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This is where I ramble about life, the internet, and creative writing. 🙂 |
 Scribbles & Notions Welcome to my blog. This space exists mainly for me to keep myself focused and writing regularly. |
A new month, a new blog post! Hello, my friends. Happy February!  I hope that things are going well for all of you in this wild and crazy world. It's been a few days since I last updated this blog so here I am, dutifully writing another article on things that have happened to me this week and what I've learned from them. To begin, I am happy to announce that I've finally finished my Advanced Data Management class at WGU. It is a huge weight off my shoulders and I am happy to finally have the extra time available again to read some more books because of it. In my previous post, I mentioned how I had purchased a novel titled Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. So far it's been pretty good, I'm only two and a half chapters in but I'm really liking it. It has rich exoplanetary worldbuilding and hard science fiction, two things I love. Also, now that I have extra time available to me again, I've signed up to the Goodreads 2025 reading challenge with a goal to read at least 10 books before the year ends. I'm hoping to achieve that goal without any issues. I've built a pile of titles on my shelf (and my Kindle) that I have yet to read. You know what they say: the best way to become a better writer is to become a better reader! Last night, I was scrummaging through my closet and found a book from 2010 that had been all but forgotten. A book titled "How To Be A Writer" by Barbara Baig. In it, she talks about how writing skills aren't things you're born with, but things you develop over time. She believes that to be a good writer, you need to practice regardless of whether you have some natural talent or affinity for it or not. In fact, she believes that 99% of people are writers, they just haven't practiced enough to be effective writers. The book's subtitle is: "Building Your Creative Skills Through Practice and Play," which I found inviting. Sadly, I never finished the book. I don't know why, since it's been a while now (15 years!) but it still had my red bookmark on the page where I had left it all those years ago. Naturally, I want to continue reading it, but I'll have to start from the very beginning now since I've forgotten most of what I read. That's not to say that I didn't find it interesting the first time around. I remember being really enthused to write more after reading the first few chapters. Life happens and sometimes you forget to finish reading a book, even a good one. Nothing wrong with that. And speaking of writing more, I've been writing quite a lot since my last blog post. I've found the secret to overcoming my writer's block, thankfully. It's actually quite simple. The reason I was not able to put words on paper before was because I was making the mistake of putting myself in perfectionist mode instead of creative mode. In fact, this is one of the topics that Barbara focuses on in her book. Here's a rather large segment from page 22 that explains it perfectly: "When we write, we need to use two different mental faculties: one, which we can call the "creative faculty," is the part of the mind that comes up with things to say, with ideas and images and words; the other—let's call it the "critical faculty"—is the part of the mind that evaluates those words and ideas. Most of us were taught to write by following a model of the writing process I call the "one-step"—or the "get-it-right-the-first-time"—model. According to this model, first you figure out what you want to say, then you make an outline, and then you sit down and write. And as you write, what comes out onto the page should be as close to perfect as you can get it. For some writers this model works; for most of us, though, it doesn't work at all — and when it doesn't, we figure that we just can't write, or we're stupid, or possibly both. But why doesn't this model work? When you are trying to get your writing to be "right" the first time, you are forced to use your creative faculty and your critical faculty at the same time. This is a difficult and often dangerous thing to do, because the two faculties can get in each other's way and paralyze you. For instance, your creative faculty says, "Hey, I've got this great idea!" and you start to write it down. But immediately your critical faculty jumps in and says things like, "Oh, that idea will never work," or "You can't say that!" or "That sentence is ungrammatical," or any other of the many things that our critical faculties have been trained to say. And then what happens is a mental short circuit—everything jams, and you end up staring at the page or out the window, you decide this is a great time to get some coffee or do the laundry or walk the dog—or anything except write." And this is why I was so paralyzed when I wanted to write anything (even this blog post). I was trying to judge the words that were coming out of my head before they even had a chance to land on the page. I was criticizing my own work as I was crafting it, which doesn't make sense and is not the right way to do things. So instead, I realized I had to make myself follow a strict code from now on. A code that involves two golden rules while writing a first draft of anything: - 1) Write like no one is going to read your story. - 2) Words are cheap. They don't cost anything. So put as many down as you want. When I took those two rules to heart, something finally clicked inside my head and I was able to write way more than I thought I could in one sitting. The gist of it all is this: in the end, whatever you put down on paper the first time shouldn't really matter to you because you're going to go back and change those things during the editing process anyway. People write garbage all the time, even entire tomes of garbage. And that's because of the second rule: words are cheap. They don't cost anything to put down on paper (or well, your screen if you're writing on a computer). So why should every word hold so much weight? The answer is they shouldn't. First drafts don't really matter because no one is going to read them. Only you will. Even Ernest Hemingway once said: The first draft of anything is s***. So get your story down on the page or your blog post written. Don't hold yourself back. You don't have to produce gold right out of the gate. It's better to simply enter a state of flow and let yourself transfer the contents from your mental space to the physical space (on the page). Don't think about how things align or don't make sense while writing it. Don't think about grammatical errors or how you've been repeating the same word multiple times. That can come later. That's when your critical faculty comes into play. Anyway, that's where I've been improving as a writer. I'm happy so far with the results. Not because the things I've written are now masterpieces and should be read by everyone, but because I'm actually creating content and setting it down somewhere, so that I can chisel it later into something I can share. And the more I do it, the more efficient I become at it. If you're like me and also been stuck in a writer's block lately, I hope those two golden rules will help you.  Thank you for reading. |
