A Time For Writing

Not everyone has the luxury of being paid to write full time, or the ability to attend an art school with a writing program. That does not mean that are not writers. Everyone is a writer, even your grandmother's racially insensitive Facebook posts are written works. One might think that in order to write their passion project novel they would need a vast amount of open hours over several months. Well, yes, and that is a large commitment. I would instead suggest short, or flash fiction. Take an hour, or a day off and write a story under a thousand words. If you have an open weekend, write something around five-thousand words. Write stories and throw them at the internet. Self-publishing has never been easier, and you never know what might just catch on. Cheers.

Screenwriter Plus Is A Hellhole

Screenwriters now have the ability to work on set, and during post in order to make to maintain a synergy between the script and the director's vision. While it is nice being able to see after the creative path of your baby project, it also leads to hours of pain and suffering. As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in a energy drink and cigarette filled editing office, learning about the "wonders" of working with raw footage in premiere. I don't mind the previously mentioned items, in fact I welcome them, but good lord, it's three in the morning,  and we haven't even got this thing looking like the short it's supposed to be. I plan on sleeping for the entirety of Monday, and just letting every DOP ever just destroy my beautiful babies. For now, I will flood my blood stream with Monster. Cheers, or whatever.

Screenwriting Torture

Over the last week, a group of colleagues, and myself, wrote, shoot, and is currently editing a short. It was traumatic. The short is just one torture scene, in which, essentially, I batter a friend of mine with brand name products. Somehow, he ended up being more okay with everything than the rest of the film crew. It probably had to do with us blitzing takedown to make it to Joe's Crab Shack. The theme of the project is horror comedy, and I sincerely hope the finished project makes you both laugh and vomit (ideally at the same time). I know that we sure did during production. I'll keep you updated and when it gets published! - Cheers!

Regarding Work Load And Schedules

          As a writer, it is common to maintain a steady job working in-house at a publication, while also freelancing. This can mean fighting to complete multiple projects within certain deadlines. There is a way to avoid this, however, and I call it constructive procrastination. Most people just call it a work order, but most people are dumb. In a certain cases, freelance work will not have a deadline that is set in stone. One should still try to complete the work as soon as possible, but one should also avoid burning oneself out. If one's attention is divided creativity will fade, the work will seem rushed, and there will more errors than Triple H has sledgehammers. Focus on the in-house work alone, get that done before its deadline, and take a break from writing. Giving one's creative side a rest will give one time to unconsciously work out plots, characters, and figure out where the story should go.
          I cannot tell you the amount of times I had put a project on the back-burner, and blasted out an analytical report, requisition form, or proposal, and then wrote half, or the last quarter of a project over night just because I was fresh creatively. I am currently doing just that. My upcoming novel accompaniment to Zardonic's AntiHero album is currently being postponed. During this time I am working on a serious of short stories, and scripts that will probably pop up on here. These will be around a 2000-4000 word count, so they should offer a quick read for your lunch break. I sincerely hope to hope to have at least the first act of the novel up for free on halloween. The rest will released in the novel's entirety as an ebook on Amazon, and other major ebook retailers. Cheers!

