Casey's Just Sayin'

Just over 2600 words, completed this morning. It's a good start and I liked where it ended. I personally prefer to hit the chapters at around 2500 words or less, but this is close enough. After rewrites it'll either be three chapters or it won't appear in the novel at all. So I've got that going for me. But Talise's life has definitely taken a turn, a heavy, terrifying turn. Although at this point neither she nor the reader - nor the author for that matter - know exactly how sharp that turn is going to be. It's kind of exciting. Thanks for reading. Off to do other stuff... then write. Casey Posted with Blogsy

This post is just for me, to keep me accountable.   Managed to hit 300 words... barely. That amount seems to be trending towards my minimum. Of course if I do that every day, I'll have a completed novel in 10 months. I'll take that.   I got caught in what I not-so-affectionately call a decription vortex this time, started waxing poetic about Talise's scene. This is OK in a sense because it's part of my style and I feel I'm pretty good at it. But 300 words of it without a break for action and I start to get nervous that the reader will begin to fade. In a first draft it's OK. If nothing else it puts me in the proper mood to move forward. And I will certainly fall in love with a couple of nuggets within, that will make it to the final draft. Thanks for reading. Off to wax poetic... and then write.   Casey Posted with Blogsy

I'm quite certain I've gone on and on about Scrivener, the queen mother of all writing programs. It's the only way to write a novel as far as I'm concerned. I've used it for years and would recommend it to anyone without hesitation. But... no app to go along with it. And I do a lot of writing on Padrick. They keep threatening to release one, but it always seems to be months away. So I use iA Writer to work on Twin Waters when I'm not at the Mac. It's a good app. Simple, but in the best way. Wrote 300+ words on it last night. Someday Scrivener will have an app for me and I'll be first in line. One has to dream. Thanks for reading, off to check for updates on the new Scrivener App... and then write. Casey   Posted with Blogsy

Does that punctuation make it read like a Loverboy song?   Anyway, apparently I was writing for the weekend, because on the weekend, I did not write. Uh, oh. Yeah, two wasted days.   But that's in the past and regret will not write a book, so let's deal with what we can control... or mostly control.   Happy Monday!!   Thanks for reading. Off to do a bunch of other stuff so I can write tonight!   Casey   Posted with Blogsy

  Cracked That 1,000 Word Ceiling   It doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme. But I did manage to cross the 1,000 word threshold on the third day.   Talise is already in trouble, although she has no idea how much at this point in the story. Poor girl. She has such a long road ahead, both literally and figuratively.   So do I.   Thanks for reading. Off to install a new dishwasher and then write.   Casey   P.S. - "Fifty Yaaaards." - Clark Griswold - N.L.'s Vacation   Posted with Blogsy

Day Two (with ominous music playing... like Bram Stoker's Dracula) First impression was frankly this: Holy cow! I can't believe how much work I've already done. That was nice. Second: I've got a Facebook notification. Third: I need my glasses. Fourth: I need a little music to drown out Bridget Jones in the next room. See where I'm going here? I was listening to Writing Excuses (great Podcast) yesterday and they were talking about a ritual at the outset of writing. I think I need a ritual... a pre-shot routine as it were... to move me into the writing mode. All that said, I did open Scrivener, read through my notes, write about a page (very slowly), and set up the Dropbox so if something hits me during the day I can throw it in there. So I can safely say day one was a success. Tonight I try to write at least another page and decide what I should include in my pre shot routine. Thanks for reading. Off to (eventually) write. Casey Posted with Bl...

Resolutions aside, here's a brief summary of what went down in December and where I'm at now in writing and, well, everything.   I want to start by saying that this year, especially, we all have a very strong common reason to appreciate every glimmer of good in our lives. This post is not about that tragedy. But before I talk about my little tiny life, I want to say for the record I sincerely believe we all owe it to humanness itself to remember and appreciate.   Negatives:   1) We almost ran out of gas getting the Christmas Tree at George's in Paynes Creek. But we didn't. 2) My sister's home in the country is our traditional Christmas Eve location and this year she decided to drive her family to Idaho to spend it with my brother and his family. So we tried to bring that Christmas Eve magic to our house, but it didn't turn out. The picture above is my brother's house. Can you really blame her? 3) The place where we've purchased our ...

There are more people out there writing novel-length prose. The problem is they are all doing it in blurbs of 140 characters.   Look at your Twitter account right now. I double-dog dare you. (I'll wait...)   Now look at the number right above the word "TWEETS".   For some of you its in the tens of thousands. It is my opinion that it's OK for you to be proud of this number. It's a pretty significant accomplishment.   I'm even a little proud of my 9,062. How many words is that? Well, if I count the number of words in my last 10 tweets (7, 24, 9, 2, 23, 23, 19, 8, 24, 21) and divide by 10 I get an even 16 words. That is 144,992 words in the last two or three years. That is one hefty tomb or two decent-sized novels.   Now I'm fairly certain stringing those tweets together to form a book would at the very best be confusing and at the very worst be unreadable.   But it does bring about some truths for us writers.   We can write novels. Almost all of us....

