The End and the Beginning

Operation Overdrive has come to an end. Sort of.

I started this month with a big idea: to write a 75,000 word novel, posting daily blog posts, poems and videos. 31 days to do an awful lot of work, whether I did the novel or the daily posts. Attempting to do everything, that was where I fell behind.

And, life got in the way. But that's okay. That will happen.

I don't consider Operation Overdrive a failure, however. Quite the contrary. I think, with everything I did, it's been a success of sorts. I've managed to get back to blogging in a way that makes me happy. I've managed to put out a lot of poems, some of which were quite popular as far as my little poetry and prose blog is concerned, and I've managed to get back my confidence in front of a camera for my YouTube channel.

I've also discovered that I can't force myself to write a book if I only end up feeling guilty about not doing anything else.

Is this a problem for the dream of being a writer? No. It's a problem for any future attempts at NaNoWriMo in any way, shape or form. At least, not when the word count target is set to 150%.

The issue, you see, was trying to balance the workload when I was finding myself at my busiest, when I was working more hours in the bookshop, and when the sun was actually shining in Ireland. (Honestly - we had a weird summer.)

I know that I can write a novella in a week.

I know that I can write a non-fiction book using all of my spare time during a busy period.

I now know that I cannot dedicate a whole month to a book, while doing everything else in my life that I don't have any control over - like work, or babysitting, or burning up in the heat - because I will only tire myself out.

Part of the issue, for me, has been sleep, though. I haven't gotten much lately. We're talking the past couple of months. Since the sun started shining brightly in the morning, I haven't been able to sleep on past six most of the time. But this is after going to bed at twelve. I was drained, and that made me too groggy to start work earlier. The end result was guilt. Guilt at doing anything that wasn't writing. Guilt that carried over into the book. Guilt at trying something new.

And that last one? That's where the biggest issue for me was this month. I bought a new camera, my first DSLR. I wanted to take photographs. I wanted to practice, to get better, to really improve upon the very basics of photography that I had. And every time I did that - guilt.

Bad. Very bad.

That's why I left the book behind. I made a conscious decision, when I found myself incapable of writing the book because of how badly I felt for not doing it as much as I should have, to drop it. Not forever. Just until I get a couple of things in order. I have other books to write. I want to practice my photography more.

Operation Overdrive finishes today, officially, but the aftermath is this:

I want to write blog posts more often. I want to record videos more often, and I want to put more effort into them than a direct upload. I want to write poems with greater purpose for ParagraVerse. I want to set up a photography blog - and a business - and I want to get out more to take photographs. I want to write a couple of books that have been on my mind for a long time, and I want to continue to write my novel.

The month is over, but the desire to create, and the aspiration that I began with, they've only grown stronger.

What I Write

When I was younger, I thought I would only enjoy one type of book: one that had magic in it. Then, I found A Series of Unfortunate Events, and everything almost changed.

Except, that was it. That was the only non-magical series I was reading. Until I went to secondary school and was required to read Boy by Roald Dahl, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, I didn't read another book that didn't have magic in it. I was reading Harry Potter, and Darren Shan, and Garth Nix.

My first book was a fantasy book. My second was sci-fi. And it wasn't just a genre fixation. I was only reading and writing novels. Nothing else.

I tried to write some short stories. They were derivative at best.

Then, when I was seventeen, I wrote a book that didn't have magic in it. It was set in Dublin, it had swearing in it, and no one could throw a fire ball or read anyone's mind. It was a perfectly ordinary book. More or less. But it was still a novel.

I tried writing some poetry, and couldn't get it right.

Eventually, I found my poetic voice. That was important for me. I was writing things that had meaning for me, and I was able to put some form on them. It was a big step in the right direction.

As I entered third year in college, I wrote a play for the first time. The only time I'd ever written a script before this was a bad, short screenplay a couple of years back.

