Goals Bloghop: Your Blog and Your Writing Goals

This post is part of the Do You Have Goals? bloghop sponsored by the Five Year Project.

Writers and aspiring writers who have goals also tend to have blogs, these days. Why? Something to do with having a platform, I imagine. A blog is not the same thing as a platform, but it's easier to put together.

How does your blog connect to your writing goals? Perhaps your writing goal involves writing a novel and having it published. Whether you publish with a large publisher or a small press, you will want to sell a few copies of that novel. Your blog can affect those sales.

Your blog is a place where your writing can be seen by potential readers without their having to take a gamble on purchasing your novel. What do your blog posts say about you?

Several times I've visited a blog by a would-be writer whose blog posts contain misspellings, grammar mistakes, and, worst of all, incomprehensible sentences. My presumption is that if these bloggers have books out, they are probably self-published and have the same flaws as their blog posts. Such blogs actually discourage book sales. Just as well, because these bloggers are probably prematurely self-published, which is not good for their writing career.

Other blogs are clever and interesting and, at the least, prove that the blogger is capable of writing in good English. Some blogs go even further and show that the blogger is a thoughtful, intelligent person who probably is able to write fiction that is compelling. One great example of this is the blog deCOMPOSE by author Mike Duran. Since Mike is a Protestant and I'm a Catholic, we don't always agree on the issues he blogs about. But at least his blog posts are intelligent and worth reading, and his blog is one of those that I look to as a role model for my own blog.

Now, not all of us can be a Mike Duran. We can't put together a thoughtful blog that attracts lively debate without cutting into our writing time too much. But we can all do something. And we can improve our 'something'.

For my own blog, my goals are to improve the blog by:
1. Posting more often--- sometimes I neglect the blog for a couple of weeks. I want to post at least twice a week.
2. I want to participate in 4 blog events monthly in order to interact more with other blogs.
3. I want to make my blog more personal by posting excerpts from my writing journal, and sharing about my struggles with writers block, low self-esteem, and my autism spectrum disorder (Asperger Syndrome).
4. More cat pictures. My blog really needs more cat pictures. Because my cats are way cute.

Kitten Therese mourning her dead friend, kitten Myfanwy.

MY goals update:

My goal, which I put down for this blog hop, was the limited one of writing 10 more poems in a series I started. I didn't do much work on this poetry project because of NaNoWriMo. And I didn't finish my NaNo novel, either. But I am continuing with my NaNo novel after the month is done. I've come up with some good ideas for it and the work is continuing.

Another goal which I haven't worked on this November is to work on putting together a ebook version of my poetry book. Also at the same time a revised print version of the book. I'm so indecisive about the whole project, though. I don't know whether to stick with the current version of the book or to totally do a new book with stuff added. Well, I'll think about that tomorrow.


My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

From My Writing Journal 11-14-13

From my personal writing journal.
 
I have such negative thoughts about myself-as-writer. I'm sure it is behind my issues with writers block and with finishing my work.

I remember when I bought Lawrence B[lock]'s Write For Your Life and the affirmations MP3 [also by Lawrence Block] and working with that seemed to help when I did the writing-affirmations-and-responses exercises.*

I think I need to get another legal pad and use it for exercises in writing affirmations. I filled one legal pad before and I think I was weakening my negative self-talk considerably by that method.

After a while when I wrote down an affirmation I didn't have negative reactions popping in to my head, I had to stop and fish for one.

Yes, I think I should incorporate a little affirmation writing into my working day. I will go to the store to buy a legal pad as soon as the morning writing session is done.

Note: the kitty picture is Kitten Therese the day I bathed her (and took pictures of the whole event). She needs a bath again right now. 

* Writing-affirmations-and-responses exercise:
Affirmations may seem just too new-agey for words, but they are just strong positive thoughts. The Christian pastor Norman Vincent Peale recommended using affirmations and suggested that certain Bible verses would make good affirmations such as Philippians 4:13 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.'

Writing affirmations down is one way to put these strong positive thoughts into your mind where they will do the most good. Lawrence Block's book recommended writing the affirmations 3 ways: I am a talented writer, You are a talented writer, Nissa is a talented writer. I do a block of 5 lines of each of these and then return to the first, for a total of 20 repetitions, on each page of the legal pad.