I’ve become a podcast listener over the last two or three years. Mostly while in my truck, I’ll have one of the fourteen casts to which I subscribe playing in my Bluetooth earpiece, a Plantronics device that cost way too much and is starting, frankly, to fall apart. But in case there are any other podcast junkies out there, and like me often search for new material to add to the mix, I thought I’d briefly mention my choices, which are all available free on iTunes. If you’ve never listened to a podcast, this might be a good place to start. WRITING PODCASTS Writing Excuses – This is the best and it’s only 15 minutes long because “you’re in a hurry, and we’re not that smart.” I wish it was longer frankly. Those 15 minutes are packed with terrific advice for fiction writers and a solid, nerdy chemistry amongst Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal and Howard Taylor, all very successful creators in their own right. Writing Show with Paula B – In this podcast Paula actua...

This place always makes me calm down and look inward. I think as writers our environment often dictates how much we write and maybe even the quality of the work we do. If we are surrounded by chaos, noise, clutter, demands of our time, responsibilities to own, duties to honor, rules to follow, we might say that there is no room for writing, no room in our minds to create anything worth reading. We might say that. I know I have. I fantasize about being out there, completely isolated, riding the wave of my own creativity to see what works of art, what masterpieces materialize. We might say that. I do say that. But that doesn't make it true. For me, it's justification for the apparent unwillingness at the time to work hard to get what I want. I say "at the time" because I'm not always so quick to make excuses. I once wrote the majority of a novel lying on my stomach in our long hallway in the front of my child's door. Why? Because said child had a couple of ...

For a child, I imagine the worst thing about a monster in the house is the deep silence under stuffy confines of a big blanket, powerless, waiting for something sharp or something slimy to grab a toe until sleep overcomes fear. For an adult though, for me in particular, the worst thing is that I can’t tell anyone without coming off as a complete nut bag, a future roommate of Miss Maclaine herself. It has occurred to me that at some point I did unwittingly purchase a ticket on the Looney Tunes express. No one would blame me, I’m sure. Dennis has been gone now for almost a year, the anniversary of his disappearance less than a week away. Considering his mystery, my new little visitor fits right in to a mentally fabricated reality. Besides, whom would I tell? I could call one of the kids, but what would they do about it? Craig would listen or at least let me speak. But then I could almost hear the platitudes, could almost write his script as he threw out his momisms about getting o...

As often happens when I have a strong run of words (30,000 in November) I bail almost completely in the subsequent weeks. That has been the case for Mighty Quinn. The book is about 2/3 done and I have come to a complete halt. It makes me wonder if binge writing such as NANOWRIMO is good for my productivity. Maybe slow and steady really does win the race. Isn't he cute? But I'm not a turtle kind of guy. I type fast, I think fast, I work fast, I golf fast, I... do other things fast. I want to write my novels fast as well. But the faster I go the uglier my prose become. My mind has to sort of devolve to get into my writing brain. Maybe I need to start some sort of meditation routine before I start slapping those little keys. Isn't he cute? Regardless, these words do not write themselves. I'm very excited that Scrivener is developing an iPad app for their phenomenal writing software. But this is no excuse. Holidays? No excuse. New job? Well, maybe a little excuse. But rea...

I thought it'd be fun to do a review of this new app, using this new app. It's called Blogsy and it cost $4.99. I didn't really need another blogging app. I'm an impulsive guy. Here's my Dad. He was also an impulsive guy. Blogpress seemed to be working just fine. But Blogsy claimed much easier use of links, formatting and media usage and Blogpress can, at times, be chunky, especially in the links category. So I thought I'd give it a try. Starting with the photos. As you can see above I was able to get a pic of my dad on this post. I had to upload it to a photo account so it could link to the pic, but this is fairly easy thanks to the symbols on the right. This is a little buggy, but within a couple of minutes I took this screenshot and had it uploaded to Flickr and then inserted in the post. I imagine it'll get better as I use it more. Let's consider the YouTube... This is a video of my boy playing the piano for his Auntie. I'm very proud! If you can...

I am returning to the faceblogoforumtweetbook world this weekend. It's been just shy of two months and it's time to reconnect. Here's what I learned while on hiatus: 1) My job is not who I am. I decided to resign from my position and leave the organization where I have worked for ten years. I start my new job on Monday and couldn't be happier. 2) Best steak in town is not the best steak in town. It is an empirical fact and I can only surmise that the emotional attachment to said best-steak-in-town causes one's taste buds to lie to one's brain. Still, the company was fantastic. 3) The leaf will fall, and fall, and fall. No matter how diligent I think I am, no matter how many times I fill the green bins with leaves off the front yard, there are always more. Yes, I'm going out there again after this post. 4) Words can be written. No, I didn't finish my first draft of Mighty Quinn. Yes, I did write. In fact, I doubled my words. I'm at about 62,000 right ...