It's been a while since I've written a full, proper blog post. I mean, a long, long time. And I haven't kept to my daily schedule since March, when a combination of London and theatre gave me too much else to focus on. Combine that with the worries about getting into the course I applied for - and thank God I actually got into it, and will begin in September - and I shut down slightly.
Lately, though - as in the past few days - I've been planning a come back. I've been planning to go into overdrive. Next month, I'm planning to do a lot online. Let's just break it down a bit. Every day in July, I want to:
- Post a blog post here
- Post a poem or story on Paragraverse
- Upload a video blog on my YouTube channel
This, and here's the catch, is while I'm writing a book for Camp NaNoWriMo. A book I haven't finished planning. So that'll be fun.
The way it's going to break down is that the blog posts will be written in advance, more or less. I've already scheduled the first three at the writing of this. They're short, and form a sort of running interview with my myself. Minus the questions. I'm insane, but I'm not ask myself questions for a month insane.
The poems are going to be either (a) something that came to me in a moment of pure inspiration or (b) based off something I found in my research for my Camp NaNoWriMo novel. The stories, which will appear every Friday on ParagraVerse, are re-posts of the original Modern Irish Myth flash stories. I made the decision recently to remove that site completely, when it became apparent that I was neither posting new material to the site, or sending anyone to it.
The video blogs are going to be my attempt to capture the month of writing on camera. Largely they'll focus on the novel, and how my progress is going. I imagine it's going to be a very stressful, very busy month, and it's all down to one other, as-yet-unmentioned thing: I'm starting a newsletter, and I want to encourage people to sign up to it. I still need to work out the kinks before I even share a sign-up page (or, you know, even begin the newsletter process of it - I have one thing sorted out, but after that... let's just say I have a lot to do.)
Starting the newsletter also requires me to re-start my Sunday articles. So I have to write them every week. And this is the kicker - while making sure I have a new poem, blog post and video going up on a daily basis, while directing people to my sign up sheet and while posting my Sunday articles - I'm setting a target of 75,000 words for my Camp NaNoWriMo challenge.
And did I mention I haven't finished planning it yet?
This is the month that might kill me, and I honestly can't wait to see how I do. I have my head in the game. I love the idea for the book. I know what I want to do with this book when it's done. I know that I can write 2,500 words per day on average. (Case in point: Balor Reborn.)
I know I'll be exhausted. I know I'll have to put in a lot of hours. I know it'll mean not watching television boxsets, or sitting down to rewatch movies for no reason. I know it'll mean not aimlessly walking around the city centre just to get out of the house. I know it'll mean not playing Skyrim for the tenth time and getting nowhere in it.
I know all of that, and I still want to do this. I want to write this book, and I want to share these blog posts, and the videos, and the poems. I'm all about the big challenges to myself. They're how I figure out my strengths and weaknesses, and that's how I grow as a person.
This Tuesday, it all begins.
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Monday, September 23, 2013
Planning Before Living
As my teaching placement in January came to a finish, it began to feel extremely real that I was leaving college. It was a nervous and exciting time, but it raised a question: what do I do now? I knew there was one thing I definitely wanted to do: I wanted to get a Masters degree.
Two problems then arose:
- What do I want to study in? (And where?)
- How can I afford it?
The second problem was much more easy to address: I can't. Working weekends only, it is literally impossible for me to save up the average full sum required to sit a Masters course in Ireland. For the whole summer, that's all I was able to manage in work - not because I wasn't willing to work, but because the hours weren't there.
Now, I'm in a position to receive a few more hours per week. My boss is currently out of commission, and so we can't mention anything further to him, but my colleagues and I have been talking, and it makes sense to us that I work four days per week - not just a few hours on a Saturday, and a full-day on Sunday. Even if I managed to work just four days in the week, I've worked it out that I can still save up for a course to begin in September 2014.
That's without giving up on comic books, the cinema, magazines or other various expenses that pop up, too, which effectively means that I'm in a position, all things going according to plan (and a plan that makes sense to six people, myself included), to begin a Masters this time next year.
