There’s lots of quotes on how to be a writer, and most of them are variations of “do the work”. Put the butt in the chair. Arrive at the page every day. Even if what you write is garbage and has nothing to do with the project you’re on, you should write, every day.

During the months of November (NaNo!) and December, I hardly found time to write because of, you guessed it, my day job. Now that things have finally let up so that I can stick my head out of the proverbial piles of papers that is my Outlook inbox and look around to see what happened over the last two months.

My kid grew a couple of inches, is in the middle of another growth spurt, and is eating like a Hobbit (Second Dinner, anyone?).

My computer sounds like an airplane. A new one is due.

I have six gig of RAM in my computer instead of eight all of a sudden.

Champions Online is eating up my CPU. Wait, I have only one CPU? I thought I had two.

The Patriots are aiming for another Division East championship. I think? I don’t know, I know that they are winning.

And why did they make a Hobbit movie? Don’t they have like three of them already?

I am going to make April (Script Frenzy) be my NaNo this year. I had a great idea for NaNo, but it sounded too “Twilighty” for my tastes. I may post my garbage-writing here, or on 800 words (marked down to 500 words) or even on Protagonize (I’m under warwriter). I think maybe the polished stuff on Protagonize to get the maximum amount of exposure, and the first drafts on 800 words.

That’s my new years’ resolution this year – to get feedback and criticism. I’m going to try to not write in a vacuum.

Wow.  Life really can take a hold of you, can’t it?  Okay, maybe a weekly post was a bad idea.

My day job has been intruding way too much into my writing life.  By the time I get home from my 8-5 job, all I want to do is veg (or actually, smash shit up on City of Heroes).  There’s a simple reason why.

My nature is an introvert, like most writers.  I get power and strength from being alone, and doing things alone.  Writing is lonely work, and I love doing it.

Well, at my job, I got promoted, yay me.  Not so yay.  This means that 1) I’m the go-to person whenever someone has a question and 2) I’m wanted by my bosses to do special projects, 3) I have to run meetings in their stead, 4) Did I mention I was a mentor to the department?

This means I have to be friendly (gasp), open, and available for people if they have questions or need help.  This is totally against my nature, which is the type of person who likes to be handed work and left to her own devices.

So, needless to say, I was totally drained by the time I got home, and all I could think of was “Tank/brute, smash!”

Then I went to my story site and saw I hadn’t written AT ALL in the month of June.  Nothing.  A dead zone.

I felt so guilty.  Did my muse abandon me because I didn’t pay attention to her?  It was then that I realized that work was killing me.

So I started “listening” to my iPhone (yes, I got the iPhone).  I would plug in the headphones, and sometimes listen to music, but most times not.  This deterred everyone but the most determined people to ask me questions.  I set limits.  Now, yay me.

However, it’s famine time here, and I’ve been reading stuff on the kindle for the computer.  Whatever you do, go out and buy the Iron Druid Chronicles.  This series is awesome.  However, I’m out of money for the third book, so I’ll have to wait for payday to get it.  I read book 1 (Hounded) in one sitting, and book 2 (Hexed) in two sittings.  The author is Kevin Hearne.  When I grow up, I want to be just like him.

Also read Joe Ambercrombie’s “The First Law” series.  Again, out of money for book 3.  This one was a little more slow-going.  However, I want to be just like him, too.  He writes really good manly fiction, the kind of stuff I love to read.

Meanwhile, the revision for Grim 2 is slow.  I pulled Grim 1 off the market, because it really looked to me like a manuscript and not a book.  (I didn’t even have a dedication.  I’m not sure who to dedicate it to.)  I read through it once, and winced at a few spots.  I’m going to revise that one as well.

As a dare, I tried writing a paranormal romance, but it’s been bogged down in the weeds.  I have a reader for it, but she said it was slow going, and she found the scene where the vampire feeds of an elderly person as “weird”.  It is slow, as I have to establish the characters, and I have a hard time establishing female characters as more than just bitches and hoes.  You’d think being female I could write good female characters.  Maybe I’m too close to the subject.

Okay, I’m going to try and get back on track with a weekly posting.  However, most of the comments here have been spam.  I suppose I need to put myself out there more.

But it’s so scary!

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
Red Smith

In the most recent episode of Mad Men (the only TV show I watch), “Signal 30”, Roger Sterling calls Ken Cosgrove into his office and tells him that he can’t write anymore because it divides his attention from work.

Immediately, I felt a stab in my heart.  I understand in the ‘60’s this was probably par for the course for managers to tell people how to spend their off hours (the early version of “work-life balance”?), but to tell a writer to stop writing?  Might as well tell a pious person to stop praying.

Yet in the last scene, we see Ken working on his next story.  Stick it to ‘em, Ken!

This partially segues into what I’m going to talk about next.

A writer writes because that is what they do.  Yet, in some cases, it’s painful.

I found out when talking to someone yesterday that one of the reasons I create worry and anxiety for myself is because I’m looking for story ideas.  There is always the “what if”.  What if I do this wrong?  Ever see the commercials for Direct TV, where it starts off that you can’t find anything on the TV and the guy ends up homeless?  This is my worry spiral.

Yet, in there, is a story.

It’s often a good story.  I can know the feelings, the emotions, of someone who is on the edge of a cliff and can describe it.  I can sense the near-end of something, and how that feels.  I can wallow in it.  Sit on it, ruminate over it, and see the story in there.

Of course this isn’t good for my psyche!

It hurts sometimes when I don’t write.  There’s a story there, just at the edge of the mists, and I can see it, but it’s jumbled.  I can’t write down summaries of stories; I need to have a story in relatively full cloth, or at least know where I’m going with it.  One-sentence ideas are not stories – they’re teasers.

I wonder how many writers cause themselves pain and torture when they even live throughout the day?

No wonder Hemmingway and so many other great writers drank.

I like technology, though I wait until initial fervor dies down before purchasing some big ticket item, like an iPad or an iPhone.  I still haven’t gotten the iPhone.

I also know the biggest tool of the trade is known as “butt in chair”.  But there are a few things that I find indispensable to my daily writing grind, and thought I would share some of them here.

Music.  iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody.  I listened to Napster before it became Rhapsody.  Heck, I listened to Napster before it became the pay-to-play and was one of the original people who downloaded music from Napster when it first came out.  (To show my age, I had AOL when it first came out and used it on my IBM PS3.)

I can write without music, but music is helpful, especially music with good cadence; that is, music that sounds like it would come off of an action soundtrack.  Pandora is good for that, as I tell it the music I like, and it creates a radio station based off of my preferences.  If I hear something I like, I’ll search for it on iTunes and buy it for the iPod.  Then listen to it over, and over, and over, and over…

Word processing program.  Word, Pages, Googledocs.  I will be honest, Googledocs is the best thing that came along since…Google.  I can go to any computer anywhere and work on my novel.  I can do some work at home and then do some work at work (shhh).

The Internet, specifically: google, wikipedia, youtube.  Google to find things; wikipedia to find information; youtube to find that song that’s been running through your head for hours.

Scrivener.  I’m writing the second book on this using it as both a word processor and for a novel-writing format.  It’s one of the best organizers out there for novelists.  If you’re going to write, buy it – after you buy my book.  My book is cheaper.

Peripherals: iPad, iPod, Mac (I have a Windows computer right now).

Now, contact information:

You can contact me here on this website by ljacob@grimaulkin.com.  I answer all emails.  I probably won’t be able to read your novel or give you editing tips.  If you really want my opinion, I’ll give it to you…though I might not be too diplomatic about it.  And I’m not an editor, nor do I work in the editorial world.