Day 4: Uh Oh

I'm not making excuses for having not written today...but that's what it's going to seem like for a while as I tell you why I haven't written today.

It boils down to three things:

1. I was cleaning my room this morning. It took longer than I thought to do less than I'd have hoped.

2. I was out with friends celebrating one of their birthdays. This had me out of the house for eight hours or so. We went to the cinema, we grabbed some dinner, and I went home afterwards. I didn't delay, but I was still out for eight hours, thanks to the buses.

3. I was tired.

Actually, number three should really read as such: I am tired. This is still a reality. But here's why I'm not making excuses despite what you just read or skimmed over:

I plan on writing tonight, until my eyes hate me for still being awake. They're getting there already, though, so I very much doubt I'll reach 2,000 words tonight. The only reason I'm writing this blog post first is because I suspect I'll be up past midnight writing, and I don't want to miss blogging every day this month.

Dilemma, though: I haven't done anything for FUFDay. Yet. It's a little too late to record and edit and publish a YouTube video, so that's out of the question, but I can do something, something I hinted explicitly at yesterday. I can announce a release date for the book.

Ordinarily, I would wait until the book is finished before doing that, but since I didn't do that with Balor Reborn either, I think I'm safe in doing it again. As it's Camp NaNoWriMo, and I'm enjoying it heartily, I imagine I'll actually be finished the book by Tuesday. Already having the cover done is a bonus, because it means I have less to do once the book is written. So... here we go... ready?

Really? Are you ready?

Because we can delay this as much as you need if you want some time. I know this is a Big Deal. Maybe more so for me, but still. This is big...ish.

Are you sure? You're ready now? You want me to tell you or you'll hurt me? Well, alright then...

The Hounds of Hell

Book Two in the Modern Irish Myth series

by Paul Carroll

Coming July 16th 2013

For realsies. It's happening. I have less than two weeks to finish writing the book, edit it, and make a trailer for it. I also plan on doing some promotional work when the book comes out, so I need to get that done. (Spoiler alert: it's some flash fiction stories.)

Okay, that's a thing done. Now to do some writing. For maybe fifteen minutes, because my eyes are furious I'm still awake and staring at a screen.

How Did FUFDay Go?

On the second time around, Face Up to Fear Day was less successful. However, that said, I forced myself to do a couple of things.

The big one was to record a poem for my YouTube channel that'll serve as an introduction to who I am. I figure that was something I should probably do, even if it meant having to put my face out there again, and try to figure out what to say. Since I plan on putting up a fair bit of poetry on the channel, I figured it was a good idea for a video. You can watch it below.

I still cringe at how up close it is, and how poor the quality of the camera is. One day, I'll be able to replace my set up.

Incidentally, the other bit of work I did today was to write the copy for a couple of gigs for Fiverr (which has just updated its model, so not everything is $5.) I'll be launching both gigs (as they were called the last time I checked) tomorrow, and I'll probably have to create a web-page to support them both on my website, as a way of driving traffic to them in some way.

I've avoided doing it in the past, for all the usual reasons, but I think I'm finally ready to do it. Plus, with my current working situation, I have plenty of time to address this sort of stuff.

While I didn't get to do everything on my list (again), I think the last-minute work I did tonight (after a less-than-exciting day) has paid off towards something. In the spirit of the day, I'll keep on working tomorrow. That's the point, after all. I'm supposed to be doing these things all the time, and for whatever reason, I haven't been able to of late.

Tomorrow's another chance to get things right. I wonder how many super exciting things I can get done in the space of a few hours.

More FUF?

My Face Up to Fear Day (i.e. FUFDay) has the potential be a weekly affair. But the real question is, will it?

Last week, I had seven ideas for things I could do. I ended up doing two of them, and one other item that wasn't on the list. This week, I have the potential to do up to eight different things. Eight. That's one more!

This includes, of course, a repetition of a YouTube overload. However, I don't plan on doing that five-videos -in-a-day sort of thing again any time soon. Too much work, too little else done. Plus, I don't think my eyes enjoyed it every much. I do, however, have a number of other related videos that could over time, become a new playlist of poetry on my channel. And that's always fun, right?

There still remains, on the list, a few items I haven't even once addressed. One of these is simply to write a short story, to submit to a competition. The real "facing up to fear" aspect of it is the submission of the story. I've been avoiding competitions for a long time, partly for fear of rejection, partly because of the entrance fee. (I canny help being without money a lot of the time...and then I buy comic books.) However, I'm really going to give it a shot, and hope that I can produce something that's up to the standard's expected. Fingers crossed, right?

There are other things I can do more set-up for, as well, though they're more boring now than they have the potential to be, based on their success, and as with a couple of the challenges faced last week, they'll remain unspoken of until such time that they actually result in something happening. Or something. (I've got three this week that are like that, so, you know, don't expect to hear much about those for a while.)

Even now, I can see the potential for the continuance of FUFDay. It can get a great many things done.

However, it can also reduce me to only doing important things on a weekly basis, and that's not ideal. I think, maybe, once I get into the habit of doing two or three things per week that scare the content out of me, I'll double the FUFDay antics. Then double it again. And they I'll have a four-day working week set up for myself in which I make sure I'm always producing and publishing something, and hoping people find some value in that.

And hey, I think I can be okay with working for four days of the week on things I love doing and that I'm just too damned scared in a weird sort of way to not do anything about. FUF fo' life?

Three Weeks

Three weeks ago, I met up with some friends in Dublin city centre, and we wrote poetry. I went on a mad one, writing what I saw and attempting to do one thing: write a lot of poetry, and look later to see if any of it is any good.

From that day, until today, I've been using the same notebook. It's one of four, and it's officially been filled.

Three weeks' work has gone into the first notebook. This has seen 60 pages filled with 36 poems of varying quality and length. Some I wrote because I needed to write a poem that day (remember, I'm writing at least one poem every day this month!), others I wrote because the idea was in my head.

There are poems about relationships, poems about things that have been bothering me, poems about spelling, poems about Dublin and poems about YouTubers. The latter category will be on display, all things going according to plan, from tomorrow onwards, in a short series of videos, as I discussed in my previous post.

That's all part of Face Up To Fear Day, or FUFDay as my friend Ian has put it. (You know Ian...I've mentioned Ian a lot.) Anyway, it's part of my attempt to get some poetry out into the world, which has been an important thing for me. However, recent activities, from over the past few months, have made it so I don't just want to post the words online. I want to perform the poems, to read them so that they have more substance, and I want it to be supported only by my voice. Not some gimmick with a word cloud, not with a song playing in the background. Just me.

I typed up a lot of the poems I've written recently, today. It took a while, especially considering the fact that one poem is almost 120 lines long. I was proud of that one.

My aim, over the next few days and weeks, is to type and print every one of my poems to have an accessible collection for my poetry folder. As you can tell from the photo above, it's extremely professional. It'll have a lot of work in it, though, when I've caught up with the poems that haven't yet been typed. There are still a lot of them from before I opened the first notebook, and that's where the backlog will come from.

Thankfully, the longest poems have been typed up already, for the most part. One of them was short-listed in the Heart-in-Mouth competition this year, another ended up on my college's website as a goodbye to the other final year students. Thus far, those are my poetic achievements. I'm hoping to add to that list eventually.

Anyway, that's it from me for tonight. Tomorrow, I'll be posting an awful lot online. It's going to be a busy inaugural FUFDay.