But that still leaves the other problem: what course would I actually do?
Part of me is considering Chaplaincy. Another part of me is considering Creative Writing. There's even a part of me that would love to go on to study Counselling. Each have their own pros and cons to consider, and I'm sure when I seriously start looking into courses things will only get more complicated. Now that I actually feel like I'm in a position to actually afford it, I can actually consider things beyond just what I'd like to do in some hypothetical universe.
Here was me thinking that I was done with college. Ha!
Life requires a lot of planning like this, though, I've come to realise. I know that while taking an extra year of study, I may have to face reduced working hours. It's also a massive chunk of money I can't put aside for saving, or use to travel (like I've wanted to for years, now!). I'm still planning to go away next year for a few days, but I do have to seriously consider the costs of everything before I go ahead with it. That's not just about the travelling; I mean everything that isn't already on my list of expenses.
As well as planning my expenses and income, I've also been looking at a few different things, from video schedules to writing plans, and considering the best course of action to take on a number of different projects. From one that currently looks like an interactive fantasy story, to a web series on YouTube, to a content-filled blog, I've got a lot of work ahead of me for so many different projects. I don't think I'll run out of work to do over the next few months, at least!
It seems like a lot to plan, but it also seems strangely necessary. Not because I might go against my plans, but because I'm not sure I could keep myself focused on one specific exciting thing for long enough to get truly involved in it. I know that once I get it into my system to write a particular thing, or record videos every x days, like I did with my daily-blogging and daily poetry exercises, it'll just be part of my life.
And isn't that the point? To read, to write, to create, to earn, to study. Isn't that the point of all this planning, that it just becomes life?
Two problems then arose:
- What do I want to study in? (And where?)
- How can I afford it?
The second problem was much more easy to address: I can't. Working weekends only, it is literally impossible for me to save up the average full sum required to sit a Masters course in Ireland. For the whole summer, that's all I was able to manage in work - not because I wasn't willing to work, but because the hours weren't there.
Now, I'm in a position to receive a few more hours per week. My boss is currently out of commission, and so we can't mention anything further to him, but my colleagues and I have been talking, and it makes sense to us that I work four days per week - not just a few hours on a Saturday, and a full-day on Sunday. Even if I managed to work just four days in the week, I've worked it out that I can still save up for a course to begin in September 2014.
That's without giving up on comic books, the cinema, magazines or other various expenses that pop up, too, which effectively means that I'm in a position, all things going according to plan (and a plan that makes sense to six people, myself included), to begin a Masters this time next year.
But that still leaves the other problem: what course would I actually do?
Part of me is considering Chaplaincy. Another part of me is considering Creative Writing. There's even a part of me that would love to go on to study Counselling. Each have their own pros and cons to consider, and I'm sure when I seriously start looking into courses things will only get more complicated. Now that I actually feel like I'm in a position to actually afford it, I can actually consider things beyond just what I'd like to do in some hypothetical universe.
Here was me thinking that I was done with college. Ha!
Life requires a lot of planning like this, though, I've come to realise. I know that while taking an extra year of study, I may have to face reduced working hours. It's also a massive chunk of money I can't put aside for saving, or use to travel (like I've wanted to for years, now!). I'm still planning to go away next year for a few days, but I do have to seriously consider the costs of everything before I go ahead with it. That's not just about the travelling; I mean everything that isn't already on my list of expenses.
As well as planning my expenses and income, I've also been looking at a few different things, from video schedules to writing plans, and considering the best course of action to take on a number of different projects. From one that currently looks like an interactive fantasy story, to a web series on YouTube, to a content-filled blog, I've got a lot of work ahead of me for so many different projects. I don't think I'll run out of work to do over the next few months, at least!
It seems like a lot to plan, but it also seems strangely necessary. Not because I might go against my plans, but because I'm not sure I could keep myself focused on one specific exciting thing for long enough to get truly involved in it. I know that once I get it into my system to write a particular thing, or record videos every x days, like I did with my daily-blogging and daily poetry exercises, it'll just be part of my life.
