Tag: 750 Words

Getting myself back up to speed

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I’d used that phrase in my previous post to talk about my ‘little fun personal project’ at the 750 Words site mainly to confirm that I have in fact been doing some writing during vacation this past week. Said project is nothing of major import, just an MU-related exercise where I’m going through the “legacy soundtrack” list as well as my writing chronology list. It’s half putting things in order and half clarifying the dates of events — something I mentioned in a few posts last month.

But the most important reason behind this project is to get myself comfortable with a daily writing regimen again.

Aha! you say. Don’t you already have one? Well, not really. I have a schedule, and a very loose one at that. It’s more of a daily reminder of ‘as long as I do something today’ and that’s it. And right now it’s this ‘little fun personal project’ with a vague reminder to work on the Trilogy Remaster. It’s just phase one of a much more detailed plan going on here.

Over the years, I’ve tried to force myself into a daily writing regimen, and every single time I fail for one reason or another. It’s happened so many times I now call them Best Laid Plans. So this time out I thought I’d come at it from a different angle: I’ve often described my writing process as similar to a musician’s, so I figured that maybe I should do so once more:

Sometimes your sessions need to focus on practicing scales instead of wracking your brain trying to come up with a new melody every time.

In revisiting the legacy soundtrack and the writing chronology of the Mendaihu Universe, I was able to revisit how I was able to pull it off in the first place without trying to emulate it in the present. That was always the weak point: emulation. Trying to relive the moment with vibes, I suppose. No, I had to look at it a different way. What was going on in my life when I wrote the Bridgetown Trilogy? [Answer found: working at the candle warehouse and turning my personal life around.] When did I quit trying to rewrite The Phoenix Effect and start A Division of Souls? [Answer found: June 2000, in the waning months of my record store job.] Why did it work so well then? [Answer found: a stable schedule, positive life events and a dedicated personal work space.]

So the next question is: how can what I discovered here be used in some way with future writing sessions? That is, without it once again falling into ‘trying to relive the moment with vibes’?

Well, that answer’s yet to come, and it hinges on whatever new writing project I work on next. I won’t know until I get there. But what I do know is how to properly implement what I’ve learned recently, and I think (and hope) that will make all the difference.

A Personal Q&A

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Q: So, what have you been up to this week?
A: Not too much, really. I’ve been on a well-earned vacation and we’ve been taking it day by day. Going for walks, doing a bit of shopping and cleaning, watching a movie (Wildwood, which I highly recommend) or two (we’re going to see Godzilla Minus Zero today), visiting the zoo. And sleeping in, which has definitely helped us relax and rest up.

Q: So…you haven’t been writing, then?
A: On the contrary, I’ve been keeping up with my daily 750Words. I’m currently doing a little fun personal project on it to get myself back up to speed. As I’ve recently finished up all the work on the Remaster for The Persistence of Memories, the only thing I need to do there is take a little time in the next few days to upload it to Smashwords/Draft2Digital and make sure the layout is up to my standards. (And maybe purchase a few physical author copies just to have them on hand.) The blog entries have been kind of light this week, but that’s by design.

Q: Any idea what you’ll work on next?
A: Officially, next is the Remaster work for The Balance of Light which is probably going to need a lot of TLC so it might take a while. But on the creative end of things, I’ve got two projects I’m contemplating: a fourth book in the Mendaihu Universe, or a complete rewrite (and I mean complete this time, not a revision like the previous attempts) of Theadia.

Q: Which of course begs the question…what if a new and promising idea surfaces?
A: As always, it depends. If a standalone idea resonates deeply enough with me that it demands my full attention, it might skip to the front of the line. I don’t see that happening, but I’ll keep my options open.

Q: Obligatory music question: what are you listening to right now during your writing sessions?
A: In Purgatory by World News is getting some seriously heavy rotation these days. It’s one of my favorite albums of the year right now and I highly recommend it. The new Fontaines DC record Dopamine Chamber is quite excellent as well, as is Mud by Remi Wolf, Common Primitives by Andy Bell (Ride) and Masal, Violins by Blondshell and Ride Lonesome by Beck.