Regarding Your Creative Writing Habit

          In recent weeks, I have noticed quite a few people say that they are not writers. I find this to be a most grievous fallacy. What they probably meant to say is that they are not a professional writer, or are not classically trained in writing. It is true that their work might not be on a professional level, or as well written as one who is classically trained, but they can still write habitually. I would state that all humans tend to be habitual writers. Even if their works are music, debates with friends over text, or just witty microblogs on Twitter, they are still working the same mental muscles. There are many explanatory works that describe the health benefits of writing, one such article is here: http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/11/5/338
           The issue I find most common in these writers-in-denial is that they have yet to find a muse that gives them that creative spark. In quite a few of my more recent posts, I stated that a lot of my creativity comes from listening to music. Most writers require a similar sort of muse. Something that they can focus on and infer their own creative story, without knowing the exact story behind the subject. Some people find that they develop off shooting stories from film, or existing books, or by looking at nature, or historical monuments. My personal creativity comes from music, and people's faces. If I find someones face particularly attractive or interesting, I will awkwardly stare at it for a moment, trying to think up what their story is, or what story their face fits in. You can imagine how that goes if the subject is keenly aware of their surroundings. Some of my inspiration also comes from personal trauma, which I explored in my last bit of short fiction, published last week.
          By now, you have probably noticed that the title of these post was aimed at YOU, but the rest of this discussion used plural pronouns pointed at the ubiquitous 'them'. That is due to the more argumentative nature of the first two paragraphs. This one here, is my personal advice for anyone looking to become more creative with their writing. Take time to explore different possible muses. Listen to albums, in their entirety, marathon several films, go on a nature walk, or even just explore your own city playing that dumb Ingress game, and notice the history around you (Personally, I'm waiting on Pokemon Go). If anything impacts you in such a way that you cannot help but feel some sort of emotion, take time to write. Just a simple paragraph that explores your emotions at this time, or, perhaps, it's a treatise for a story, or a poem, or song. Just create. Do this as often as possible. This will train your mind to view things in a creative light, and let your imagination roam more freely than those people we call 'adults'. Of course, we know they are just repressed writers.

In Which I Complain About My Profession

          Writing schedules are a pain. While it is true that this an occupation that often times allows one to work from home, and keep the hours they choose, it also has some of the strictest deadlines. Some writers who have managed to land in-house jobs at publishers, studios, or magazines do maintain a nine-to-five work day, but they also have to spend most of their evenings either corresponding with other writers, working on their own projects, or, in most cases, both.
          Those who strictly write also have to take time to communicate with editors at these establishments since that provides them with updated deadlines, and suggestions to keep their work on track and in theme, but they also have to manage their own daily completion schedule on whatever it is they hope to have published. This is done by maintaining a word count, and it is the bane of my existence. A writer usually has an idea of how many words they want their work to be. Usually it's a rough estimate rounding up or down to the nearest ten thousand, or hundred thousand words. Then divide this by the number of days between now, and a week before you want to get it to your editor, (trust me you still won't have it done in time) and you have an idea of how many words you need to write each day. As a daily goal it's great, it serves as a simple, achievable goal to do whenever throughout the day. In most cases, however, your personally set deadline is a matter of weeks, and if you are doing anything bigger than a small novella, your word counts will give you carpal tunnel just by looking at them.
          God forbid you go grocery shopping, meet up with a family member, or do some dumb adult thing during the normal hours of the day. This will, most likely, cause you to stay up until two, one eye tracking the words you write, the other looking at your counter in the bottom of your screen. Sooner or later, we all go a little cross-eyed. For our editors who have to deal with similar problems, and maintain a nine-to-five schedule, my heart goes to out to you. Of course, most of us don't complain, without a little tongue-in-cheek. We have one of the best jobs in the world, we get to create worlds, and give people fun. This is something I, and many of my peers, are very passionate about.
          We usually lose track of time when writing, and I find myself, more often than not, going over my word count at three in the morning. This still does not mean the work gets done on time. Usually our visions are more grandiose than time permits. If you recall, or simply rotate your eyes to look at paragraph two, I said that it's good practice to set your personal deadline at least a week before your actual deadline. That week will be you frantically trying to tie up lose strings in the story, condensing and revising chapters, and giving your story a conclusion that doesn't feel as abrupt as it actually is. Of course the time for this varies. If it's a short fiction, or novella one to two weeks should suffice. If you have written a full novella, you may want to give yourself a month for damage control, as you probably forgot a character you introduced in chapter two by the time you wrote chapter five.
          This job is a lot of not sleeping. Whether you're writing comics, films, games, or books you will dedicate yourself to perfecting each work, while your publishers believe you can crap each one out in one night. It's an amazing ride though, so grab some coffee, find a place with a view, and start smashing your keyboard for weeks at a time.