And isn't that the point? To read, to write, to create, to earn, to study. Isn't that the point of all this planning, that it just becomes life?
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Subscribers, wha'?
On Friday, I launched ParagraVerse, my new prose and poetry blog. With that, came Bed, my horror flash fiction story. Today, the first Tuesday since the launch day, I put up the first poem to the site: The Stars Went Out and Left Us Behind.
What I have noticed in each case is that (a) I have gotten a few 'likes' from other Wordpress users, (b) I have gotten at least one comment per post and (c) at least one person has subscribed each time. And just for the record, these aren't bragging rights.
In fact, the only reason I'm highlighting this is because people ask me (rather often, in fact) which blogging platform they should use. While Blogger is fully Google-integrated, it's labels don't do much for helping other Blogger users find your posts. I've also found that it's a slightly longer process to subscribe to someone's blog via Blogger.
Wordpress, on the other hand, while not totally Google-integrated, allows for other Wordpress users to find blog posts more easily. (This is true of Wordpress.com, not of using the .org self-hosting option.) What this means, of course, is that more people you don't know can find your post more easily just by searching a tag, or by seeing your post pop up in the Freshly Pressed section of Wordpress.com. Subscribing is also a much quicker process.
Let's make it clear: I didn't set up ParagraVerse for subscribers. I set it up to share prose and poetry. However, subscribers are a sign to me that people are interested in reading what I've written. I don't, and won't, display my subscriber numbers (unless running a competition when I reach X amount of subscribers - then I'd need to display it to prove it) because the subscribers are, to me, the people who want to read my work, not the number I can show people who come to the site.
The advantage of having subscribers, of course, is that the task of sending your work to people is done for you by their action of subscribing. While I will always post a link on the various social media sites I use to new poems and stories, not everyone who reads them is necessarily following me on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.
And, while I'm talking about it, I'd like to openly thank everyone who has thus far (a) subscribed, (b) commented on, (c) liked and/or (d) read Bed or The Stars Went Out and Left Us Behind. It means a lot to me to receive such positive feedback after so little work has gone up. I hope you'll stick with me as I add to the collection of stories and poems over the coming months.
What I have noticed in each case is that (a) I have gotten a few 'likes' from other Wordpress users, (b) I have gotten at least one comment per post and (c) at least one person has subscribed each time. And just for the record, these aren't bragging rights.
In fact, the only reason I'm highlighting this is because people ask me (rather often, in fact) which blogging platform they should use. While Blogger is fully Google-integrated, it's labels don't do much for helping other Blogger users find your posts. I've also found that it's a slightly longer process to subscribe to someone's blog via Blogger.
Wordpress, on the other hand, while not totally Google-integrated, allows for other Wordpress users to find blog posts more easily. (This is true of Wordpress.com, not of using the .org self-hosting option.) What this means, of course, is that more people you don't know can find your post more easily just by searching a tag, or by seeing your post pop up in the Freshly Pressed section of Wordpress.com. Subscribing is also a much quicker process.
Let's make it clear: I didn't set up ParagraVerse for subscribers. I set it up to share prose and poetry. However, subscribers are a sign to me that people are interested in reading what I've written. I don't, and won't, display my subscriber numbers (unless running a competition when I reach X amount of subscribers - then I'd need to display it to prove it) because the subscribers are, to me, the people who want to read my work, not the number I can show people who come to the site.
The advantage of having subscribers, of course, is that the task of sending your work to people is done for you by their action of subscribing. While I will always post a link on the various social media sites I use to new poems and stories, not everyone who reads them is necessarily following me on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.
And, while I'm talking about it, I'd like to openly thank everyone who has thus far (a) subscribed, (b) commented on, (c) liked and/or (d) read Bed or The Stars Went Out and Left Us Behind. It means a lot to me to receive such positive feedback after so little work has gone up. I hope you'll stick with me as I add to the collection of stories and poems over the coming months.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
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.
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.
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