By this point, I was doing something else with my reading, too. I was reading all sorts of books. I was reading novellas, poetry, short stories, and non-fiction. I had actually found non-fiction interesting. I was reading books on business and mental health and writing, and I was loving it.

When I wrote Balor Reborn in 2012, I also started writing flash fiction. I managed to take ideas and turn them into 1000 word stories quite easily.

The end result: I now write novellas, in different genres, as well as flash fiction on romance and mythology and vague elements of fantasy and magical realism; I've been writing poetry, and I've written short scripts for stage production; to top it all off, I've been writing books on writing.

It may not seem significant for some, but when stories were my whole world, turning to all of these different areas and genres has been life-changing for me. I'm not just a novelist, or a poet, or a playwright; I'm a lot of different things, all at the same time, and it's the spice that makes my life that little bit more interesting.

Operation Overdrive, or The Month That Might Kill Me

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.

All You Need is Love

Late last month, I got the idea to post a "love" poem every day in February. Thinking about it, I realised that 95% of my poems that could arguably be considered a poem about love aren't romantic. I just don't write romantic love poems all that often. I think I've written maybe three, ever, and I don't know where two of them are. (One of them ended up in Poetry Against Cancer.)

This, I decided, was perfect.

I'm not a fan of Valentine's Day. I find the idea of giving someone a five euro card and a box of chocolates or flowers and rushing out to an expensive restaurant to prove to other couples that you're in love a bit...odd. Especially since Valentine's Day seems to be some "romantic" competition. Everyone in a relationship has to do something on Valentine's Day, or no one will believe they're in love, or in a relationship, or whatever the heck sort of excuses people use to go out on Valentine's Day.

Frankly, it bewilders me. I don't think I'll ever celebrate it in the typical way. I don't think I'll buy someone a card produced en masse by a company who says it's romantic. I'd prefer write a poem that says how I feel.

Still, I think 28 poems on the theme of love is a suitable substitute. Even if they do cover a lot of the issues in a relationship that aren't necessarily romantic, like not talking to each other, struggling to understand each other, breaking up, trying to get back together, and not really fitting together.

Why am I posting them, then, if they're not romantic? Because they're real. I'm not about to write 28 poems that you could find inside a Hallmark card. Most of these poems only make perfect sense when you've lived my life. But they're about love. They're about the love I've felt, love that hurt, love that wasn't fair, love that still bothers me and love that fills me with joy.

I'm not Adele. I'm not putting these poems out there to make someone look bad, because the reality is they tell a story about relationships, from the bad separations right up to making up again. The first dozen poems or so cover an interesting arc in my life, and they'll continue on like that, taking snippets from my life when things hurt a little too much to celebrating moments when life just felt wonderful.

These aren't poems about me being in love. These are poems about how I experience it. Some will read angrily. Some will read pleasantly. Some will be sad, and some will be happy.

The Beatles once said "All you need is love." In a sense, that's true. But it doesn't have to come from a Hallmark card. It doesn't have to be limited to the person you share a bed with. Love isn't romance. Love isn't perfect. But, I think, if you really want to experience life, you need to recognise that you love someone. Love someone who hurts you sometimes. Love someone despite their flaws - because you stop noticing them. Love someone because they make you happy. Love someone who makes you feel confident.

And if you're feeling brave, tell them how you feel.

Daily Content and a Publishing Schedule

While reading The Millionaire Messenger (and yes, eventually I will stop mentioning that book), it occurred to me that if I really want to sell books, I need to do more than just write books, or writing articles or stories when I wanted to sell a book. Having brought up the book so much, and thought about it a lot, I got the idea to publish The Winter Folk over the period of December.

It was a no-end-in-sight plan. Not that it had no end, but that I wasn't doing it for a particular reason other than: (1) I wanted to do something nice in the run up to Christmas and (2) ParagraVerse has been awfully lonely, lately. So, I wrote it as twelve-part poem, to help make it last longer while my work schedule picked up.

As it happens, the poem created its own end.

