What Do I Write About?

I'll be honest: even though I know I want to write a blog post today, doesn't mean I have any idea what to write about. This is the biggest problem with trying to write every day when I don't have a plan of any description. I get lost for ideas, not sure what I want to talk about from my day-to-day experiences, and not having much else to talk about.

I've had this same problem with writing poetry this month, too. Yes, I force myself to do it, and yes I'm happy with some of the material I've produced, but overall it's been a case of really, really having to try to just find a topic. Never mind the actual writing part of this. That's the part I can handle.

I think it's actually going to come down to having to draw up a list of topics, both for the blog and the poetry. It's not the most authentic writing experience, but it means I'll be less likely to be stuck for a piece of work. Actually putting together that list is a little bit difficult, of course, because I've already exhausted a great many ideas over the course of this blog. Without writing explicitly about other people, it all boils down to what I can say about a particular topic, or what I can say about what I've been doing since I finished my exams.

But here's the thing: getting back into playing Skyrim and reading Born Weird by Andrew Kaufman are not quite the blogable experiences I'm looking for. (Other things have happened, but that's an entirely different matter.) My life, for the most part, has not been newsworthy since exams ended. Except, you know, for the birth of my new website.

What has effectively happened, though, is that while I've been struggling to come up with something to blog about and taking a holiday after exams and college, I've been getting lazy. I wish I could say I've been writing a huge amount every day, but I'm still very much adapting to life without exams on the horizon.

So, I have nothing to write about, in a very crappy sense.

I want to write. I'm sure I could find lots to say, if I had some sort of direction. I can definitely produce a lot in a relatively short period of time. It's getting to the starting line that's the problem.

What do you reckon? Is there something you want me to write about on this blog? I've got a month to fill, only a couple of suggestions from a friend (the evidence of which I can't even find!), and a mind drawing blank. (I'm going to blame exams.)

To put it simply: What do I write about?

The Month That's In It

This month is an important one for me. It's not that there are any big anniversaries or grand occasions worth celebrating, either. This month is the first month entirely free from having college work to do. And so, I'm taking advantage of it by defining my own life and how I spend it.

Since blogging so regularly in April proved beneficial for both my blog stats and my general ability to write on demand, I'm doing it again this month: every day, one post on this blog. I don't have a list of back-up ideas to work with. I don't have much to go on except for what I do each day. But I do have that: I have the days and what I do.

With that in mind, I can tell you two things that have also begun today: an attempt to write poetry every day for a month, and a new website.

The poetry is fairly simple, actually. I have a tendency to write poetry when I haven't written something on a particular day, so writing a poem every day isn't much different to how things turned out on repeated occasions over the past five months. This is also coming off the back of a poetry writing day(on Thursday) with some friends, for which writing poetry on demand was a necessary requirement to actually doing what I'd wanted to do.

I've already written today's poem, and though I plan to "perform" some of these poems on YouTube throughout the month, for now I'm keeping it quiet. I went for something more personal than I let myself write on Thursday, and I'm still unsure as to how exactly to share it with the world. It's now among over thirty poems I need to type up, too, so it could be a while before it sees the light of day.

The website that launched today is a fairly important one for me: ModernIrishMyth.com. I've pulled my flash fiction across to that site, and set it up so that over the next month or so I can add in some Behind the Scenes posts about the different myths and monsters in the stories. It's the home for the books that are due to pick up rather quickly. Balor Reborn has been out for some time, but between college, my research paper, The Jerry Davidson Show, teaching placement and exams, I haven't actually had a chance to go near The Hounds of Hell, beyond planning it.

That's all changing, and the new website is the start of it. My rather ambitious plan is to release a new book in the Modern Irish Myth series every month until they've all been published, bringing us as far as April 2014.   By May 2014, there will also be four collected editions of the series (books 1-3, 4-6, etc) in print edition, pending finances. It's going to be big, it's going to be exciting, and it's going to be a lot of work. But then, I'm not really doing much else with my time aside from writing like a mad man.

This month will also see the rise of another site, mid-way through, so keep an eye out for that. I'm effectively setting myself up make a full-time job out of this (though how much I earn depends entirely on how many books I sell!). I need to fill up my time with writing, or I'll really be feeling it in September when I don't start lectures again. Some people travel, some work full-time in the same job they've been working for three or four years, and while I'm still in the bookshop, weekends just don't cut it when you have five other days of the week to fill up.

