I'm Releasing a Book!

Remember all those times I said I was working on an ebook? It was a project that began before Christmas, before I was working full-time under a part-time contract. Then, it stopped. In December, I stopped writing the book because I no longer had the time to write much. I wrote The Ice Queen & The Legend of the Winter Folk, and I wrote the poem The Winter Folk, and the flash story Snow Day, but I didn't write much else for all of December.

Recently, with the way things have been moved around in the house, I've been in a position to use my time more freely throughout the week. I've been able to write more often, and for longer, and I managed to get myself into a pretty good routine of writing different things several days in advance. I was able to return to my ebook.

Last week, I told you its name. 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block (While Improving Your Writing Skills). This week, I can show you the cover. In a few days, I'll be releasing the book.

Keep in mind this is a low-resolution image. I like it, though. I like the vibrancy of the colours. I like the simplicity of the design. I like how it looks when I print it on photo paper, and I like how the thumbnail is still identifiable when I see it from afar. I really, really like this cover, and I really love the book.

The actual release date has not been set. Nor will it be. I'm hoping to publish it on Tuesday, but that's not a guarantee for a couple of reasons. 

1. I don't know if anything will get in my way as I put the finishing touches on formatting and all that jazz.

2. I can't tell in advance how long it will take Amazon to actually publish the book once I hit the "Publish" button. I window of 12-48 hours is all I ever get, and sometimes it's even quicker than that.

However, all things going according to plan, and Amazon keeping up with its track record, Tuesday 21st.

This book wasn't just fun to write. It was educational. It was a benefit in and of itself. It allowed me to overcome my own problems in productivity in the very writing of it. I'm very excited to actually be releasing it. It's been my first big project of 2014, to complete this book that I think can benefit a lot of people in many ways, and I really want to get it out into the world for it to have a chance to prove itself.

If you've been following me on my writing journey from early on, since before the Balor Reborn days, you know I'm taking this seriously. You know that when I publish something, it's because I really love it. This book is no different. It's the start of something big for me, not just because it's a new type of book, but also because it sets a new standard for covers. I'll be re-doing my older covers, re-branding my books to make them look more vibrant and alive.

I needed this book. I needed to write it. I know other people will need to read it. A lot of what I've learned over the past ten years is in this book, from my very beginnings as a writer to one who's received an Undergraduate Degree and published several books of his own. From reading, from listening to mentors, and from trial and error, I've picked up a lot of different tricks along the way. This book, I hope, will help people on their own writing journeys.

Let's leave it there before I start getting too preachy about the book. It's coming, people, and I can't wait, and I think that should say a lot about how much I believe in it. Peace out!

Creative Block?

Okay, that title might be pushing it. I don't quite have a block on my creativity as much as a severe case of The Lazies. I'm still getting ideas and planning stories, but I'm not doing anything with them.

And that, as you can guess, is a problem.

So, I'm going to spend a wee bit of time in the morning trying to get my creative gears going. I may end up doing some crafty stuff, like drawing or Celtic designs, but I'd like to get some poetry written and a flash story written, too. Basically, anything to get myself doing something with my time.

It's been too easy to play Pokémon Yellow all day, and follow it up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's my childhood all over again, except I can do it all day long.

(As it happens, I did something earlier, but it will remain, for a wee while, a secret. It's not done yet, so I don't really want to show it around. I'm calling it a prototype.)

We watched a movie today, though. Myself, my brother and my dad all sat down and watched Jack the Giant Slayer. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Funny, adventurous, and with clever twists on the story we all know. If you haven't seen it, I would definitely recommend it. It's especially good as a family movie (and I don't just mean families with young children!)

Anyway, I'm going to keep this short. There's tea to be had, stuff to be read, and if the television is free, Buffy to watch. Tomorrow, I'm going to beat The Lazies to death. Creative block my arse.

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?

Blocked

The never-fun experience of not knowing what to say is happening. Some call it Writer's Block. I call it an ass. It's not so much that I can't find the words to say something, or that I have nothing to say, but that I don't really know what I want say.

So I'm talking about writer's block instead. I remember way back when, I used to suffer from terrible writer's block. I would think that I could never write another word again, nothing worth reading, nothing that would make sense, nothing. It would infuriate me, antagonise me, sicken me, and then later I would write something and forget all about it.