In the writing of it, I began to think about how interesting I might find the story to write. In particular, I wanted to write the story of the Ice Queen. The world has seen Jack Frost. The world knows all about Santa Claus. But the Ice Queen... well, any time there's a queen or a witch who dresses in white and surrounds herself in ice or snow, she seems to be a villain.

Not for me, not this time.

So, that's what I'm writing now. The Ice Queen. It's a short story. I'm hoping to publish it for Kindle later this month. I'll need to design a cover, soon. And write the two flash stories I want to publish this month on ParagraVerse, too. All of this, out of a little wish to write a poem and make it last.

I hadn't even been set on writing this, until yesterday. And even then, I only thought about it. It wasn't until I actually sat down to plan a schedule that I also decided to plan the book. The schedule was for daily content online this month. I know I missed December 1st, but from then on out I've got things in mind. The Winter Folk helps by taking up half the days between now and Christmas. Thankfully, the poem also sparked a book which sparked a couple of other pieces that need to go online.

Somehow, the poem created a published schedule around itself.

It wasn't the practice I had in mind, but that's fine. At least I know in January, when I get to work on a campaign towards launching another book, I'll have an idea of how best to follow through on my ideas. Scheduling is definitely of benefit to me. It's basically the only way I'm managing this right now.

Anyway, my original plan for daily content, now fully completed, is seeing the following going online:

- 8 blog posts,
- 9 videos,
- 2 flash stories,
- 2 poems - one in 12 parts, and
- 1 ebook.

How much of this is written or prepared? Less than half. How much will be prepared in advance and pre-scheduled? More than half. And how much of it is going to be fun to put together?

I'm going to go with just about all of it.

What this all boils down to is releasing a lot of content that I find interesting, setting new challenges for myself on a regular basis, writing about what I know and, with the exception of the ebook, making it all free for anyone to look at. I think it's a fair deal, getting all of that for nothing and having no obligation to buy the story in the end. And if you enjoy yourself along the way, all the better. That is the point of this sort of stuff, after all, to provide some entertainment.

If all goes well, I'll keep up this sort of thing in 2014, and not just because I'll be releasing new books in the future. This is the essence of The Millionaire Messenger, I think, or part of it at least. The best way to reach an audience is to give people something for nothing, and tell them that there's also something they can buy if they want. The point, though, is that the "messenger" is passionate about what they're talking about.

I think in this case, that goes without saying.

(P.S. If you want to keep up with everything I post this month, Twitter is probably your best bet. You can find me @writeranonymous.)

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.

I Launched a Thing!

Today was the official launch of my new prose and poetry blog: ParagraVerse! It's a weird name, I know, but it's oddly difficult to find a name on Wordpress that isn't taken already. It's annoying when the ones you want are used up by dead blogs, but not to worry. At least I have one no one can complain about not getting, that's a little bit odd (like me) but still vaguely describes what the blog is about: paragraphs and verses, the stuff of prose and poetry.

I launched with a new FridayFlash story, entitled Bed. When I told my brother about it, he said I should write Goosebumps. I took it as a compliment. I was especially delighted to see (a) that someone tweeted about it and called it creepy, and (b) that people had subscribed to the site after just one story. I have a few others in mind, which I'll be writing over the next few days and posting every Friday for a while.

I'll also be including poetry into the mix, with video readings of them. I'll have videos for the flash stories, too, in the future, but I found myself oddly pushed for time today when I was launching, and ill-clothed for the recording. I'll add to the site early next week when I'm wearing a t-shirt that wasn't stuffed into a drawer.

Anyway, you can check out ParagraVerse here: http://paragraverse.wordpress.com

I need to plan a few poems to add to the site over the coming weeks. There'll be a mix of things, anyway. I might go through with an idea I've had for a themed set of poems, just to start, and have that little collection go up for a while. It's only four or five poems, but that's enough to get me started.