Q: Obligatory cat question: how are the kitties doing?
A: Jules and Cali are doing just fine, thanks for asking! They’ve been their usual silly selves and have been waking us up at 5am regardless of our sleeping in this week.

Q: Obligatory personal question: how about those election results earlier this week?
A: WHOOF! Yeah, I’d figured there would be a bit of red-to-blue switching, but I don’t think anyone had any idea there would be this much. I just…kept happening throughout the evening. I’d been in the office working on stuff and A was in the living room constantly keeping me updated. I won’t go into personal detail here, other than that it was a long-awaited and much-needed sea change, and I’m hoping it continues in this positive direction.

Q: Back to writing — what else is on your mind right now?
A: I keep wanting to get back to journaling but I keep forgetting to because I’ve been distracted by other projects I’ve been working on. It’s not important, but I think it’s something I should get back to, if only just to strengthen the boundaries between my creative work, my personal thoughts and so on. I’m trying to create a stable and workable writing regimen these days, and in the process I remind myself to take it one day at a time. Keep it enjoyable and not worry about what’s not in my control just yet.

Q: Sounds like you’ve been having a good week! Anything else you’d like to add?
A: Nah, I’m good! I’m back to work next week so I’m thinking I’d better prepare myself for that as well. But I’m not going to stress out over it, though. See you next Monday, then?

Q: Works for me. I’ll bring the tea and apple cider donuts.
A: Sweet!

Getting through

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This past week has been a bit tough.

On the home front, we’ve been dealing with weird weather that’s been stuck in the mid-sixties with 85-95% humidity for a full month without a break, which means high pollen count, and which also means that my sleep patterns have been interrupted by serious sinus and ear congestion waking me up unless I take a few Benadryl before lights out. And on the day job front, I’ve just finished off five 4am starts in a row (filling in for main bookkeeper who took evening shifts to train a few night people to ease our morning workload). Suffice it to say I’ve been feeling exhausted and loopy the entire time.

The good thing is that Sunday’s weather was quite enjoyable, a much more tolerable 65% humidity and yay, the sun finally blessed the Richmond District with its presence! Heh. Windows were opened and rooms were dusted so that perhaps I can breathe a little easier in the next few days. If all else fails, I think we still have the air purifier from our old apartment somewhere in garage storage that I could bring up and run for a bit.

Meanwhile, yes, I have somehow managed to keep plodding on with the Remaster project for The Persistence of Memories! After chilling out after work and getting my second wind, I have managed to get a good few pages done every night, right alongside getting myself reacclimated with my daily 750 Words. Despite my exhaustion this past week, I’m still powering through because this is a project I’m enjoying, and it’s something I really want to do. And that’s a good a reason as any!

Adjust as necessary

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I’ve just come up with an idea that could possibly help me with my creative outlets, and it’s not about bringing the whiteboard schedule back. I’ll admit it worked for me quite well in the past, but over the last couple of years it’s lost its appeal and felt more like a deadline than a guideline. And the more I missed those deadlines (whether due to Real Life Stuff or Day Job schedule or something else), the more frustrated I started to feel.

As you can see, I’m trying to get back into my regular blogging schedule. It’s one that’s worked well for ages and doesn’t use up too much of my time, as long as I’m not writing the entries at the last minute. And I’m hesitantly trying to get back into my daily words at 750Words, which I’d also put aside for a couple of months. I’m not exactly daily yet with that, but I’m getting there. I’ve turned the morning notifications back on in the hopes that it’ll help inspire me to return there more often.

Right now I only have two calendars, as I’ve retired the whiteboard. One is my Zen-a-Day that’s on my desk, which essentially serves its intended purpose as something to think about during the day. The other is the monthly calendar that’s hanging just above my PC tower. In the past I used to put my day job hours on it, along with any other events A and I would be going to. Right now it’s pretty empty.

But while working on today’s 750Words, I thought (and wrote): How about this: on Sunday, when I’m doing my PC cleaning and house errands, why not plan out the rest of the week? Make some time for some creative outlets. Instead of a schedule, at the start of each week I can say something like “hey, let’s work on a comic on Thursday since I have that day off”. I have Sundays off for the most part and do in fact use that day as a ‘cleaning and errand day’, so I think that would be a perfect time to block out an hour or two without it being rigid or repetitive. This would give me more flexibility for anything that might arise scheduled or not, and I can work around other things that might be going on. And most importantly, it gives me a positive thing to look forward to.

Whether this will work out will of course depend on how much energy and dedication I put into it. The whole point is to build up those creative muscles again yet still retain the ability to adjust as necessary.

Balancing

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The other day someone on Threads mentioned how they once witnessed one of their classmates sitting next to them in a lecture hall, seemingly focused only on the detailed knitting project they were working on. The poster thought, initially, that it was rather rude of them to attend a class only to completely ignore it, only to be proven wrong when they then asked the professor a very detailed question about something that had been mentioned twenty minutes previously. Surprised and intrigued, they asked the classmate how they could do that and mentioned that the knitting was their “secondary focus”; they had ADHD and this pretty much their fidget-spinner activity. Something additional for their brain to focus on that gave their initial focus (the professor) more clarity.

Reading this, I thought: wait a minute. I used to do this all the damn time in high school and college. My notebooks were filled with made-up maps and doodles of a character I’d call Murph, maybe even the makings of a poem or a lyric. I was terrible at taking notes in school (I couldn’t focus on what the teacher was saying and transcribe it at the same time, not without missing out on bits of information) and completely by chance I realized this worked for me. Even into my post-academic years, I’d have that secondary focus going on while taking in what someone might be teaching me. And if you ever saw me at various conventions, I’d be sitting a few aisles back in the audience with a notebook out, writing notes on story ideas while also listening to the presenters. [The downside to this is that I’ve had to explain to many managers that I’m not not paying attention, this is just the way I focus on what you’re telling me.]

It occurred to me that this was exactly how I was able to write two complete novels at the same time: I worked on self-publishing A Division of Souls while writing a rough draft of Meet the Lidwells; I wrote Lidwells while writing a rough of In My Blue World. And so on, until I took some personal time off during the pandemic in 2020. I knew I could probably get away with doing it, so I just…did it.

It’s been a while since I’ve done that kind of creative multitasking, but I’m thinking it’s time for me to return to that process. I’ve been feeling kind of distracted lately and it’s causing me to lose focus on Theadia. It’s not that I have the Don’t Wannas, it’s more that I keep turning away to look at something else that might be slightly more interesting at that moment. There’s also the fact that I occasionally forget that I have those ADHD kind of issues with focus and distraction and I just sort of spiral into hyperfocus on whatever’s in front of me. It’s an ongoing battle sometimes.

My plan, at least for now, is to utilize the 750 Words site for this ‘secondary focus’. I’m not entirely sure what project I’ll work on, but I do have a few that I could pass the audition once I give it a try. Will it work? Who knows? But like I said…I just have to do it.

Year Begin: Heading into 2026

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Let’s start with the things I’d like to do in 2026:

— I would like to complete and release Theadia next year, most likely during third or fourth quarter of the year. I still need to finish it, and I also need to revise it and figure out a cover for it. I’ll spend maybe a couple of weeks flitting around on the photo sites to see if I can find something that works, but I’d also like to look into seeing if I can commission an artist for it. I spent a good number of years working on this project and I’m quite proud of it, so I’d rather not drop the ball and half-ass the end result. It’s an important story for me, and I’d love for you all to read it and enjoy it.

— Will I have time to work on the Remaster for The Persistence of Memories, as originally planned? That’s a good question. I think I will, considering this one needed the least amount of work. If I recall, most of the work it did need will be for clarity or tightening up. I also might give it a newer cover. While it looks good on the physical copy, it doesn’t quite translate as well digitally. I’ll have to do some more work on that. I think I pulled one or two pictures back in the day that I liked, but I’ll see if I can find something similar that’s much more intriguing.