This is the month that gets the ball rolling on a lot of different projects. I hope to see you around when these changes start happening.

Timetabling

From June onwards, I'll be on my own timetable for weekdays. This will last for the foreseeable future, and for the first time ever. I won't have college in September (I hope), and I don't currently have a full-time job in place. Those sort of things just aren't that common.

The implications of this are both positive and negative.

For a start, my travel expenses per week are driven down significantly. Rather than spend about €25 on travel to and from college per week (a massive chunk of my wages), I can work from the comfort of my own home. I also won't have to worry about paying for lunch when I run out of time to make one in the morning...because I'll be eating in all the time. That's up to €20 saved per week.

However, despite saving money, I'm not exactly in a position to do much else with my life; I'm still only working weekends, so I can't afford to travel, or to move out. I also don't get to see people as often as I'd like (and I like people, especially my friends). And I have to set my own work.

This is where my timetable comes in. Knowing there are only so many days I can work on one project before it becomes tiresome, I've devised a way to write about several different things throughout the week. A mix of poetry, script writing, novelling, flash fiction, articles, blog writing, video making and general adminstration work sees me working full-time on writing.

It also sees me putting off the insanity of being without a structure in my life.

However, it does also call for me to have to use my time as if I were working a regular job. Specifically:

- I need to earn money from writing
- I need to have holidays from writing
- I need to work with people in some way

I'm already working on the last one, and I'm technically earning something from writing (though not enough to be currently in a position of paying myself an hourly wage for the amount of work that actually went into the books I have published, thus far), but actually having holidays is difficult. I'd need to plan projects towards similar deadlines. I'd need some sort of money to actually go somewhere (and somewhere affordable... the student lifestyle continues even after the degree has been earned!).

It's not impossible, I know, but it will take some work.

I've set myself deadlines and tasks per month (books to have completed, projects to launch that currently only exist anonymously, submissions) so I'm not going completely without direction. I have a whole folder full of tasks that need to be done, books to be written, and a step-by-step guide to getting them done.

I don't want my time to go to waste. I know how easy it is to sit by and do nothing. But I also know how possible it is to accomplish a lot in a short period of time. Two years ago, I found myself in the position of needing to write about 25,000 words in five days in July (Camp NaNoWriMo anybody); finishing that early, I applied for, and was hired, for a writing position on The Phantom Zone (a site that unfortunately not been written on in over a year, when I stopped writing when it appeared no one else was regularly posting); at the same time, I began putting my website together.

It had been a busy five days, but it made the time feel worthwhile. That's what I want to get out of life. Sure, I could sit around all day and watch RoosterTeeth videos or tweet about the varying quantities of tea in my cup, but I wouldn't feel like I was actually accomplishing anything. (Don't get me wrong: when summer hits, I imagine I'll be spending a fair amount of time listening to the RoosterTeeth podcasts while doing things like cover design, or taking a break from work, but I don't want that to be the only thing I accomplish in a day.) Similarly, I won't be repeating what I did last summer: watching videos with the aim of achieving something from what they taught, only to never put it into practice.

I need to fill my day with activities, and I need to be flexible (but professional) about how I do it. Essentially, I'll be working a seven-day week, though I'll be setting my own hours for five of those. And I need to. Not just to actually get the books written that I've been wanting to write for years and months, now, but to actually feel like I'm doing something with my time.

If history has taught me anything, I grow restless during time off when I feel like I should be doing something. Here's the reality of the situation: I won't have a research paper to write, or teaching practice to prepare for, or a deadline to finish the really serious, time-consuming work of longer books and projects, all of which are usually dictated by the coming of September. September will just be the month after August, not the month I'm working to another timetable again.

Until such time that I find full-time work, I have to make it for myself.

Incidentally, while I have many, many projects to do for the next few months, I'd like to blog every day in June (and possibly July...and August...and September... getting the picture? Every day. Forever.), but I'm wondering: what would you like to read? I'm open to suggestions (though I'm hoping not to repeat the Sexy Sea Anemones post that resulted from an extremely open call for blog post ideas a few years ago!). Leave a comment below (or on whatever social media site you found this post through - if I posted the link).