In the meantime, I can focus on getting lots of other material written to diversify the selection of prose and poetry available for reading. I'm incredibly excited about this new blog. I think it could be a lot of fun, and it lets me write across a range of different genres, rather than focusing entirely on the Modern Irish Myth stories. While I enjoy writing them, I would eventually run out of myths to use. At least this way I can work off a number of different ideas for short stories I've had, which makes releasing something new every week that little bit easier!

It feels good to have finally launched a new long-term site!

Worker, Chef, Writer, Trainer

If today had a theme, it would be Time. My ability to keep track of it was tested, both in work and at home, and while I failed miserably in the shop, I managed to not kill everyone at home.

See, as part of the changes happening in the shop, we have to return a lot of old stock. I was left to the kids' section today, with a twenty page list and a pile of empty boxes. My four-hour shift usually drags by, and while I did check the time on a couple of occasions, I failed to truly keep track of things. Five minutes after my shift had ended, I was still plucking books from the shelves.

Oops?

Thankfully, I had access to a clock later in the day when, by circumstance, I was left to put the dinner in the oven. Lots of different types of chicken (you know, thighs, wings, drumsticks), any of which could have killed us if not cooked properly.

But I'm a good boy. I put the food in the oven at the right time, and everything turned out nicely.

Today also marked the beginning of two things: the work on my poetry and prose blog, and a nostalgic game-playing experience.

I began the blog-work by putting together the banner and getting the blog a name. I've opted to use Wordpress. While Blogger is good, I find it's a lot more difficult for other people using it to find posts. Wordpress at least lets people use tags that actually work within Wordpress.com to find posts with that tag. (Yes, I know, Blogger tags are for Google's benefit...)

I have a list of things I need to do to finalise the work before the launch (I'm hoping Friday, with a flash story), and I'm going to draw up a list of different projects to keep me going on the site. Fun, right?

As for the nostalgia... well, someone mentioned Pokémon on Facebook earlier, and now I'm playing Pokémon Yellow online. It was the second - and last - Pokémon game I owned. I could have picked a more modern one - even just more recent than Yellow - but I couldn't resist the idea of having my own little Pikachu following my character around on screen.

It brings back fun memories of playing the game as a child. I still have the Gameboy I played it on, though I couldn't tell you where the games have all disappeared to. It's a pity, really. We probably gave them to a cousin, or something.

Still, I have my Pokémon game to play, now, I have a new blog to work on, I have a lot of work to do in the shop, and I didn't give the family food poisoning on account of my ability to look at a clock. I call that a good day.

Day 31: The Last Month Considered

When I look back at the last month, I see good times and bad. Actually, the "bad" are merely an absence of work. Compared to other times, that's not actually all that bad.

I got to see friends, which was nice. Between an on-stage comedy, dinners, the Zoo and the cinema, I've gotten to see a lot of the people I'm delighted to call my friends, doing things I don't always get the opportunity to do. In previous summers, I don't think I actually squeezed in as many days socialising as I did this month. Somehow, life never worked out that way. I'd like to think of this month as being the template for the next few months, at least.

In terms of work... while I did lose my ticket for the productivity train a while back in terms of The Blood of Leap, I did manage to write a fair few poems this month. I'm lucky that I have that this year. In the past, if I wasn't writing fiction, I wasn't writing. While I didn't submit anything this month in terms of poetry, I do have a list drawn up of where some poems are going. And I entered a competition, which was fun. I don't know when the results are out, but I'm glad to have even submitted something.

In the long run, things are still holding up well. I've written something every day - as this blog can attest to - which means my New Year's Resolution is still in-tact. The habit is getting easier to keep. Best. Resolution. Ever. Seven months in and still going at it.

Of course, I should also be celebrating the publication of The Hounds of Hell, and happy-dancing to the fact that it's sold already.

Next month, I have a lot to focus on. Between a family celebration and some friends leaving, and a possible haunted house excursion on the tables again, I'll definitely have enough to keep me socialising. This is aside from regular things like going to the cinema, and lunches with friends. I could also be releasing a wee ebook, but I still have to write a good chunk of it, and edit it properly. Still, it could be fun.

