Writing

No new words to report today.

I took a step back today and after some encouragement from friends online I realized the fear and anxiety I was experiencing was completely self inflicted. So despite the lack of word count I’m feeling more confident as the story concept I want to write slowly percolates.

I happened to be reading Rob Parnell’s Fast & Furious 2: Writing For Amazon and Kindle last night and he had some interesting and helpful things to say about the fear/anxiety/creativity connection. Despite their hyped-up titles, I’ve found Parnell’s books to be helpful and informative. I’ll do a longer post about my own issues concerning the anxiety/creativity connection in a later post.

I also came to the realization that while taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo I fully expected to go from zero to sixty (or 50K in this instance) without any real plan or training.

I NEED to practice.

Writing creatively is like working any muscle and I figuratively need to learn to walk before I can run. I’m going to start doing ‘morning pages’, a sort-of wake-up ritual than many people swear by, but I always thought was a little silly. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to sit at my desk with a pad and pen and write something, anything, first thing in the morning. It will be good practice and accomplishing a creative task (no matter how small) will hopefully set the tone for the entire day.

Zero new words to report on day one. I knew I might fall flat on my face eventually and embarrass myself publically, I just hoped it wasn’t going to be right out of the gate. For some ungodly reason, creating fiction makes me very anxious. I have no clue why I’m so fearful (if I did know I wouldn’t be in this predicament), but it’s a serious issue for me and one that I’ve been trying to work through for many years.

I did find pictures of several main characters (I like having visual references) and have a better grasp of some of the events that will take place in the short stories that I WILL write in the coming weeks.

As Scarlet O’Hara once said, “Tomorrow is another day.”

Starting tomorrow, I’m trying something new here at ye olde blog place. I’m going to write about my attempt to break into the world of gay romance fiction!

Ok, I admit the idea isn’t totally my own, Dean Wesley Smith has been blogging about his daily writing adventures for nearly two years now. I thought it might be interesting (I HOPE it’ll be interesting) for potential readers and other M/M authors to get a front row seat and watch as I start from absolute zero and attempt to build a career as a gay romance author.

I’m sure there will be laughter and tears and I know there will be times when I fall flat on my face in front of the whole world (not that the whole world reads this itty bitty blog but… well, you know what I mean). I also hope I can share the good times too, because I wouldn’t even attempt to try something like this if I didn’t already know that M/M romance readers and authors are the most awesome people on planet earth! Like seriously for real.

To kickstart things off I’m going to document my attempt to complete Camp NaNoWriMo.

Most of you have probably heard of NaNoWriMo, the month long national novelizing adventure that takes place each November. Well, camp is pretty much the same, it just happens during the Spring and Summer. The April session kicks off tomorrow and I’m gonna do my best to actually “win”.

I’ve been a fan of NaNo for many years and I fully support it’s mission of fostering creativity through the written word. That said, I’ve never completed a project during November, not even close.

I’m going to give it my all and use this session of Camp as the kickstart I need.

Have I figured out what I’m going to write?

Um, not really.

I have some ideas and I know that I want to concentrate on short stories this session (50K worth). So I guess we’ll see what happens.

Anyone else attempting Camp this April?