| Alright, I haven't had much time to write a new blog post in a few days, so here it is! I'm trying to keep it updated as much as possible. So, what is there to write about? Well, I'm almost done with my Advanced Data Management class at WGU, which is great. I can't wait to take a break from all that studying. In other news, I've received another review here at WdC! This time on "Lane 96"  , which is a short story that I wrote in 2011. The reviewer this time was Amethyst Agape Angel   who was kind enough to give me feedback on my writing (with suggestions on how to fix the story rambling a bit, as well as a couple of unnoticed typos) which I used to revise the story. The latest revision hopes to fix those problems, so if you have the time, go ahead and take a look at it and let me know what you think of it.Thank you Amethyst! Speaking of learning to write better, a brand new lecture on professional writing by Brandon Sanderson appeared on my YouTube feed a few nights ago and I found myself watching it. For those of you who don't know, Sanderson is a science fiction/fantasy author with iconic works like The Stormlight Archive and Mistborn. He is known for writing epic fantasy novels set in the Cosmere fictional universe. He's also known for being really good at churning out books almost every year. He's been uploading new content to his YouTube channel recently and about a week or so ago, he uploaded a new lecture series called The Philosophy of Professional Writing. You should check it out if you're interested in writing and publishing a novel. Link below. My own writing journey has taken a big hit lately. With all the work I've had to do on my classes and the extra stuff that's come up, I've had very little time to write anything new. As a result, my productivity is down, and I am not making as much progress as I'd like. It is what it is, and I can't beat myself up too much for not meeting deadlines that I have imposed on myself. But that's not to say that I haven't been writing at all. In fact, I recently uploaded a new short story called "The Intruder" which is a bit of a departure from the usual stories that I write. Go check it out if you're up for a tale involving a fight-or-flight choice in an otherwise mundane life moment. Not sure what made me write that one.I'm working on another short story on the side. As you can probably tell, I'm trying to get back on that horse! (the writing horse). Hoping that I don't get off it any time soon (or that it doesn't throw me off).  I've also been wanting to read more. The last book that I read was probably like a year ago. So I've decided to pick up Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. From what I gather, it's a science fiction novel about humans leaving Earth and going to some other planet. It already shipped from Amazon so I'm just waiting for it to arrive tomorrow. I'm really excited for that one. What have you been reading lately? Or what have you been writing, for that matter? Please let me know in the comments. That's all for now! Have a great week, everyone! |
I have to say, for being a site that was made in the year 2000, Writing.Com still somehow manages to maintain its appeal (at least to me) in terms of aesthetics and also usability. There’s something about it that I can’t quite place my finger on, but it makes me want to write more than any other site ever has. I guess I’m a sucker for minimalist user interfaces and websites. WdC just works, and it works well, even for little things like changing the site’s skin or customizing your profile. Whoever designed and coded this site did a really good job at making the simplicity of the platform its strongest point, as it looks and feels good to use. Or maybe that's just me. I’ve recently felt the urge to write again, mostly because I’m nearing the end of my second to last semester at WGU and I have time to actually consider other interests and pursuits in my spare time. Being a software engineering student can feel all encompassing at times and as such it has paralyzed me from doing other things that I love. My free time is scarce these days and whenever I attempt to launch a new project (like writing a novel) or play a new video game, it always feels like I’m cheating myself out of hours of my day that could be better spent studying or finishing classwork. I can’t enjoy my other hobbies because I’m always thinking about due dates. And let me tell you, that is a sure fire way of burning out. For that reason, I think I need an outlet to let myself just enjoy the moment and embrace being creative rather than productive. Utilitarian as I am, even I know not to put all my focus on work and school, because it’s not healthy and it will cause me more harm than good in the long run. So I'm glad that I re-discovered Writing.Com and I plan on writing more in the future, for my own sanity’s sake. I returned to WdC a few days ago because of a review that was left on one of my short stories. The review came in through my Gmail inbox and even though normally I don't click on notifications from websites I haven't used in years (as many of them are spam), I was curious as to why I was receiving a review alert from Writing.Com when I hadn't posted anything there in more than a decade. The review was from Tiggy  who had read my "Dimensional War" short story. I wasn't expecting a good rating since the story was written during a time when I was still fairly new to crafting narratives... but to my surprise, the reviewer left me some positive feedback! Here's an excerpt from the review:I’m not a sci-fi fan but the setting of this tale made it an interesting read. In fact, it was the short description that made me click on this story because I was curious what you would do with this idea. There was a lot of focus on the soldiers and their mission, especially at the beginning, which was quite detailed and seemed well researched. It was soon forgotten though when the aliens landed, but you brought it back to the soldiers and why they were there at the end. I, too, wondered if anyone would believe them when they reported what they had seen, but I assumed that this wasn’t an isolated occurrence and the aliens probably landed in other places as well. It was a good story that made me wonder how it might continue. For a bit of context, Dimensional War is a story that takes place during WW2 and involves portals opening up and strange beings emerging from them. I don't really know what made me write it at the time, but I know there were more chapters I wrote in that same setting (but those documents are now long gone, lost to time 😔). After saying my thanks for the review, I started considering why I hadn't visited Writing.Com in such a long time. Had I forgotten about it? Did I consider it at some point bween 2011 and now and just thought it to be outdated or archaic? Did I find other sites for storytelling? I really don't know. I remember that it was one of the first sites I visited in my youth that allowed people to share stories and get them reviewed by a community (long before sites like Wattpad or RoyalRoad even existed). Perhaps I hadn't consider it because my writing days were mostly behind me. So I started thinking: what if I started writing again? What if I posted new stories? Before I knew it, I was customizing my profile and uploading new pictures of myself. I began to consider whether or not to purchase the "Upgraded" membership, allowing me to create books and even have a blog. As you have probably guessed, I ended up pulling that trigger, and well, here we are. In the coming weeks, I plan to start drafting some new stories and posting them on WdC. I also want to talk about how my writing journey is going thus far. Weekly updates is what I'm aiming for, but we'll see how that goes. |
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