I've also got my poetry blog to launch. A poetry blog which I might make a poetry and prose blog. I'm thinking of making my website more of a static - but still interactive - place, with other sites hosting stories and poetry entirely on their own. It's a much better system, I think. I can de-clutter my site as a result of that, which is always a good thing.

Who knows, that might launch tomorrow if I get around to it.

Day 30: The One With the Family Meals

While I've all but abandoned Camp NaNoWriMo, I think it's only fair on the start of the month to keep numbering as I began. Day 30 of the month, and I spent a considerable amount of time with family members over meal times.

This might not seem like such a big deal, but with my brother moved out of the house and the remaining four of us working varying hours and often not overlapping, meals in which we all get to sit down together aren't all that common. When my older brother is there, it's an even rarer occurrence. It's not that we don't see him, it's just unusual for all of us to be together at the same time.

While lunch was just McDonalds, for the first time in God knows how long we all sat at the kitchen table and had a cup of tea. Actually, that might be the first time just the five of us sat at the kitchen table and had tea. Normally, only four of the six chairs at the table are accessible without the table being pulled out - which usually means guests over for dinner. Back before my older brother moved out, we didn't sit at the table for tea, and we pulled out the table when everyone was eating at the same time. But we didn't keep it that way.

Today, we pulled out one of the other two chairs. It was oddly comfortable, despite the fact that we've all been together a lot over the past twenty two and half years. I guess I miss that, all of us getting to sit around together with the television off, just talking.

I didn't write today, but I didn't really intend to. I've yet to write a poem, but I'm still on Total Relaxation Mode. I figure I'm allowed to be calm about things every once in a while.

Anyway, I figure it's about time I mentioned here that I intend to start a poetry blog. I'll be writing some stuff specifically for it, and probably doing video readings for it, too. I've still got to set it up, of course, but it's going to happen, and a lot sooner than any of the other projects I have in mind. It'll take a lot less upkeep than the other projects, so I've nothing holding me back with it.

That'll be fun, right?

I'm still trying to decide what platform to hold it on, though. Part of me wants to make it ad-supported, but that would mean (a) using Blogger or (b) buying a domain name for to use a Wordpress site and hosting it on my server.

I'm still arguing with myself over that one. I might not even make it ad-supported, since that wouldn't really bring in much money anyway. I would just be spending money for the sake of it. With the ads out of the way, I pretty much have an open choice on the matter again. But what do you think? Blogger, Wordpress, or Tumblr?

Day 29: Poetry, No Motion

I spent the day writing a bit less poetry than I'd planned to, but watching a lot more Buffy than anyone would consider healthy.

That said, I did write a few poems. I started with one addressing Milton and Dante and their versions of Hell. It was a fun one, but I can't help thinking I'll never escape the Dreaded Research Paper. It doesn't help that I later wrote one about the seven deadly sins.

The day's work also saw poems about relationships creep into existence unexpectedly. I don't think I ever really intend to write those sorts of poems. It requires trying to explain how life works with other people, and I'm not entirely sure I can ever really reach a conclusion about anything that happens. I mean, I can only ever say how I feel about how I perceive things, and that's not an explanation I can rely on.

Aside from that... just Buffy.

Season 4 was fun. Really fun. Between the college experience and the flashbacks, the Big Bad battle, the silence and the wicked dream episode, it definitely caught my attention a lot more this time around.

It did require a lot of not moving today, though. I think I'm okay with that. I got to drink tea, eat a brownie, relax, write the aforementioned poetry, and I was with out worry the whole time.

I could get used to days spent writing poetry all the time. I think I'm better off just letting them happen, though, for the time being. I'm nowhere near the writing-a-poetry-book stage, so I think I'm okay taking it easy.

Day 28: Silence

Is it weird that two of my favourite episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are (1) the episode in which nobody can talk and (2) the episode in which everybody sings?

I just watched the former, and oddly it spoke volumes to me. I wondered about silence, about how we would communicate if we couldn't talk to each other. Go one further and eliminate electronic communication. The written word in printed (or handwritten) format would be our primary means of conveying messages to one another, not just over long distances, but in face-to-face interactions.

That is, of course, if we survive that long without the sounds of our voices in our ears. The show demonstrated a city-wide depression, aggression and numbness from the loss of voices, and I'm not sure how long society would last in the 21st century without electronic communication on top of that silence. (I'm taking that into consideration because the show was set in the 90s, and email wasn't that big a feature of regular life for most people in Sunnydale.)

It's interesting, of course, because we live in an era in which fewer people are writing to each other, and while we encourage people to talk about their feelings, few actually do. Imagine if they couldn't, literally speaking. If people couldn't voice their opinions, how would that change them? Would we all become mindless, or would we be more willing to read what those around have written? Would violence be the first response to anger, rather than a last resort?

I suppose right now, I'm considering this on an emotional level, too. For the first time in a week or so, I haven't felt like I was under any undue pressure. I don't have the book to worry about, I don't have to be concerned about meeting a word count. I can relax. I could relax. And I did. I suppose I still am. I got to eat breakfast with my family and know that the only thing I had to do was get ready for work afterwards. I could eat dinner when I returned home, and afterwards relax on my bed, and then go to watch Buffy with a cup of tea and an ice-cream (I'm not sure they're a pairing that usually go together, ice-cream and tea, but they seemed to work well.)

All in all, the emotional silence of the day was a relief.

To be fair, I did it to myself. No one said I had to write three books in a month. No one forced me to only focus on those books. On top of that, no one has done or said anything wrong to me that might get me unduly upset. All of the emotional noise of the past week has been brought on upon me by myself and my own decisions, and the pressure I applied on myself.

It felt good to get a break from that.

Tomorrow, since I don't appear to have any other plans, I think I'm going to do my Big Bad Poetry Day. It could be fun, it could be productive, and writing poetry has always helped me to deal with whatever's on my mind. Tomorrow, of course, it won't just be a twelve hour catharsis session. I'll probably write poems about nature and friendship and all the usual things people write poetry about. But I have ideas to experiment with, and I'm going in with one goal in mind: to have fun.

Day 27: Considerations

Today, something occurred to me: in focusing all my attention on writing the Modern Irish Myth books, they became something I didn't want to focus on. Which, you know, means that I wasn't getting anything done at all. It got to the point that thinking about writing The Blood of Leap was off-putting, rather than just requiring me to turn on my laptop and write. After all, that's what I do when I need to write a blog post (usually), so it's not that much effort. But actively disliking the idea of going to write the book?

No, I couldn't have it.

Writing is supposed to be fun. And I was enjoying writing the book, until a lot of different things came up that required my attention in one form or another. I don't believe in writing a book when it's not enjoyable. I purposely picked a topic for a my research paper that was both interesting in and of itself, and allowed me to look at interesting texts (translation: books, poems, songs, films and television shows - I rock at academia). It meant I wouldn't be put off writing it when I had to. (Even though I went into Major Procrastination Mode and didn't write it for a while.)

But I don't want to force myself to write a book in a bad mood knowing that focusing on it means I can't do anything else. This means two things are happening:

1. I'm going to take more time to write other things, not just the Modern Irish Myth books.

Let's look at this logically: I want to earn from writing. Fiction isn't exactly a goldmine for most writers. Focusing all of my writing time for the next few months on writing fiction means I probably won't make much money from it - one of my self-appointed parameters for success being to make a certain amount from writing generally speaking - unless I become a bestselling author - another parameter for writing success.

Add to this an interest in poetry, teaching, writing non-fiction, writing about writing, and writing other stories, and I've got a problem. If I focus entirely on the Modern Irish Myth books, not only am I less likely to find even minor success (the sort that makes me feel like I'm getting somewhere, but not necessarily the sort that makes me famous), I'm less likely to be happy writing.