I've Googled how to get rid of it, written down lists of how to get rid of it, put into practice so many different things just to get rid of it. It's the common cold of the writing world, and it's a damned plague.

Except...

Well, it's all in our heads, isn't it? I mean, really, we're just stuck for words, and then saying it's writer's block. There's something wrong with that, though. By naming it, we're giving it power, over us, over our words, our language. That's bad. That's really bad. The name makes it strong, makes it difficult to get rid of.

A friend of mine gave me a writer's block birthday card once, and I actually use it to get rid of the damn block on words. It's literally a picture of a cinder block. What sort of power does a cinder block have over words? None. None at all. It's perfect.

Tonight, I don't know what I want to say here. I've been saying things to people on Facebook, so it's not that I have nothing to talk about, but it's all private stuff. I have college work to do, and I know what to say there, but I don't especially want to talk about literary criticism or how it's affected by views and opinions of Walt Whitman over the space of three months or so, not here.

It doesn't help that I'm tired. Certainly not. Thinking of what I'd like to say in the public sphere gets difficult the more tired I become. It's why some blog posts go off on weird tangents and express convoluted metaphors that don't really hold up. It's the public-sphere part of trying to write a blog post that makes it difficult to decide what to say. There's a lot I want to talk about that I can't (aforementioned future plans that depend on how my time-line will hold up before I know exactly when certain things will happen), and a lot that's just not interesting enough to share here.

Effectively, I have to force myself to say something every day, for the sake of writing every day, and that's the difficult part. Being creative on command is the difficult part. It's possible, though. I mean, I did it for a week with Balor Reborn. People who do NaNoWriMo have to do it every day. I know how to help kick-start the creativity. That still won't give me an idea as to what I can say that I want to say publicly.

With that in mind, today, I settled on just making it clear that I have to force this a lot. But look, a whole post out of that. It's not just a "What" that I have to write about, but the "Why". The "Why" is what makes the post so long, and what makes it worth reading (or, at least worth writing).

Tomorrow, I'll probably give out about assignments. Sure, it would be rude not to.

Writers block, and you

Twenty-one minutes ago, according to my Twitter timeline, I was asked about writers block. The particular case was one of the worst I'd ever heard of from an aspiring author - it started last September. Look at the calender; it's September now. When I realised how dreadful this was, I began trying to recall every tip I'd ever received about beating the big bad WB.

One of the favourites: try something new. This can range from anything from new music, a new route to work or school or some other place you find yourself going to every week, reading a new book that's completely different to everything you've ever read, or anything else you can think of that's different in your life. The reasoning behind this is that the unfamiliarity of the subject in question forces your mind to examine it while it's fresh. That new route may contain a dozen ideas for stories that you'll start noticing because the entire area is new to you.

Then there's free writing. Free writing is one of those much discussed areas of writing that involved nothing more than a stop watch, twenty of your best minutes (or even just fifteen), a pen/pencil with paper, or a computer instead, and you, the writer. The idea is to pick a phrase or word to get yourself started, maybe even use it as the title, and just write for the allotted time. It doesn't have to be great writing, once you don't stop until the clock is up. When you're done, you should feel refreshed and ready to tackle that novel that's been hiding away at the back of your mind.

Something I tried recently was going through every single of a band (one of my favourites) and looking for a connection in each one to a story I'd like to write. The creativity behind this lies in finding a new way to tell a story the original author had no intention of doing, like a crossword puzzle, only with ideas rather than words and songs rather than clues. Looking at the lyrics to the songs also helps, in case you don't hear what the singer is saying properly.

These three tips for beating WB have been very useful to me in the past. I'm not going to promise you they work, but they might, and that's the important thing. You won't know until you've tried, anyway. Most importantly though, just write. If they don't work, just try putting your thoughts into coherent sentences, and if and when you get going, you can always edit the badly written parts. Or, if the novel seems daunting, try writing something much shorter. I tried this one as well: flash fiction, or stories less than 1,000 words, are an excellent way to do some writing without having to worry too much about what's going to happen down the road - it's a very short road!

I hope these tips are of any use to you. If you have any yourself, please share them in case these aren't right for our tweeting-writer in question.