LB also recommends writing down your immediate reaction: you write 'I am a talented writer' and then write what pops into your head: 'you are NOT,' or 'no good' or whatever negative self-talk pops out. I was shocked at first with how virulent it was--- I was calling myself a fraud, even saying to myself 'she's dead'. But after repeatedly writing these negative thoughts as they came, the response kind of wore itself out and I had less and less negative stuff available, and it was weaker. I didn't FEEL it very much.

I had been writing my affirmations in groups of fives (with a space between the groupings), first the 'I' version, then the 'you', and then the named version, all with negative responses. Then I did the last five, in 'I' form, without the responses. 

I came up with a new wrinkle. For those last 5, I now write a positive response--- 'yes, I can' or 'AMEN' or whatever comes to mind. It ends the exercise on a very positive note, and, like the negative responses in the previous lines, has the additional function of keeping the writing of the affirmation from becoming too mechanical. That's also probably the reason for doing it in first, second and third person.
My page at NaNoWriMo:
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein
My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

From My Writing Journal: 11-13-13

Excerpt from my writing journal, which I began in 2011 and mostly haven't used until lately.  

11-13-13
Once again I have a fearful feeling when I think about working on my writing. The SF-Gothic [my NaNoWriMo novel] feels flat to me - except when I'm working on it which the anxiety only rarely lets me do.

I'm more inspired by the zombie thing right this second. I think I may do a rough draft/rough sketch of the skeleton of it, writing in my composition book outside my Sacred Morning Writing Hours.

I have a Dreaded Doctor Appointment this morning and haven't had breakfast yet so I don't know what I shall get done. Perhaps I shall open the program [YWriter, free novel-writing software] and just write a few token words.

Yes, that.

Note: I did write the 'few token words' which ran to about 400 and on the 14th and 15th got more respectable word counts done in the morning hours. I'm feeling better about the story and have resisted the temptation to switch over to 'the zombie thing'.

I might also mention I'm aware how stupid it is to write very private writing journal things and then post them on a blog for the world to see. But, hey, I'm weird that way.


My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

Would the Saints Kill Sick People During a Zombie Apocalypse?

 

Recently on The Walking Dead, Carol killed a couple of people because they were sick, and might spread their illness and/or turn into zombies when nobody was looking. And lots of Walking Dead fans said Carol did the right thing.

That made me thoughtful. As a Christian I'm called to be a saint. What would the saints do during a zombie apocalypse? I just can't picture Saint Paul or Saint Maximilian Kolbe or Saint Therese the Little Flower killing sick people because they might become zombies.

A saint would quarantine the sick people in zombie-proof cells and then most likely volunteer to be the one stationed in the quarantine area to care for the sick.

Honestly, I don't think I'd volunteer for the get-sick-and-die zombie apocalypse duty. I mean, I admire Saint Maximilian Kolbe, how when he was in the Nazi death camp and a man was about to be killed Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to die in his place. But I know I wouldn't have the courage to do that myself.

Moral issues like this need to be thought through logically. If we establish the principle that one may preventatively kill a sick person to stop them from spreading a disease or becoming a zombie, that sets a precedent. Many people in the zombie apocalypse may suffer sicknesses and even if medical doctors are around--- NOT a given--- there are no operating labs to confirm a diagnosis, so one cannot tell which sicknesses may be fatal ones.

And any person, regardless of age or apparent state of health, might die suddenly and become a zombie. So--- if some member of a survivors group kills another, it's fairly easy to make a claim of necessity--- the dead person seemed unwell. He might have endangered us all. How can anyone prove it one way or another? And chaos would reign and groups fall apart.

No, the whole Thou-shalt-not-kill thing is still a good rule. In a zombie apocalypse, you can't go it alone. You will need people with skills you don't possess. You will need people to watch your back. You will need to be able to trust them, and how can you if you knew they would casually kill you if it might conceivably make themselves a bit safer.  

How would YOU handle the issue of people sick with a contagious disease during a zombie apocalypse? Would you kill them? Abandon them? What if you had no handy place in which to quarantine them and no one to care for them that was not needed to care for vulnerable people?

 

This post is my post for the Indie Life blog hop. And the message the above post has for the indie writer is I guess on the importance of thinking things in your story through in a logical fashion.

If you are writing a zombie apocalypse tale, for example, you may have a vague notion as you put your characters through their paces that in a zombie apocalypse everything is different and the old rules don't apply.

Question that. What are the old rules? Why, in each instance, might they not apply? And what will be the extended consequence of their not applying? It actually doesn't matter what your precise answers are to these story questions--- so long as you have thought these things through and it makes sense, not just to you but to the average intelligent reader.

Because a well-thought-out story is a story that people will remember.