Considering the amount of changes my life is going through at the moment, I don't think restricting my options is necessarily a good thing. I want to start freelancing seriously. I want to write more poetry. I want to rediscover a certain sense of self from writing. I want to write more about writing.

To manage this step more plausibly, I need to focus on Thing #2 to happen.

2. I'm revising the publication schedule for the books.

I had intended to release a book a month until the series is complete. This is a fast-track system to releasing eleven books in less than a year, which requires them to be written at a pace of at least one per month. Given my difficulty in focusing on the series with Big Ol' Life getting in the way, you might see the problem that might arise from this commitment. Unless I drive myself absolutely insane and risk hating the books as I write them in an effort to meet my previous writing schedule (to finish writing by October's end), a book a month means trying to focus all  the way through various holidays and events, and assumes my employment situation will remain as disappointingly the same as it is now. (I know, lots of people want and need jobs, but a grand total of 10.6 hours' pay per week isn't exactly enviable.)

Reality check: I want to work more hours. I need to. Not because I want to be Stinking Rich, but because I want to do more with my life than work at the weekends in a shop, arrange lunches with friends every couple of weeks (if I'm lucky), read comic books and go to the cinema. I want to travel. I don't even intend on travelling extensively until I can get myself earning enough to justify the expense. I just want to be able to go on a trip out west, or to London, or go to the Edinburgh Arts Festival. Even these simple things are out of my price range.

From my point of view, that sucks. I'm out of college, but I have next-to-nothing to my name and I'm in no position to improve my life. It just feels like I'm getting dragged along by circumstance.

So, with all of that in mind, the new publication schedule - unless I find it as equally restrictive as the current one - is to release the books every two months. This means that The Blood of Leap is due for release in September, not August. It means that the twelve books will take me to March 2015, not May 2014. A longer wait for the finish, yes, but this has a couple of benefits.

Firstly, I'm under less pressure to write the books in a short period of time, which means I'm less inclined to dislike them. (Much less inclined, in fact.) As a result of that, I'll be able to write better books.

Secondly, I'll be able to write other books in the meantime, and work on other projects, without the pressure to release something new all the time. With the series to keep me going until 2015, I'll be able to get other projects ready for launch. I've even got a couple of stand-alone titles in mind, which may find their way into publication either during the publication cycle, or afterwords (with the latter projections bringing the final run of fourteen titles to September 2015.)

Thirdly, I won't be crowding the market with my own books. I'd be a bit overwhelmed with the selling thing if I was trying to promote the books so heavily all the time until March. Yes, I'll have to promote the books, but at least I won't feel like it's all I'm ever doing if the publication dates are set further apart, and it won't seem like I'm rushing the books into publication for the sake of it. (The truth of the matter is, they're short books, which I can write quickly when I get to writing them; it just wouldn't look that way from the outside.)

All that considered...

I'm calling a halt on my Camp NaNoWriMo intentions. Next week, I'm going to make plans to see a friend. On Monday or Tuesday, whichever is free earliest, I'm going to spend the day writing poetry (which will probably require major Facebook stalkerage for scenic photographs for inspiration). I plan on writing a lot of poems in the day. I'm hoping my brain can manage between 15 and 25 poems - even if they require a lot of editing afterwards - to try get the rush from creativity back. I think it'll be good for me.

Basically, I'm sick of being caught up in life and not doing anything with it. It's time to make a change.

Day 21: A Poem for the Day

Today's a day for family. As a result, I won't be around much to write or to tweet or to freak out in celebration of the announcement of Avengers 2: Age of Ultron. Instead, I'm leaving you with a poem for the day.

These Are Days

These are days we'll remember,

From January to December,

Days spent with family,

Celebrating merrily.

These are days to sing about,

While pouring drink out

From fancy bottles of wine,

Sitting down together to dine,

And raise a toast to the day

And the people who chose to stay.