— I’m not going to worry too much about coming up with any new projects, especially since I have the two above to focus on. However, my plan is to keep my options open via the 750Words site. Whether it’s outtakes, MU-related ideas or just something that crossed my mind that day, I’d like to see where that takes me. I think I’ve come to the point in my creative career where I don’t feel too worried about running out of ideas, because I’ve proven to myself that was never the case. It’s always been about outer frustrations intruding into my creative life, whether it was job related or personal, and I’ve learned how to keep them separate. It still takes time and practice to keep that in place, but I’m aware of it and that’s the most important thing.

— Again, I do plan to expand my creative outlets by returning to art and music. If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s in the approach. I tend to freeze up if I force myself to do anything creative because it either feels like an assignment or an impenetrable wall. And if I approach it from that angle, then I first have to cast my creative mind aside to work past it, thus defeating the purpose. So how am I going to work this out in the new year? By taking a much simpler route: just pick up the tool and see where it takes me. It doesn’t always have to come from inspiration, sometimes it will just come from interest or curiosity. I’m curious to see what I can come up with on my guitar if I used alternate tunings. I’d like to see if I can get better at comic art. The approach is all about wanting to do it, not forcing myself to do it.

— And on a personal level, how do I want to live my life? I’ve made so many changes over the years, positive ones that needed to be taken, and now I’m at a point where I can move forward with the least amount of resistance. Where do I want to go? What do I want to do? What have I wanted to do? It doesn’t feel nearly as daunting as it used to, and that’s by design. I acknowledge the work it took that got me to this point, and now I’m allowed to keep moving in the right direction.

**

Sure, I’ve had my down moments. Times when I fell, times when I broke. But in 2025, I picked myself back up enough times that it no longer feels painful. I still feel the frustration, but now I know I can accept it each time and keep moving despite those down times. I can face the fears now. I can face the uncertainty. And that makes looking forward so much easier and clearer.

Here’s to wishing everyone a special and uplifting 2026!

Year End: Moving Forward

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I’ll be honest, I’ve spent most of December half-assing it.

I mean, I’ve gotten a lot done with Theadia. I managed to not only figure out a snag that was bothering me for the last few months, but the solution was so simple that it feels like a huge weight was taken off my shoulders. This in turn is helping me get through the various WRITE THIS LATER scenes a lot quicker, much to my relief.

I’ve been pretty consistent with the blog entries here and at Walk in Silence. And I’ve also been doing a really good job of keeping up with my daily words at 750Words, with only the occasional “cheat day” (in which I paste an older entry from this blog and comment what’s changed since then) here and there. I’ve been doing that on purpose as a dry run to get myself in shape for consistency starting next year.

Thing is, I probably could be doing more. I could be further along with Theadia, and I definitely need to get my butt in gear with the remaster for The Persistence of Memories. I haven’t picked up my guitars in a bit, I’ve been forgetting to update the personal journal, and I definitely haven’t done any art in far too long.

Still, I’m not about to beat myself up about all that. Not anymore, anyway. I’ve retaught myself not to focus on the failures, and instead focus on picking myself up and continuing when it eventually does happen. Call it a bit of self-awareness, a bit of Zen balance, whatever it might be. I know, I’ve tried this approach in the past and it always ends in tears, but that’s the point: accept that failures occur, pick myself up and dust myself off, and keep going.

I do have plans for 2026, of course. But that will be in the final entry, coming next Monday! See you then!

Seven or eight things

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One of the hardest parts of wanting to keep a daily habit of writing at 750Words (especially after a long hiatus) is trying to come up with something to write about in the first place. Some days I’m just fine and the ideas come easy to me, but other days I tend to overthink it and get nowhere. I’m also still trying to get out of the habit of using the site to write personal things that really should be offline in my moleskine notebook.

