,024 characters (letters, spaces, punctuation marks), and every story is collaborative, with a creative commons license, so it cannot be copyrighted as yours.

Both sites offer feedback from other writers, with Protag having a critique group you can join to ask for critique especially. The feedback is positive, sometimes helpful, but not like a real critique or how an editor would go over a piece.

My home is on Ficly. I've made friends there, and once you get involved, you are family. Most of my work is there. I love it so much, I have Ficly items in my zazzle store!

Working in an environment that promotes collaboration allows people to take your story whim, because on ficly you barely have room to develop anything, and turn it in another direction. The small space teaches you to write great hooks, be succinct in your descriptions, and build plot, setting, and character in one fell swoop. Entire stories CAN be written in 1,024 characters. I've done it and I've read many others who have blown my socks off in that short a space. :)

Gror Methonyg and the Abyss of the Unknowable

It also allows you to add characters, switch POV, and experiment with story flow by changing the setting like going from one chapter in a book to the next. These are all great ways to beat writer's block; to write past a difficult part in a story. This site has helped me develop these skills.

One of the best features is the challenge feature, where a challenge is laid down and it's your job to write to meet it. If you can think of it, it's been challenged! This is a great place for inspiration as well as practice. Some challenges are grammatical, write without using the word 'the', or write without repeating words, or write a story in a few words. Some are more about craft, like write about this list or words, write cyberpunk, or write a love story that ends badly. Some ideas are so great, there is a push to create a writing challenge book, a fat tome of inspiration.

Even these entries to challenges can be sequeled and prequeled for collaboration on a longer work. In fact, I've had a challenge entry inspire my writing friend ALRO to write a long series/story of many ficly pages.

Martyr for Culture

I've been inspired by a challenge entry many a time. :)

Feeding off of each other is how we communicate, the conversation changes as another speaker adds in a tale of their own with a spin that leads us to the next topic. It's only natural that we follow the same patterns in our writing.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Sci-Fi

I don't venture into Sci-Fi very often. I'm a dabbler in it. Recently I wrote something a bit Sci-Fi and since it is a rare thing, I thought I'd share.

Let me preface this by saying I sequeled a story where the Main Character created a time machine and supposedly an error in calculation left them 10,000 years in the future instead of 100.

After months of walking, surviving, fighting off beasts, eating only things I saw other creatures eating, and building a hut and a fire, I have given up hope that humankind survived.

Putting together a rough signal transmitter from the parts in my time machine, I wait here, the latitude and longitude beeping out endlessly into the sky above. I wrote a message with rocks ten feet wide on the top of a plateau. I am building myself a wall.

I could travel farther, keep looking for clues, but it seems this land of forest and wild things has recovered from some terrible shock. The trees here are too young, the vegetation fast growing, I assume it has only been the last 50 years that this area has bloomed.

What did we do to the Earth?

I began to dig just last week. I was looking for trash they said would never decay. I found a layer of dark rock, the kind made by intense heat and quick cooling. I can’t get past that without advanced tools.

I am sure my ancient race lies below it.

The neat part is, a person sequeled me and took my new looking land and turned the mathematical error BACKWARDS, thus creating the existence of homo-sapiens.

:D

Behold the power of collaboration!

Update: I found another Sci-fi piece I wrote recently and still am collaborating on. Here's my earliest contribution.

They were watching her. A myriad of screens lit up their faces with a blue glow. Tiny cameras were everywhere, undetectable, always watching. Dakota couldn’t get the image out of her head. Somewhere safe, those sick bastards were refusing to help her, watching like she was the animal on some documentary that is hunted by a lion.

Stealthily she crouched, laser pen her only weapon, walking with knees bent so her shoes wouldn’t squeak. She measured her breathing and tried not to sweat too much because there was only one beast that could smash a steel lab table and break through the wire enmeshed glass, and it was blind. It hunted by smell and sound. Tiny polyps along its frilled neck sprayed a paralytic on its victims so they wouldn’t run as it pounced on them. Its venom smelled of cucumbers. The lab reeked of cucumbers.

This could be why her team did not come for her.

Or the people behind the cameras could have set this all up. An exercise, a test, to see what she could do.

Well, she could live.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.