These are days to commemorate,

Marked on a calender to mind the date;

These are days for spirits to fly,

Days to share between you and I.

Day 20: The Busy Reality of Life

Today's been a busy day. Tomorrow promises to be busier.

I didn't get to write today - I'm not even sure I switched on my laptop - and so my word count is falling behind dreadfully. It's nearing bedtime. For me, that means one thing: tea.

This, of course, to be accompanied by a poem. When I said I didn't write today, I really meant it.

I guess I just have to accept that for the time being, not every day is going to be a writing day.

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?

Smile

Some days it's just easier

To smile and say goodbye,

To the memories and fantasies

And ideas of you and I,

Without asking too many questions

Of the how and why.

The Inaugural FUFDay

Today, I faced my fears.

Well, not all of them. FUFDay - Face Up to Fear Day - is going to be a weekly thing, for me. I have items on the list I'd drawn up that I just didn't have time to complete. I reckon if I hadn't had to go get a hair cut, I might have achieved something. I blame the hairdresser for changing their student offer ('cause there's no way I'm spending €25 on a haircut that could cost me €9.)

Delays aside, I got to work.

Now, two of the three things I did are sort of personal. They're the sort of personal I can announce if/when I know more about them. We'll put it this way: it took some forcing to get myself to do them. In one case, I've never done it before. In another, it's been over a year since I've done anything close to it...and I did a lot more of it than ever before. (Hurray for vagueness, right?) In both cases, your finding out will be based on the results of my actions today. If I've been successful, you'll know.

Anyway, in less vague terms, I posted five poems on YouTube today. That's more than doubled the amount of poem-videos I have on my channel.

These videos, as a sort of easing-myself-into-it decision, are about five YouTube channels (totalling seven YouTubers). Well, I say "about"... I mean they've been inspired by them, in some cases speak to them directly to them, but they're not biographical works.

The first video features the poem Young Hopeful, quote-unquote about Carrie Hope Fletcher. As these videos were posted in order of writing, I suppose I ought to explain why I wrote it. Problem is, I can't. I just got an idea for the poem, the words happened, and it was somewhat about Carrie, but not quite.

With WOTO up next, I even broke their name for the poem; rather than making reference to the World of the Orange, my poem is called Contented Content of the World of Orange. It's almost the same thing. Not almost enough. However, I didn't write the poem to get everything right. I wrote it to capture some of the fun of the duo behind the channel, Brad and Liam. If they see it, maybe they'll like it.

The third poem, If, Like, is more addressed to Charlie McDonnell than about him. It was also the first poem I wrote because I wanted to write a poem about a YouTuber, and not because I had a video on my mind. Charlie was also the first YouTuber I watched that I've stuck with since finding his channel, which I think is fun.

In an attempt to continue writing about my favourite YouTubers, I came to Alex Day. Unfortunately, many of Alex's videos have been about Twilight or sex. He's also vlogged about a lot of other things, but the one thing that always pops up again is his music. With that in mind, I wrote the poem, The Day, utilizing as many titles of his songs as I could. I'm fairly happy with the result.

The final poem was probably the hardest to write, because I wasn't sure what to say at all. A Home in Nerdfighteria is a semi-fictional address to some of the recurring jokes in the vlogbrothers videos made by John and Hank Green. I did my best with what my memory could pull out on the spot.

Now, the reason these poems were part of FUFDay: the audience.

Not only do I get nervous getting on stage, I mumble on camera. In the editing process, I also became aware of how many times I said "um" and "eh". And all these worries weren't even to do with the poems. What if people hear them and don't like them? What if people think it's incredibly, ridiculously weird to have written the poems, and think I should just get off the Internet forever?

Okay, that last one was a joke. But what if the people about whom they were written (or who I had in mind when I was writing them) don't like them? And I don't mean just not liking them. I mean disliking them. Actively. That would suck.

Can we play the Make the YouTuber Find the Thing game and see what happens, though?

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.