Something I’ve recently come up with to get around that temporary writer’s block is what I’ve been calling “Seven Or Eight Things”. Instead of trying to think of something I could stretch to roughly eight hundred words, I’ll split it up: I’ll write about seven or eight things for a hundred words. There’s no planned subject, I just let the words take me somewhere for a brief time.

Surprisingly, it’s been working even better than I’d expected! Over the last couple of days I’ve been talking about writing plans, thoughts on an album I happen to be listening to at that moment, or working through a creative problem I’m having. A few personal things still pop in, but those entries are actually in the minority this time out, and that’s perfect for what I’m trying to do here. Most of the time it’s something that pops into my head at that particular moment, so it could be anything!

Mind you, this is not a plan set in stone. It’s merely a process I’m trying out where I’m able to approach the daily words easier, but without the added stress of forcing myself to think of something to write about. If anything, it’s a reminder that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself when it comes to creativity. Leave the hyperfocus to the projects that need it; this is merely the warm-up exercise and stretch that I need beforehand.

That time of year again

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It’s been a bit over three months since we moved into our New Digs, and things are finally settling and falling back into place. I might still have to remind myself that those month-end payments aren’t for rent anymore but mortgage, but other than that I’m happy that we’re here. We might be slightly further away from the shopping corridors but we’re two blocks from our community garden plot, a block away from a major bus route as well as a very large public park, and the neighborhood is thankfully much more peaceful. (Yes, even during recess for the kidlets at the school across the way.)

This is good timing, as it’s that time of year where I feel the need to change things up. And you know how I am in autumn: excited about the new music releases and contemplative about where I am and where I want to be. I’ve already made a lot of positive changes over the last few months — with room for improvement, of course — so it’s really just a matter of doing it at this point. Or not doing, depending on the situation. Some habits I find I just do not need nor want anymore. Some habits I’d like to revisit once more.

And what about writing? Well, the remaster of A Division of Souls is out and away, and I’m thinking of starting in on the remaster of The Persistence of Memories pretty soon. I’m also focusing on Theadia and it’s still looking good and on schedule for release sometime next year. But I can’t help but think: I’ve got a journal and a notebook gathering dust in my satchel right now, and my 750Words sign-in remains woefully ignored. I mean, I’ve worked on multiple stories at that same time before, so this is nothing new. I can certainly play around with writing extremely rough drafts of new ideas while spending most of my creative energies on the two main projects. And in the process, probably disconnect from a few IRL things that I don’t need to hyperfocus on.

And what better time to do it than during the season that works best for me?

Somewhere in between

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I’m kind of in an interstitial space right now creatively, I think. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve stopped performing a lot of the habits I’d had over the last several years in Spare Oom — the whiteboard schedule, the logging of the word count, writing at 750Words, and so on. The main reason I stopped is that I wanted a fresh start here at the New Digs. For the most part it’s been a positive choice as I haven’t felt the stress of not hitting scheduled goals. It’s helped me focus on current projects with more clarity.

Not that I’m complaining, however. I like being here at this time, because it means that I’m breaking away from old habits and yet to forge new ones. I’m allowing myself to try new things and approach current projects in a slightly different way. Perhaps this is why I’m also allowing myself to indulge in a wave of comic reading on Hoopla these last several weeks…I get to try something new, see what inspires me.

I’ll be honest, I do occasionally feel the temptation to fire up the 750Words or do a bit of journaling, but I’ve been responding to that with well, you don’t HAVE to if you don’t really want to. Which, to me, means that if the only reason I want to do any of that is out of a sense of missing it, then I probably shouldn’t waste my time. If I’m going to return to the daily words or the journaling or anything else, I want to have a good creative reason. For the moment, I don’t want to split up my concentration on anything that’s mere folly right now, not when I want to put as much focus as I can on the Theadia project.

I suppose if this stage is anything like the one I had during the Belfry Years, this will (hopefully) mean that a lot of positive creativity will soon come out of it.