My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

What Can You Write When You're Blocked?

Writer's block. Or maybe we could call it writer's agonized paralysis or writer's internal annihilation. Some real writers say they've been through it, others say it's an imaginary condition.

In my imaginary life, writer's block is a fact of it. Oh, the creeping horror of it all! The days when even thinking about sitting down to work on a writing project has me on the edge of panic. The times when my mind insists that a perfectly sound writing idea I've been working on is hopelessly bad, and must be abandoned in favor of something with more prospects.

In time the repeated effects of the block put my self-esteem in the bargain basement and below. I mentally re-write my writing history to eliminate the proud moments and magnify the failures. I'm nothing, I'm no one....

I'm a writer. I am a woman made out of stories. I don't know how to be anything else. When I decide to give it all up forever, I am making up new stories in my head within four hours.

Thomas Mann said: "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

I write like Thomas Mann now.

What can you write when you're blocked? What can you do, right now, in spite of your writer's block? Can you write a poem, a short story, a fanfic, a dirty limerick? Can you write a blog post or a Facebook status update? Do that, then.

But that isn't getting your novel written! you exclaim. True, but any writing you can do outside the novel is a step toward finding a way back into the novel.

Can you scrawl some lines into your journal? Perhaps you can write a few lines of your novel by hand in a composition book during a commercial break during The Walking Dead. Or if you cannot do that, perhaps you can transcribe some handwritten lines of your novel previously written into your YWriter novel file or your Open Office file.

Can you write a to-do list for your day's chores? Perhaps you can do some work on outlining your novel. Perhaps you can even do a full outline using the Snowflake method. You might think, well, what if I can write a full outline, how does that help if I'm too blocked to write the novel? But once you have outlined, you may find you can write the novel, at least a little bit at a time.

This is how to write when you have writer's block. Find things you can write outside the planned novel, and then see if you can't transfer that into your planned novel.

It's hard. It's almost impossible. But you're a writer. That's what makes writing so hard for you. And that's why you do it anyway.

How about you? In what ways is writing more difficult for you than for other people? Do you have any methods for getting around those difficulties?

My page at NaNoWriMo:
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein
My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

IWSG: Humble Writing Projects

 Written for the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop.

 It's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and so it's time for my annual re-read of 'No Plot? No Problem' by Chris Baty, founder of NaNo. And what struck me on this read-through is the value of having a humble estimation of your writing project.

While trying to write a first draft at a rapid pace, it can be FATAL to decide you are working on the Great American Novel. You will constantly be tempted to stop/slow down to get every word just right. It will seem like a good idea to skip two or three writing days in order to do research on a few minor things for your story, to make sure everything is just right.

The NaNo approach isn't about sitting down to write great literature and getting everything right. It's about getting things WRITE. It's OK to write second-or-third rate prose for NaNo. It's OK to use Thuggy for a minor thug character's name and plan to give him a real name in the rewrite. It's OK to write INSERT CLEVER PLOT THING HERE and move on.

The NaNo goal--- 50000 words in a month--- seems insane for the inexperienced writer, but it actually works out to the sort of writing pace many of the best professional writers do routinely, at least during their youthful, energetic career phase. A number of writers have written decent novels in the period required or less. In fact, some in their heyday could do a write and rewrite of a 50000 word genre novel in a month after they had a bit of writing experience.

Many writers who did this were working on forms of fiction they thought of as 'potboilers'. Lawrence Block, the mystery writer, famously wrote a lesbian novel as his first published novel, and went on to write soft-core porn novels to pay the rent while also writing mystery short stories.

By giving yourself permission to write imperfect fiction, you are giving yourself the needed permission to WRITE. Even great novels are not perfect, and were even less perfect in the first draft.

Fear of error is a great source of insecurity for writers. For me, at an early age I somehow internalized the idea that making a mistake--- in writing or in other things--- was close to unforgivable. In school I often failed to complete writing assignments to avoid the shame of having my errors exposed--- even though my writing skill was ahead of that of my classmates.

By deciding that my current work in progress is NOT great literature, but more of a potboiler, perhaps closer to a writing exercise in combining incompatible genres (gothic romance, science fiction), I am able to reduce my overwhelming anxiety when sitting down to write. Yeah, I still have this sick feeling that I'm about to have a panic attack when I just think about sitting down to write, but this counters it a bit.

So, that's it about my humble and insignificant writing efforts. How are YOURS coming along?

My page at NaNoWriMo:
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein
My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt